The underdevelopment of health of working America: causes, consequences and possible solutions

This article presents the health conditions of working America, and provides an analysis of the causes of that situation. It is postulated that the main health problems in the U.S. are due not to prevalent life styles, as the behavioralists indicate, but to the dramatic maldistribution of economic and political power in our society, with the absence of control by the majority of the U.S. population, the working and lower middle classes, over the work process with which they are involved, the economic wealth that they produce, and the political institutions that they pay for. The production of goods and wealth as well as the political institutions of the United States are dominated and controlled by a minority of our population, the corporate and upper middle classes. Empirical information is presented to support this postulate. In light of this explanation, it is asserted that a major public health task is to deliberately and actively contribute to the political mobilization of forces aimed at bringing about profound changes in the pattern of control of our working institutions and of the distribution of wealth and political power, changes which seek to shift that control from the few to the many.