Reich's Boats

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Reich’s Boats

“Twelve thousand people are added to the world’s population every hour, most of whom,

eventually, will happily work for a small fraction of the wages of routine producers in America”

(291). In the late 1970's it was customary for families to have the “dad” as the bread winner. The

“Leave it to Beaver” persona poured from home to home and engrossed the budding families to

come. Now in the modern day “Gucci” society, a one person income is not adequate enough to

keep a family above water. Everything is getting to be more and more expensive, but the income

of modern families, is no longer a safety boat . Robert Reich in “Why the Rich Are Getting

Richer and the Poor, Poorer,” describes a metaphor of three boats, the routine producer, the in-

person server, and the symbolic analyst, explaining the fates of these American workers.

The first group of American workers that Reich discusses is the routine producer, the

hands on producing worker that helps the larger corporations manufacture their goods. He

stresses that in the mid twentieth century, routine producers were to make a decent living: they

could buy homes, take annual vacations, and save toward retirement(290). However, Reich states

that this is no longer the case. His metaphorical boat containing the routine producers is sinking

steadily(290). Because of ease of transportation as well as advances in communication, “modern

factories can be installed all most any where on the globe”(291). Therefore, it is a simple process

for factories simply to relocate wherever labor is cheapest. Reich cites the example of AT&T,
who after years of assembling their telephones at a factory in Louisiana relocated to Singapore

where labor cost were cheaper. However, “by the late 1980s, AT&T’s strategic brokers found

that routine producers in Thailand were eager to assem...