Twenty Years of Schooling and They Put You on the Day Shift

The New York Times is unquestionably the best newspaper in the United States, certainly leagues better than my own local rag, the Washington Post.  And yet, the amount of arrant nonsense that gets printed on its Op-Ed pages is pretty astounding.  There's BoBo Brooks, Ross "Chunky Bobo" Douthat, Maureen Dowd, all of whom lower the level of national debate with their own peculiar combinations of intellectual dishonesty, superficial thinking, and personal sexual hangups.  And then there is the bullshit artist supreme, Thomas Friedman, mangler of language, spouter of his own self-promoting jargon, and a truly mediocre thinker who has somehow been led to believe he is a sage of some kind.

I will have to deal with his most recent crap fest in my next post, but am still fuming over this bit of nonsense from last Tuesday, entitled "The Start Up of You."  The premise of the article is that our "kids will not so much have to find their next job as to invent their next job."  They are going to all have to be "entrepreneurs" about their careers and we are told that "for entrepreneurs it's differentiate or die -- that now goes for all of us."  Friedman cites to the accumulated wisdom of some of the driving forces behind recent Silicon Valley ephemera like Groupon, Linked-in, Zynga, and Twitter, as though those companies really suggest the model by which a country of over 300 million people are going to live their lives.

This seems really obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be said.  The vast majority of people in this country are not going to be working in Silicon Valley or like enterprises.  They are going to continue doing the jobs that have been staples of the economy for a long time -- nurses, teachers, health care aids, building tradesman, truck drivers, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers, hair dressers, grocery store clerks, etc.  These people don't need to differentiate themselves -- they need to be paid a fucking living wage by a society that credits them with some human worth.  The notion that people want to -- or will be able to -- continuously reinvent themselves as workers is just nonsensical.  It devalues the concept of experience, it belittles the value of stability in people's lives, and it is, ultimately, a way to glamorize what in fact is an ugly world view of perpetual worker vulnerability and lack of value in a world in which free floating capital continuously undermines any hope that the vast majority will experience anything like a decent and secure life. 

Friedman has no sense whatsoever of the implications of the world that he is endorsing.  Moreover, his technological triumphalism strikes me as absurd for someone who lived through the late 90s tech bubble that brought us AOL and Pets.com.  The durability and economic viability of these social networking sites strikes me as dubious in the extreme. 

I read Charles Blow's column today, talking about what actually people in the country do for a living, to be an implicit rebuff to Friedman.  Yeah, Blow lays on the ordinary Americans working hard in the deep South bit a little thick, but the overall message is quite clear -- jobs are expanding in lots of low wage, hard laboring kind of work, a hug quantity of which takes no advanced degrees or fancy entrepreneurial spirit.   I note that among these jobs, there are a couple -- registered nurses and carpenters among them -- that are listed as high wage.  But these jobs are high wage jobs largely because of unionization -- yes, the people who ply these trades have undeniable skills, but in the end it is collective bargaining that has made them reasonably lucrative careers for people -- not "branding" or "differentiating" or entrepreneurial this or that, but good old fashioned trade unionism. 

If the United States is going to flourish, we need to somehow assure that all who work and contribute in these unglamorous, but highly necessary jobs (really think about the value of the home health aid versus some clown who allows you to get coupons online), can make a decent wage with health care coverage and an adequate retirement so that they too can share, however modestly, in the bounty of the world's richest country.     

Comments

[Clarissa]

What an absolutely brilliant post! I see my students - bright, hardworking kids - who graduated last year or this May - and who either can't find a job at all or get offered $11,000 per year for a full-time position at our local bank. Something is deeply wrong in a society where young people who put themselves through college have to face such limited - or altogether non-existent - options once they graduate. It just annoys me beyond what I can express when I read such condescending articles in the New York Times written by people who are completely out of touch with the reality my graduates encounter.

[beckya57]

You're right about nurses' unions, Sir C, the one here in WA has a lot of power. That's really helped we ARNPs too, since by allying with the RNs and LPNs we get strength beyond our own numbers, which aren't all that large. One of the issues we talked about at our recent leadership retreat (for the psych ARNP association) is how to continue networking with the WSNA (the state nurses' union). I'm actually kind of surprised that we haven't seen the same kind of demonization of nurses' unions that we've seen of teachers' unions. You'd think the right wing would enjoy blaming us for increasing health care costs. Either they haven't thought of it (seems unlikely), or they've taken note of the polls that show nurses to be one of the most highly trusted occupational groups in the country.

[low-tech cyclist]

"it is, ultimately, a way to glamorize what in fact is an ugly world view of perpetual worker vulnerability"

Just wanted to pull this line out to highlight it, because I think that in this line, SC, I think you've distilled the problem with this world view right down to its essence. This is the one thing that must be said about this Friedman column and others like it (because Lord knows he's not the only pundit who's served up this drek); the rest is supporting evidence.

And while Friedman's too oblivious to the lives of real people to intend that particular effect, I'm sure the folks at the Chamber of Commerce (and elsewhere), who drool over the prospect of a "world...of perpetual worker vulnerability," surely find Friedman and others who espouse this idea to be extremely useful idiots in the work of convincing the public that this is the way things really should be.

[Corvus]

Fuck yeah, Sir Charles. Fuck. Yeah.

[big bad wolf]

what corvus said.

excellent work, SC

[kathy a.]

yes, very good.

among his other sins, friedman discounts the fact that many people who have steady careers now have worked a number of jobs along the way; for most people, it has not been simply a matter of stepping up the ladder, as he assumes. in other words, many workers outside the rarified silicon valley world have long employed innovation, adding skills, starting over.

the financial crisis is being used as an excuse to cut wages, benefits, job protections, and jobs. those at the top are not suffering much, because they still have more cash than they know what to do with (yet yearn to increase the stockpile) -- the financial crisis was engineered by the fortunate, but is coming out of the hides of ordinary workers. or would-be workers.

people here have mentioned before the bleak prospects for those just entering the job market. they have little experience and are competing now with more seasoned workers looking for new work.

the idea that it's all about profit for those at the top is so pernicious and ingrained among the privileged that someone like friedman does not even recognize it is a problem. we need workers to make living wages for necessary work; we need necessary work to be done; we need for younger people to find work in the first place. there is only so much room for the entrepreneurship he admires in a society where so many people are struggling to support themselves and their families.

people who do not have money do not spend money. the exception is when they spend money they do not have and cannot repay -- which is a part of why there was a financial meltdown. the "all is profit" people decided they could make more by pressing people to take untenable credit risks. when those offers were accepted, and then the debtors could not pay up, the moral blame somehow went to the borrowers who were duped rather than the geniuses who duped them. (sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part, the duped are the ones suffering.)

big business and rich folks have come out relatively unscathed, still profits aplenty -- but directly contrary to the trickle-down theory, they are not building new jobs with that money. they are not that interested in protecting and keeping existing workers -- after all, workers can all be replaced (for less!) because so many people are looking for work.

[Sir Charles]

We could, of course, emulate Friedman and marry the child of a billionaire.

Now that's the entrepeneurial spirit.

Friedman also shamelessly uses his perch at the Times to promote his books. A pity the rest of us don't get to advertise for ourselves for free in the nation's most prestigious daily.

[kathy a.]

damn. i forgot to marry the child of a billionaire. i never did take to "dating for dollars."

[Sir Charles]

Well kathy, clearly you don't have the entrepeneurial mind set necessary for the future.

[Morzer]

I must say that Tom Friedman writes and apparently thinks like a child who has delightedly realized that the big bright thing in the sky is called the sun and can't wait to share his scientific genius with a grateful world. Why does the NYT insist on giving columns to charlatans like Friedman and Brooks? Do they really gain readers this way?

Two of the most alarming trends in recent years: the scorn for people who actually work hard for a living (with an accompanying attack on the idea that such people should earn a good wage), and the rejection of expertise and competence in favor of charlatanry, snake-oil and "faith".

[Sir Charles]

Clarissa,

Thank you. Friedman lives in a bizarre little bubble.

becky,

My mom was a nurse for forty years. They never got paid decently until 1) women began moving in numbers into other professions; and 2) until they began unionizing in numbers. And now it has become a reasonably good paying profression -- although always vulnerable to aggressive management tactics, including the importing of nurses from overseas to try to undermine wage standards.

l-t c,

Absolutely. And Friedman makes this rather horrifying world view somehow sound reasonable -- even promising. He's completely out of touch.

Corvus and bbw,

Thanks.

kathy,

One of Friedman's many flaws is his attributing of benign motives to our business elite.

[Sir Charles]

Morzer,

Yeah -- I always imagine a Friedman column being read in a loud voice like someone not overly bright trying to teach a child.

I think Friedman is a charlatan who doesn't even know he's a charlatan. He's a strangely credulous guy who really thinks he is offering pearls of wisdom.

Brooks, too, is a charlatan, but of a slightly different variety. Although when I think of his columns on evolutionary biology he seems similarly credulous.

[kathy a.]

on the topic of the silicon valley "model" for everyone -- an LATimes piece on how crazy that is. it certainly is not a model for the vast majority of workers.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I am very reluctant at any time to disagree with you, Sir Charles -- and when i do, I usually spend so much time rethinking my position that, whatever side I come down on, so many posts have gone up that it isn't worth making my comments.

I am especially reluctant, when the rest of the table is hoisting you on their shoulders and marching you around in triumphant, and fighting to refill your glass, to be the one person who remains seated, arms folded, and dour expression plastered on my face, shaking his head sadly.

But this time I am forced to be that nay-sayer. What Friedman actually said -- not the parody of his thought you produced -- makes sense and may be necessary to think about and not just to skide over. Friedman is not saying 'In the future everybody will work for Twitter (*shudder* my view of Twitter is a little more negative than even yours is) or the other networking services. What he IS saying, as I read him, is that there are certain skills that -- for those people who are not merely content to be members of the 'service economy' -- need to be developed and concentrated on.

(Ironically, I wish mhb were still here, because the skills that Friedman talks about are precisely the skills that a musician has always needed -- at least during my life time. Much the same could be said for a writer, or almost any person who is earning his living in the entertainment field.)

You give a very interesting list of 'important jobs for the average person.' (And this may seem elitist, but I need to pint out that the people Friedman are talking about are not the 'average people' but the people who create the surplus that male your list of jobs possible.) Let's take a good look at the list you provide:

nurses, teachers, health care aids, building tradesman, truck drivers, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers, hair dressers, grocery store clerks

Fascinating group of occupations. Yes, you are certainly right that they are the backbone of 'today's economy' but they share one thing. Not one of them produces anything. None of them 'brings new income into the community.'

In fact, a sealed community, totally isolated from the world around, that consists of these people would starve to death, because there would be no one to actually pay for their services.

In effect, it would, in the best case, create a fully barter or socialized, maybe even communized, economy, where each person was required to proveide his/her services to the rest of the community in exchange for other members of the community being forced to provide their services. And this would, of course, leave entirely unaddressed where the necessary 'products' needed for each of these professions would come from. To pick the simplest example, you can't make much of a living as a grocery clerk unless you have a grocery store, which implies a supply of groceries that no one is providing from your list. A nurse or doctor needs bandages, drugs, evenuniforms, in shirt things, and your economy doesn't provide them.

The 'service-based' economy is vital in many ways. It could even be argued -- even by me, who is very skeptical of 'automatic' politcal-economic ties -- that there is a definite connection between the health of that part of the economy and liberal democracy. (And, in fact, one triumph of liberal democracy is to make 'services' previously available only to the rich available to the society as a whole. (The change from 'tutors' to 'teachers' and from 'court physician' to 'family doctor' illustrates that.)

But the problem with the 'service-based' economy is that it doesn't produce wealth. You say that the people working these jobs deserve both dignity and a living wage. I entirely agree, and need to insist on that.

But they can't get a living wage, a society cannot afford to compensate them properly -- or, in many cases at all -- unless there is an external supply of wealth that allows them to get paid -- that provides a class of people or a society as a whole that can afford their services.

And the wider the distribution of that wealth production throughout the society as a whole, the stronger the possibility for the sort of democracy we all want. This is why there is a link between capitalism -- ideally a New Dealish socially directed and controlled capitalism -- and democracy.

But the sources of that wealth production are limited. Land was a tradiotional way of creating wealth, but that implied either the development of undeveloped land or the claiming of previously unclaimed or unused land (or land being occupied and used by people who could be pushed out of the way, like native Americans or other 'natives.' Neither of those routes is possible in today's world where almost all land is either developed or being deliberately kept less than developed.

Theft was a traditional form of bringing wealth into a society, either through military conquest or piracy or the like. I don't think that method is likely to return to favor in anything resembling our world.

Agriculture was -- and remains -- the most important form of wealth production. It literally 'grows' new wealth, it produces something everyone needs and, because farms are or were traditionally self-sufficient, it also kept people out of the labor market and provided an 'escape valve' during the times the capitalist part of society did one of its periodic hiccups. And it was also very labor-intensive.

But agriculture has changed, and there are -- at least in this country -- far fewer family farms. Agriculture has become less labor-intensive (a blessing for the people who have to work in it) and thus provides less of a safety valve. And the growth of 'agribusiness' means that much of the surplus wealth provided goes into a smaller group of hands, that it is not as widely distributed as it previously was.

The only other forms of wealth creation or wealth infusion are industrialization -- making things, turning 'raw materials' into 'products' -- and finance -- manipulating other people's wealth.

Industrialization -- once it gets past the 'captains of industry' stage -- spreads the wealth around broadly, and leads to a society that can devote a suitable and necessary part of the surplus to just those 'service' jobs you discuss. (It is even necessary to pay for the government that controls it.) But even here the problem is that all segments of the industrial economy are becomuing less labor intensive. We just don't need as many people to produce things if we have the aid of technology -- and Luddism is not an alternate.

Finance is different. Finance manipulates money, and money is simply a symbol which gains value by 'general agreement.' (And a non-symbolic money -- like the Paulites suggest would be desireable -- has many many other problems not worth discussing.) Finance is not labor-intensive at all. As I stated previously, finance does not create jobs because there is no relationship between 'employee hours' and 'wealth created.' It leads to a concentration of wealth, and eventually turns a 'service economy' into a 'servant economy' with the services limited only to those who can afford them and paid so poorly that the servants can't afford to have their own services.

(You mentioned, for example, home healthcare attendants, but it is only the rich or the government supported who can afford to hire them.)

A few places to start. Sorry to have gone on this long, and not really gottem back to the idea of 'skill-sets' that Friedman starts with, but we can go there later.

And please, Sir. Charles and everybody: I have a picture of a preferred society that is not much different from any of yours. I want what each of you want, a society where people are well-fed, healthy, independent, free, and have dignity that can not be taken from them.

My only point is that moving towards that goal, or even maintaining the progress we've made towards it, may require a deeper and less superficial look at the basics than I have seen even from you, Sir Charles.

[whew, a rant and a half, and started right after bbw's comment at 10:03, so i've missed any future comments.]

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Sorry for the incredible number of typos -- the rant was interrupted by one cry for help and advice from a friend, and Kittenz's first daily round of medicine and I was rushing like crazy and not even looking at what i was typing -- I am a 2-finger typist if I have never mentioned that.

I hope the meaning is clear and exactly where my point of disagreement with sir Charles is -- and my agreement with the horrible Thomas friedman. In fact, I think all three of us would agree on about 95% of our points, and I would argue that the two other positions are both necessary and complementary.

Sir Charles, we need the type of society you (and I want) with democracy, equality, dignity and comfort for all. But without a large minority of the populace developing the sort of skills Friedman suggests -- and using them on the economy as a whole, not just on Facebook -- which is actually as much a triumph of 'finance capitalism' as anything else around -- we won't have an economy that makes that possible without some other form of rethinking.

Meanwhile all three of us would reject the 'neo-Feudalism' that -- and this has been my main point right along -- 'finance capitalism' if not totally checked -- tends to produce.

More later, but a busy day, hope I will have enough time to at least respond the the flying bricks heading my way.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I think we are slightly talking past each other. My discussion was more about what the nature of the labor market -- as illustrated in Blow's article and its attachment -- is likely to be, not some sort of sketch of what is necessary for econommic growth. I would note, however, that one of the best paths to economic growth is simply having a populace that is paid enough to purchase goods, thereby in the process making the kinds of entrepeneurial innovations valued by Friedman worthwhile. One needs disposable income to be able to purchase this kind of ephemera.

One of the features of a very advanced capitalist society is that fewer people are needed to produce actual products -- be they agricultural or manufacturing or raw materials -- freeing up labor to provide the kinds of personal services that are a feature of the current economy. (If you look at the largest employer in many smaller cities in America now, it is almost invariably the local hospital.)

Of course we need people to invent things, found new businesses, develop new technologies, etc. My point was simply that the bulk of the populace is likely to continue to be involved in working the kind fo jobs I've laid out here.

[Beckya57a]

I turned down a soon-to-be-surgeon for a psychologist. Clearly I am also lacking the necessary entrepreneurial spirit.

[Morzer]

"Agriculture was -- and remains -- the most important form of wealth production."

Not true, I fear. Agriculture was the mainstay of production in pre-modern economies, along with a certain amount of mining and craftsman-based manufacturing in small-scale operations. Even then, the revenues that the state acquired from "agriculture" were normally based on a land-tax, rather than on a tax levied on the products themselves. Said land-tax, often coupled with a hearth-tax, was the mainstay of government finance. In some pre-modern societies, merchants paid a limited amount of money for the right to bring their goods to market/into the city for sale, but this wasn't typically a big source of government revenue, partly because cities tended to be fewer and smaller. Agriculture has steadily lost importance as part of the economy ever since the industrial revolution.

[kathy a.]

prup, i think you are kinda full of it when you talk about agriculture. first of all, we all need food, no?

what you do not really address despite mentioning "agribusiness" is that farm labor often results in wages below minimum wage -- even today. despite mechanization, one cannot pick certain crops or sort the results etc. without labor. california has huge tracts of farmland, and the impact of agribusiness was huge even back during the dust bowl/great depression. family farms were sold off because the owners could not afford to work them anymore; there was unlimited cheap labor for agribusiness because families were starving.

the changes in ag that you mention began well before my lifetime, even before my late father was born in 1930.

[beckya57]

Jim, the problem in the US isn't inadequate production to support the economy. It's that the fruits of that economy are too concentrated in too few hands. This has several consequences: (1) money gets diverted into useless and dangerous financial manipulations, instead of being spent on useful things such as infrastructure or household basics, and (2) the general populace doesn't have enough money to maintain its standard of living, and then gets over-indebted, which creates new opportunities for financial mischief and overall economic instability. Eventually the house of cards collapses, and people can no longer afford to buy things, and you get the situation we're in now. Unfortunately, that very concentration of wealth also prohibits the needed actions (e.g. first adequate stimulus, then regulation and finally a more equal distribution of resources) from being taken to address the fundamental causes of the instability. Furthermore, the wealthy see a country with demoralized workers as an advantage, and keep forgetting that another word for workers is consumers, i.e. demoralized workers=inadequate demand.

Another problem with wealth concentration is one that Jonathan Bernstein pointed out recently. He was saying that a Madisonian political system like ours depends on the politicians acting to maximize their chances of being re-elected (similar to how a truly free market can obtain good outcomes not because the actors are good but because they do good things in order to maximize their profits). He then went on to say that that may no longer be working in the US, because the economic incentives to hold unpopular right-wing positions have gotten so large. I think he was talking about the revolving door of GOP (and occasionally Dem) politicians moving from politics into well-paid corporate sinecures, and that they are more likely to get these gigs if they've taken corporate-friendly positions, even if those are unpopular with most of the public, while in office. (Think Billy Tauzin and Evan Bayh.) His view was that this is a relatively new and destabilizing force in our politics, and I'm inclined to agree, based on the events of the last 30-40 years, and especially the last 20.

Another really destabilizing force, which is related to the above and I've mentioned before, is the apparent GOP decision to destroy any Dem administration, regardless of the costs to the country. I believe similar things have happened in our history--with very negative consequences--but this is unprecedented in my lifetime. The Dems don't do it, and the GOP didn't do this to JFK, LBJ or Carter; they opposed many of those presidents' policies, of course, but they didn't make destruction of their administrations their #1 goal. This started with Clinton and has continued with Obama. It's happening even now, with the world economy in the balance: even the Republicans who know a debt deal is necessary are still prioritizing how to make the deal as disastrous as possible for Obama, and those priorities are continuing to interfere with getting a deal done. This has also been a huge factor in making the negotiations so difficult: the GOP has spent the last 2 years telling its base that Obama is the Antichrist, so of course the base is opposed to any deal whatsoever, consequences be damned. We also have related problems, such as unfilled vacancies in the courts and other branches such as the Fed, d/t endless holds and filibusters, and the impossibility of passing any decent legislation. Our system just isn't set up to handle this kind of situation.

Ok, that's my long rant.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

While it may be quibbling, 'wealth production' in the sense I used it meant 'production of wealth that would not exist without it.' Thus you can either grow something that didn't exist before you grew it, turn 'natural resources' into salable products that didn't exist before you made them, or manipulate money to create wealth. Once that 'new wealth' exists, it can be distributed through society, with its producers or owners having the money to buy other things and services.

It is those moneys that enable the goverment to pay for education for all -- instead of just allowing the rich to hire tutors. It is that money that allows the government to pay for security services for all (police, fire, military) rather than allowing the rich to create private armies and corps of retainers for its protection and allowing the rest to fend for itself.

Again, my whole point centers around the dangers of 'finance capital' the mere manipulation fo money to create wealth. That 'newly created wealth' -- besides being ephemeral and likely to disappear when 'the bubble bursts' -- doesn't get spread around through society -- because it isn't initially distributed to the usual crowd of employees. We've heard a lot about the new 'concentration of wealth among the rich' and spend time arguing if this is the result of Republican economic policies.

It is, or at least they foster the concentration, but it is more because of an inherent tendency of finance capital to concentrate wealth.

We are already seeing -- but not noticing -- signs of a 'neo-Feudalism' in 'gated communities,' concierge doctors, private security services, and tutorial services, among others. (And, on a personal note, I may, with governmental assistance, possibly be able to afford home healthcare services that I may need if I wind up having to have some leg surgery. But it is the governmental assistance that would make this possible. For most people, such services -- or even day care services -- eat up too much of their income to be possible -- legally, paying taxes and hiring 'citizens.'

But our whole political discourse makes no difference between finance capital and industrial capital. We tax them equally (at best, in many cases we actually give tax breaks to the finance sector) and argue that they are 'job creators' (true, somewhat for industrial capital, much less true for finance capital).

And that, unfortunately, helps make the difference between the haves and have-nots steeper. And sadly, while the Democratic response stresses support of the middle class -- low level haves -- it has ignored the poor and non middle class working people (the term 'working class' is obsolete if it ever had any meaning).

And I'm afraid that I can see any number of factors that will increase the tendency to neo-Feudalism unless people see and work against the trendency. And I'm tgalking decades, not centuries. (Does anyone else remember the social structure Bester described in THE DEMOLISHED MAN and STARS MY DESTINATION? It wasn't a major part of the stories, but it seems to be the way we could go, and very fast if any of several bubbles burst -- from the default crisis on.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Becky: The concentration comes from the 'financialization' of the economy. It is an over-simplification, but perhaps a useful one, to say that agriculture and industry produce wealth, which, through government and through the service industries, gets distributed, until the finance industries reconcentrate it (through banks and insurance companies as well as stock markets and multi-level derivatives) so it can help finance the next round of investment in wealth creators.

This is fine -- until the finance segment begins creating a substantial part of the wealth of the nation through complicated -- or even simple -- transactions. This causes several problems. First -- repeating myself -- the wealth is distributed to very few people, there is no connection between 'employee hours' and 'productivity' (acceptable in service and entertainment sectors, not in wealth-creating sectors).

Second, these people do an absolutely lousy job of spending the money. They save too much of it, they overpay for things (and drive the price of those things up for the other people -- both housing and marijuana went sky-high in the early eighties because of the willingness of the Wall Streeters to pay 'top dollar.'), and the impact of their spending frequently stimulates the wrong parts of the economy.

On that last point, imagine the comparative effect on prices at the grocery store between one person who earns $5 million and 100 people who earn $50 thousand. Since 'supply and demand' does work, it is easy to see that the increased demand for 'ordinary groceries' from the second results in lower prices for those things as well.

Finally, the financial industry creates the 'bubbl;e phenomena' which, surprisingly, also works to concentrate money. A bubble breaks and 'uncreates' what had been newly created wealth. But the creators (innocent or deliberate) of the buble already have their money and probably have taken much of it out of the bubble and gone on to other things. It is the later purchasers of the bubble commodity who have their money evaporate -- and the essence of a bubble is that it spreads through the economy as a whole, that the working and (non-financial) capitalist population get caught in the collapse.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

As for the Republican assault on Obama, it is important, but it wins even if it fails -- if it manages to 'grab control of the discourse' if it manages to make Democrats as well as Republicans question the assumptions behind the NewDeal/GreatSociety programs.

As i've said so many times, we have to regain control of the discourse, we've got to sell our ideas not on 'pocketbook values' but as moral imperatives. We are a better society, a more ethically healthy, productive, moral society when we treat health care, good education, and even affordable food as rights. (And that is the way they were sold in the beginning. FDR and LBJ 'shamed' the society, forced them to look at the elderly working their way into the grave instead of having a few years to rest before dying, to see the starving people in the midst of plenty, to see the sick coughing their way to death in hospital emergency rooms, etc.

Now we sell them as 'things you might need someday' but they passed because we really are a just and humane people, and we couldn't stand to see others suffering when we could relieve them. (Analogy: How many people give blood because 'that way there will be some around if they need it' and how many give it simply because people are dying, and they don't have to die if I give blood. But somehow the Republican campaigns of the last 30 years have caused us to believe the myth of our own selfishness.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Okay, i'll shut up for a while and get back to needed work. Might not even be around much of tomorrow, required to be the accompanier to a friend having a colonoscopy, and I don't have a laptop.

[beckya57]

Jim, I think most of what you're saying is consistent with my own comments, e.g. that financialization and the accompanying concentration of wealth at the top are bad for the economy and ultimately for the society.

Unfortunately I think we're going to have to go through several more decades of the nightmare scenarios you're talking about before people really understand what's at stake here.

On a different subject, the Women's World Cup game is making me crazy. I just heard that the First Family is watching; hope Obama's enjoying the break from the debt ceiling negotiations.

[beckya57]

US scores!

[Sir Charles]

Watching the game too.

In the second overtime period. I am a believer in staying aggressive and not trying to just run out the clock. (Woa the U.S. just came close to conceding the tying goal at the 112 minute mark -- ugly, ugly mental errors on defense. Yikes!)

[Sir Charles]

Goddamn it. Another lapse and a Japanese score on the corner kick.

Oh and then Wambach with a golden opportunity with a minute to go. Ugh!

And now a red card. And a free kick from just outside the area.

I guess I should have live blogged this. It's down to penatly kicks.

[Sir Charles]

Sweet choking dogs!! I cannot believe this.

[Sir Charles]

I have never seen 3 PKs missed in a row. Never.

[Sir Charles]

Wow -- what a horrible way to lose.

[beckya57]

Yeah, it totally sucked. I don't know much about soccer, but it looked to me like they really let down on defense after they scored that second goal in OT. I think they were pretty shell-shocked in the penalty kick phase; they just didn't seem to be focused at all.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And another OT comment. Rebekah Brooks was arrested this morning. The Murdoch Empire seems to be imploding as quickly as the Soviet one did.

[Morzer]

Sir Paul Stephenson has now resigned, which means that the British police are really starting to clean house over the Murdoch scandal, and apparently Brooks is explicitly a criminal suspect. A month ago no-one in Britain would have imagined this sequence of events.

Nihon ni omedeto gozaimasu. Bad luck, USA - but you should have scored at least three times in the first half. As for missing three penalty kicks in sequence.. well...

[beckya57]

It would be nice to think the Murdoch empire could implode over here too, but I really don't see that happening.

Morzer, you're right that the US women should have put the game away in the first half. They let Japan stay in the game, and the Japanese took full advantage. I can take some comfort in the thought that my 2 favorite Japanese, Ichiro! and Jake Shimakubukuro, probably really enjoyed it.

[Morzer]

I was rather impressed by the demeanor of the Japanese coach, Sasaki. He seemed almost gently amused by the drama, and was grinning like a small kid before the penalty kicks. He then ambled up to the award ceremony as if politely delaying his golf game for the greater good.

[Morzer]

Apparently, the Japanese women may receive a rather small reward after their victory. It's just possible that the president of their football association might be able to get them each a watch!

NadeshikoWatch

[Sir Charles]

Morzer and becky,

I suppose that given what Japan has endured recently, it is a nice thing for them to have won.

But God, that has got to be one agonizing plane ride home for the U.S. team.

Jim,

Getting back to your comments, I think that we really are in a position in the U.S. where the issue is one of distribution of wealth rather than the need to generate a huge amount of wealth. There are more than enough riches in this country for an adequate standard of living for everyone. If people received adequate remuneration for their labors, we could begin the recovery in the consumer economy.

We are suffering from tax, economic, and labor policies that are and have been deliberately designed to turn this into a lower wage and low tax economy in the name of "competitiveness." I would submit that worshiping the God of "competitiveness" is nothing but a race to the bottom that is going to lead to wide spread enmiseration of a vast number of Americans.

[Morzer]

I think there is a difference between a competitive society, where there is some sense of shared purpose and fellow citizens working together, and a competitive kakistocracy, where individuals, rather than citizens, strive to reach the top by pushing others down. It seems to me that democracy works well with a competitive society, but that its values are antithetical to those of a competitive kakistocracy. Unfortunately, the US has devoted a good deal of its energy and resources of late to turning a competitive society into a competitive kakistocracy, and this necessarily requires an erosion of democracy.

[Sir Charles]

Morzer,

I like that.

I am, here, by the way, using "competitiveness" as a proxy for conditions that permit the corporate CEO class to extract whatever it is they deem to be sufficient tribute from we mere mortals.

[nancy]

Morzer--Good thing your nom-de-net was connected with the "watch" link. Normally SirC would have spotted spam and you'd have been immediately off-ed. :)

Circling back to Friedman, he has a new book coming out in September where he's obviously going to flog the "world is flat" metaphor some more. That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World We Invented and What We Can Do to Recover.
Expect a return to his column's theme, but I'm not sure that his messages here aren't a bit muddled. I get lost in my metaphors lots, but I don't earn megabucks trying to direct the national "conversation" [a Friedman fave]

btw--bbw--loved your link to the book review at Logos. The art of the exploratory essay gets far too little attention imho.

Also--I'm pleased for the Japanese team. Japanese morale surely needs a boost like this. Am wearing my interchangeable good-sport fan cap.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Semi-OT but Blog for Arizona has a weekly Cartoons of the Week segment. This week's, on the debt crisis, are particularly worth checking out.

[Morzer]

Nancy, how is an article in The Independent spam? If I had linked to David "Brother of Rebekah" Brooks, I could understand the insinuation....

Puzzled,
Morzer de Plume

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Sowwy -- well, maybe a little -- but the best way of easing pain while working is to sit and read a blog post or two, and there's a lot of good stuff today. One of my favorite blogs is Blue in the Bluegrass whose proprietor, Yellow Dog, is a great progressive democrat -- and atheist in a state that is conservative and building the Flintstone Truther Theme Park. But this one ain't political, exackly...

Technology provides many wondrous things ... including new ways to be stupid.

[nancy]

Morzer-Cause when he sees a "product name", especially on the weekend, he goes into "getting out the fly-swatter" mode. I most appreciated your link.

Cogblog gets "visitors" in sales, usually late Saturday night. This weekend it was "Burberry bags" I believe. ;-)

[Sir Charles]

And Raybans too.

We're so stylish.

[Morzer]

Raybans and Burberry bags? You don't suppose David Brooks is ekeing out a meager income by doing "product placement" at the weekend?

[Mandos]

Women's libido improvement

[nancy]

Morzer--heh. David Brooks' sideline effort. Bien sur.

[Morzer]

I don't know about improving women's libido, but this might provide some amusement for the evening...

FightingTrousers

[Crissa]

I'm kinda annoyed that my health insurance didn't cover the cost of diagnosing pneumonia.

I guess it's supposed to be normal that I got pneumonia and needed medicine to treat it? The diagnostics cost hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't have known if I had pneumonia if I didn't get them.

An annual exam is covered... But the x-ray required before using their MRI? Not covered. Getting pneumonia? Not covered.

I don't get it. How is knowing that my money for the month is just gone, going to get me to be responsible to go to the urgent care facility when I'm really ill?

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

How strange and anoying. They aren't covering costs associated with pneumonia? On what basis?

[Sir Charles]

Morzer,

Very funny. I guess Professor Elemental and Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer have a kind of East Cost/West Coast thing going.

[oddjob]

Totally OT (but the open threads are days old & large threads already) - in a burst of common sense Moody's suggests the USA join the modern world and do away altogether with a statutory debt limit.

(What with it being so sensible and all I'm certain this won't happen.)

[Mandos]

Anyone get rickrolled? Anyone?

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Oweing to some fatigue and general lassitude as the dry season progresses towards the smoke season I am breaking my own rule and commenting without reading the whole thread.

What SC said in the OP hit some nerves. Although his points are well taken and concise enough there is a certain blurring that comes of even allowing a distinction between 'labor' and something else. It is no more than a confession of ignorance to think or believe that there is a difference between being an internet inventor and digging a ditch by hand. Indeed, in many respects they are not at all comparable, but in one respect, arguably the only respect that matters, they are done for the reward, the compensation. To put it into context, I think that if you ordered any of the high flying so called entrepeneurs of Facebook or Twitter to climb down in a trench two feet wide and ten feet deep in poorly consolidated alluvial sediments and dig it one foot deeper they would soil their undies. It makes one wonder - can any of them replace a toggle switch in their home with or without throwing the breaker and not reverse the polarity? Can they sweat a union onto to pieces of copper pipe?

There is of course the question of scale involved, Facebook and Twitter involve millions of people. A given plumber on a given day can't do more than a handful of jobs even if they are simple and he/she is quick. The virtual world is just that, virtual.

The only thing I have read by Friedman is the Lexus and the Olive Tree and I found it both interestind and a little repulsive. But I did come away with the impression that he is very sure he really does understand everything on a global economic level and he actually understands almost nothing of global economics. As a primer for profitting from globalization it was not even very specific let alone conclusively deterministic.

One wonders for a moment why someone so consistently wrong would have any voice in a national discussion of issues. Then one is reminded of Fox News.

There is an opportunity here to beat back the fascist/theocratic trend. The calculous seems to me to say that the time is ripe to call them out.

Sooner rather than later. What say you Mr. President? I realize the choice is precarious at best.

[grackle]

I've never understood the hatred toward M Dowd, it's not as if she is pretending to be a policy wonk and she does a nice job with the hypocrisy beat. Similarly, why beat up on David Brooks ad hominem when you just disagree with him. Newspapers aren't academic journals. I mean he's not obviously stupid lazy like Friedman.
Also, believe it or not, "building trades workers" produce products not services.