Losing what made us great

Whatever your idea of America was/is, there were elements in its past that made the mythology of our exceptionalism and superiority attractive. Not only attractive, but an argument could be made that America's "goodness" was very real and tangible. For close to three decades following WWII, America created a middle class and an economic climate of opportunity that allowed many to begin to have a "better life". Tax policies and other government policies were not weighted to benefit only the wealthiest of our citizens.

Fast forward however to our present day. Arlie Hochschild has an article picked up by AlterNet, as well as other progressive outlets that illustrates the cruelty of the Bush administration and their policies of reverse Robinhood-ism.

Hochschild uses the analogy of a chauffeur to illustrate the current administration's lack of empathy for anyone but their own. And who are their own? Wealthy, multi-millionaires--men (and a few select women, I guess), predominantly white, who care little about distributing their wealth, but hoard it and actually continue to confiscate additional wealth from those below them on the socio-economic ladder. Robbing from the working-classes and the poor, in order to add even more to their overstocked coffers. You can say what you want about the so-called "robber barons" of the previous century--the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mellons and Morgans--but they at least had some capacity for largesse and endowed many communities with parks, libraries, museums and other amenities that were accessible for all citizens, not just the uber-wealthy. Contrast that with today's wealthiest Americans--driving Hummer's and other behemoths, buying up our open spaces and restricting access to the hoi polloi. This is certainly the case here in my home state of Maine. But I digress; back to the article at hand.

Hochschild begins,

Let's consider our political moment through a story.

Suppose a chauffeur drives a sleek limousine through the streets of New York, a millionaire in the backseat. Through the window, the millionaire spots a homeless woman and her two children huddling in the cold, sharing a loaf of bread. He orders the chauffeur to stop the car. The chauffeur opens the passenger door for the millionaire, who walks over to the mother and snatches the loaf. He slips back into the car and they drive on, leaving behind an even poorer family and a baffled crowd of sidewalk witnesses. For his part, the chauffeur feels real qualms about what his master has done, because unlike his employer, he has recently known hard times himself. But he drives on nonetheless. Let's call this the Chauffeur's Dilemma.

Absurd as it seems, we are actually witnessing this scene right now. At first blush, we might imagine that this story exaggerates our situation, but let us take a moment to count the loaves of bread that have recently changed hands and those that soon will. Then, let's ask why so many people are letting this happen.

Lest you think that this is just another case of knee-jerk liberalism, belly-aching about those hard-working business folk, just reaping the benefits of the free market, here are some stats for you to mull over:

• On average, the 2003 tax cut has already given $93,500 to every millionaire. It is estimated that 52% of the benefits of George W. Bush's 2001-03 tax cuts have enriched the wealthiest 1% of Americans (those with an average annual income of $1,491,000).
• On average, the 2003 tax cut gave $217 to every middle-income person. By 2010, it is estimated that just 1% of the benefits of the tax cut will go to the bottom 20% of Americans (those with an average annual income of $12,200).
• During at least one year since 2000, 82 of the largest American corporations -- including General Motors, El Paso Energy, and, before the scandal broke, Enron -- paid no income tax.

Consider this additional tidbit of information courtesy of Hochschild's excellent article:

For every decade in the 150 years before 1970 -- including the decade of the Great Depression -- real earnings rose. As University of Massachusetts economist Rick Wolff points out, however tough a man's job or long his hours, he could usually look forward to a bigger paycheck.

But after 1970, the real earning power of male wages -- and I focus here on men, for they are the closer fit to the profile of the chauffeur -- stopped rising. Their dream was linked, it turned out, to jobs in an industrial sector that been automated out or outsourced abroad. Their old union-protected, high-wage, blue-collar jobs began to disappear as new non-union, low-wage, service-sector jobs appeared. Indeed, the man with a high-school diploma or a few years of college found few new high-opportunity jobs in the much-touted new economy while the vast majority ended up in low-opportunity jobs near the bottom. As jobs in the middle have become harder to find, his earning power has fallen, his benefits have shrunk, and his job security has been reduced.

So what was the result of this phenomenom that Wolf illustrates? First of all, life at home become tougher. The hallowed example that many on the right cling to of the domestic model--a single breadwinner (Dad) going off to work, while Mom stayed home and provided a home that was nurturing for Junior and Buffy.

But Wolf shows that this isn't the case any longer, as the "squeeze" made it necessary for Mom to take a job.

Citing Wolf, Hochschild writes, "Wives took paid jobs -- and this in a society that had given little thought to paid parental leave or family-friendly policies. For men as well as women, hours of work have increased. From 1973 to 1996, average hours per worker went up 19%. Since the 1970s, increases have occurred in involuntary job loss, in work absences due to illness or disability, and in debt and bankruptcy. The proportion of single mother families rose from 12% in 1970 to 26% in 2003."

I'd urge you to spend some time this weekend, reading the entire article from start to finish. It's illustrative and IMHO, very accurate. It also shatters the myth of President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and any connection his followers mistakenly attribute to him of being like the Jesus of the Bible.

A new look

Some funky things kept popping up in my last template for Words Matter. Having had the old design long enough to grow tired of it, I decided to change the look just a bit. Unfortunately, in doing so, I've lost all my links, so I'll be adding them back as time permits.

Well, I'm off to my Twilight game tonight to see if my Patriot Mutual squad can make it two in a row.

Energy policy

The U.S. Senate is debating an energy bill. If your morning paper is as uninforming as mine is, you probably found little or nothing about it.

U.S. energy policy is one of the most important issues affecting Americans. Some would argue that it is the single most important issue affecting our bloated, consumptive way of life. Regardless of one’s political persuasion, it behooves all of us to learn about some of the issues and pay attention to the debate.

The current bill, at over 1,000 pages, touches almost every corner of life in our country. Unfortunately, much of past policy has resulted in $500 billion in subsidies given to old paradigm energy industries such as coal, fossil fuels and nuclear. Contrast that with only $25 billion subsidizing renewable and alternative energy options.

Unbelievably, this morning, one segment on C-Span’s Morning Journal had a rehashing of the debate of whether nuclear energy is an option. With a spokesperson from the Nuclear Energy Institute obfuscating the issues brought by Navin Nayak of the Public Interest Research Group, I was just shaking my head that arguments refuted 25 years ago about the viability of nuclear energy, are still being debated.

Ultimately, regardless of one’s stand and orientation on energy, our current consumption of energy and reduction of demand must be a prime pillars in the debate if we ever are able to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. If we want to bring our troops home from Iraq, we can’t be driving SUV’s and other gluttonous consumers of petroleum.

A soul checks out

On Sunday, Father's Day, my son put together an awesome mix tape. Rather than go out and purchase some mass-produced detritus, he put his own personal touch into giving me something that I'm enjoying way-too-much.

I'm amazed that he's paid attention to my music and my moods and like me, who has always put too much thought into tapes I've made for others, created a mix that captures a good portion of the past ten years of musical highlights for me.

One of the bands Mark put on the tape was Soul Asylum. I used to be a huge fan, when they were the darlings of the college radio circuit, before they hit it big with their platinum-selling Gravedancers Union record.

I always appreciated the solid songwriting of Dave Pirner and had recently read an interview he did pertaining to his recent solo release, Faces and Names.

Today, I heard on our local alt-rock station, that bassist Karl Mueller had passed away, after a battle with throat cancer.

I saw Soul Asylum play back in 1985, at a club in Chicago called Caberet Metro. It was on upper Clark Street, not far from Wrigley Field. A typical hangout of the college, indie rock crowd of the time, local faves Precious Wax Drippings opened up. Both my musician friend Leo and I had a great evening hearing Soul Asylum rip through a loud and fast set, with Pirner handing over his guitar mid-song to someone in the front row and the fan didn't miss too many notes. This was a fun time, two decades back. A night when the music was good, the hair was less gray and the St. Pauli Girls (weird link) flowed freely.

In the city

I’m not sure where the fascination with capitalism and American’s woeful understanding of economics originates. While it would be (and is) fun to lay the blame at the feet of our educational institutions, I’ll refrain from doing so, at least for now.

Free markets act irrespective of people, environments and sentiment. They are cold and calculated agents that more-and-more, steamroll anything and anybody in their path.

A recent book I picked up at the library, Mike Davis’ Dead Cities, has stirred in me a once more, a fascination with urban environments and their influence in our country, as well as other parts of the world. In the same way Mumford’s The Culture of Cities opened up areas of understanding I had never entertained before, so does the writing of Davis. Using cities past and present as his stage to engage in tales of infinite greed, urban neglect and political scandal, Davis lays waste to the 1950’s Howdy Doody caricature that many Americans are still wedded to.

His takes on the southwest and in particular, the environmental deterioration of that former beautiful and unspoiled region of the United States are eye-opening to say the least. With this mirage city’s water gluttony fueling the extravagances of the casinos and other tourist meccas, it stretches my incredulity regarding others greed and capitalist excess.

In the preface of the book, he begins with, “Lower Manhatten was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape. Cars, railways, ferries, all had ceased, and never a light lit the way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky confusion but the light of burning. Dust and black smoke came pouring into the street, and were presently shot with red flame.”

What? Someone’s eyewitness description of the events of September 11, 2001? No, actually, H.G. Wells, from The War in the Air, written in 1908!

As I said earlier, capitalism and its markets care not at all about people, places and personal predilections. As Naomi Klein’s article in The Nation reaches the conclusion, disaster and human suffering is good for business—misery loves capitalism!

With all the talk about God, morality and the anathema of one’s personal sexual conventions, the basic root of all evil is conveniently left out of the discussions.