Massey: Age of Extremes

Alright, alright. We're talking about poverty again in this writing. Massey brings up some very valid discussion about poverty, how hard it is to define, and briefly where it is located in the United States.

The thing that most gets me is that with all this discussion about poverty and what not, we still have it. I do wonder, often, why people raise so much money to help others in third world countries when the United States is starving in their backyards. I do often wonder recently too, how the President can hold a banquet worth 500,000 dollars on Thanksgiving, and we're still wondering how to help the population overcome the poverty line. I do not get it. I'm going to, as so many times in my writing, stand on this soap box for a second. I do not have a lot of information to back any of the claims I am about to make, so please be gentle if you disagree. I just feel like we are so blinded by our comfort as Americans. To be part of the top 1% in the world, wow, its truly an honor. We have the oportunity to chase dreams and make green, we're the elite. But then we complain, all of the time about the people who are starving in Africa. (I only use Africa because everyone says that phrase.) The point is, here are people starving in Saginaw, my hometown. There are people starving in Lansing, and yes even in Mt. Pleasant. Are we so naive to think that we will change the world when we're not whole? We as the United States of America should band together so that we can change the world here first. I would have been super impressed if the President spent 500,000 dollars on a meal to feed the homeless for one day. That one meal could have lasted them for weeks.

I'm sorry to rant, I just hear so much in the Sociological realm about poverty, and starving people and how there is such a separation between the poor and rich, and I do not see anyone with the most power to change things, doing anything to close that gap. What good is all of the statistics and information that Massey gives us if we aren't doing anything about it. That's it, off the soap box. Again, i'll never understand why I cannot do these things on time.

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Global Austerity-Pollin

Pollin discusses the period after World War II and how it became influential in governments policies in promoting economic growth and equality. These policies became more and more interventionist as exemplified in communist countries where the government controlled “virtually all productive assets and economic activity was directed through a government-established comprehensive plan” (pollin 874). These resulted in high employment rates and relative equality in health and educational opportunities.

Similar to that there were import substituting industrialization models where every chance to increase capacity to manufacture goods was taken to strengthen the local market, this kept healthy domestic markets and rose the standard of living in the countries it was present in. While there were many benefits from these forms of socialism pollin argues that it was repressive and forced companies to compete against each other for government favor. Pollin goes on to argue that the transition from big government to the neoliberal governments has increased global inequality in income and standard of living. In examining this he looks at the institution of sweatshops and their affect on the workers and the economy. The workers are effectively enslaved in some sweatshops where the business takes the new workers ID card so they cannot leave the immediate area without facing arrest. The success of the sweatshop can be attributed to the surplus of workers in less-developed countries where lack of taxes on imported goods make farming business crumble and people flood to the cities for work where more jobs have not been created, this surplus of workers leaves people desperate enough to find work at sweatshops appealing. He goes on to quote several economists who talk about sweatshops as a blessing because they create jobs and that they must be beneficial to the people because people continue to work there. Pollin disagrees with this saying that while they do create jobs that’s not to say they are a good thing, he sites many examples of countries where as wages rose, so did employment rates. This could punch a huge hole in people’s argument that raising wages would cause job losses. He goes on to discuss Bono’s attempt to raise money for developing countries and how the country would benefit much more from the establishment of the macro economic policies of the UN rather than raising Bono’s financial goal to aid the country. This makes sense to me because it seems that philanthropists like Bono only try to relieve the symptoms of poor economic policies rather than the cause, while noble it is also an inefficient use of effort, much more could be done if the countries policies were self sufficient. If sweatshops were made to pay their workers a living wage, Pollin calculates that it would only increase the cost of products by about 1.8%. Considering Americans have begun the practice of paying between 15 and 28% more for products guaranteed to have worker friendly business practices this would be one of the smarter moves on the part of the developing countries, they wouldn’t lose business and they could raise the standard of living in their country.

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For Traci Greenhalgh

The Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin talks about how living standards for everyone today are well above what any one ever seamed possible hundreds of years ago. In the 1900 the life span of some of the wealthiest people was only 60 years. From the 1940’s- to the 1960’s the government was promoting economic growth and increasing equality. Because this was during the cold war state socialism was the most influential and also the most contested we dominated economic thinking china Asia and many other countries. The government in these countries owned the entire means to production and their for the means for assets were filtered through the government. States with high socialist governments tried to keep high employment and equality in the handing out of what it controlled. Income, health care, housing and educational opportunities.

In Latin America they tried an approach called import-substituting industrialization and this was where developing countries should strengthen their ability to produce and manufacture goods for their own markets rather than exporting it and always using imported goods which are more expensive. This would benefit the entire country because local growers and buyers would get more money and all of the money would stay with in that place circulating. With all of these ideas their was lots of things that did not work out.

He marks the 1980’s as the point to transition out of the post world war II era of the development state policies and the ascendancy of neoliberalism. By the end of the 1990’s china had still not adopted neoliberal policies. The overall growth rate and per capita growth rate were significantly higher in the developmental state era than they were in the neoliberal era. But in china the growth rates were higher in the neoliberal era. The average increase in overall income in the poor and middle income countries just barley stayed ahead of population growth.

Economic growth in most developing countries has slowed substantially and income distribution has become more unequal their fro poverty in developing countries has worsened for the most part or has slowed. The most publicized global austerity has been the sweatshop labor conditions. Highly dealing with clothes and footwear. The most publicized US problem was with Nike shoes where people in Indonesia were making 14 pairs of shoes a day and earning 14 cents a hour.

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Friedman

In the article, it discusses how in developing economies men nor women are expected to live until 45 years old. That was a very interesting fact to learn, only because 45 to me is still very young, and it is crazy to see that in the world today, there are still countries that have such hardships, they cannot provide to their people the way we take for granted. The economies in third world countries are nothing like we have, and we still always cry about our economic hardships, because we have seen better, but what if we never had anything like many countires in the world currently have? Would we still cry about not getting enough money on wall street, and not being able to take fancy vacations, or having our houses cleaned for us? How is it they can survive, and we sit around and cry about all of our problems? I never really thought about how greedy and ridiculous we were being until now.


We also have so many economic policies like free markets that we can’t get away from. We have crazy high interest rates, we have trade laws, so is this economy really running our lives on the flip side? Everything we do revolves around money and the economy, and is it ever going to change, or we going to continue to live our day to day lives around what the money of the economy is worth. So many people live off of $1-$2 a day in this world, and is that honestly possible, and still able to maintain health and live a happy life? I know that chances are, just because I am in the country I am in, it would very hard for me to do. So it’s very hard for me to grasp the concept of someone living this lifestyle, and having a life up to par.

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Change In Politics

Within this article Michael Walzer explains and talks about the neoconservatives, and how they are the voice behind the change in politics. The neoconservatives according to Steinfels and Schuster “express a neo-sense of crisis and loss.” They live with one basic dilemma and that is that “the institutions they wish to conserve are to no small extent the institutions that have made the task of conservation so necessary and so difficult.”

The crisis that Steinfels speaks on is the fall of authority in governments, armies, universities, corporations, and churches. The head officers in charge of these establishments cannot command obedience or respect because the trust and deference have broken down. The neoconservatives are scholars and intellectuals, and people read there documented options’ because they have a different view on things than any other politics group. These groups of people are getting looked at more and more and people are taking them more seriously over time. Steinfels states that “this intelligent conservatism that America has lacked, and who’s absence has been roundly lamented by the American Left. “

The neo conservatives are liberal but they don’t have as strong of believe as a full blown out liberal. They think that no one person should be set on thinking one way because of a group that they are in. They believe that it set people free of religious and ethnic community; it abolishes control and agencies of control. They believe that it will generate free men and women and also radical individualism and then a radical competition among self seeking individuals. The reason why this liberalism didn’t work in the past was because people were still living in the past and was stuck on the old rules and ways of life.

Equality is another factor that makes the liberals nervous. They want all to be equal with the affirmative action, and the woman rights movement and the civil right movement it was a great step forward. They want to give merit to these minorities but to help them come up and try to put everything on a equal playing field but they don’t think that they would make it because the elite old men are the ones that carry the power and make all the money.

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Where Have All the Unions Gone

In the article, Where Have All the Unions Gone… Long Time Passing?, Richard Freeman discusses the diminished population of union workers in 2005 as compared to 1984. Richard gives three reasons for the failing unions: 1) management fights unions because they raise wages and benefits, lowering profits. 2) Union leaders failed to address declining union worker participation. 3) Workers decided that unions did not serve their best interest.

Freeman describes the opposition by management in the U.S. in discussing their tactics of barraging their employees with anti-union material, denying union access to workers and “forecasting” the employees job loss (one-in-five union organizers are fired as a result of their participation in union campaigns)(Freeman 847). This is quite different from the European management tactics where management is supportive of unions who generally make organizing their labor easier. Unions aren’t seen as much of a burden because the citizens already have universal health care and they already pay fair wages. The unions are failing to gain members and are losing support and gaining opposition through failed campaigns. While its evident that the more problems a worker has with the work place the more they show interest in organized representation more people are interested in non-unionized representation, more like a manager and employee open forum.

While support for unions may be low it seems to me from the research presented in this article that if the U.S. ever manages to establish universal health care that opposition by businesses may decrease. Coupled with the use of open-source unionism as suggested by the author who would use the internet as a cheap means of organizing and informing their union workers this could begin to bring back the unions. Unions are essential for not only helping equalize the workplace and help ensure the comfortable lifestyle of their workers but they benefit small businesses, a small business that cooperates with unions are more attractive to the potential employees because while they can’t compete with large corporations in the wage arena, unions help establish benefits and a comfortable work environment for their employees. They give power to the traditionally powerless in a very democratic fashion.

Anyone who’s read Nickel and Dimed would know that American companies traditionally exploit their low wage workers because they have no ability to barter, if they argue they can quickly be replaced… but if they have the force of a union behind their back they aren’t as dismissible. Low wage workers need protection especially concerning that someone who works full time at minimum wage should not live below the poverty line.

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Explaining American Exceptionalism

This chapter discusses that issues and poltics of social inequality in America . The author discusses that during the periods between the revolutionary and civil war. In this period blacks were freed from slavery and they were the primary labor force in the south, but they were not allowed to join unions, this weakened the unions that did exist. The New Deal is also discussed in relation to its cause of migration of blacks from the south to the north. This migration disabled the south’s ability to function as a separate nation. Americans soon had to face the idea of social equality, an issue that was brought to the forefront in the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

The author then goes on to analyze the attempt made to reconstruct racial politics. The three explainations offered are the policy centered approach, the legacy of the weak working class, and the legacy of strong liberal values. The policy centered approach states that the civil administration was not protected from partisan use and parties used government jobs to mobilize their clients and reward activists. Politicians battled over the spoils of office rather than programmatic appeals. The weak working class explaination is that the weakness of the American labor movement has been a product and producer of racial divisions. The explaination of the strong liberal values is that the liberal idea is to distrust the government and avoid government intervention. Support for interventions dissipates when civil right and liberties are in danger.

The last chapter of the book talks about the three welfare reforms and how they have failed in contributing to social equality. This failure is a failure to live up to American ideals of liberty and also democratic rights.

I feel the looming racial tension is caused by many of the things discussed in this chapter. I also feel that there are other factors that have played into the inequality of blacks. The effect that government policies have had on social inequality is profound. I feel that even before these policies were created there were people supporting the idea that blacks are inferior. There were many “scientific” breakthroughs that supposedly showed that blacks were inferior biologically and therefore were inferior to all other races. These arguments were ultimately shown to be false, but the mindset of Americans has not completely changed.

Propaganda was used then to keep the blacks inferior and I feel it is also used today through main stream media and stereotypical representations of black Americans. Although science has proven that there is hardly any variation between “races”, there is still a tensions between people of different races. I feel this tension is caused by our learned cultural identity and others perceptions of that identity.

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