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but we no longer have a manufacturing strategy, don’t enforce our trade laws as vigorously, and don’t provide adequate support and retraining to displaced workers. Unlike previous recoveries, this time working families are not gaining ground. The share of national income going to workers is the lowest on record, while the share of national income going to corporate profits is the highest on record. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that as of 2006, wages and salaries paid to workers as a percentage of GDP stands at the lowest level on record, 51.6 percent. The share of income going to corporate profits was the highest on record at 13.8 percent. In fact, slow wage growth is boosting corporate profits. According to Goldman Sachs, slow growth in labor compensation explains 64 percent of the increase in profit margins over the past year, and “the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.”

If you’re interested in policy changes that would strengthen the middle class and help poor people work their way into it, you can contact the Center for American Progress, which is working on ways to lift the debt burdens on the middle class; the Center for Responsible Lending; ACORN, which organizes low-income people for economic and political empowerment; and several progressive religious groups, including the National Council of Churches, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Faith in Public Life, and Sojourners.

America has hundreds of such advocacy groups that argue for better care for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan; better equipment for our soldiers in combat; a stronger effort for peace in the Middle East; more rights for people with disabilities, as well as for gays, lesbians, and others; a fair and more effective immigration policy; greater education opportunities for minorities and the poor; and any number of other causes. Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate, you ought to find some positive change in government you can support. Groups that advocate for your views are not hard to find on the Internet, especially with all the aggressive blog sites exploding in cyberspace.

It’s important to remember that some of your most significant advocacy and involvement can be at the state and local levels. The major health-care reforms of the last few years have been instituted by state governments, with several states poised to do more this year if the child-health insurance program’s federal matching funds are continued. Groups of states in the West and the Northeast are trying to work together on climate change.

In April 2007, New York governor Eliot Spitzer proposed a package of legislative and regulatory measures designed to reduce the state’s energy consumption below current levels by 2015, primarily through more renewable energy production and higher standards for appliances and buildings. A New York company, Empire State Wind Energy, founded by businessman Tom Golisano, is offering local governments the chance to own their own wind generators, sell the power to utilities, and use the earnings to reduce property taxes or finance public improvements.

In 2006, the California legislature under the leadership of Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata passed the most far-reaching climate change legislation in America. Around the same time, a citizen coalition of consumer, environmental, and public health groups, scientists, and business groups tried to accelerate the transformation with Proposition 87, a ballot initiative that would have imposed an extraction tax of between 1.5 percent and 6 percent on oil producers in California to raise $4 billion for clean fuel vehicles and fuel distribution networks; more rapid development of solar, wind, and hydrogen power; and more research for the development of new clean energy technologies. The ballot initiative was funded by philanthropist Steve Bing, who put $50 million into the effort. Unfortunately,