The blog of a North Country Swede!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Fear and fairness in determining the collective good

Author's note: My post from September, 2005, Katrina and the collective good is my "most read" post. This post expands on the concept of the collective good by examining the essence or essential nature of fear and being fair in an industrial/technological society. Also, two recent books make this an appropriate time to revisit these issues:


The Squandering of America,
by Robert Kuttner

and


Plus, this article in the December, 2007 issue of Vanity Fair:

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush,
by Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz

To live in fear is the essence of slavery, or the essential characteristic of liberty is to live without fear. Freedom is having no fear.

As FDR -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- said in his first inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that theAnd only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
And fairness? What is fairness in our individual lives interacting with each other? What is fairness in the commons, the public arena? How does what we do privately affect others publicly, and what is fair about it? How does what is done publicly affect us privately, and what is fair about it?

In political history we have specific interpretations attached to fairness such as President Harry S. Truman and his Fair Deal, and the Fairness Doctrine as an FCC regulation.

Here I want to strip away this historical baggage and get to the core meanings of fear and fair as we live our daily lives ... starting as children on the playground where we learn to handle bullies, and we go by the rule, "fair is fair".

Here I will explore the premise that my country, the United states of America, is faltering because our leaders are bullies who have abandoned fairness.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Economic smoke and mirrors ... or the love of money is the root of all evil

Fact: The cost of oil and food are not counted when measuring "core inflation".

Fact: The unemployment rate does not include workers who have given up looking for a job.

And our vaunted leaders have kept telling us the US economy was doing great ... right up until now when the plummeting value of the dollar has pulled back the curtain ... a la Wizard of Oz.

And we no longer have the industrial base to take advantage of a weaker dollar. We don't have anything to sell except Manhattan real estate. (That's metaphorical, folks ... just in case you didn't catch the sarcasm.)

And we the people have our brilliant idiots — our leading economists — conspiring with our greedy elite ruling class of global corporationists to thank for the mess we are in, and the coming catastrophe ... which they will sell to us via the religion of True Believers as the moral decline of the people ... when they should be reminding us of the age-old wisdom of "the love of money is root of all evil."

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

"The flimflammery of official statistics ... "

The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking.

The big story out of Mr. Bernanke’s appearance before the Joint Economic Committee was his prediction that the economy was likely to worsen. Only the people still trapped in denial could have believed otherwise.

This is what Representative Maurice Hinchey of upstate New York told the chairman:

“This economy is not doing well. And the example of the mortgage closures on 2 million people — and maybe a lot more than that as time goes on — is really not the cause of the economic problem we’re facing, but it’s just a factor of it. It’s a factor of the weakness of this economy.”

In an interview after the hearing, Representative Hinchey discussed the disconnect between official government reports and the reality facing working families. He noted that the unemployment rate does not include workers who have become so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for a job.

And the most popular measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, does not include the cost of energy or food, “the two most significant aspects of the increased cost of living for the American people.”

The elite honchos in Washington and their courtiers in the news media are all but completely out of touch with the daily struggle of working families. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty and close to 60 million others are just a notch above the official poverty line.

- Bob Herbert
Recession? What Recession?
OpEd - NYTimes
Saturday, November 10, 2007


When the labor movement in the United States failed to fight for the right of every person willing and able to work to be able to work at a job that at least paid a living wage for a worker's family, the labor movement failed the worker and his/her family.

The principle of having a job that pays a living wage for a worker's family for everyone willing and able to work is NOT socialism, communism or even unionism. It is the cornerstone of a free society.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Variations on the human theme ...

We all know that people have different eye colors ... and that there are major differences like brown and blue ... and that there are tint and pattern variations of the main differences.

Most of us know that traits like response to certain stimuli also vary, like sexual arousal to specific visual images ... and that individuals are aroused differently, to different levels of arousal, by different images.

What we may not have thought about is how that translates to different levels of group identification. I would suggest a spectrum of emotional commitment to one's "identity groups" -- family, and other forms of "tribe" such as religion, alma mater, company, etc. --from intense embedding to casual acceptance like, "Oh yes, I belong to the local bowling league."

I would speculate further that the ability of the symbols of any one of our identity groups to trigger an emotional response is a key indicator of "embeddedness" within that group. In examining the relationships of symbols to their emotional responses, the variations of individual emotional response need to be factored into the analysis.

"Symbols" in this context mean any "identifying" signs, sounds, rituals, etc. For instance our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner" is a symbol of our national identity.

Taking a leap ahead, we can envision a political party that unites the "religious identity" with "national identity" as creating a strong pull on its members. And those individuals with the strongest positive emotional response to religious symbols are -- hypothetically at least -- the ones who would develop the strongest positive emotional connection to the political party and its symbols.

We should keep in mind that slogans and phrases can become symbolic elements of group identity as opposed to rational elements of public discourse.

And if the political leaders merge the religious and national identities of the people by using symbols of the religious identity to interweave the emotional connection rather than overt statements which would be rationally rejected out of hand ... and if they do this consciously ... don't we have what is actually going on today in the United States? And what went on in Hitler's Third Reich within the lifetime of some of our citizens?

And isn't this the whole thrust of the neocon a la Leo Strauss political movement?

Friday, November 09, 2007

"They" are trying to hold back worldwide panic over the dollar ...

Just before Christmas in 2005 I advised my friends that they should either sell their home in the coming year or plan on staying in it for awhile.

Their children were going to college and it was obvious from all the key indicators that the housing bubble was getting ready to pop. Mostly I had been reading Paul Krugman's column on the OpEd page of the NY Times and putting two and two together.

Currently it is obvious that the economy of the United States is tanking. And if the US Dollar becomes funny money, the Chinese are going to be pissed. Like 1.5 trillion dollars is a lot of swag anywhere ... and there is only so much Manhattan real estate ... and as the dollar plummets ... the amount you can get for any given million or so is less and less.

What will our brilliant financial idiots do then? Like, when the dollar tanks? Right now they are trying desperately to hold back the panic that a real run on the dollar would cause.

And you see, folks ... there isn't any vast industrial base to pick up the slack ... in like churning out something the world wants at the lower prices the falling dollar would bring ... so we are caught in the economic vise of our own making ... not the making of we the people, but of the making of our great greedy leaders ...

The only question left is who are "they" going to blame.

Oh ... and my friends didn't sell their home. They enjoy living in it, their neighborhood, and their community. And they will not retire for another ten years or so. They love what they do and how they live.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Well, we're in for it now ...

How I see things as an American citizen ... now that General Musharraf of Pakistan has declared a state of emergency and suspended that country's constitution.

Our military's ground forces are almost totally decimated by the protracted military occupation of Iraq since our victory there in the Second Iraq War ended by mid-2003 with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (But we still have our nukes.)

Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are earning gajillions off the "risk tax" added to the price of oil by our participation in destabilizing the Middle East.

China is buying up the world's resources with our U.S. dollars as fast as it can, ahead of the falling value of the U.S. dollar.

What else? There is so much more going on ... like the resurgence of Hezbollah in Lebonon and the Taliban in Afghanistan ... and we haven't even begun to decipher the deterioration of our moral authority with the all but concrete revelation that we tortured human beings in our custody.

The Cheney/neocon/Bush 43 administration's foreign policy has been a disaster in so many ways that it is hard to keep track of them all ... and the large number of problems cannot be hid by the relatively small fig leaf of General Petraeus's tactical surge with its principle outcome being the balkanization of Iraq ... which, by the way, benefits Iran to a great degree.

My God, it is a mess, isn't it?

What is more ... our enemies know all this.

Wages for labor is the primal discussion ...

Wages for labor is the primal discussion ... how do we divide the rewards of the hunt ...

If we view "labor" as a cost like any other material than we actually/literally make those who labor into commodities, something other than primary participants. But we all know this ... and we console ourselves by becoming consumers.

The narratives we pass onto our children and our children's children is "be good and we will buy you something" ... the emotional expectation of becoming an adult gets wrapped in the opportunity to buy ... not in the ability to do ... for too many of us.

We who labor have all to often accepted the role of gun-bearer and guide to the Great White Hunter as if he were some kind of god-man when it is our labor and skills that allow him to hunt.

The problem from the labor side is that too often labor has been organized to exclude, and organized labor becomes viewed as an obstacle to many -- if not most -- who want to work ... an obstacle to those who want to, but are not allowed to join the hunt.

As long as organized labor colludes with the man to limit access to work, labor in general will lose.

That is not to say that specific skill sets/individual parameters cannot be defined or selected for specific jobs/assignments, or that pay rates can't vary. It is to say that labor solidarity must be for the principle that everyone willing and able to work must be given work at a living wage (in the context of a working family's needs).

I don't really give a rat's butt how many rich folks there are, as long as all who want to work can earn a living wage.