politics of equality

Who Gets the Most Government Benefits: Urban Democrats or Rural Republicans?

Today's Republican Party, fueled by the Tea Party movement's right-wing populism, rails against government benefits and those who receive them. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for example, warns that Social Security and Medicare will turn us into "a bunch of people sitting on a couch, waiting for their next government check." But who really receives the bulk of government benefits: urban districts represented by Democrats or rural districts represented by Republicans?

Using the New York Times' map of the county-level distribution of government benefits, I've compared Republican and Democratic districts in two states. Here is California's 9th District (including the cities of Oakland and Berkeley, represented in the House by Democrat Barbara Lee) compared with the 19th District (including the largely rural areas of Stanislaus, Fresno, and Madera counties, represented in the House by Republican Jeff Denham):

We find a similar story in Minnesota's 5th District (including the city of Minneapolis, represented in the House by Democrat Keith Ellison) and the 6th District (including the rural counties of Benton, Stearns, Sherburne, Wright, Anoka, and Washington, represented in the House by Republican Michelle Bachman): 

This is, of course, a small and unrepresentative sample - but more comprehensive studies (see, for example, Gray Richardson's work on this topic or the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study) have shown that the pattern holds: the regions of the United States most inflamed by right-wing, anti-government populism benefit disproportionately from government programs and income transfers. To put it another way, Cadillac driving welfare queens are easily outnumbered by pickup truck driving welfare cowboys.

Why, then, do voters who depend on government benefits support candidates who promise to do away with them? There is an obvious appeal to thinking of oneself as an independent, "rugged individual." It is an ideological fantasy image with deep connections not only to American frontier culture, but to the more modern celebration of the business entrepreneur as cultural hero. The business-owning elite has a clear material interest in eliminating government income transfers such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare: doing so would not only reduce their tax burden, it would put downward pressure on the wages they pay their employees. But many of those same employees are ideologically invested in the fantasy image of themselves as the sort of rugged individuals who have no need for government income transfers. The power of that ideological fantasy is striking: the parents who send their children to public schools are the voters who choose to lay off teachers rather than pay taxes; the workers who are barely able to afford private insurance are the voters who hate and fear a "government takeover" of health care.

It is difficult, though, to imagine a way through this contradiction without a political movement willing to craft for itself an appealing ideological image that is not simply another version of anti-government individualism. Freedom from the law, from government, is one type of freedom. But there is also freedom to go to school, freedom to go to the doctor, freedom to a secure job and a decent wage, freedom to a safe and comfortable home. Who is brave enough to admit that government benefits make us free?

CEO Pay Rises Again

What a great time to be a corporate CEO. As the Guardian reported today, CEO pay increased last year by 28%, while ordinary workers (after adjusting for inflation) got nothing. This year, CEO pay increased 15%, while ordinary workers got 0.3%. It appears that there is plenty of money in corporate coffers to give the already rich fatter pay packets, but still not enough to create jobs or raise workers' wages.

Why do I keep passing along these dismal figures? Yesterday was International Workers' Day.

In Oakland, at the rally called by the Occupy Movement, I saw a few people who looked like they had walked over from their offices, a few in union t-shirts - but far too few. The distribution of wealth in our country will not change until the balance of power between employers and employees changes. And that won't happen until more working people organize and make themselves into a political force to be reckoned with.

Austerity Doesn't Work

The story is the same in Britain, Spain, and now the United States: cutting government spending slows economic growth. The recovery from recession was already sluggish enough, due to the fact that we didn't invest enough in public-sector economic stimulus. Cutting government spending at a time like this is very much like shutting off the hydrant just as the fire department is beginning to get the fire buring down your house under control.

During a recession, privately owned businesses respond to a drop in consumer demand by reducing investment and hiring. Government is the one institution that can increase investment and employment without worrying about consumer demand. Government can create jobs without worrying about whether or not those jobs will result in profitable returns for the investor. Creating jobs, though, creates consumer demand - which encourages private businesses to increase investment and hiring.

History has already proven several times over that the way out of recession is to increase government investment. How many more times must we run the experiment before we start believing the results?

How to Make Political Change: An Open Letter to the Occupy Movement

Politics is the process through which people make conscious decisions about the conditions of social life. It involves competing interests, power over resources, and influence over those with decision-making power.

The process of making political change often appears both obvious and obscure. We know that a civil rights movement transformed the racial segregation of the United States. We know that a feminist movement transformed the legal, political, economic, and cultural status of women. Yet, in our historical consciousness, these great, world-altering movements often seem to have arisen out of nowhere. We are left with the vague feelings either that political change occurs spontaneously, as the natural reaction to a grievance, or that individual leaders are wholly responsible for the rise and success of movements. In fact, nothing could be further from the case.

Do you want to make political change? Here is how it is done:

1. Have an analysis of the situation you face, including both a critique of existing conditions and a proposed alternative. It is important to be able to articulate your proposed alternative clearly, even if all its details are not readily available.

2. Develop organizations with resources and decision-making processes. Individual leadership can sometimes be tremendously effective. Far more effective and reliable, though, than a great individual leader is an organization that develops the skills of many capable, trusted activists.

3. Develop ideology - the core values, but also the imagery and forms of identity that define a movement. The more an ideology differs from a community's existing stock of background beliefs and assumptions, the more difficult it will be for that ideology to take hold. One time-tested technique is to reinterpret an old ideology in a new way, as in the civil rights movement's reinterpretation of biblical stories and gospel songs.

4. Engage in actions that educate the public, persuade those on the fence, outrage those who are silent, unify those who are with you, divide those who are against you, and shift power in your favor.

5. Be in it for the long-run. Political change sometimes seems to come in a lightning flash. But behind the scenes will always be found the slow, patient work of decades. Slavoj Žižek, commenting on the Occupy Movement puts it very well: "The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work – they are the beginning, not the end."

For a brief, utopian moment in 2011, some began to speak as though the Occupy actions would grow indefinitely; that they would prefigure a new form of society. Others (especially those of us with prior experience on picket lines, blockades, and sit-ins) knew that eventually these actions would end: their momentum would fade, the police would drive them out, the necessities of everyday life would reassert themselves. This is not a sign of failure. Political actions come and go. Political change is something different. It requires not just the fleeting spark of a protest action, but the durable presence of organization, ideology, and a clear alternative.

Health Care and the Individual Mandate

In 2010, the U.S. took a grudging half-step toward a fundamental feature of modern social infrastructure, taken for granted in every other highly developed country: health insurance coverage for all citizens. That grudging half-step - the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare" to its detractors - is now the target of a legal challenge being heard by the Supreme Court. The central issue in the case (brought to court by a coalition of Republican Party state governments) concerns the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate: a requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance. Under the law, those with low incomes would receive a subsidy covering the cost of their insurance. Insurance companies would not be allowed to deny coverage to people because of pre-existing health conditions. But everyone would be required to have health insurance, just as (under various state laws) every driver is required to have auto insurance.

Why did the Affordable Care Act include an individual mandate? The basic reason is the nature of insurance itself. At any given time, most members of an insurance pool will be healthy, a few will be sick or injured. If the pool is large enough, there will be enough people contributing to cover the costs when someone needs care. But if people wait to purchase insurance until they get sick (and the insurance companies can't deny them coverage because of a pre-existing condition) there won't be enough money in the pool to make the system work. We would then be forced back to a system in which individuals would have to pay all the costs of their health care by themselves or insurance companies would be allowed to deny coverage to anyone they chose. The number of Americans without health insurance (44 million) and the number of personal bankruptcies caused by health care costs (62%) should indicate that neither of these are acceptable options.

What isn't being discussed at the moment is that the battle over an individual health insurance mandate could have been avoided altogether. The Affordable Care Act included an individual mandate only because it attempted to ensure that all Americans had health insurance coverage without threatening the economic power of the health insurance industry. Had we created a system of comprehensive public health insurance (like the systems in Canada, France, or the UK) the complicated, cobbled-together, Rube Goldberg mechanism of insurance exchanges and subsidies and individual mandates enforced by penalty fees would have been completely unnecessary. But creating a comprehensive public health insurance system (essentially Medicare for all) would have meant putting the health insurance industry largely out of business. And in 2010, insurance companies and HMOs spent more than $202 million lobbying members of Congress to make sure their business wouldn't be threatened. 

The question of health care is now being debated as a question of freedom - described mainly as the freedom not to purchase health insurance. But because we have chosen, yet again, to cower in fear of the insurance industry, we risk forgetting about the other side of freedom: the freedom we gain as individuals when we are healthy and well - and able to remain so without taking on a crushing load of debt. 

Why Every Worker Needs a Union

If you are fortunate enough to own a business, you can't be fired from your job. You can perform badly, run your business into the ground, and thereby lose your livelihood - but no one can walk into your business one day and tell you to clear out your desk simply because they don't like the color of your shoes. For most Americans, though, this is exactly the way the world works. At virtually any time, for the flimsiest of reasons, the boss can show you the door.

For most of us, paid employment is the material foundation for every other aspect of our lives. It determines where we live, what we do with most of our waking hours, and what we are able to do with our remaining leisure time. For anyone who is not able to live off the interest income from a huge pile of amassed wealth, the loss of a job is devastating.

Many non-academics assume that as a tenured university professor, I have a guaranteed job for life. It would be convenient for me if this was the case - but it isn't. I can be fired for failing to do my job. I can be fired for failing to do my job adequately according to standards set by my employer. I can be fired for violating my university's rules and regulations. I can be fired for violating the law. I can be laid-off if my university doesn't have enough money to pay me. My job can be eliminated if my university decides that it doesn't need my department or my position any longer. There are many ways in which I can lose my job, but I have to be terminated for cause. I can't lose my job for arbitrary and capricious reasons. If I pass my probationary period and continue to do my job adequately, my Department Chair can't fire me because he doesn't like me. The Dean can't fire me because I criticized one of his policies in a meeting. The University President can't fire me because he doesn't like the topics of my research.

But the protections I have as a tenured university professor are essentially the same as those held by every worker with a union contract. A worker with a union contract can only be fired for cause: poor performance, violation of rules, lack of funds, or elimination of a position. Every employee deserves this right. No one should have a guaranteed job regardless of their performance, but no one should have to face the loss of a job they have held for a reasonable period of time for arbitrary and capricious reasons. No one should have to risk losing his or her job for speaking out about unfair treatment. No one should have his or her livelihood taken away by a manager who simply prefers to see a different face in the office.

Choosing to employ someone is not the same as purchasing a loaf of bread or a bag of cement or a new computer. Employing someone in a continuing position (as opposed to a job with a defined end-point) not only means that the employer makes an investment in the employee - the employee also makes an investment in the employer. Every aspect of our lives comes to be organized around our paid employment. And that investment deserves to be respected. It deserves more than to be thrown away on a manager's whim.

Every employee needs and deserves the protections of a union and a union contract. The horrible irony is that the exact moment at which most workers are likely to realize this - the day the boss tells them to clear out their desk - is the moment at which they will be least able to do anything about it.

Romney's Class Warfare: Take from the poor, give to the rich

As a professional political scientist, I often find myself reminding people that U.S. Presidents do not have the power to make law. Presidents don't have the power to create or repeal health care policies. Presidents don't have the power to raise or lower taxes. But when candidates run for the office of President, their policy proposals tell us quite a bit about their beliefs, their values, their concerns. And Mitt Romney is deeply concerned about the well-being of the top 1%.

Romney's proposed tax policy, for example, would give the top 1% a $149,000 tax break while raising taxes on the poorest 20% by $149. If that isn't class warfare, I'm not sure what else to call it. The only question now is: How many working class Americans will vote in November to donate their hard-earned dollars to the already super-rich?

Two faces of music education.

Tuba wars in Los Angeles and socialist orchestras in Venezuela. 

Why is poverty different today?

In today's New York Times, David Brooks takes on an important question that social scientists have struggled with for the past few decades: Why has the social fabric in the U.S. - particularly in the world of the urban poor - deteriorated so dramatically?

Brooks correctly rejects the cultural determinist claim that unstable families, incomplete educations, and criminality are simply the natural expressions of bad people with bad values. Yet, while he suggests that we look to social scientific research for answers to such important questions, he ignores one of the most important studies in this area: William Julius Wilson's "When Work Disappears."

Brooks wants to downplay the importance of stable employment in forming the foundation for stable communities, but this is precisely what Wilson's study demonstrates conclusively. The single most important reason why urban African-American communities during the Great Depression were more stable and peaceful than they became after the 1970s was the loss of stable, full-time employment.

Brooks says, "I don't care how many factory jobs have been lost, it still doesn't make sense to drop out of high school." He obviously has some more reading to do.

How much is Facebook worth?

How much are the teachers who taught Mark Zuckerberg mathematics worth? How many of his Harvard professors were educated at public schools and universities? How much is their contribution to his success worth?

How many of Facebook's employees drive to work on public roads, drink from public water systems, or flush their toilets into public sewers? What is that worth in an initial public offering on Wall Street?

What about the legal system that allows Facebook to negotiate enforceable contracts? How much is that worth?

Without basic literacy, none of Facebook's 845 million users could operate its interface or understand the advertisements that provide its revenue. Without mass literacy provided by public education, Facebook would have no product to sell. How much is that literacy worth?

How much is Facebook worth? Stock analysts suggest that its value is between $75-100 billion. It would have no value at all, though, in a world without public education, public infrastructure, or public order.