LINK

9.20.01

by Jeff Faux

There is no silver lining to the cloud of horror that descended on America last week. And the avalanche of pain, terror, and death we have witnessed may be just the beginning.

But life, as always, slowly picks up and moves on. Despite the nagging sense that it is unseemly to begin thinking about the economic consequences, the country is once again back in the market. Investors are selling the stocks of insurance companies and airlines, buying those of military contractors and companies that will benefit from the new security-conscious society. Economists are calculating the gains and losses and guessing about the odds of a recession.

Many are engaged in burying the dead and tending to the survivors, or facing the awesome responsibility of satisfying the national demand for action that serves justice rather than multiplying evil. Those of us who are going back to business have an obligation, as we do, to reflect on what we have seen.

The attacks of last Tuesday revealed some truths about the American political economy that have been obscured in recent years.

One is just how much of our economy is made up of what used to be called the "working class" -- the non-supervisory, non-college-educated people who make up 70 percent of our labor force. For the last half-dozen years the media saw economic trends through the eyes of the glamorous, globe-trotting, business executive -- to the point where it seemed to many that they must represent the vast majority of American workers. And one could hardly find a more fitting symbol of the new global economy than the World Trade Center -- surrounded in the evening with a herd of sleek limousines waiting to serve the masters of the universe at the end of the day.

And yet, it turns out, that the building was run by thousands of data clerks and secretaries, waiters and dishwashers, janitors and telecommunication repair people. The roll of trade unions mourning their dead is long: firefighters, hotel and restaurant employees, police, communication workers, service employees, teachers, federal employees, pilots and flight attendants, longshoremen, professional engineers, operating engineers, the electrical workers, federal employees, building trades, and state, county, and municipal employees.

And many were in no union, meaning job insecurity, no benefits, and certainly no limousines.

A second insight revealed by the awful gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline was how ill-served we have been by a politics that perpetuates the illusion that we are all on our own and, in particular, holds the institutions of public service in contempt. For two decades, politicians of both parties have celebrated the pursuit of private gain over public service. Shrinking government has become a preoccupation of political leaders through deregulation, privatization, and cuts in public services.

One result is that the U.S. is the only major nation that leaves airline and airport security in the hands of private corporations, which by their very nature are motivated to spend as little as possible. So the system was tossed in the lap of lowest-bid contractors who hired people for minimum wages. Training has been inadequate and supervision extremely lax. Turnover was 126 percent a year and the average employee stayed in airline security for only six months. Getting a job at Burger King or McDonald's represented upward mobility for the average security worker. In an anti-government political climate the airline corporations were able to shrug off the government inspections that consistently revealed how easy it was to bring weapons on board. The competition for customers sacrificed safety to avoid any inconvenience. How else to explain the insane notion that a 3-1/2 inch knife blade is not a weapon?

Private provision of public services has been the dominant philosophy of government in our time. Only natural, the economists told us. People were motivated by money. It's human nature. "Greed is good," said the movie character in the send-up of Wall Street -- a sentiment echoed by politicians of both parties. "Collective solutions are a thing of the past . . . The era of big government is over. . . . You are on your own." Public service was "old" economy, just for losers. A teacher in New York City schools starts at $30,000. A brand new securities lawyer starts at $120,000. Does anyone believe that this represents sensible priorities?

And does anyone believe that the firefighters who marched into that inferno did it for money? Does anyone think that people working for a private company hiring people for as little as possible would have had the same motivation -- would have been as efficient? At the moment when efficiency really counts?

When the chips are down, where do we turn? To the government's firefighters, police officers, rescue teams. To the nonprofit sectors' blood banks and shelters. And to Big Government's army, navy, and air force. During his campaign, the president of the United States constantly complained that the people knew how to spend their money better than the government did. Overnight, we just appropriated $40 billion for the government to spend however it sees fit. Who else would we trust?

The stock market itself made one point. Despite calls for investors to exercise patriotic restraint, the market opened with an avalanche of sell orders, driving the Dow to its largest point loss in history. As one broker said, "This is how capitalism is supposed to work." Just so. The market is about prices, not values. Finally, perhaps we learned something about our national identity.

It is common -- almost a cliché -- among political philosophers and pundits to define America as an "exception." For many, America's exceptionalism means that it is the best place to get rich. For others, it is our unique set of laws -- our Bill of Rights. Still others see America not in national terms at all, but as a patchwork of ethnic groups and regional interests.

There is some truth in all of these views. But those who risked and gave their lives -- both the public servants and the brave civilian passengers who rushed the terrorists and forced the airliner down in Pennsylvania before it could get to Washington -- are unlikely to have acted out of reverence for the deregulated market or for our court system or for some ethnic or religious loyalty.

Everything we know tells us that they acted as human beings responding to the agony of other human beings, or trying in one last desperate effort to spare their country more damage, not because it is the world's superpower but simply because it is their country. No country has a monopoly on simple patriotism. If America is, as the politicians often remind us, the "last best hope" for humankind, then it is not because we as individuals are exceptional and different from the rest of the world, but because we are much the same -- full of the normal set of human traits, which at times of stress often bring out the best in us. It is obvious that we can no longer rely on our exceptionalism to keep us safe. In the coming weeks and months and years we are likely to be reminded of that. To get through this, we need to be disabused quickly of the illusion that we are all on our own. America's strength, like the strength of any other society, is in our ability to be there for each other.

-- Debra (Thisis@it.com), September 22, 2001

Answers

>>The stock market itself made one point. Despite calls for investors to exercise patriotic restraint, the market opened with an avalanche of sell orders, driving the Dow to its largest point loss in history

Come on, I give half my earnings to the government and get precious little in return, how much more patriotic must I get? Now I got to give up the meager remnant I am permitted to retain, and am saving for my retirement, in the interest of 'patriotism?'

Right when people admonish me for worrying too much about money, guaranteed that's the moment they are themselves reaching for my wallet.

>>When the chips are down, where do we turn? To the government's firefighters, police officers, rescue teams... And to Big Government's army, navy, and air force. During his campaign, the president of the United States constantly complained that the people knew how to spend their money better than the government did. Overnight, we just appropriated $40 billion for the government to spend however it sees fit. Who else would we trust?

Well of course! That's why we HAVE a government. That's why we DO pay taxes- for government agencies to preserve and protect us, very fundamental.

What we DON'T have a government for is transfer payments to the professionally indigent, to research trees, to abort babies.

Not sure where they are creating that 40 bil from- taking it from some other targeted expenditure? Increasing taxes? Or creating it out of whole cloth, a la funding of Vietnam war?

-- Maybe (Baby@Im.Amazed), September 22, 2001.

Excellent points.

We Americans have the shortest memories, both individually and collectively, of any people on this planet. The moment that the media quit bombarding us 24/7 with horror stories, we go back to doing our nails and watching football, and never give any of it another thought.

Just to prove my point (and this is a gamble, I know, since there are some uncommonly astute people in these forums, here, I've found) - how many average American's can correctly answer this question?:

Do we still have American troops in Kosovo?

Ask around; the sheer volume of blank looks and "Gee...I dunno." answers surely tells you a lot about this country, too.

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 22, 2001.

Whenever I hear some pious "no such thing as too much government" jerk drawing his inevitable distinction between price and value, I also look to my wallet. Even a few seconds of thought and we realize that price is what the free market values something at, and "value" is what this liberal *thinks* something *ought* to be worth, if only government were properly empowered to *force* it to be worth that much. And government's failure to enforce HIS opinion on US is always to our great detriment. Uh, right.

Maybe retaliation should be entirely government's job. Just put enough of a price on the terrorists' heads, and turn entrepreneurs loose. Essentially, this is what is being done against us, and it works very well.

[A teacher in New York City schools starts at $30,000. A brand new securities lawyer starts at $120,000. Does anyone believe that this represents sensible priorities?]

What has happened is that the lawyer earns whatever his services can be sold for as low bidder on the market. If he's no good, he finds a new profession. If he's excellent, he earns $120,000. Fine. Now consider the school teacher. Any competitive bids? Any competition at all? Any unions? Can parents opt out of paying for public schools and bid to get their kids into private schools? Are our public schools any good? Why runs them and how?

The answers to these questions are extremely illuminating. Lousy teachers are union members, without any real competition, paid by seniority and where real competence is an unwelcome threat. Government employees to the core. They ARE paid what they are worth, but not what they COULD be worth if schools were private. In that case, the ability to *teach* would be paramount. Just imagine. A system where merit actually counts. What a concept.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 22, 2001.

Not sure where they are creating that 40 bil from. On Saturday Sep. 15, it was removed from the SociAL security trust fund. Along with the 50 bil for those harmed by the events of Sep. 11.

90 billion taken from the social security trust fund without a wimper. Had we not been given our little $300. kickbacks, we would have had enough money to cover any emergency.

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), September 22, 2001.

Cherri! Shhhh! You're not supposed to notice that! There's a WAR on, you know! Pay attention to THAT instead!

They'll fix it all up with a few hundred silent "riders" attached to all those defense funding bills flying thru the legislature and being rubber stamped as fast as their little arms can stamp them, right now...not to worry...

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 22, 2001.

Cherri, not to worry. Keynesian economics posits that deficit spending is good during a recession. Don't you remember "we only owe it to ourselves"?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 23, 2001.

Cherri: I've seen you mention this additional $50 billion twice now. I've not seen that mentioned in any news article I've read. Everything I've read said $20 billion for the rebuilding effort and $20 billion for defense. Do you have a link regarding that extra $50 bil?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 23, 2001.