ww.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map
The shrinkage in membership is partly a result of Ds taking union support for granted but mostly the result of management learning how to keep employees more frightened of losing their jobs than angry about being exploited.
Tom Blackburn
Please bear with me on this one.
Some months ago, I was reading up on current Republican theories on why all public and state subsidized options should be eliminated in American healthcare. And I was reading a paper produced by a prominent libertarian economist written for a conference at the University of Chicago. His basic argument is that the our whole system is dysfunctional because of regulation; regulations meant to protect the public, but more importantly regulations meant to protect business interests. Were these to be stripped away, the Invisible Hand would emerge, prices would fall and quality would increase and we would all live happily ever after Hallelujah Amen.
I read this with interest because it was a rare study of how regulation supports business interests. But then I ran into something that took my breath away. It was so obvious that I felt stupid and diminished for not having seen it clearly before. I feel as though it might be important, but since I read it I have been unable to develop it (I believe) and this has had a bad affect on my writing as a whole. But I would like to give you what I have here.
This economist was bright enough to know that he can talk theory all day long, but he needed a case study to back himself up. So he chose the deregulation of the airlines under Reagan. He pointed out that the airlines were heavily regulated, in terms of quality standards, the protection of unionization, the assignment of routes, etc. Reagan pushed through a massive deregulation in the name of the free market and all of these things were opened to "innovation". And he points out rather correctly that prices for airline tickets immediately fell. (He also notes that a number of large carriers disappeared, such as Pan American, Eastern, Braniff, etc. But this was the "creative destruction" of businesses that could not adapt and innovate).
He listed a number of things that contributed to the fall in prices and as I read them I sort of ticked off in my head what their percentage contributions might have been. When I got to the largest one, I had what Japanese Zen Buddhists might call a moment of "satori" or "clarity". Because from this simple thing, so much that happened later arose.
The big thing that Reagan did was allow the busting of the union. It wasn't so much that the union was killed. It was that the things that the union had achieved were no longer to be supported by regulation. The author noted (with pleasure) that wages then fell, a lot. Union maintenance of work conditions disappeared. Since wages are the largest expense in any business, this was the main cause of the price drops in tickets. And it dawned on me that the drop in wages would have seriously eroded the purchasing power of the employees, perhaps enough so that they could not afford to buy tickets for their own flights (let's put aside the fact that some airlines would allow employees to fly for free).
For the economist, the destruction of the union meant that wages could now "float" to levels set by the "market". But to me (and this was the moment) this meant that the workers were removed as partners and were turned into simple assets just like plan parts or control of a lucrative air route. Before I go into this, let me list what we might see come from this subsequently.
1. Prices would fall in a sector, but remain high in other sectors. People who had not had their own wages decreased by an action like this would applaud the deregulation of the airlines, because of the falling prices. But....
2. The successful deregulation with no political push-back would mean that other industries could be deregulated in their turn (as transportation shortly was). So that....
3. We would expect to see wages go flat over the course of decades (which they have) with increases in the other sectors making up the wage decreases in the targeted sectors hiding the affects in the statistics, and....
4. We would expect to see a decline in overall purchasing power, which would lead to a decline in the US internal market, causing capital to look outside the US, and....
5. We would see and increase in "productivity" that would be masked in the public mind as technological improvements (computerization and such) but would actually be caused by a decline in wages, since "productivity" is actually a ration between inputs and outputs.
6. The middle and working class would start to focus on prices and taxes, rather than wages. The war on tax supports for anything would be waged since working people (rightfully) would be afraid of tax increases cutting into their flat or lowering incomes.
7. Destruction of unions and general deregulation would make wages and employment very insecure (as business pushed down on both protections of workers and their fringe benefits as well) which would turn workers into a political preoccupation with "jobs" rather than "good jobs".
I could go on. And on.
I could call an article about this Price as Politics, because we have sold out ourselves on the basis of "lower prices", which become self reproducing since we need lower prices as our wages go down. (Free market theorist assholes will actually argue that this is what the capitalist economy is about; that workers should never get wages but rather reap the benefits of falling prices).
But there is a Catholic thing here, an please be patient while I vent a bit.
The reduction of workers into mere human capital detaches businesses from any realistic contact with the community, because the community becomes irrelevant. I have long believed that business in America simple used America as their mailing address and that the idea that they should operate in an amoral "market" detached from any place or society since local development will simply "happen" via the Invisible Hand is deeply immoral. (As it happened, Adam Smith thought the same). I may be entirely wrong here, and if I am I want you to tell me, but my sense of Catholic Social Teaching is that while it does talk about the rights of labor, and talks against the rights of the market, it nonetheless speaks as though capital's expropriation of all productive surplus (I won't call it profit) is legitimate and that the capitalists need to simple pay more attention to the needs of labor for various nice moral reasons.
But in fact, the issue is detaching labor (as human capital) from workers and the denial that workers deserve by right and by the fact that business is actually an integrated part of human communities and not some sort of benevolent parasites. Catholic Social Teaching is too much about charity and not enough about an integrated social order. This is what unions used to be about. And this is what we need to return to. Labor is simply not something that can be detached from the laborer and added as a line on a balance sheet.
1. Who in their right mind or a real choice would want to fly today? The market has removed every conceivable pleasure--comfortable seats, leg room between the seats, air, food, and stewardesses and stewards who treat the customer with respect (think of the man dragged off the plane a few months back! Think of the stewardess telling a passenger it was forbidden to sing the national anthem in honor of the dead soldier in the hold of the plane! It wasn't forbidden by Delta! only by the stewardess)
ReplyDelete2. The commodification of air travel is a pattern: the breakdown of every feature in order to raise the bottom line. Think of the body parts now sold for profit, in this country, eggs and sperm; elsewhere kidneys and who knows what else.
I could be wrong (Tom Blackburn will clarify) but I think the Catholic Social Justice Tradition came late (19th century) to the defense of workers, favoring instead the land owner, the king, the factory owner. Isn't that why Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII was such a breakthrough?
3.
I'll get back to 3 later.
DeleteMargaret, the commodification of everything is a pattern. Everything now gets valorized in the market and having the ability to sell anything on the market is a sign of "freedom", because the market is now democracy itself. People want to liberate themselves from old fashioned constraints that used to go by the names of morality and ethics. This is how we went from keeping a Rockefeller from running for president because he was divorced to electing a Right wing president beloved of Christians, whose wife is a former soft porn model. Any connection between what one does and what one "believes" has been severed. Anything can be twisted. Everything is part of The Deal. One goes to school, not to get educated but to become salable and this is a good thing.
DeleteYou are correct about how commodification reduces standards. We live under the fantasy that since people buy something it must be what they want. Free market ideology claims that a market always expresses people's real desires. I would oppose to this something that the late Paul Fussell once said. "If everybody doesn't want it, nobody gets it." People will adjust their standards to what is available. I'm sure that you and I are both old enough to have seen this in action for all kinds of products. (I remember eating a thing called a tomato when I was young. They are unavailable now, having been replaced by a thing called a "tomato").
Yes, the market has had a huge impact on the airline industry - with both negative and positive consequences, depending on where one "sits". I too used to enjoy flying, and now dread it. But I have learned to pay for a bit more comfort and convenience, and to reduce the time and stress associated with airport security these days. We have paid $100 for 5 years of global entry (which includes TSA pre-check domestically). For longer flights (across country and internationally) I pay the $50-150 or so for a few more inches of space in the cabin. I buy some food at the airport before boarding because so far I have not purchased a meal on-board that was edible. International flights do at least provide food, even in economy (barely edible, but...)! I fly a fair amount for someone who is not a business traveler - from DC to Calif to see our children and grandchildren, internationally to see another child and his family, and shorter trips for couple vacations. At least a dozen flights/year, and usually more. The airlines continue to cut free services because they are losing so much business to the rock-bottom economy airlines like Spirit and Frontier. They observe that most flyers just want a cheap ticket, and those who want more leg room, or food etc can choose to buy them, leaving those who will happily do without for a cheap plane ride with that option.
ReplyDeletePlane travel is incredibly cheap in inflation adjusted terms. Except during the Thanksgiving and Christmas periods, I can fly to California on a major airline for an average of $350-400RT, sometimes less during slow periods. I do not choose to fly on the discount carriers, which are even more awful than the majors. We have two credit cards for the airlines we fly most often - that waives luggage fees and provides for earlier boarding, and one provides a $99 RT companion ticket each year - more than worth the annual fee.
I moved to DC for grad school after college, and met my husband here, but have returned to California at least annually to see my mom and friends, and now at least twice/year. Sometimes we fly our kids/grandkids east. In the early 70s I was earning about $14,000/year and I would pay about $250-275/RT to California from DC. In inflation adjusted dollars, that is the equivalent of about $1600 today. I wouldn't be seeing my kids very often if I was paying that. There were about 9 non-stops every day to LA from Dulles and a lot of empty seats. Far more people fly these days than in the 70s because of the fact that in real dollars, the cost of plane travel has plunged. The planes are full. The biggest problem now is that the government has approved too many mergers, and the majors pretty much have an oligarchy. But I haven't yet gotten poor enough to endure Spirit. There are signs though that the majors have cut enough. To continue to compete some (Delta, American) are again providing meals on longer flights (but still not increasing leg room).
Continued
ReplyDeleteIn many of the union-airline negotiations, the unions refused to look at the real operating costs of the carriers and ended up cutting their own throats to a degree during negotiations. Yet there is high demand for airline jobs. Of course there is demand for the tarmac and mechanical jobs - the latter often pay well. Qualified applicants can be flight attendants (low pay) without being young, pretty, slim and white, a far cry from the 60s and 70s. One of my sisters-in-law was a flight attendant for a major carrier after college. She was young, slim, tall, pretty and white of course. She had to resign her job after her marriage. Today I see many older flight attendants, retired from other jobs, or with kids grown, who fly not only for the income, but because they had deferred travel and now can see the world affordably. One of my sons worked for a major airline while in college. He could fly for free if space was available and for about $20 RT in first class domestically, all across the country. As his parents my husband and I had the same privilege. There was a small fee for flying internationally. As an airline employee he enjoyed excellent rates at hotels. Most of his colleagues at the airport (he was a front-desk person often dealing with angry flyers whose flights were cancelled) worked for a total compensation package - often for the perqs more than for the salaries.
So, flying is indeed a commodity. People make value choices all the time in the marketplace - a gourmet restaurant or a fast-food place or a mom-and-pop diner? The more expensive (but classic and long-lasting) clothing choices v. the cheaper, trendy fashions that are disposable in a year or two. Working for an airline is also a choice - seen by many as an attractive option, better than working for many ground-based employers.
I don't have an answer for the loss of union jobs, but I think it goes beyond simple profit-greed. Sometimes the unions pushed too hard. The airlines are profitable again, but many had severe losses for years, largely due to the cost of fuel, and many are still reporting losses. United just reported a huge loss - as a result of the dragging incident (serves them right. I fly United all the time, because they have the most FFlyer seats availabale to the most places, but if I weren't worrying about the miles.....). Even though fuel prices dropped dramatically a few years ago, it's only been recently that this saving has been reflected in ticket prices. I also find, when getting ticket price breakdowns, that a significant percentage of the ticket is for various taxes and fees imposed by the government. This is especially true internationally - very often in trips to Europe, the ticket itself costs less than the fees, taxes and surcharges.
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0510/4-reasons-why-airlines-are-always-struggling.aspx
In the competition between two companies, the one with a union keeping wages up will be non-competitive. If both companies have unions (especially if they both have the same union) I don't buy the idea that wage negotiations as such will cause either company to fail. It's the same with regulations. Regulations do create expense. However, if all businesses have the same regulations all have the same expense. I see individual companies arguing they they were ruined by regulation, but I have seldom seen a whole industry wiped out by regulations. What I see instead is that some inefficient companies fail and whine about regulations while others in the same industry prosper. I have had arguments with (usually failed) businessmen who claim that regulations raise prices so high that consumers will walk away from the product as such. To which I say that if consumer spending on the product drops by 20 percent causing demand to drop, this will actually create more intensive competition and the most inefficient 20 percent of the existing companies will fail and the rest will survive; exactly what capitalism is supposed to do. Because in practice, while the Right likes to talk about competition, no capitalist really wants to compete (Adam Smith recognized this 200 years ago). Hence my definition of the Modern Libertarian. A Modern Libertarian is a person who, if his business fails, blames everyone but himself.
DeleteSometimes I wonder if the Soviet Union, as centralised and inefficient it was, had not the burden of military competition with us and promoting its own expansionary ambitions, would have had an economy that was good enough. People warm with rooves overhead, enough to eat and drink, clothing, alcoholic beverages. Same with Cuba. So it would take another century to achieve Facebook. Would that have been so bad?
ReplyDeleteThe problem with totalitarian states is that they are totalitarian. Russia (and formerly the Soviet Union) and Cuba had, and for that matter still have, a&&holes running the place, and no meaningful means to vote them out of office. I don't recall a time in history when Russia didn't have expansionist ambitions, at least to get a warm water seaport.
DeleteFacebook is why I believe in Hell.
DeleteIt would always have been bad because one can't separate the politics from the social benefits. I imagine that what you are really asking is whether there could have been socialism without Bolshevism. What would have to have emerged is socialism with democracy. While (despite the claims of our own Right) Western Europe seems to have been able to create social-democracies wherein there is both capitalism and worker protections, this has required a discussion that we have not been able to approach in the US for almost 100 years. How does one have capitalism but also contain it? Or is this possible?
DeleteI think a Swedish system would be fine. Even better if the capitalist sector were filled with worker owned companies. That, to me, would be the alternative to unions. I just wonder if ANY system might work well enough if unburdened by war and empire building.
DeleteOne would think that the separation of ownership from control (the "management revolution) would mean that ownership itself, especially as expressed in terms of stock holding, would make the question of who should "own" the company irrelevant. (And the rich sometimes make this argument saying that everyone who has a 401K owns stock now so when management forces wages down it helps everyone). But we live in a society that believes that the rich are motivated by only rewards and the non-rich are motivated only by punishment or the threat of it. The key is whether workers have any input into control. They can obtain it in capitalism via unions or by ownership, but only by ownership that gives them some measure of control.
DeleteWhat strikes me is the tolerance by the Right of corporation managers that pay themselves huge amounts of money. Technically, these people are employees just like everyone else. Their own salaries take away from profits too. (And I have long held that the Tea Party would do well to support caps on executive salaries and call the law The Defense of Capitalism Act.
But this won't happen of course.
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou could see this all play out back in 2010 in the UK with the combination of the Catholic church's third way and Tory David Cameron's and Phillip Blond's Big Society.
It was a way to take government money away from the poor and (supposedly) replace it with Catholic charity, while allowing a cynical Nietzschean economic theory (only the strong deserve to survive) to control the marketplace.
Then Pope B16 applauded the idea - Benedict's Big Society. There was a post at America magazine by super conservative Catholic Austen Ivereigh that promoted the idea ... What connects Cameron to Italian Catholics. But Rowan Williams of the C of E spoke out against it - Rowan Williams attacks Coalition over Big Society and spending cuts.
There is a whole lot to unpack there, but let me start by addressing, inadequately, your final comment on the Church's Social teachings being too charity-oriented. Au contraire, since Leo XIII started it in the late 1800s (before then, there wasn't enough democracy for individual Catholics to need to have any social teaching), the emphasis has been NOT on charity as being good for the giver but on the Rights of "man" (in the old-fashioned inclusive use of the term). Just grabbing a quick example without leaving my chair, here is para. 35 of Gaudium et Spes from Vat II:
ReplyDelete35. Human activity, to be sure, takes its significance from its relationship to man. Just as it proceeds from man, so it is ordered toward man. For when a man works he not only alters things and society, he develops himself as well. He learns much, he cultivates his resources, he goes outside of himself and beyond himself. Rightly understood this kind of growth is of greater value than any external riches which can be garnered. A man is more precious for what he is than for what he has.(5) Similarly, all that men do to obtain greater justice, wider brotherhood, a more humane disposition of social relationships has greater worth than technical advances. For these advances can supply the material for human progress, but of themselves alone they can never actually bring it about.
Hence, the norm of human activity is this: that in accord with the divine plan and will, it harmonize with the genuine good of the human race, and that it allow men as individuals and as members of society to pursue their total vocation and fulfill it.
End quote. Francis has been building on that, and his argument in The Joy of the Gospel and Laudato Si is, again, that it is insufficient for the lucky sperm club and those who have clawed their way to the top to leave to "the poor" an endowed hospital wing and their best wishes. It is, instead, everyone's duty to make the poor as rich as a human needs to be to be truly human.
I am paraphrasing, of course.
That is point 1
True. But there is a certain amount of "flexibility" here that is always exploited by anyone who wants to screw workers and the poor. The whole thrust of the Market Worshipers is that the free market is the best way to accomplish all that the CST proposes.
Delete"Similarly, all that men do to obtain greater justice, wider brotherhood, a more humane disposition of social relationships has greater worth than technical advances."
Greater justice is found via that "neutral" force of market relations and the "equality" it produces (the :="free" in free market). The humane distribution is seen as the function and goal of the market itself. People take out what they put in. And technical advances come from the market, which is certainly not subordinated to them. In fact, technical advances expand overall wealth, which expands the pool of possibilities as well. As I once heard an idiot executive at my company say "Workers need not fear innovation if they constantly train themselves for the jobs of the future".
It reminds me of the subsidiarity arguments about assigning tasks to the smallest possible political units. The Right immediately takes this to mean, for example, that more things need to be taken away from the Federal Government and assigned to the tender mercies of the states, because the states are smaller than the nation. No reference to the fact that the states are easier to corrupt than the Feds or a questioning of what the real difference might be between 320 million people or 20 million people defined as "communities". Or a question as to how "all humans have the same kind of bodies" converts to "the support of healthcare needs is best divided between 50 entities" because, you know, "flexibility".
I get what the popes may have been doing. But in the end, it seems to me to be a call to avoid unjust profiting, while allowing the profiteers to define what that means.
Now, as to where someone might get the notion that Catholic social teaching is more about charity (giving it) than about justice (supporting those who demand it)... well, one might get that notion because that is how Catholic social teaching has been taught by Catholic prelates and priests who are not much interested in it. Such as the ones who are hectoring Pope Francis over alleged doctrinal deviations involving sex and Communion and, of course, by the ever present brocade brigade who don't care what you do as long as it doesn't deviate from the General Instruction on the Roman Mass, with Appendices. Well, there were a bunch of those among the Pharisees, too.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if they took all the teachings of the Church as seriously as they take their chosen teachings, they would have to clean up their act in regard to such matters as BLM, immigration and military adventurism, not to mention the climate change, which their preferred administration considers unmentionable. John Gehring is really the guy who should be writing about this, and his piece in the NY Dailly News on the eve of the Al Smith Dinner would be a good place to start. It is at:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/paul-ryan-strange-catholic-values-article-1.3572497
Notice, charity is not the operative concept.
To me it goes back to a fundamental question defined by Marx (unfortunately). Is the contribution of labor fully compensated by whatever pay the worker gets or does the contribution of labor have a wider significance? Marx proposed a "labor theory of value". He said that it was labor and not the genius or even the risk taking of the capitalist that actually produced most value. He said that what the capitalist does is buy labor time from the worker and then presses the worker to produce more value than he received, with the capitalist taking all of the extra. All workers between them produced all value in society, and since production was by necessity in capitalism is social, the production of value both sustains and reproduces society.
DeleteIn the 19th century, capitalists constantly squeezed more out of workers by both increasing the intensity of production and reducing their wages. The reduction of wages caused workers to compete with each other harder for "jobs" which depressed wages even more. That his led to a decline in the internal market was not relevant to the individual capitalist. I think we are seeing this return today. It is said that wages are flat, but in fact the cuts are happening at the level of fringe benefits now. The internal market in the US is not very relevant because neoliberalism in the US allows capital to flow freely to other markets in the world. And there is a whole ideology out there that claims that it is capitalists who take all the risks, that anyone can become a rich capitalist, and that any problems a worker has are his own fault, because he wasn't prudent enough. "If you don't like being a slave, go start your own plantation." A guaranteed living wage just promotes laziness and lack of industry. Stupid workers don't realize that they are being exploited for their own good.
There are two other political theories that I know of that support worker participation into the fruits of their labor. The first is the one that supported the non-Marxist unionization movement to begin with. The argument was that if unions were not allowed, workers would politically agitate more and more on their own terms as the kind of inequality that we see today continued to grow. This was unionization to prevent socialism. The second was that inequality was a national issue. This was the sort of thing promoted by the Right in the past. The idea that and overall educated and healthy population was good for the prosperity of the nation as a whole. This is something that the Right could get behind in the past. It is the basis of government social programs financed through taxation.
Nowadays, almost every state program from education, health, safety legislation and consumer protection is viewed as "socialism" and we can see efforts by the modern Right to disavow these things from any historical source Left or Right.
I think the charity/justice difference in the church is along conservative/liberal lines (mostly). It is those who are Republicans/libertaians who want to keep the government from working economic justice and instead want to fall back on charity.
ReplyDeletePope Francis, although a social conservative (contraception, LGBT issues, women, etc.) is an economic liberal, perhaps because of where he's from. He wants to see justice done economically, but the church pretty traditionally has taken the side of the rich and powerful, who would rather do charity.
Charity is optional, probably cheaper and when the rich do it, everybody is supposed to kiss their asses in gratitude. One of the Koch Bros. donated $500M to a cancer center. Meanwhile, their plants pour out questionable materials into the environment. Gates can be the Great Benificence because he was allowed to establish a virtual software monopoly.
ReplyDeleteWell,the rich get a tax deduction for charity. And a deduction at 39% is worth a lot more than a deduction at 25%. But a person is more valuable than a deduction in Church teaching, if not in Republican practice.
DeleteI do not want to have to depend on the beneficence of the rich or the generosity of Democratic lawmakers to make ends meet. These winds shift too often. If I were paid a fair wage for my work, I would not need Obamacare subsidies, my colleagues would not need food stamps, and their children would not need WIC.
ReplyDeleteI want what I'm worth, not what captains of industry or rich Democrats are willing to hand out.
I think they used to call it "justice", Jean. The oligarchs say "JUSTICE!" the same way Maynard G. Krebs used to say "WORK!".
ReplyDeleteBut as a society we are beyond people getting only what they have "worked for". We believe that people who cannot work still deserve to survive with help from the government, simply based on our common humanity. Justice isn't about people getting rewarded for being useful, it's about the belief that we all my need help sometime.
ReplyDeleteJohn Rawls wrote about fairness and how societies decide who should get what. He had a thought experiment in which the leaders all met to decide this, but none of them knew who or what they were ... were they male of female, white or black, poor or rich, sick or well? Since they didn't know, they had to choose rules for society that would be the most fair to everyone, because they themselves could be one of the most needy and vulnerable.
I understand that the elderly and infirm need help, and I think we should ensure they are generously provided for.
ReplyDeleteWhat grinds me is that the oligarchs try to pit middle-class against poor, paying me crappy wages and telling me the undeserving poor who work the system are the reason they can't pay me a living wage.
As they fly off to Vail in their private jet.
There are lots of ways wage disparity can be legislated, but when only rich people are in Congress, it isn't gonna happen
Yeah, I agree with you. Wish there was a way non-rich people could run and be elected.
ReplyDeleteI would like to respond to one point in Patrick Shannon’s long and complex overview of the ongoing destruction of the laboring class:
ReplyDelete“Labor is simply not something that can be detached from the laborer and added as a line on a balance sheet. “
One problem going forward is that there will be less and less “labor.” That is, as we see to our distress, more and more people are unable to find work they can do. There are many reasons for this, but going forward the chief reason will be the inevitable march of technology to reduce human participation in production.
In a new book on artificial intelligence, Life 3.0., Max Tegmark posits a variety of scenarios for the work environment of the future, and most of them require almost no human intervention. No matter what we may lament has happened historically to get us to the pass we are in (a pass that issued in the election of the demagogue in the White House), the future in this regard is dire. The one percent will end up with everything, and the workers who can find no work will have nothing. (Ironically, the argument that we need a well-off middle class to buoy the economy will become irrelevant because the cost of production by robots will become vanishingly small--no salaries, healthcare, time off, etc.)
There is also a very thoughtful (and scary) article in The New Yorker (10.23.17), “Dark Factory,” on the topic of how robots are taking over more and more jobs at higher and higher levels. It also considers the cascading effects when even just one actor in an industry moves to increased use of automated factories or warehouses. Sheelah Kolhatkar, the author of the essay, quotes a researcher who says, quite sincerely, ““I usually like to ask the question: How can this help make society better? What is something people now do that robots might do?’” As Kolhatkar notes (and Max Tegmark, too), nearly anything physical that people can do will eventually be a task available to robots.
Moreover, we know the country faces a slow but steady demographic decline. With the Trumpian campaign against immigrants, the demographic slide will only continue, meaning ever-fewer workers supporting ever-more elderly in need of healthcare, etc.
Catholic social teaching may take up the need for an integrated social order. But the social order itself seems to be dissolving.
Well, let's look at this dire prediction a bit.
DeleteRight wing economists celebrate mechanization because it lowers production costs and, in theory, prices. Capitalists like it as well since it is cheaper than labor costs and eliminates pesky workers as well.
But I would argue that it is only dire if we assume that current relations of production are maintained. The solution would be to cut hours without cutting wages to follow the decline in the need for workers. In other words to pass on the savings of this kind of productivity to the workers. It would not be necessary to pass on ALL of the savings to the workers. But right now the one percent believes that it should get 100 percent of the fruits of any efficiency. And their political supporters argue this as well, claiming that if they can't get 100 percent, they are going to pull their capital and not use it. Or at least move it to places where they can get 100 percent. I would argue that this again supports my contention that capital is treated in the US as something separate and outside of society.
But reducing hours is a hard sell, because it will be resisting by those who would not benefit. It's the same way with the incremental destruction of unions and the lowering of wages. Since it is done piecemeal, since there are parts of the economy that are currently unaffected, those people will form an opposition base, especially with any plan that can be spun to make it look like their own situation will get worse. (Note how the Right portrays unions. On one hand, they have no affect on wages and only exist to extort dues. On the other hand, they have a massive affect on wages and make American industry noncompetitive. The contradiction here is never noticed).
A problem I have with CST (and I have no solution to it) is that it is portrayed as Catholic in such a way that it seems to be somehow religious. I think it would be better off if it was portrayed as a reasonable social/economic theory that should be held by Catholics (and everyone else) as reasonable and equitable. When we start defending it one the basis of it being supported by the Pope, we have already lost.
Cheaper and cheaper manufacture by robots married to AI leads me to think about the environmental costs. The materials still have to come from somewhere and those materials are getting harder and harder to come by. We are already drowning in cheap crap that negatively affects the environment. When the crap gets cheaper, more environmental degradation.
DeletePatrick, that is an interesting thought about CST. I think it does resonate with many people outside the church. I still have "connections" with the Unitarians, who embrace it without necessarily recognizing it as a Catholic thing.
DeleteDitto some Protestant churches in the next town over who have joined together to create an astoundingly vibrant safety net for the homeless (we live in one of five poorest counties in Michigan). This was spearheaded by the Methodist ladies, the Salvation Army, and a few evangelicals storefront churches. Most churches now participate. Except the two Catholic churches. We are distracted with the bishop's attempt to replace the Diocesan Appeal with an endowment fund. Whole other story there.
Suffice it to say that while Catholics are struggling to keep their doors open by looking inward, the mainline Protestant churches + some happy clappies are expanding by looking outward. They have embraced the corporal acts of mercy with more alacrity than the Catholic parishes.
Not to say that many Catholics don't participate in the effort. We have "scarf day" where the downtown park is festooned with hats, mittens, and scarves, free for anyone. Free coffee and snacks. Table with flyers outlining help available in the winter months.
The Salvation Army was open as a cooling center this summer. Someone always just showed up with ingredients for free lunch. Old people teaching teenagers to play euchre.
It has been heartening!
1. Justice and/or Charity...I point out, but do not make an over-all defense of because I don't know enough: Catholic Charities here in NYC has a pretty extensive system for helping immigrants--legal, economic, educational. A recent forum on their services sounded pretty impressive, but, of course, execution is everything. Catholic Charities in many places around the country run shelters, half-way houses, etc. So do many others: Lutherans, Salvation Army, etc. Just throwing that into the mix. The line between justice and charity is not always so clear.
ReplyDelete2. Shifting economics in groceries: Ten years ago my neighborhood had three large supermarkets within about 1.5 miles of one another. One is left today. In the place of two of them are 3 that started out as fruit and vegetable stands, which is what they sold along with a few staples. The three have now expanded into small supermarkets, two have grown quite large.
The original supermarkets had a unionized labor force. These three almost certainly do not.
In one the checkers are almost all Africans (from Africa) with a few Hispanics. The stockers are all Mexicans, from whence much of the produce comes except during summer months.
In another the checkers are Hispanic and Middle Eastern, the stockers are Middle Eastern as are the "bosses,"(Lebanese or Turkish) along with a few Chinese.
In the third, all checkers and all stockers are Hispanic. I would guess, but don't really know, the African checkers and Hispanic stockers are undocumented. I like shopping in all of these places...odd veggies, strange brands, unexpected novelties (lemon grass), and they are all friendly. All are far superior to the Whole Foods that's opened in the next neighborhood over.
I often lament, "Where is Marx now when we need him?"(to Patrick's point above). Yet the introduction of new people and new ways of doing things, a powerful feature of immigrant societies, i.e. NYC, need to be calculated into the economic mix: Do we need to turn to chaos theory?
In no way do I dispute the need for immediate relief of those forced out of the workforce. If for no other reason than that until their situation is addressed, our politics will only continue to deteriorate. But stopgap, piecemeal solutions will not work—band aids on wounds. We must think more boldly. One proposal (actually now being tried in some Scandinavian countries) is simply to provide every citizen with a minimum income. Even Richard Nixon flirted with this idea. (See the eye-opening article on “Guaranteed minimum income” in good old Wikipedia.) If the Church is to take on the immense problem of the unemployable, then it needs to consider supporting bold undertakings such as this.
ReplyDeleteMy bigger point is that with the passage of time, the class of people who cannot find work they can do will only grow and grow.
By the way, there have recently been several dystopian movies based on the idea of a remote elite living in splendor while the 99 percent wallow in irredeemable poverty—see “Elysium” with Matt Damon and Jody Foster, for one. I think more people need to read up on the French Revolution!
We long ago passed the point at which everyone was needed to do the essential labor of society. So we invented jobs to keep everybody busy, cf. personal trainers. If workers are merely inputs in corporate production processes, we will need to either create guaranteed incomes or ramp up the funeral industry temporarily. Considering who is making the decisions (such as cancelling the 7th Amendment) these days, the choice could go either way. (It has been deemed necessary to protect Wells Fargo against the people it scammed. Ordnung muss sein.)
ReplyDeleteA friend suggested: "Love people, use things. Not the other way around." The suggestion is so last century. But I continue to pass it on.
While the Great Pumpkin and the Repubs are killing Amendments, I hope they ay least leave intact the one that lets me drink. I'm going to need it.
DeleteMaybe this is unwarranted optimism, but perhaps something will happen similar to the Arts and Crafts Movement at the end of the 19th century. Machine and robot-made things might be cheap and utilitarian. But not very satisfying as far as requiring skill and artistic input. Maybe with a guaranteed basic income people can develop their creativity and make things for daily life which are both beautiful and useful. We are already seeing "artisanal" breads, cheese, etc. And people are growing heirloom seeds, even though we have GMO seeds and robot field equipment which produce food easier and cheaper. Some people understandably don't want to go that route. I don't think the robot takeover is going to be total or all-pervasive.
DeleteYeah, Tom, I think you are right. Some of us are superfluous to serving the beast. English teachers seem high on everyone's list of make-work professions.
DeleteWe have been going to farmers markets and mom-and-pop places the past few years. It is fun to talk to the people who grew or made what you're buying. Raber seems inclined to go live on a Catholic Worker farm. No way I can be away from my various doctors. But I have encouraged him to try it out for a summer. It would be nice to think he has a place where his carpentry skills are valued in a community of believers when I'm gone. A port in the storm of the prevailing madness that will, I think, eventually swallow us all.
Jean, Even tenured Harvard professors can be replaced by online courses taught by tenured Yale professors. Of course, they will be among the last to go.
DeleteThis may not be the place to bring it up, but the howling enthusiasm on the part of governors, legislators and Congressmen over STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) depresses me no end. What we need, as humanity becomes superfluous to the needs of the corporation, are the humanities. Of course, English, history, all that stuff has a liberal bias. But so does science, although it does seem possible these days to find people who respect the science on "both sides" of the climate debate.
Anyway, the plebes are about to lose their 401k's to go with the pensions they stopped getting years ago. Let them eat STEM.
One sees the Right now claiming that even things like universal free education of single payer healthcare are "socialistic" which is to say communistic. I have actually seen people say that Hitler established universal healthcare in Germany as part of his Nazi plot and that if we have universal healthcare we would be just like Cuba, as though the Mariel boat lift was about Cubans fleeing the grinding oppression of good hospitals and schools.
ReplyDeleteIn Europe, the social safety net and worker's rights was about saving capitalism (just as it was here) but also about nationalism. It was considered a nationalist virtue to want a strong, healthy, and well educated country. I would call this idea a conservative space; an argument that could appeal to conservatives, since one would not only need to get them to drop their current stupid beliefs but provide another so that they can save face.
The only reason most of these "rugged individualists" can exist is that civilization makes them possible. Probably me, as well. But I think that in a "state of nature", I'd have a better chance than Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh.
ReplyDeleteNot sure where else to mention this, but Bart Stupak, Michigan's U.P. congressman who brought CSJ to bear during the ACA debate, will be on Off the Record tonight. Bart has written a book about his experiences. You can stream the program after it airs here. http://wkar.org/programs/record#stream/0
ReplyDeletePatrick says “It was considered a nationalist virtue to want a strong, healthy, and well educated country.” That was certainly true in the U.S. from the founding through the 1950’s at least: free universal public eduction, free state universities, free libraries, governmental support of the arts and sciences, on and on. How could it go away so quickly?
ReplyDelete