Soon after the 911 attacks the president addressed the American people and instructed us to "go shopping" lest the terrorist win. That set an alarm bell that is still ringing in my mind and has only grown louder with the more recent economic events. It is a little dangerous making bold statements about economic issues to Darren as he has actually read important thinkers like Malthus, Smith, Marx, Kaynes ect... none of which I have read, except for some Marx. My thoughts on this topic are relatively unencumbered by the educational process. (All that I have read of Marx made a lot of sense with the exception of men holding wives in common). Even so, in light of all the "economic news" of late, I have a few uneducated questions.
What IS a jobless recovery? What is recovering and for whom? If speculation drives the markets up but there are no jobs, how can the consumers afford the "junk from the man"? Isn't that what drives the whole thing?
If I remember correctly FDR pushed the US into a new era of economic management by borrow/spending on infrastructure investments. The idea was that there would be a short term gain of increased economic activity, and a long term investment which would eventually pay back through increased productivity. Ronald Reagan gave us the idea that increasing the take home pay of the capitalized was the best way to help the poor and middle class. No need to focus on where the investment actually goes, the act of freeing it from government control will unleash magical vibes. Today we have eliminated the “voodoo” aspect of Reaganomics and just focus on subsidizing the capitalized without looking for any further benefit. Is it the right thing to do? Could there be wiser options? Who cares, they are too big to fail.
We have lost the vocabulary to differentiate between the consumptive economy, the productive economy and the parasitic economy. Not that parasites are a bad thing, no one could live without a colony of bacterial in the gut to digest food, but their survival is not the primary measure of the health of an individual. If I went to the emergency room with broken legs from falling off a scaffolding and the attending physician focused on the survival of the bacteria in my system and ignored everything else, we might assume there is a problem. Yet the doctors overseeing the economy have eyes only for the players who have never produced a single item needed by a human being or delivered any of those products to a population where they are needed, the aptly named FIRE sector, Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Lets pour a little more fuel on.
Here’s a random thought. Is it ethical to create the economic machinery to turn housing into an investment market, the foundation of the FIRE sector? Are there such things as basic human needs which everyone should have without bearing the burden of profit creation? What if water systems were operated this way? Police and fire protection? Healthcare seems headed that way with mandatory insurance coverage looming. This is a topic for another post/rant.
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ReplyDeleteSorry, there were just too many grammar problems with that first comment. Here is my third try...
ReplyDeleteDr. Cornel West defines culture as “dynamic, ever-changing structures of feeling and structures of meaning that help sustain humans in the face of death and extinction” which is “inevitable.” And he understands politics “as structures of common life that we human beings have—either that we forge together or that is imposed upon us. And of course, there are operations of power in both. And there are operations of norms in both. It’s never just about power; you need legitimacy, you need arguments that try to justify why power is deployed in this way or not.”
Someone was telling me the other day about how rich business men in Central Asia stave off resentment and transmute their wealth into prestige: they build mosques and hospitals for their minions and become kind and caring Muslims with the gift of giving. Most big markets made up of makeshift shops (actually shipping containers from Guangzhou) in Kyrgyzstan for instance, have their own mosques and schools courtesy of the entrepreneurs who made it big.
The same thing happens here in Seattle (though it's operating in a different religion), Washington Mutual has long donated $100,000 or so to put on our 4th of July magical fireworks (J.P. Morgan-Chase says they won’t do it this year), Boeing built us a stadium for drunken spectacles, Bill Gates sponsors our state run universities to teach weird languages and builds our museums and fills them with magical objects. I think since Reagan invented the position of CEO-in-Chief, this way of transmuting wealth into prestige has been the direction American humans have taken to be the natural form of politics and culture. But now you say this way has lost some of its voodoo, lost its clever costumes, and now we are living in naked anxiety.
Dr. Cornel West says, “My reading of brother Barack is as follows. He’s brilliant; he’s charismatic; he’s very strategic. He quickly became mesmerized by the braininess of some of those tied to Wall Street. And he wanted to reassure the establishment in order to get his footing because he’s a newcomer. Newcomers are always very anxiety ridden vis a vis an establishment that’s been around for hundreds of years… he’s head of an empire. It’s deeper than assimilation, and it’s not corruption; it’s just life at the top.”
This seems accurate to me too. We’re anxious about the future so we’re willing to go along with feeding the monkeys at the top of the jungle gym. We need to find a way that puts the magic back into economic life. I think keeping in mind that we are always trying to catch up with nature, balancing parasites against production and consumption, is a good way to get started. I think making things which last with our hands, things that transform and transmute other objects, things that pull with them a long history and tradition of craftsmanship and artistry is a good way to start. I think making and consuming things that transmit human feeling and not cost-effective machinery is a good way to start. But we’ve spun for ourselves a pretty tangled web, a network society which makes tracing the structures of feeling and structures of meaning a difficult task.
What a Darrenesque response. It's almost like old times. I can smell pumpkin curry soup with crusty fresh market bread with crushed olive spread...
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