Here is virtual room to discuss Billmons piece about the economic bifurcation of the society and its political history and consequences.
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July 21, 2004
Billmon: Building a Bridge to the 19th Century
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from an interesting essay called Greed
“Could it happen in America? To some analysts, it is already beginning. A survey released by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation attributes our enduring levels of violence to “vast and shameful inequality in income, wealth and opportunity among urban poor” who are often “trapped in places of terror” (26) – inequalities which are simply un-American, opines C. Murphy (27).
Troubling studies exist, but we surround this research with technicians questioning methodology and politicians arguing the study represents no reality. There is denial: “Forget the data,” asserts one newspaper columnist on poverty issues, “…things have gotten better.”(28)
Finally, this issue is no longer the environmentalist’s concern about scarcity of natural resources, nor the population expert’s warnings about Earth’s limits to growth.
These scarcities are man made, the result of what people do to people. The fact is, far from being an abundant world, it is a world of scarcity because we calibrate it so. And yet the moral connection is absent.
Currently our aggregate wealth is like a high tide, covering many unpleasant things on the ocean floor. When there is full employment, we all seem happily raised. But a few years ago the Harvard Business Review carried an article daring to look down: Richard Freeman (29) warns that under the surface America is becoming dangerously segregated, forming an apartheid economy, and the lowest are not free to move up. Freeman adds a shadow. He sketches in a huge new group of Americans, the economically sinking workers who are trailing their counterparts in other advanced countries.
Sociologist Derber’s point is that where people are homeless, starving, or jobless, civil society has failed (30).”
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 21 2004 12:37 utc | 1
I read somewhere recently that the “middle class” is really somewhat of an aberration in history. Just what becomes of us in “their” perfect world? Do we all end up flipping burgers?
Posted by: beq | Jul 21 2004 14:04 utc | 2
Interesting discussion on now on Diane Rehm on NPR(10:10 AM EDT:
________Bernstein, and someone else (didn’t catch the name) from American Heritage Foundation discussing decline of real wages. The issue is possibly getting a little traction.
“Abraham Lincoln was a trial lawyer”
Posted by: tom 47 | Jul 21 2004 14:14 utc | 3
Interesting discussion on now on Diane Rehm on NPR(10:10 AM EDT:
Jerry Bernstein, and someone else (didn’t catch the name) from American Heritage Foundation discussing decline of real wages. The issue is possibly getting a little traction.
“Abraham Lincoln was a trial lawyer”
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 21 2004 14:14 utc | 4
This speech is to be delivered by Tom Daschel today on the Senate floor:
Doing Right by America
Posted by: sukabi | Jul 21 2004 14:46 utc | 5
the “middle class” is really somewhat of an aberration in history
The middle class is the product of protectionist policies, which prevent contractual freedoms to be extended outside of the borders of a nation. They force the employer to look domestically for an employee. They legislate that the demand for labor only be supplied by contracts with the workers from the domestic pool of supply. This means that higher wages can be demanded.
Free market means the freedom of the employer to fire his employees and be free to look for substitutes outside of the domestic market.
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Jul 21 2004 14:47 utc | 6
Billmon, if you’re reading this (which I doubt):
Really nice post, man.
Posted by: Jackmormon | Jul 21 2004 14:52 utc | 7
Billmon:
“And building a newer deal, one that reconciles the benefits of globalization with the social problems it creates, doesn’t seem to be on Kerry’s agenda, or anybody else’s.”
And yet whatever happens, the most destitute person in America will still be doing much better than most of the people in the Sudan. Not that there’s anything right with that. God, this planet sucks sometimes.
Posted by: Romdinstler Jones | Jul 21 2004 14:53 utc | 8
Fascism doesn’t need middle class. In 1944, Wallace predicted it:
“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
Read the full article here.
Posted by: Lupin | Jul 21 2004 14:56 utc | 9
I worry about inflation due to huge spending, especially on Defense. If we already have wages falling and employment as well, plus huge spending in the Defense sector (which creates fewer job per dollar than any other) aren’t we going to wind up with underemployment-plus-inflation? That’s the guns and butter result of Vietnam coupled with recession. Or is that a far-fetched scenario?
Posted by: x | Jul 21 2004 15:13 utc | 10
underemployment-plus-inflation?
Stag-flation is the name of the game —
Prices are rising, especially at the wholesale level. Suppliers are finally passing on the costs they have eaten for the past three years; 6-9% increases are now common.
Housing starts were down 8% last month, due to softening demand and rising interest rates. Because the refi boom, the home building and remodeling industries are such an important part of the economy, the Fed will be constrained when it comes to jacking up interest rates. I expect about a 1% maximum rise in mortgage rates, if that.
Of course, Alan Greenspan could decide to screw the economy, as a way to screw John Kerry. That would be in keeping with his pro-GOP agenda.
Posted by: ck | Jul 21 2004 15:55 utc | 11
Lupin — I was about to post the same thing. As far as the Kerry campaign goes, perhaps is going to make some kind of new new deal his over-arching theme. The choice of Edwards, with the success of his “two Americas” speeches during the primaries suggests as much. FDR gave a great acceptance speech in 1936, repeatedly referring to “economic royalists” of the present day and linking them to the economic tyranny that spurred the Revolution. I’d be inspired if Kerry made a speech that connected planet wide strife and environmental degradation to new generation of economic royalists — and this time a ursurper to boot.
On the defense spending side, I don’t expect Kerry to be different, from looking at his website.
Posted by: x | Jul 21 2004 16:09 utc | 13
fauxreal
I’m a slow reader but thanks so much for the Edney article GREED. It was worth the time. The following hit home with me because I gave up on television so long ago and whenever I find myself in front of one now, I can’t believe how it has changed.
“As with any other drug, we need increasing strengths. The only way to find out what television is doing to you after years of watching is to turn it off for a month. Turn it on again after abstinence, and it seems like a television’s bid for our attention is like repeatedly shooting a pistol into a chandelier.”
Posted by: beq | Jul 21 2004 16:58 utc | 14
Not even knowing that Billmon posted the subject article, I related a little of my own experience in dealing with the real-world issue of reality disconnects on ASZ.
Sometimes, I think the whole have/have not thing is such a target rich environment that it’s saturated. People at either end of the economic spectrum really just don’t give a shit, because they figure there’s nothing they can do about it anyway.
Posted by: Richard Cranium | Jul 21 2004 21:11 utc | 15
The middle class is the product of protectionist policies, which prevent contractual freedoms to be extended outside of the borders of a nation.
Actually, the middle class came into its own in this country when the people who put their fucking lives on the line for this country in WW2 were finally acknowledged and rewarded for that fact.
Education made it possible for those in the lower classes to qualify for something other than blue collar jobs. That education was possible because of the GI Bill.
But one big problem in America is that we don’t have a free market at all. We have crony capitalism, which is welfare for the rich that reaches into the billions of dollars.
…and then the mother fuckers think they have no obligation to people in this country who pay the taxes to give them all those subsidies.
sort of like some little shit who fails at every business he’s involved in who thinks he deserves all the money tossed his way cause his daddy is prez and people want to buy influence….
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 21 2004 21:35 utc | 16
What a long drawn out essay to say America is tanking. The stock market is again heading under 10,000 and the dollar is slipping close to going under .80 per Euro. The cost of the Iraq debacle is is racing along at several million per day and up to 40,000,000 Americans are going to bed hungry every night. The Federal deficit is increasing faster than at any time in history.
Even Lou Dobbs seems to be throwing up his hands in desperation.
Posted by: pb | Jul 21 2004 22:42 utc | 17
Lest we forget that money isn’t everything after all. Er, something like that. From willwilkinson.net/flybottle/
July 21, 2004
Rich in Love
A friend (who may or may not want to be named) points to this WebMD article summarizing the economic value of sexual activity. It turns out that extra money doesn’t make us that much happier, but sex makes us quite a lot happier, so if we’re putting a money value on units of happiness, sex is worth a lot of money.
“After analyzing data on the self-reported levels of sexual activity and happiness of 16,000 people, Dartmouth College economist David Blachflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England report that sex ‘enters so strongly (and) positively in happiness equations’ that they estimate increasing intercourse from once a month to once a week is equivalent to the amount of happiness generated by getting an additional $50,000 in income for the average American.”
My first reaction to this is that prostitutes are undercharging. My second reaction is pretty much the same as my correspondent, who writes:
“There should be a tax on all that undeclared income! — after all, all those people are getting the benefit of that money, isn’t that the same as actually having the money? How can that $50,000-equivalent benefit be redistributed so that everyone can benefit ‘equally’?”
Posted by: Pat | Jul 22 2004 1:19 utc | 18
@ Pat
I’d give you my two cents’ worth but I’m saving it up.
😉
Posted by: Nemo | Jul 22 2004 1:23 utc | 19
Nice Post by Billmon.
There was always a middle class in the US and it was the merchant class until unions organized and Henry Ford decided to pay wages so his employees could by his cars and then the middle broadened.
Billmon was right about Clintons luck. One of the factors of the 1990s boom was the Asian crisis. That let Greenspan take the break off monetary policy. But the kicker was OPEC had produced alot of oil to feed the Asian Tigers. The Asian crisis caused a glut and oil to fall into the mid and lower teens in price per barrel. That allowed the US economy to really take off. People say it was the stock market bubble. That was not the whole truth. Cheap oil was like a big tax cut for everyone including the lower classes.
Those circumstances may not ever happen again. But we do need some class warfare. We need wealth re-distribution or we will have the Gilded Age again. On with the pitchforks and shovels.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 22 2004 2:37 utc | 20
thanks for the GREED link faux.
i am intrigued by this paragraph, if anyone cares to elaborate, please do. its towards the bottom under the heading
Moral Enertia
“Well, we can follow suit. We can generate our own examples of contradictions. So, perhaps, commercial success and social responsibility are not incompatible anymore. Everything is possible if you use self-contradiction; you are able to both work for a company, and rebel against it. Corporate rebellion = loyalty.
This leads to a technique a ‘Sixties activist, Rudy Dutschke, once called “the long march through the institutions.” It is a long term and less bloody strategy: Go in, behave – and take over. The new culture agent is stylishly dressed, well paid, and works in an plush ad agency, designing resplendent ads which promote the return to honesty and social justice, humaneness, equity and the common good (68).
The next revolution will be inside corporations.”
Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2004 3:38 utc | 21
We need wealth re-distribution or we will have the Gilded Age again.
Seems like we’re already there. The cultural signs have been on the wall for a while — the breathless worship of rich people and their fortunes, the dumbing down, the “mercantilisation” of everything in sight… endless recycling of the good old lie that anyone can win big in this casino… good time to re-read Babbitt actually…