× Expand AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

The amendment was defeated, but no one actually rose to speak against it. That was because the measure's opponents couldn't come up with a defense of their position that didn't sound absurd.

Last week, as it considered a bill that would re-authorize funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Senate defeated an amendment by Democrat Chuck Schumer, of New York, that would have blocked airlines from reducing the "size, width, padding, and pitch" of airline seats, the legroom between seats, and the width of the aisles. It would also have required the FAA to set minimum standards for the space airlines provide passengers to ensure their "safety, health, and comfort."

Schumer's amendment went down on a 42-to-54 vote, with every Republican voting against it except Maine's Susan Collins, and every Democratic voting for it except a DLC-ish trio consisting of Delaware's Tom Carper, Missouri's Claire McCaskill, and Montana's Jon Tester. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz were off somewhere running for president; John Cornyn and Dick Durbin were also absent.

It's hard to imagine that there are any actual airline passengers who fly coach who would oppose Schumer's amendment. In recent years, the average width of a seat in coach has shrunk from 18 to 16.5 inches, while the average pitch-the space between one point on a seat and the same point on the seat in front of it-has shrunk from 35 to 31 inches. To get a seat with more legroom-with a 35-inch pitch-you now have to pay extra for what used to be the standard. The collapse of oil prices may have fattened the airlines' coffers, but those profits haven't been invested in any fatter seats.

The descent of air travel into a form of jet-powered incarceration is the result of the warp-speed financialization of American capitalism and the soaring inequality it has produced. Last year, in an extraordinary op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Rick Schifter, an American Airlines board member and a onetime partner in a private equity firm, celebrated the stock performance of the leading U.S. airlines in recent years, which had landed American, Delta, and Southwest-three of the big four-in the top-ten list of Fortune 500 companies in the three preceding years. The soaring stock price, Schifter asserted, was the result of "consolidation and liquidation of some airlines" (that is, the rise in oligopoly pricing as competitors dropped by the wayside). It was also the result, he continued, of changes in airline practices after they were deregulated in 1978. In the bad old regulated days, "many airline executives were motivated by growth over profits-and were reluctant to shed inefficiencies which were vestiges of a regulated industry."

Passengers of a certain age remember those "inefficiencies" fondly-legroom, hot meals, reclining seats, no extra charges for baggage, a modicum of decency in the companies' regard for their passengers. But with the decline of competition compelling passengers to choose from a small group of airlines all under pressure to boost the share prices sought by major investors such as Schifter-who probably never fly coach but in their own private jets-those inefficiencies have become a thing of the past.

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In most long-established American industries, maximizing shareholder value has meant reducing worker income and diminishing consumer choice. In the airline industry, maximizing shareholder value has also meant minimizing passenger comfort.

The elimination of comfortable airline travel is also one more instance of an industry adapting to the decline of the mass middle class. As coach has shrunk, first-class seating has expanded. Delta now provides flat beds for first-class passengers on New York to Los Angeles flights, Emirates Air offers top-dollar passengers compartments complete with minibars and showers, and Lufthansa employs humidifiers increasing the humidity in first-class to 25 percent. In coach, meanwhile, it remains an arid 5 to 10 percent. For years, JetBlue resisted this trend by not having a first-class section and thereby providing its median passengers with more legroom, but it finally succumbed to Wall Street analysts' criticism that it was-oh, the horror-"overly brand-conscious and customer-focused" by sacking its management team and installing a new one that put a first-class section in the front of its planes, reducing the space for everyone else.

Just as mass-market retail has polarized into Bergdorf Goodman for the elites and Walmart and dollar stores for the masses, so airline seating has been divided into peerage and steerage.

So what were the Republicans and the "business Democrats" who defeated Schumer's amendment supposed to say? That a level of basic comfort that was once the industry standard and the common experience of American travelers now had to be sacrificed to the gods of the market, and was rightly doled out in accordance with one's wealth? That the government could not intervene to defend the interests and the knees of the traveling public? No wonder nobody spoke up.

Cornered by a reporter from The New York Times, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby said, "I don't think we ought to be regulating people"-which would have been a devastating riposte to Schumer's measure had it called for whacking off portions of people's legs so they'd fit into their seats. But what Schumer's measure actually called for was the regulation of companies with oligopolistic power so they would cease abusing the people who are compelled to patronize them when they need to travel. If Shelby's comment was the best the Republicans could do-and apparently, it was-it was just as well they shut up.