We have come to serve the economy rather than the
economy serving us. We ask people to suffer to save the system that
produces suffering, instead of creating a system that seeks to eliminate
suffering.
I have a confession to make. In the series of
articles I have supposedly been writing about income inequality, I have
really been writing about something else: need. Let’s not fool ourselves
or think I have been naïve. Raising the minimum wage or making minor
redistributions of wealth, while likely to help many in materially
significant ways, will not even minimally move us toward something
remotely resembling income equality. The average American workers or
unemployed and underemployed souls wouldn’t suddenly find themselves
rubbing shoulders with Jamie Dimon or some other fabulously wealthy CEO,
even if such an infinitesimal narrowing of the wealth gap were
politically orchestrated. What we are really talking about when we
engage the issue of income inequality is finding a way to help those in
“low-wage” jobs or in need of work earn enough to meet their basic
needs, not actually equalizing incomes.
I am coming clean because I feel our political
discourse is decidedly impoverished because of the absence of discussion
about NEED. We dance about it in indirect ways, talking about raising
the minimum wage, helping small businesses so they can hire, lowering
taxes, creating middle-class jobs, etc.; but rarely, if ever, do we hear
anyone talk about creating, or re-creating, an economy designed to meet
basic human needs.
Perhaps ironically, New Jersey repugican Senate
candidate Jeff Bell most recently and unwittingly raised the issue of
need when analyzing why he trails Democratic incumbent Cory Booker in
the polls. “Single mothers particularly,” he said, “are automatically
Democratic because of the benefits. They need benefits to survive, and
so that kind of weds them to the Democratic Party.”
Did a repugican just admit that we have people
experiencing real need in this country who really do require what meager
assistance is available just to survive? While it easy to hear, as some have, the same old tired repugican rhetoric lambasting the
poor and lazy for their dependence on government handouts, his exact
words actually mark a telling departure from typical repugican
double-speak regarding need.
Routinely issues of need get recast in our limited
bi-partisan political discourse into the vocabulary of jobs; and when repugicans speak about jobs, they typically do so with forked tongue,
at once berating individuals for being unwilling to work (and hence
opposing the extension of unemployment benefits because they
disincentivize work) and also excoriating President Obama for his failed
economic policies for not creating jobs. Obviously, the approach begs
the question, how can we blame people for not working when there is a
scarcity of jobs?
Quite glibly, apparently. Just take Wisconsin's Scott Walker who in a recent gubernatorial debate,
defended his record of having created only 5,800 jobs (against a loss
of 13,000!) when he promised 250,000 for Wisconsin, by asserting, “We
don’t have a jobs problem; we have a work problem.” If Wisconsin citizens weren’t so lazy and possessed some initiative, Walker would have created another 250,000 jobs!
Similarly, repugican lightning rod Newt
Gingrich, in the height of the Great Recession in November 2011,
dismissively admonished Occupy Wall Street protesters to “take a bath”
and “get a job,” while around the country, from 2009
through 2012 the country witnessed the following scenes: in May 2012,
20,000 people applied for one of 877 jobs at a Hyundai plant in
Montgomery, Alabama; in Summer 2011, 18,000 people applied for one of
1,800 jobs at a Ford plant in Louisville; also in 2011, more than 41,000
people applied for one of 1,300 jobs at a new Toyota plant in Tupelo,
Mississippi; in 2009, 65,000 people applied for one of 2,700 jobs at a
Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga.
The approach is akin to blaming thirsty people in a
desert for not looking hard enough for water—except with this key
difference: in our world we arguably have enough water, but our system
withholds it from those who can’t find jobs in an economy in which jobs
are scarce, operating on a logic that not only defies social reality but
is illogically punitive and inhumane.
If we were to recognize the reality of need in our
country and understand that our current economic system actually
generates inequality and deprivation, as Jeff Bell unwittingly did, we
might actually begin to focus policy-making on re-making the economy to
meet rather than exacerbate human need.
At times we almost get there, but the habit of
political thinking in U.S. culture tends almost invariably to retreat
from critique of our economic system, into blaming people for not doing
enough to succeed in a system that affords little opportunity.
For example, a recent Harvard Business School study “An Economy Doing Half Its Job,”
as you can tell from its title, highlights a malfunction in our economy
manifested in the fact that working-class and middle-class citizens
continue to struggle coming out of the recession while large and
mid-size businesses are faring quite well. The study calls this
divergence “unsustainable.” Despite its critique of our current economic
system, the main recommendation has nothing to do with repairing the
system or even with redistributing wealth; instead, the study calls for
American workers to increase their value by acquiring skills to compete
in the global economy.
The folly of this approach, as well as its
prevalence as a default habit in American political discourse across the
board, is evident in a rather conventional speech President Obama gave in April 2012 at the University of Iowa.
While addressing college students and discussing the need to address
the debt burden caused by student loans, Obama expressed his desire for
everyone to graduate college and succeed. U.S. culture loves this story
of the individual’s rise to success through education, ingenuity, or
pure hard work. We love it so much it clouds our thinking. Certainly we
can agree we live in a society in which anybody can make it. We see
evidence of this fact all the time. But we don’t live in a world in
which everybody can make it. Even if every person earned an advanced
degree, would there be jobs for everyone? Additionally, we would still
need people to perform the socially necessary though stigmatized
“low-wage” work. Yet we neglect to recognize this reality that our
economy generates inequality and need, that it is inveterately an
economy that does only half its job.
During the Great Depression, while people stood and
starved in breadlines, farmers poured milk down sewers and burned crops
in order to create scarcity to raise prices; that is, in order to get
the economy working again, food was destroyed while people went hungry.
This scenario presents quite a contradiction and underscores the degree
to which our economy has become more important than the people living in
it. We have come to serve the economy rather than the economy serving
us. We ask people to suffer to save the system that produces suffering,
instead of creating a system that seeks to eliminate suffering.
When will we fully recognize there is a problem with
our economy and work to create a system that works for people and stop
asking people to suffer to prop up an economy that doesn’t work for
people?
Perhaps when we truly recognize need.
