Pearls Before Swine

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I’ve argued at book length that we did want to and still should– that mass creativity is a social and economic good that founded the post-war American middle class and its gradual pushing back of the walls of poverty, exclusion, discrimination, unhappiness and non-fulfillment. Reducing material suffering and increasing happiness were two sides of the same coin. We all still say we believe in both. The sole means of a broad increase in happiness is mass creativity–the general development of society as a great leap beyond the lavish development of a small elite.

Chris Newfield, “Quality Public Higher Ed: From Udacity to Theory Y“

I’ve had more than one argument with various members of my very large extended family over some political issue or the other. In the end– or, rather, at bottom, because these arguments have no real end– it always boils down to something seemingly simple. They don’t believe in democratic government; in fact, I don’t think they– or most American conservatives– believe in democracy at all. Or, rather, they don’t see the purpose of democratic government.

They aren’t fascists or authoritarians, although I think those are strong tendencies in the Tea Party movement. The loss of democratic understanding creates a vacuum and creepy things rush in. Most of the American right, though, serves our national oligarchy via libertarian and not authoritarian ideas. (The exception seems to be the so-called cultural issues, such as gay marriage and women’s rights, reproductive and otherwise.)

I think my relatives don’t believe in democracy in the larger sense: they see no link between the greater good and any government policy beyond the military. Events in Wisconsin suggest that this disconnect extends even to police, firefighters, and public school teachers.  Newfield suggests, in effect, that this is because they don’t  believe in themselves.  It’s what he calls the X theory,  “the assumption of the mediocrity of the masses.”

Political conservatives, Newfield argues, don’t believe that people can be educated in any meaningful way; the human norm is a kind of dull stupidity. (I can certainly sympathize with that feeling.) When push comes to shove the idea of promoting education has little appeal. It’s tossing pearls after swine.  In more official and no doubt more cynical conservative quarters Newfield is surely right.

I don’t think that my relatives or conservatives more generally don’t believe in human potential, though. I think that they no longer believe that there is any link between  the cultivation of human potential and democracy. This isn’t natural human cynicism or caution. We don’t have a theory of democracy anymore because the Reagan revolution– a decades  long anti-government advertising campaign– has been so successful.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Language

Spite

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If there be any, as I hope there be none,
That would lese [lose] both his eyes to lese his foe one,
Then fear I there be many, as the world go’th,
That would lese one eye to lese their foes both.

John Heywood’s A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes, “Of Spite“

I have to say that I find the survival of Wisconsin’s Governor Walker  bizarre. It’s not just a low-ish voter turnout. Essentially, a big chunk of the population chose to use their/our money to pay for the financial sectors’ destruction of the economy. Even more than that, they chose both to dismantle their main tool for protecting their economic interests– the union’s collective bargaining power– and accepted a higher degree of misery for the culture at large. It’s a classic case of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”  It’s impossible to say how bad– or, rather, how much worse– things will get but these defeats are not metaphors.

State employee unions are standard bearers everywhere, helping to keep wages high and benefits more generous for everyone. In an economy flooded with people needing work, the loss of collective bargaining will drive wages down and further shrink benefits. Less money, fewer people with healthcare, more poverty, everyone looses.That’s just the start of Walker’s agenda, which also includes radical cuts in Medicaid and education and generous grants and tax incentives for businesses. There’s little evidence that this sort of corporate welfare and worker “discipline” will stimulate any sort of economic growth.

As president Clinton has said, it’s sure to expand unemployment , slow economic growth, and “explode the debt when the economy recovers so the interest rates would be so high, nobody would be able to do anything.” Why do people make this choice? My guess is that the right-wing has succeeded in making cultural politics seem more real and important than material interests. It’s not the usual “abortion” and “guns” strategy, although that’s a part of it. Instead, they seem to have tapped into a kind of class resentment that pits rural voters (mostly white) against a more cosmopolitan (in other words, not only white)  urban and suburban population.  This is what Walker really meant by “divide and conquer.”

Posted in: Economics

Permanent Austerity

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The adjuncts tend to teach core classes at Duquesne, and Cech noted the adjuncts’ lack job security because if their classes do not fill up, they are not guaranteed employment. Adjunct faculty members make up 40 percent of the liberal arts instructors and can earn up to no more than $10,224 in yearly salaries while full-time assistant professors within the liberal arts make a yearly salary of $65,300.

“Part-Timers At Duquesne Unionize With the United Steelworkers“

I’m always thinking that I sound crabby if not permanently angry so I go in search of good news. This piece, from Adjunct Nation, is in fact very good news insofar as it reports on six schools in the Pittsburgh area that are unionizing in affiliation with the United Steel Workers. It’s good news for a lot of reasons. I don’t think we’ll make any real progress until we have  a national labor movement,  and for that we need Card Check, but six schools in a city can at least begin to make a difference. Labor markets are very regional.

I like the idea of primary and secondary industry labor– the people who brought  us the weekend, ended child labor, created the minimum wage– working directly with tertiary industry people, especially education.   Solidarity is important, of course, and the traditional unions have a lot of expertise that we can all use. Even more importantly, we need a broadly representative labor movement that recognizes the necessity of a diverse economy.  Any economy overly focused on the so-called service industry is by definition a weak economy.

I also believe that these sorts of coalitions will eventually get us to the next important stage in the labor movement, which is a push to a shorter work week.  (Occupy Wall Street, are you listening?) It’s great that technology makes us more and more productive but if we don’t cut the labor week down to size this sort of progress will only lead to more unemployment. In the long run, the only real way to ensure some degree of equity will be to cut down the work week. If 20 hours were considered full-time, we’d really be on to something…

On the other hand it’s not all rainbows and unicorns…  The contrast between full-time and adjunct work at Duquesne and elsewhere illustrates a permanent state of austerity endemic in U.S. universities and growing worse each year.  These employment and salary disparities need to be widely known and ought to alarm everyone; if the austerity folks have their way our future is  an economy in which fewer and fewer workers have full-time positions while  more and more are under-employed and, of course, under-paid and over-worked.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Uncategorized, Writing

Show Me The (Public) Money!

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Ordinarily, when people speak of income disparity they are talking about individuals or about classes of individuals. The statistics are amazing: the U.S. hasn’t had this wide of a disparity in at least 8 decades.   The disparity is often even more shocking when you compare institutions.  I found two stories in this vein today. On the one hand, the Sacramento, California Public Library system is planning to cut hours in an attempt to prevent lay offs of employees.

In the richest state in the richest country in the world the most basic of public services, the library, has to cut hours (“Sacramento Public Library closures scheduled due to staff furloughs“).  You can just hear the austerity folks chanting their song: “We have made unsustainable promises for so long, and now it’s time to pay the piper.  The recession has been over for a while but the economy is only growing slowly, etc. There’s not enough money.”

Only, that’s not true; there’s a lot of money but it’s elsewhere: “MIT and Harvard pour $60M into “edX” online courses.”  I like the idea of free online courses but I can’t help but wonder why two private institutions have access to huge pools of money for this sort of program while, on the other side of the country, indeed in most of the country, public institutions are struggling to survive.  I suspect the answer is public policy not accident.

The French election of a socialist government, led by Francios Hollande, isn’t a simplistic “rejection of austerity.” It is also a recognition that we, the Western Democracies, do have the money, but it lies elsewhere. Here in the U.S., we’ve essentially disarmed ourselves, dismantling labor unions and filling legislative houses with Republicans servants of the status qua.   In Europe that hasn’t happened and there’s a chance priorities can be changed.

Posted in: Economics, Professional