Last week Alan Greenspan confessed to having too great a faith in the market’s ability to regulate itself. In reading the article about his testimony, I also learned that he was a devotee of the late author, Ayn Rand. At first this meant little to me.
As a student, back in the Eisenhower years, I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead like any other student remotely interested in American literature. Working from a Calvinistic philosophy in which man is NOT the measure of all things, I dismissed its fierce individualism as a quaint conceit and moved on.
It never crossed my mind until last week how much damage such a philosophy could do in the hands of a powerful believer. Not until a huge financial house of cards and bad paper came crashing down this month. We have one more—very legitimate—thing to blame: the philosophy of Objectivism.
Most especially if that philosophy profoundly influenced the man who for two decades held our financial fate in his hands – the most powerful central banker in the world. The whole planet bowed to his wisdom, not least, Presidents and Congresses. His ideas were emulated around the globe.
Mr. Greenspan was not just a casual reader of Ayn Rand, someone who became enamored of a book. He was a member of her inner circle. When she formed her intimate circle in 1950—to discuss philosophy and promote her philosophy, young Greenspan was a charter member.
From these discussions he drew his own philosophy that government has no legitimate role in regulating businesses or men who are in pursuit of their own wealth and aggrandizement. Reason could be the only proper moral guide, reason and rational (ized?) self interest.
Pursuit of one’s own happiness is the only proper morality. Government exists only to protect this rational man seeking happiness through its police powers, military forces and courts – which operate only by reason, not by a standard of justice and certainly never by mercy.
Mercy (pity, ruth) had no place in Rand’s cosmos. Laissez faire (the economic philosophy that led to the debacle of 1929) must be the proper rule of government. It has no business giving aid to anyone under any circumstances. The very concept of charity was highly suspect to Ms Rand. The world, as she viewed it, was essentially a ruthless place where only self-interest had any standing.
(One can be somewhat sympathetic to her point of view remembering that she endured the horrors of the Communist Revolution in her native Russia as a young woman. She saw all government control as the dictates of a commissar.)
While one can be sympathetic to her own visceral reaction to what went on in the Soviet Union after the fall of the Tsar, it’s slightly appalling that these same negative feelings about governmental supervision or control became an integral part of the makeup of the man who was to have the biggest say in regulating greedy three year olds on Wall Street.
The Federal Reserve—or for that matter the SEC—are not Bolshevik expropriators. We had a man running the former and influencing the latter who saw it that way. The market, Rand and Greenspan believed, is rational, run by rational men who will supervise themselves.
“I had too much faith in the market’s ability to regulate itself,” Greenspan told Congress last week. He might have remembered that his old mentor had no use for faith of any kind. Where was your rationality, Mr. Greenspan?
I all but forgot Rand’s books because I did not share her rosy view of unregulated humans. I grew up knowing William Henley’s poem, “Invictus”. “… I thank whatever gods there may be For my unconquerable soul. … I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
That—published in 1875—sums up the view of life of the characters in Rand’s books, written decades later. It’s proud, it acknowledges neither right nor need for any regulation of the “captain of my soul.” But Mr. Greenspan and the fallen titans of Wall Street might have paid a bit of attention to a parody of that poem that I’ve always liked.
I am master of my fate; I am captain of my soul. But I—and many stockholders—had more fun when I was cabin boy.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Eeny, Meny, Miney,Moe--Red Vote, Blue Vote
The election season is nearly over. Character assassination will soon be put back on hold. Outright lies will be forgotten—and we may never know which they were. Sarah Palin and Barrack Hussein Obama have been the two major lightning rods.
She, as every good Democrat knows by now, is a total incompetent. She has cheerleader looks and (to coin a stereotype) cheerleader brains. The Republicans spent way too much on her clothes, and she’s a drag on the ticket anyway.
Hussein—Hussein, why does that name sound familiar? Must be some kind of Muslim radical. The Christian right insists that if Obama is elected most of us won’t have the right to own guns, and we’ll live in a totally homosexualized America with the institution of marriage forever destroyed.
Some of these statements might be true (as former Soviet Premier Gorbachev put it: “I have a thousand economic advisors. One of them has a good idea. I don’t know which one.”). Some are indubitably false. I love the way they accuse Obama on the one hand of being Muslim, on the other of belonging to a Christian Church that puts down America.
Even if he wanted to destroy the institution of marriage, I’m not sure his wife and the mother of his two girls would let him. I have no doubt he favors “choice” in the matter of abortion. But both Bushes and Reagan ran against abortion and changed absolutely nothing. What will Obama change?
Sarah Palin has decided (CNN report printed on AOL news) that the McCain staff did a lousy job of introducing her to the American people. She seems to feel that by micromanaging every twitch of her hairdo and every syllable of her comments, they have made a fool of her.
She’s starting to speak out on her own. She’s disagreeing publicly with McCain on tactics like pulling out of Michigan. “She takes no advice from anyone,” gasps a McCain advisor. Well, considering the press she got while listening to them, why should she listen now?
The advisors complain that she’s gone “rogue” and is thinking only of her own future. However true this may be it certainly suggests something more than an empty-headed cheerleader. She must have had some skills to get elected governor of America’s largest and climatologically most diverse state.
Maybe they should have remembered what some of Reagan’s closest friends tried to tell his handlers—“let Reagan be Reagan”. Let Palin be Palin. Let Obama be Obama. We often lose that in the fury of a campaign. Desperate attempts seem to be made to keep voters from ever seeing the actual person.
My pastor this morning had some words of advice for believing Christians – Republican or Democrat. (He reminded the congregation that there are believers in both camps.) “Whoever wins,” he said, “God remains in control.
“It is up to Christians to pray.” That –rather than in political organizational rallies or by labeling this or that candidate as God’s chosen, or by warning us that all the tenets of our faith are forfeit if this or that candidate does not win.
“Pastors,” he said, “belong in the pulpit, leading their people in prayer.” He suggested that they do actual harm by leaving them for political activism. God is in control and, if He is in control, He can manage just as well without politicized clergy. Politicians and Pastors, while both may be fervent believers, have different callings.
In any case, he kept saying, the future of America belongs in God’s hands not just in the hands of those who hold office. It was a good reminder for me.
I’m aware that I really don’t know any of the four candidates this year. I haven’t been allowed to know them – just as I have no idea what is actually in a hot dog under the casing. So let’s just vote – Christians pray and vote; non-believers cross your fingers and vote. As Wellington put it, “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”
She, as every good Democrat knows by now, is a total incompetent. She has cheerleader looks and (to coin a stereotype) cheerleader brains. The Republicans spent way too much on her clothes, and she’s a drag on the ticket anyway.
Hussein—Hussein, why does that name sound familiar? Must be some kind of Muslim radical. The Christian right insists that if Obama is elected most of us won’t have the right to own guns, and we’ll live in a totally homosexualized America with the institution of marriage forever destroyed.
Some of these statements might be true (as former Soviet Premier Gorbachev put it: “I have a thousand economic advisors. One of them has a good idea. I don’t know which one.”). Some are indubitably false. I love the way they accuse Obama on the one hand of being Muslim, on the other of belonging to a Christian Church that puts down America.
Even if he wanted to destroy the institution of marriage, I’m not sure his wife and the mother of his two girls would let him. I have no doubt he favors “choice” in the matter of abortion. But both Bushes and Reagan ran against abortion and changed absolutely nothing. What will Obama change?
Sarah Palin has decided (CNN report printed on AOL news) that the McCain staff did a lousy job of introducing her to the American people. She seems to feel that by micromanaging every twitch of her hairdo and every syllable of her comments, they have made a fool of her.
She’s starting to speak out on her own. She’s disagreeing publicly with McCain on tactics like pulling out of Michigan. “She takes no advice from anyone,” gasps a McCain advisor. Well, considering the press she got while listening to them, why should she listen now?
The advisors complain that she’s gone “rogue” and is thinking only of her own future. However true this may be it certainly suggests something more than an empty-headed cheerleader. She must have had some skills to get elected governor of America’s largest and climatologically most diverse state.
Maybe they should have remembered what some of Reagan’s closest friends tried to tell his handlers—“let Reagan be Reagan”. Let Palin be Palin. Let Obama be Obama. We often lose that in the fury of a campaign. Desperate attempts seem to be made to keep voters from ever seeing the actual person.
My pastor this morning had some words of advice for believing Christians – Republican or Democrat. (He reminded the congregation that there are believers in both camps.) “Whoever wins,” he said, “God remains in control.
“It is up to Christians to pray.” That –rather than in political organizational rallies or by labeling this or that candidate as God’s chosen, or by warning us that all the tenets of our faith are forfeit if this or that candidate does not win.
“Pastors,” he said, “belong in the pulpit, leading their people in prayer.” He suggested that they do actual harm by leaving them for political activism. God is in control and, if He is in control, He can manage just as well without politicized clergy. Politicians and Pastors, while both may be fervent believers, have different callings.
In any case, he kept saying, the future of America belongs in God’s hands not just in the hands of those who hold office. It was a good reminder for me.
I’m aware that I really don’t know any of the four candidates this year. I haven’t been allowed to know them – just as I have no idea what is actually in a hot dog under the casing. So let’s just vote – Christians pray and vote; non-believers cross your fingers and vote. As Wellington put it, “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Why Should Anybody Care?
“Why do you care?” It wasn’t a particularly hostile question. It reflected a bit of puzzlement, a touch of boredom, perhaps an ounce of honest curiosity. He looked straight at me – there was perhaps a touch of contempt on his face. “Why do you care?”
I had passed out the assignment, explained that it was due at the end of the hour. This young man pushed the pages aside, left his book shut and took out his cell phone. That’s a major no-no in this school. I looked at the defiance on his face and decided that as a substitute I didn’t need to fight a losing war for possession.
I just said, “I didn’t see that phone; I don’t want to see it,” and I began to walk toward him. He looked at me and decided he didn’t want the battle either. He flipped it shut and closed his hand over it. I accepted a half victory and looked away.
He casually stood up and began walking around the room. “Sit down!” I said. He looked at me, then he turned and walked back to his seat, slipping the phone in his pocket. He just sat at his desk, looking bored. He was a coiled disruption just waiting to spring.
I called his name. “Would you please open your book and start your work?”
That’s when he looked back at me and asked the question. Why did I care? Why should he care? I’m sure the regular teacher (I know her) had warned him about flunking and all the possible academic consequences of doing no work. This leaves kids like him unfazed.
Middle class school, middle class expectations—which are slipping lower and lower. I don’t know what parents of these kids think they are going to do for a living. I don’t have an idea what the kids themselves think they’re going to do to pay their cell phone bills. If he didn’t care, why in the world should I or any other teacher care?
When I handed out the assignment, I saw another kid pick up the assignment and heard him say, not quite so sotto voce—the art of the whisper is almost completely lost in the modern classroom, “I ain’t gonna do this.” There were murmurs of assent all around him.
At the end of each hour that day, I found untouched and unused copies of the assignment lying on top of desks. During the hour they might sit there with the book open and the paper next to them, but at the end many had done nothing. I looked at several during the hour and asked them to start. Some said “Okay”, others gave an excuse why they hadn’t begun yet, a few ignored me.
Of course, in every class, there are as many as ten or so who sit quietly by themselves and work quietly all hour. They have completed assignments to hand in. But they are increasingly—whatever district I’m in—becoming an ever smaller minority.
I often feel guilty as a “sub” when I hear how loud the room is. Kids talk about sex, drugs, alcohol and rap music. They even plead to have the music turned on—“Our teacher always lets us”—and she or he probably does. I hear enough music from other rooms. When it’s on they just yell over top of it so I mostly leave it off. That’s less loud.
I also hear enough loud talking from other rooms when the door is left open. (Kids often ask to shut the door so their noise won’t be heard in the hall.) So I suspect that it isn’t just me. This is confirmed when one of the good students comes to me and asks to work in the hall. Mrs. Jones, I am informed, always lets me. “It’s too noisy in here.”
Occasionally another teacher is in the room to “team teach” with me or the regular teacher. Yesterday, the team teacher said to me, “I’ve never heard this room so quiet.” So I’m doing something half right.
But the question remains. Why do I care? Why should the regular teachers care (I hear them talk among themselves about thirty, forty, fifty percent failing)? If the kids don’t care, their folks don’t care, why should anybody care?
These are tomorrow’s voters, workers, leaders. That’s why we should care – and we’d better start soon. It’s a competitive and increasingly hostile world out there. They certainly aren’t going to care.
I had passed out the assignment, explained that it was due at the end of the hour. This young man pushed the pages aside, left his book shut and took out his cell phone. That’s a major no-no in this school. I looked at the defiance on his face and decided that as a substitute I didn’t need to fight a losing war for possession.
I just said, “I didn’t see that phone; I don’t want to see it,” and I began to walk toward him. He looked at me and decided he didn’t want the battle either. He flipped it shut and closed his hand over it. I accepted a half victory and looked away.
He casually stood up and began walking around the room. “Sit down!” I said. He looked at me, then he turned and walked back to his seat, slipping the phone in his pocket. He just sat at his desk, looking bored. He was a coiled disruption just waiting to spring.
I called his name. “Would you please open your book and start your work?”
That’s when he looked back at me and asked the question. Why did I care? Why should he care? I’m sure the regular teacher (I know her) had warned him about flunking and all the possible academic consequences of doing no work. This leaves kids like him unfazed.
Middle class school, middle class expectations—which are slipping lower and lower. I don’t know what parents of these kids think they are going to do for a living. I don’t have an idea what the kids themselves think they’re going to do to pay their cell phone bills. If he didn’t care, why in the world should I or any other teacher care?
When I handed out the assignment, I saw another kid pick up the assignment and heard him say, not quite so sotto voce—the art of the whisper is almost completely lost in the modern classroom, “I ain’t gonna do this.” There were murmurs of assent all around him.
At the end of each hour that day, I found untouched and unused copies of the assignment lying on top of desks. During the hour they might sit there with the book open and the paper next to them, but at the end many had done nothing. I looked at several during the hour and asked them to start. Some said “Okay”, others gave an excuse why they hadn’t begun yet, a few ignored me.
Of course, in every class, there are as many as ten or so who sit quietly by themselves and work quietly all hour. They have completed assignments to hand in. But they are increasingly—whatever district I’m in—becoming an ever smaller minority.
I often feel guilty as a “sub” when I hear how loud the room is. Kids talk about sex, drugs, alcohol and rap music. They even plead to have the music turned on—“Our teacher always lets us”—and she or he probably does. I hear enough music from other rooms. When it’s on they just yell over top of it so I mostly leave it off. That’s less loud.
I also hear enough loud talking from other rooms when the door is left open. (Kids often ask to shut the door so their noise won’t be heard in the hall.) So I suspect that it isn’t just me. This is confirmed when one of the good students comes to me and asks to work in the hall. Mrs. Jones, I am informed, always lets me. “It’s too noisy in here.”
Occasionally another teacher is in the room to “team teach” with me or the regular teacher. Yesterday, the team teacher said to me, “I’ve never heard this room so quiet.” So I’m doing something half right.
But the question remains. Why do I care? Why should the regular teachers care (I hear them talk among themselves about thirty, forty, fifty percent failing)? If the kids don’t care, their folks don’t care, why should anybody care?
These are tomorrow’s voters, workers, leaders. That’s why we should care – and we’d better start soon. It’s a competitive and increasingly hostile world out there. They certainly aren’t going to care.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Dissing Michigan
Out here in Michigan, we’re getting kind of lonely. The phone never rings; there are no rallies or breathless announcements from our local anchorpersons that Obama or Bush or McCain is coming. We’re enjoying the silence of a backwater whose vote has already been decided – and we’re not worth the nickels it costs to visit.
You’d think we were Nevada, North Dakota or Rhode Island—not a great big bundle of sixteen electoral votes. (Relax friends, as the auto industry collapses and more people start running for the exits, we’ll have fewer electoral college votes in four years. Will we even rate an occasional TV spot then?)
They’re fighting over Virginia. Ohio is a “battleground state”. McCain just loves New Hampshire, he says today; and everybody wants a piece of Florida. Pennsylvania looks iffy; Missouri might go this way or that. Obama goes to Hawaii to visit grandma. Poor, ignored Michigan.
Obama has raised so much money this year that he can and is outspending McCain about four to one. ABC News reports that Obama outspends McCain eight to one on TV ads. (Remember the good, old days when Republicans were supposed to have the campaign money – and the favor of the old Press Lords?) He is reported to be surging everywhere.
Yet poll after poll shows McCain hanging in at close range, sometimes down by as little as a statistically insignificant one or two percent. Both candidates are campaigning hard in a race that they obviously feel isn’t quite over yet. Obama enjoys the enthusiasm, but somebody must love McCain.
The question is validly raised is this stubborn Republican support indicative of an endemic racism? There may well be instances of people saying they’re not racist and then acting out in way that suggests they lied. But McCain support certainly isn’t all racism.
I, personally, am torn on this issue. For well over forty years I’ve looked for the day when a black American could prove himself fully equal at the highest level. If that were the only issue in this race, I’d pull the lever for Obama myself. But there truly are other issues that sway me more.
I am against gay marriage. I go with the historic Christian point of view that marriage is very much for the propagation of children. (I have no objection to a civil union that confers legal rights.) I am viscerally against granting homosexual unions marital status. I am scarcely alone in this.
I am also against unrestricted abortion, late term (nearly live) abortion , and the right of legal infants (persons under eighteen or twenty-one) to get an abortion without parental approval. They couldn’t get an aspirin in school without a parental okay. But an abortion? Come, come. Again, I’m not alone.
There is excellent reason to believe an Obama administration would support positions that I find morally reprehensible. Not only that, but it can be expected to appoint Supreme Court justices with similar views. I cannot support this no matter who the person is or what his other positions may be. There are, I suspect, many people in this nation equally torn.
A lot of people like me may explain why McCain is hanging in even though in states like Virginia, Obama’s paid staff outnumbers McCain’s four to one. In Ohio, McCain can afford staffed offices in a handful of crucial counties. Obama has them in all counties.
Obama is probably going to win. (The Republic will survive – I discovered that when Truman won by lunchtime the day after election day in 1948.) This is, after all, the man who found a dozen ways to take down the Clinton machine in the primaries. He kept nickeling and diming his way to the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Give him that, he doesn’t quit.
He also has awesome resources. Republican strategists who talk about the Obama money machine sound a lot like awed World War II German generals describing a superbly equipped allied attack. “My front,” gasped a Nazi general after a thousand plane allied assault, “looks like the face of the moon.”
Obama will very likely roll on to victory. But the reason it isn’t already a rout has more to do with issues than with hidden pockets of racism. It is possible to like the man and loath his policies. That pretty much sums up my feelings about the Senator from Illinois.
I can understand that McCain can’t afford to campaign in Michigan – but couldn’t Obama show up just to say, “Hi”? It’s strangely lonely with no canned messages asking me to vote one way or the other. It could give us an inferiority complex. We’ve got enough grief with a collapsing auto industry.
You’d think we were Nevada, North Dakota or Rhode Island—not a great big bundle of sixteen electoral votes. (Relax friends, as the auto industry collapses and more people start running for the exits, we’ll have fewer electoral college votes in four years. Will we even rate an occasional TV spot then?)
They’re fighting over Virginia. Ohio is a “battleground state”. McCain just loves New Hampshire, he says today; and everybody wants a piece of Florida. Pennsylvania looks iffy; Missouri might go this way or that. Obama goes to Hawaii to visit grandma. Poor, ignored Michigan.
Obama has raised so much money this year that he can and is outspending McCain about four to one. ABC News reports that Obama outspends McCain eight to one on TV ads. (Remember the good, old days when Republicans were supposed to have the campaign money – and the favor of the old Press Lords?) He is reported to be surging everywhere.
Yet poll after poll shows McCain hanging in at close range, sometimes down by as little as a statistically insignificant one or two percent. Both candidates are campaigning hard in a race that they obviously feel isn’t quite over yet. Obama enjoys the enthusiasm, but somebody must love McCain.
The question is validly raised is this stubborn Republican support indicative of an endemic racism? There may well be instances of people saying they’re not racist and then acting out in way that suggests they lied. But McCain support certainly isn’t all racism.
I, personally, am torn on this issue. For well over forty years I’ve looked for the day when a black American could prove himself fully equal at the highest level. If that were the only issue in this race, I’d pull the lever for Obama myself. But there truly are other issues that sway me more.
I am against gay marriage. I go with the historic Christian point of view that marriage is very much for the propagation of children. (I have no objection to a civil union that confers legal rights.) I am viscerally against granting homosexual unions marital status. I am scarcely alone in this.
I am also against unrestricted abortion, late term (nearly live) abortion , and the right of legal infants (persons under eighteen or twenty-one) to get an abortion without parental approval. They couldn’t get an aspirin in school without a parental okay. But an abortion? Come, come. Again, I’m not alone.
There is excellent reason to believe an Obama administration would support positions that I find morally reprehensible. Not only that, but it can be expected to appoint Supreme Court justices with similar views. I cannot support this no matter who the person is or what his other positions may be. There are, I suspect, many people in this nation equally torn.
A lot of people like me may explain why McCain is hanging in even though in states like Virginia, Obama’s paid staff outnumbers McCain’s four to one. In Ohio, McCain can afford staffed offices in a handful of crucial counties. Obama has them in all counties.
Obama is probably going to win. (The Republic will survive – I discovered that when Truman won by lunchtime the day after election day in 1948.) This is, after all, the man who found a dozen ways to take down the Clinton machine in the primaries. He kept nickeling and diming his way to the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Give him that, he doesn’t quit.
He also has awesome resources. Republican strategists who talk about the Obama money machine sound a lot like awed World War II German generals describing a superbly equipped allied attack. “My front,” gasped a Nazi general after a thousand plane allied assault, “looks like the face of the moon.”
Obama will very likely roll on to victory. But the reason it isn’t already a rout has more to do with issues than with hidden pockets of racism. It is possible to like the man and loath his policies. That pretty much sums up my feelings about the Senator from Illinois.
I can understand that McCain can’t afford to campaign in Michigan – but couldn’t Obama show up just to say, “Hi”? It’s strangely lonely with no canned messages asking me to vote one way or the other. It could give us an inferiority complex. We’ve got enough grief with a collapsing auto industry.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Iron Law of Wages
The Iron Law of Wages seems to be back. We thought it died a final death when Henry Ford doubled the wages of his factory workers in a single stroke back in 1914. He wanted (for perfectly selfish reasons) to be sure his workers could afford to buy the Fords they made. It made him rich.
Today millions of Americans handle, sell and build merchandise they cannot afford to buy. Half of all working Americans (says Dobbs on CNN TV) work for less than $500 a week. Minimum wage (retail, fast food, meat packing) doesn’t add up to anything like that.
Trust me, the clerk in Saks or J.C.Penney’s that you bought a dress from last week could not afford that same dress –and to eat too. The same was true for American laborers for most of the Nineteenth Century. The system that guaranteed their impoverishment was called “The Iron Law of Wages.”
It worked very simply. You flooded the labor market with an endless stream of illiterate and desperate immigrants. If anyone wanted a raise, he was free to leave his job. He could be instantly replaced by another immigrant or illiterate farm hand.
There was no minimum wage (no benefits either). Men worked twelve or more hours a day for six days a week for One Dollar a Day – for decade after decade. Women worked the same hours for about $1.75 a week. Kids as young as six got about a dollar a week.
As long as there were new immigrants, a steady flow of native Americans who had neither skills nor literacy, children of families so impoverished there could be no thought of educating them, the Iron Law continued to enforce itself in the American workplace. Decade after decade.
As recently as 1956, Tennessee Ernie sang a song about miners – “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? A day older and a deeper in debt. … St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go—I owe my soul to the company store.” When my wife quit a job at JCPenney a few years ago, her credit card was deep in debt. It wasn’t worth her working. She was surrounded by people who needed the tiny income to survive. Their hours were cut to eliminate the need to pay benefits.
Today we have a continuing flood of illegal immigrants. Our high schools are cranking out thousands upon thousands of unskilled and illiterate “graduates”, not to count those who simply drop out. We have a rising flood of downsized workers desperate to take any work they can find.
I have substitute taught for nearly a decade. Gas and all costs (including fees) have more than doubled in that time. There have been no raises. Why should they? Retirees like me, laid off teachers, recent graduates flood the substitute pool. For substitutes, retail, unskilled jobs and – increasingly—professional and white collar workers, the pool keeps filling up.
Wages fall or stagnate. There is often no more hope of improvement than there was in the 1800s. An Iron Law seems to have fallen across the nation. Business Week magazine, in the current issue, points out that the productivity increases and rising standard of living we have enjoyed the past few decades have all come from borrowing – from home equity and credit cards.
In other words, there has been no real improvement in a long time. Masked behind leveraged luxury homes and expensive automobiles on credit, even the upper middle class is mired by an Iron Law. My physician told me recently that his income had declined 40% in the past five years.
American Express is troubled. The people on the upper East Side of Manhattan are said to be eating out less and wearing last year’s dresses to charity balls. Even that level of society seems to be touched by the general angst.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but for millions of Americans, the Iron Law of Wages is back.
Today millions of Americans handle, sell and build merchandise they cannot afford to buy. Half of all working Americans (says Dobbs on CNN TV) work for less than $500 a week. Minimum wage (retail, fast food, meat packing) doesn’t add up to anything like that.
Trust me, the clerk in Saks or J.C.Penney’s that you bought a dress from last week could not afford that same dress –and to eat too. The same was true for American laborers for most of the Nineteenth Century. The system that guaranteed their impoverishment was called “The Iron Law of Wages.”
It worked very simply. You flooded the labor market with an endless stream of illiterate and desperate immigrants. If anyone wanted a raise, he was free to leave his job. He could be instantly replaced by another immigrant or illiterate farm hand.
There was no minimum wage (no benefits either). Men worked twelve or more hours a day for six days a week for One Dollar a Day – for decade after decade. Women worked the same hours for about $1.75 a week. Kids as young as six got about a dollar a week.
As long as there were new immigrants, a steady flow of native Americans who had neither skills nor literacy, children of families so impoverished there could be no thought of educating them, the Iron Law continued to enforce itself in the American workplace. Decade after decade.
As recently as 1956, Tennessee Ernie sang a song about miners – “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? A day older and a deeper in debt. … St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go—I owe my soul to the company store.” When my wife quit a job at JCPenney a few years ago, her credit card was deep in debt. It wasn’t worth her working. She was surrounded by people who needed the tiny income to survive. Their hours were cut to eliminate the need to pay benefits.
Today we have a continuing flood of illegal immigrants. Our high schools are cranking out thousands upon thousands of unskilled and illiterate “graduates”, not to count those who simply drop out. We have a rising flood of downsized workers desperate to take any work they can find.
I have substitute taught for nearly a decade. Gas and all costs (including fees) have more than doubled in that time. There have been no raises. Why should they? Retirees like me, laid off teachers, recent graduates flood the substitute pool. For substitutes, retail, unskilled jobs and – increasingly—professional and white collar workers, the pool keeps filling up.
Wages fall or stagnate. There is often no more hope of improvement than there was in the 1800s. An Iron Law seems to have fallen across the nation. Business Week magazine, in the current issue, points out that the productivity increases and rising standard of living we have enjoyed the past few decades have all come from borrowing – from home equity and credit cards.
In other words, there has been no real improvement in a long time. Masked behind leveraged luxury homes and expensive automobiles on credit, even the upper middle class is mired by an Iron Law. My physician told me recently that his income had declined 40% in the past five years.
American Express is troubled. The people on the upper East Side of Manhattan are said to be eating out less and wearing last year’s dresses to charity balls. Even that level of society seems to be touched by the general angst.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but for millions of Americans, the Iron Law of Wages is back.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Arresting Grandma
Whoa. The police handcuffed an eighty-nine year old woman in Ohio for confiscating a ball that landed in her yard. (AP report, AOL news—10/21/08) This wasn’t the first time. Kids have been kicking and overthrowing balls into her yard for some time, according to police sources.
She said, “I would have given it back to them eventually, but not now.” The police said, “Now”, and put the cuffs on her, put her in a squad car and arraigned her. She faces a judge next month for “petty theft” with a possible fine of $1000 and 90 days in jail.
At first I laughed. Incredulously. I grew up in middle class suburban neighborhoods where any one of my neighbors would have felt entitled to confiscate a ball that landed on his property. As a kid, I certainly would not have felt free to retrieve such a ball without going to the householder and asking permission to enter his yard. My parents –and our neighbors—enforced that.
I knew one man, only twenty years ago, who lived near a school. He had an garage full of balls he had picked up off his yard. He had taught in the school next door for decades; he was just sick of balls landing in his lawn and garden.
I’ve got a ball-size dent in the vent of my shed from next door. I don’t believe I returned that ball. Petty theft? Jail time?
Edna Jeeter has simply lived too long (maybe I have, too). She grew up in an era where it was the absolute obligation of the child –and his parents—not to hit balls onto someone else’s property. Jeeter was back in that time. Today, the parent called the cops on her. I suppose this makes her an atavist.
There is a much bigger issue at stake here than who gets the football. (Let’s not talk about a generation of children raised to believe there should be no significant consequences for any action or failure to act. That makes them very scary and totally unprepared for the real world.) Let’s talk about the more fundamental issue of property rights.
Unlike continental European democracies, ours was founded on the Right to Property. The men who wrote our constitution understood that it was a fundamental right (if not the most fundamental right) of a free man: to own and enjoy property with a total right to peaceful usage thereof and the guarantee that it could not and would not be trespassed upon.
That’s what the kids did. Use the ancient term: they trespassed. She didn’t; they did. And the parents and police arrested her to preserve the right of someone else (a child in this case, but that fact is essentially irrelevant) to trespass.
Bluntly, she will face a judge because she refused to allow trespass.
Again, whoa. Take away private property and the right to its unfettered (and untrespassed upon) use, and American democracy quickly goes away.
I said “American democracy”. If you prefer the continental variety of democracy, stand by for instability and constant changes of government. There is the joke that Italy, for instance, changes prime ministers about once a week. France has had at least 20 different styles of government since our constitution was written. You like governmental chaos, take away the absolute right to private property.
The constitutions well understood that ownership of property not only vests you in your own homestead but also in the entire body politic. That is why, at first, only property owners were permitted to vote.
Now some might argue that Ms Jeeter was a crab – that she was the antithesis of a cookie making, neighborhood grandmother. (I have no way of knowing.) But even if she was, her temperament in no way diminishes her right to peaceful enjoyment of her own property – free from footballs landing in the geraniums.
Crabs have as many constitutional rights as nice people. There is no legal imperative to be nice. There is—or used to be-- an imperative that you must stay off my lawn without my permission. If we’ve lost that, we have lost something huge.
She said, “I would have given it back to them eventually, but not now.” The police said, “Now”, and put the cuffs on her, put her in a squad car and arraigned her. She faces a judge next month for “petty theft” with a possible fine of $1000 and 90 days in jail.
At first I laughed. Incredulously. I grew up in middle class suburban neighborhoods where any one of my neighbors would have felt entitled to confiscate a ball that landed on his property. As a kid, I certainly would not have felt free to retrieve such a ball without going to the householder and asking permission to enter his yard. My parents –and our neighbors—enforced that.
I knew one man, only twenty years ago, who lived near a school. He had an garage full of balls he had picked up off his yard. He had taught in the school next door for decades; he was just sick of balls landing in his lawn and garden.
I’ve got a ball-size dent in the vent of my shed from next door. I don’t believe I returned that ball. Petty theft? Jail time?
Edna Jeeter has simply lived too long (maybe I have, too). She grew up in an era where it was the absolute obligation of the child –and his parents—not to hit balls onto someone else’s property. Jeeter was back in that time. Today, the parent called the cops on her. I suppose this makes her an atavist.
There is a much bigger issue at stake here than who gets the football. (Let’s not talk about a generation of children raised to believe there should be no significant consequences for any action or failure to act. That makes them very scary and totally unprepared for the real world.) Let’s talk about the more fundamental issue of property rights.
Unlike continental European democracies, ours was founded on the Right to Property. The men who wrote our constitution understood that it was a fundamental right (if not the most fundamental right) of a free man: to own and enjoy property with a total right to peaceful usage thereof and the guarantee that it could not and would not be trespassed upon.
That’s what the kids did. Use the ancient term: they trespassed. She didn’t; they did. And the parents and police arrested her to preserve the right of someone else (a child in this case, but that fact is essentially irrelevant) to trespass.
Bluntly, she will face a judge because she refused to allow trespass.
Again, whoa. Take away private property and the right to its unfettered (and untrespassed upon) use, and American democracy quickly goes away.
I said “American democracy”. If you prefer the continental variety of democracy, stand by for instability and constant changes of government. There is the joke that Italy, for instance, changes prime ministers about once a week. France has had at least 20 different styles of government since our constitution was written. You like governmental chaos, take away the absolute right to private property.
The constitutions well understood that ownership of property not only vests you in your own homestead but also in the entire body politic. That is why, at first, only property owners were permitted to vote.
Now some might argue that Ms Jeeter was a crab – that she was the antithesis of a cookie making, neighborhood grandmother. (I have no way of knowing.) But even if she was, her temperament in no way diminishes her right to peaceful enjoyment of her own property – free from footballs landing in the geraniums.
Crabs have as many constitutional rights as nice people. There is no legal imperative to be nice. There is—or used to be-- an imperative that you must stay off my lawn without my permission. If we’ve lost that, we have lost something huge.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Bush: Did He Lie or Was He Fooled?
The question of Iraq has seemingly gone away this election season. But it shouldn’t. The question is much broader than one relatively small nation. It casts doubts on the whole Bush doctrine and it reminds us that the next president will still have a tiger by the tail.
I know that lack of credit, Wall Street’s agonies and rising unemployment have pushed it out of mind recently. But it’s still there, they’re still shooting and progress is very, very fragile. An interview with Donald Trump, of all people, brought it sharply back to my attention last week.
Trump very bluntly says President Bush should have been impeached for invading Iraq. The interviewer pressed him on why. “He lied”, snapped Trump. He was asked if he really meant that – as opposed to bad intel or general confusion. “He lied,” repeated Trump.
I’m no fan of Trump or his television persona. But it crossed my mind that this is a man who has made big money and done a lot of high flying business deals in his career. You don’t do that successfully if you are not a very good reader of people – unless you can be pretty sure when they are bluffing or lying.
I’ll listen seriously when Mr. Trump insists someone is lying. Needless to say if a president lies and then sends thousands of boys to be shot up or killed, he should be impeached. One cannot imagine a higher crime or misdemeanor. But, even if Trump is mistaken, we’ve still got a nasty situation on our hands – with no real solution in sight.
Before the next president feels forced into invading somewhere else, we’ve got to sit down and figure out why we did what we did and how either not to do it again or how to do it more intelligently. That is probably as urgent as bailing out our banking system.
Let’s look at Iraq. Before Churchill cobbled its three regions into one “nation” in 1921, it had never been or seen itself as a single entity. It had been called “Mesopotamia” –the land between the rivers – for time out of mind. It had been part of an Assyrian Empire, a neo-Babylonian Empire, a Persian and Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire and, finally a succession of Muslim/Turkish Empires.
The Turkish Empire collapsed in 1918. Suddenly, for perhaps the first time since the Biblical Abraham, Mesopotamia was ruled by no one. (This “freedom” didn’t come about until the fighters of Mesopotamia wiped out an invading British army in 1916. It lasted until Britain was given a mandate over the area as spoils of war.)
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was aware that there was oil in that area. After all, he had used the British oil wells in Iran (Persia) to convert the British navy from coal to oil ten years before. But his immediate problem was that Britain was broke and it cost money to maintain the imperial presence in what is now Iraq. He had a money saving idea back in 1921.
Take Prince Feisal of Arabia (he was played by Omar Sheriff in “Lawrence of Arabia”), create a “kingdom” out of the three regions and hostile populations – Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites – and let Feisal figure out how to run it with minimal British support. It would cut costs enormously.
By 1930, Iraqi resistance had become so stiff that the British withdrew entirely. Feisal was on his own. His family managed to last until 1958 (despite Nazi coups and war with Israel) when his son, Feisal II, and his entire family were machine gunned to death for their pro-western policies. They dragged his body through the streets behind a jeep. So much for John Foster Dulles’s Baghdad Pact.
This is an area that has a history of anti-British and anti-western attitudes, reinforced with effective violence. But it does not mean it was a terrorist state. Not everyone who doesn’t like us is a terrorist. Not every nation that opposes us is worth invading.
We pushed them out of the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 with some validity. But to invade them when they had become militarily enfeebled in 2003? What was the sense of that? (And the British went in with us!? Had they forgotten 1916 and 1930?) Did we really think they would lie down and hand us their oil?
They’ve kept their oil. They just want us to rebuild what we blew up and go home in relatively few years. What have we gained? No more than the British did in the 1920s. Our whole national prestige is on the line and we have nothing to show except ruinous cost in blood and money.
Far more terrorists are to be found in Iraq today than Saddam Hussein ever allowed to run about in his era. He was vicious, he may have been nuts, but he had a practical streak. We’d be better off if he were still there –living with the concern over what might happen if we ever invaded.
Maintaining his concern would have cost us little money and less blood. Nor would we have such an ugly black eye in the international community.
So, why did Bush go in with an army that was too small to be effective? Why did he go in at all? Was he dreaming of oil? Was he lying? Was he just getting back at Saddam for taking a shot at daddy? Whatever the reason, we must never again start a war so foolishly.
I know that lack of credit, Wall Street’s agonies and rising unemployment have pushed it out of mind recently. But it’s still there, they’re still shooting and progress is very, very fragile. An interview with Donald Trump, of all people, brought it sharply back to my attention last week.
Trump very bluntly says President Bush should have been impeached for invading Iraq. The interviewer pressed him on why. “He lied”, snapped Trump. He was asked if he really meant that – as opposed to bad intel or general confusion. “He lied,” repeated Trump.
I’m no fan of Trump or his television persona. But it crossed my mind that this is a man who has made big money and done a lot of high flying business deals in his career. You don’t do that successfully if you are not a very good reader of people – unless you can be pretty sure when they are bluffing or lying.
I’ll listen seriously when Mr. Trump insists someone is lying. Needless to say if a president lies and then sends thousands of boys to be shot up or killed, he should be impeached. One cannot imagine a higher crime or misdemeanor. But, even if Trump is mistaken, we’ve still got a nasty situation on our hands – with no real solution in sight.
Before the next president feels forced into invading somewhere else, we’ve got to sit down and figure out why we did what we did and how either not to do it again or how to do it more intelligently. That is probably as urgent as bailing out our banking system.
Let’s look at Iraq. Before Churchill cobbled its three regions into one “nation” in 1921, it had never been or seen itself as a single entity. It had been called “Mesopotamia” –the land between the rivers – for time out of mind. It had been part of an Assyrian Empire, a neo-Babylonian Empire, a Persian and Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire and, finally a succession of Muslim/Turkish Empires.
The Turkish Empire collapsed in 1918. Suddenly, for perhaps the first time since the Biblical Abraham, Mesopotamia was ruled by no one. (This “freedom” didn’t come about until the fighters of Mesopotamia wiped out an invading British army in 1916. It lasted until Britain was given a mandate over the area as spoils of war.)
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was aware that there was oil in that area. After all, he had used the British oil wells in Iran (Persia) to convert the British navy from coal to oil ten years before. But his immediate problem was that Britain was broke and it cost money to maintain the imperial presence in what is now Iraq. He had a money saving idea back in 1921.
Take Prince Feisal of Arabia (he was played by Omar Sheriff in “Lawrence of Arabia”), create a “kingdom” out of the three regions and hostile populations – Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites – and let Feisal figure out how to run it with minimal British support. It would cut costs enormously.
By 1930, Iraqi resistance had become so stiff that the British withdrew entirely. Feisal was on his own. His family managed to last until 1958 (despite Nazi coups and war with Israel) when his son, Feisal II, and his entire family were machine gunned to death for their pro-western policies. They dragged his body through the streets behind a jeep. So much for John Foster Dulles’s Baghdad Pact.
This is an area that has a history of anti-British and anti-western attitudes, reinforced with effective violence. But it does not mean it was a terrorist state. Not everyone who doesn’t like us is a terrorist. Not every nation that opposes us is worth invading.
We pushed them out of the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 with some validity. But to invade them when they had become militarily enfeebled in 2003? What was the sense of that? (And the British went in with us!? Had they forgotten 1916 and 1930?) Did we really think they would lie down and hand us their oil?
They’ve kept their oil. They just want us to rebuild what we blew up and go home in relatively few years. What have we gained? No more than the British did in the 1920s. Our whole national prestige is on the line and we have nothing to show except ruinous cost in blood and money.
Far more terrorists are to be found in Iraq today than Saddam Hussein ever allowed to run about in his era. He was vicious, he may have been nuts, but he had a practical streak. We’d be better off if he were still there –living with the concern over what might happen if we ever invaded.
Maintaining his concern would have cost us little money and less blood. Nor would we have such an ugly black eye in the international community.
So, why did Bush go in with an army that was too small to be effective? Why did he go in at all? Was he dreaming of oil? Was he lying? Was he just getting back at Saddam for taking a shot at daddy? Whatever the reason, we must never again start a war so foolishly.
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