PERSPECTIVE ON THE NATIONAL MOOD : Economic Justice Dies a Slow Death : A 20-year decline in the living standards of the American majority has led to our country’s present turmoil.

President Clinton calls it a “funk.” Others describe growing popular discontent, even anger. Abdicating officials proclaim that the political process is “broken.” Such observations come with little grace from the very leaders who are at least partly responsible for those deteriorating conditions of American life that underlie the present unrest and fuel the Republican “revolutions” and liberal bewilderment, the Christian right, the disaffected center and the aimless left.

Present turmoil and the seeds of far greater upheavals to come are a result of a 20-year decline in the living standards of the American majority, a decline that is now accompanied by the greatest redistribution of income upward since the onset of the Great Depression more than half a century ago.

The underlying facts are now beyond dispute. In the early 1970s, following a quarter of a century of steady increase, the income of the average American began to decline. And it is still shrinking. At the same time, other conditions that contribute to the quality of life have deteriorated: Public schools are worse than ever; college education is priced out of reach; our streets are streaked with violence, our communities plagued by fear. An American born 20 years ago has inherited a worse life and narrower opportunities than did his parents. Unless, of course, he or she is in the fortunate minority--that upper 10% or 20% whose income and wealth has gone steadily upward. The country has become wealthier, but only a minority have been allowed to share in that growth.

There are many causes for this devastating transgression of the American dream. It is not the consequence of some natural law, or even an unamendable edict of democratic capitalism. It results from policies designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. And it results from the failure to institute new policies that might frustrate the natural tendency of private power to aggrandize itself.

We have allowed, even encouraged, businesses to substitute miserably paid workers in foreign lands for our own citizens. Free trade and thoughtless immigration policies have further reduced the ability of American workers to claim a share of the nation’s growth. High interest rates, despite the absence of any threat from inflation, have benefited large financial institutions and bond traders at the expense of those who must pay those rates whenever they use credit. We have failed to strengthen unions against the onslaught of downsizings and wage reductions and permitted the financial markets to reward the wholesale firing of workers.

And there is much more.

For if there is one consistent thread in the complex tapestry of national policy, it is the continued support of big business and the affluent over the interests of the nation as a whole.

It is little wonder that so many are angry or cynical. Their political leaders have been accomplices in the shift of income from working Americans to the forces of organized wealth. Indeed, the political process itself now belongs to those who provide the immense resources that fuel politics and the legislative process. It is expected that many should be hostile to the political structures that have conspired in the destruction of their hopes, torn apart their honest expectations and continue to ignore the denial of economic justice. They allow politicians and the media--themselves the owned creations of corporate America--to debate the size of the federal budget, the abuse of welfare, the extravagance of Medicare, etc. Of course, welfare should be reformed; health spending programs must be rationally restricted. But at the heart of this great deception is the reality that if we totally abolished every program to help the poor and if we balanced the budget, it would not enhance the life of working Americans in the slightest.

Nor should we expect illumination from our present pre-presidential debate.

The Republicans excoriate public extravagance, the opportunism of the poor, the decline of “values,” while the once vigorous clarion call of the liberal left has dwindled to a confusing murmur. And all conveniently agree on the need to avoid “class warfare,” even though it is the depredations of the wealthy that are assaulting the living standards of working Americans. It is not the social programs of the once-honored New Deal or Great Society that are being repealed. It is the most important, overwhelming achievement of liberalism--the creation of a middle-class society.

Of all the candidates, only Pat Buchanan is even partially addressing the denial of economic justice. But the populist message is not a right-wing message. It rests on a premise as old as the country--that all Americans should share in the growth of the nation and that the public well-being not fall prey to the powerful.