The "Occupy" Movement

[a_majoor]

WSJ on the "Occupy Wall Street" movement:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203633104576623042789155716.html#U502989597974DJB

Capitalist Tool Meet Jesse LaGreca, Disney's Audio-Animatronic revolutionary.
By JAMES TARANTO

"I'm the only working-class person you're going to see on Sunday news, political news," declared Jesse LaGreca on "This Week With Christiane Amanpour" yesterday. "Maybe ever." Truly America does not have a rigid class structure, for this self-proclaimed working-class tribune "is a blogger for the liberal website Daily Kos," as Amanpour said in introducing him. "And he's been a fixture at the Wall Street protests."

If Norma Rae had a blog, she'd be this guy.

Whether or not LaGreca is working-class at all, his assertion that that gives him singular status on Sunday news shows is plainly bunk. He appeared along with a panel consisting of Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, Peggy Noonan and George Will. (In case you missed it, ABCNews.com has the video.) Noonan, with whom we work, tells us that she and two of the other three panelists had what would be considered working-class upbringings. (The exception is Will, son of an epistemologist.)

At one point, Noonan posed a question: "What is your plan? You going to spend the next six months blocking the Brooklyn Bridge? Or are you going to harness a movement into political action?"

LaGreca's response: "What I find amusing is that now people are looking to us to solve the political problems, and they should. But I'm not going to support one party or the other. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. But I will encourage you to be a voter. I think we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative."

And we all know what backbreaking work it is to push narratives! In the bad old days before trade unions and labor regulations, children would earn just pennies as they toiled for 14 or 16 hours a day, shoving heavy narratives through dirty, dangerous vignette-shops.

But seriously, consider that statement in light of this passage from a recent Noonan column:

The president seems preoccupied with "shaping a story for the American people." He says: "The irony is, the reason I was in this office is because I told a story to the American people." But, he confesses, "that narrative thread we just lost" in his first years.

Then he asks, "What's the particular requirement of the president that no one else can do?" He answers: "What the president can do, that nobody else can do, is tell a story to the American people" about where we are as a nation and should be.

Tell a story to the American people? That's your job? Not adopting good policies? Not defending the nation? Storytelling?
The interview reflects the weird inability of so many in political leadership now to acknowledge the role in life of . . . reality.

Noonan goes on to observe that "overthinking the obvious and focusing on the artifice and myth of politics is a problem for all political professionals, including Republicans. . . . But this is mostly a problem for the Democratic Party at the national level, and has been since the 1980s. It reflects a disdain for the American people--they need their little stories."

James Taranto on Jesse LaGreca, capitalist tool.

Behold Jesse LaGreca, who boasts of his working-class street cred while speaking the elitist jargon of the professor-cum-president's failing administration. And he does so on ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Co. He's an Audio-Animatronic revolutionary.

All that said, there is some truth to his statement that "we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative." But the truth of it makes his posturing all the more ridiculous.

"Occupy Wall Street" began as a left-wing protest, something about as exceptional as a pigeon in New York. It didn't become a "narrative" until the narrators made it into one. Who are those narrators? They work for companies like Disney, CBS Corp., Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co. (co-owners of NBC), Time Warner, News Corp. (our employer), the New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co., Thomson Reuters Corp. and Bloomberg LP.

These corporations make their profits (or attempt to) by pushing narratives--by selling stories. Sometimes their narratives are as preposterous as Jesse LaGreca's. An example is yesterday's New York Times editorial that begins: "As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions."

The disdainful reference to "the chattering classes" is just priceless. To which class, pray tell, do New York Times editorialists belong? Though come to think of it, at least the anonymous hack who wrote that editorial got paid for his effort. That makes his claim to working-class status stronger than LaGreca's.

Krugman's Army

"It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction," observes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who, as we noted Friday, has graciously accepted "the job of helping to translate" incoherent and hateful nonsense "into more fleshed-out proposals" for what one organizer has labeled "Krugman's Army."

Krugman observes that "there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009." That's certainly true, but what's weird is that Krugman seems proud. The Tea Party, for example, saw nothing like the bizarre scene at Occupy Atlanta, in which a Krugman platoon refuses to let Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero, speak.

It's something to watch. A gaunt, bearded middle-aged man conducts the meeting, with audience members repeating everything he says even though, unlike his counterparts in New York, he is speaking through a bull horn. When he announces that Lewis would like to address the assembly, some members are enthusiastic, but others object that it isn't on the agenda and it wouldn't be fair to let Lewis cut in line.

"I personally would like to acknowledge the invaluable work that Congressman John Lewis has dedicated his life to," says a younger gaunt, bearded man, as the audience repeats his every word in unison and people around him flutter their hands in approval. "However," the young man continues, "the point of this general assembly is to kick-start a democratic process in which no singular human being is inherently more valuable than any other human being." A confused Lewis nods sadly.

For want of a "consensus," the young gaunt man prevails. Lewis is not allowed to speak, and he droops away.

Watching the video, we got the sense that Krugman's Army could easily experience a shattering of its discipline. If these people were stripped of the order imposed by the society they are rebelling against--if they were on a deserted island rather than in a public park in an affluent city with a strong police presence--surely it would not take long to degenerate into "Lord of the Flies." Krugman would be Piggy.

London's Daily Mail has a photo of something else no one has ever seen at a Tea Party: a man in New York defecating on a police car. Krugman's Army marches on its stomach too. And if the general's own paper is to be believed, the Mail photo isn't an isolated incident: "Mike Keane, who owns O'Hara's Restaurant and Pub, said that the theft of soap and toilet paper had soared and that one protester had used the bathroom but had failed to properly use the toilet," the New York Times reports.

Remember when Krugman was making up lies about conservatives employing "eliminationist rhetoric"? He now commands an army that is engaged in a campaign of actual elimination.

 

[Edward Campbell]

part 1 of 2

I'm not going to “die in ditch” in favouring this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs, but two facts, and I believe they are facts, stand out: first, as the author's lunch companion said, "We're just not that good anymore," and, second, our (relative) decline has been accompanied by a dramatic shift in the ratio of executive to 'worker' compensation. Maybe, and I'm very happy to consider it, the two effects are coincidental and their is no causal relationship, but, equally, maybe the rise of “celebrity CEOs” is connected to the declines in productivity, shareholder value and so on. In any event, for your consideration:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136402/george-packer/the-broken-contract?page=show

The Broken Contract
Inequality and American Decline

By George Packer
October 11, 2011

Summary: Like an odorless gas, economic inequality pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of its democracy. Over the past three decades, Washington has consistently favored the rich -- and the more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the rich acquire, making it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price.

GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer at The New Yorker. This essay is adapted from a Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lecture on American Civilization and Government that he delivered earlier this year at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers.

***​

Iraq was one of those wars where people actually put on pounds. A few years ago, I was eating lunch with another reporter at an American-style greasy spoon in Baghdad's Green Zone. At a nearby table, a couple of American contractors were finishing off their burgers and fries. They were wearing the contractor's uniform: khakis, polo shirts, baseball caps, and Department of Defense identity badges in plastic pouches hanging from nylon lanyards around their necks. The man who had served their food might have been the only Iraqi they spoke with all day. The Green Zone was set up to make you feel that Iraq was a hallucination and you were actually in Normal, Illinois. This narcotizing effect seeped into the consciousness of every American who hunkered down and worked and partied behind its blast walls -- the soldier and the civilian, the diplomat and the journalist, the important and the obscure. Hardly anyone stayed longer than a year; almost everyone went home with a collection of exaggerated war stories, making an effort to forget that they were leaving behind shoddy, unfinished projects and a country spiraling downward into civil war. As the two contractors got up and ambled out of the restaurant, my friend looked at me and said, "We're just not that good anymore."

The Iraq war was a kind of stress test applied to the American body politic. And every major system and organ failed the test: the executive and legislative branches, the military, the intelligence world, the for-profits, the nonprofits, the media. It turned out that we were not in good shape at all -- without even realizing it. Americans just hadn't tried anything this hard in around half a century. It is easy, and completely justified, to blame certain individuals for the Iraq tragedy. But over the years, I've become more concerned with failures that went beyond individuals, and beyond Iraq -- concerned with the growing arteriosclerosis of American institutions. Iraq was not an exceptional case. It was a vivid symptom of a long-term trend, one that worsens year by year. The same ailments that led to the disastrous occupation were on full display in Washington this past summer, during the debt-ceiling debacle: ideological rigidity bordering on fanaticism, an indifference to facts, an inability to think beyond the short term, the dissolution of national interest into partisan advantage.

Was it ever any different? Is it really true that we're just not that good anymore? As a thought experiment, compare your life today with that of someone like you in 1978. Think of an educated, reasonably comfortable couple perched somewhere within the vast American middle class of that year. And think how much less pleasant their lives are than yours. The man is wearing a brown and gold polyester print shirt with a flared collar and oversize tortoiseshell glasses; she's got on a high-waisted, V-neck rayon dress and platform clogs. Their morning coffee is Maxwell House filter drip. They drive an AMC Pacer hatchback, with a nonfunctioning air conditioner and a tape deck that keeps eating their eight-tracks. When she wants to make something a little daring for dinner, she puts together a pasta primavera. They type their letters on an IBM Selectric, the new model with the corrective ribbon. There is only antenna television, and the biggest thing on is Laverne and Shirley. Long-distance phone calls cost a dollar a minute on weekends; air travel is prohibitively expensive. The city they live near is no longer a place where they spend much time: trash on the sidewalks, junkies on the corner, vandalized pay phones, half-deserted subway cars covered in graffiti.

By contemporary standards, life in 1978 was inconvenient, constrained, and ugly. Things were badly made and didn't work very well. Highly regulated industries, such as telecommunications and airlines, were costly and offered few choices. The industrial landscape was decaying, but the sleek information revolution had not yet emerged to take its place. Life before the Android, the Apple Store, FedEx, HBO, Twitter feeds, Whole Foods, Lipitor, air bags, the Emerging Markets Index Fund, and the pre-K Gifted and Talented Program prep course is not a world to which many of us would willingly return.

The surface of life has greatly improved, at least for educated, reasonably comfortable people -- say, the top 20 percent, socioeconomically. Yet the deeper structures, the institutions that underpin a healthy democratic society, have fallen into a state of decadence. We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year: climate change, income inequality, wage stagnation, national debt, immigration, falling educational achievement, deteriorating infrastructure, declining news standards. All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress. Last year, a Wall Street company that few people have ever heard of dug an 800-mile trench under farms, rivers, and mountains between Chicago and New York and laid fiber-optic cable connecting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. This feat of infrastructure building, which cost $300 million, shaves three milliseconds off high-speed, high-volume automated trades -- a big competitive advantage. But passenger trains between Chicago and New York run barely faster than they did in 1950, and the country no longer seems capable, at least politically, of building faster ones. Just ask people in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, whose governors recently refused federal money for high-speed rail projects.

We can upgrade our iPhones, but we can't fix our roads and bridges. We invented broadband, but we can't extend it to 35 percent of the public. We can get 300 television channels on the iPad, but in the past decade 20 newspapers closed down all their foreign bureaus. We have touch-screen voting machines, but last year just 40 percent of registered voters turned out, and our political system is more polarized, more choked with its own bile, than at any time since the Civil War. There is nothing today like the personal destruction of the McCarthy era or the street fights of the 1960s. But in those periods, institutional forces still existed in politics, business, and the media that could hold the center together. It used to be called the establishment, and it no longer exists. Solving fundamental problems with a can-do practicality -- the very thing the world used to associate with America, and that redeemed us from our vulgarity and arrogance -- now seems beyond our reach.

THE UNWRITTEN CONTRACT

Why and how did this happen? Those are hard questions. A roundabout way of answering them is to first ask, when did this start to happen? Any time frame has an element of arbitrariness, and also contains the beginning of a theory. Mine goes back to that shabby, forgettable year of 1978. It is surprising to say that in or around 1978, American life changed -- and changed dramatically. It was, like this moment, a time of widespread pessimism -- high inflation, high unemployment, high gas prices. And the country reacted to its sense of decline by moving away from the social arrangement that had been in place since the 1930s and 1940s.

What was that arrangement? It is sometimes called "the mixed economy"; the term I prefer is "middle-class democracy." It was an unwritten social contract among labor, business, and government -- between the elites and the masses. It guaranteed that the benefits of the economic growth following World War II were distributed more widely, and with more shared prosperity, than at any time in human history. In the 1970s, corporate executives earned 40 times as much as their lowest-paid employees. (By 2007, the ratio was over 400 to 1.) Labor law and government policy kept the balance of power between workers and owners on an even keel, leading to a virtuous circle of higher wages and more economic stimulus. The tax code restricted the amount of wealth that could be accumulated in private hands and passed on from one generation to the next, thereby preventing the formation of an inherited plutocracy. The regulatory agencies were strong enough to prevent the kind of speculative bubbles that now occur every five years or so: between the Great Depression and the Reagan era there was not a single systemwide financial crisis, which is why recessions during those decades were far milder than they have since become. Commercial banking was a stable, boring business. (In movies from the 1940s and 1950s, bankers are dull, solid pillars of the community.) Investment banking, cordoned off by the iron wall of the Glass-Steagall Act, was a closed world of private partnerships in which rich men carefully weighed their risks because they were playing with their own money. Partly as a result of this shared prosperity, political participation reached an all-time high during the postwar years (with the exception of those, such as black Americans in the South, who were still denied access to the ballot box).

At the same time, the country's elites were playing a role that today is almost unrecognizable. They actually saw themselves as custodians of national institutions and interests. The heads of banks, corporations, universities, law firms, foundations, and media companies were neither more nor less venal, meretricious, and greedy than their counterparts today. But they rose to the top in a culture that put a brake on these traits and certainly did not glorify them. Organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Ford Foundation did not act on behalf of a single, highly privileged point of view -- that of the rich. Rather, they rose above the country's conflicting interests and tried to unite them into an overarching idea of the national interest. Business leaders who had fought the New Deal as vehemently as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now fighting health-care and financial reform later came to accept Social Security and labor unions, did not stand in the way of Medicare, and supported other pieces of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. They saw this legislation as contributing to the social peace that ensured a productive economy. In 1964, Johnson created the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress to study the effects of these coming changes on the work force. The commission included two labor leaders, two corporate leaders, the civil rights activist Whitney Young, and the sociologist Daniel Bell. Two years later, they came out with their recommendations: a guaranteed annual income and a massive job-training program. This is how elites once behaved: as if they had actual responsibilities.

Of course, the consensus of the postwar years contained plenty of injustice. If you were black or female, it made very little room for you. It could be stifling and conformist, authoritarian and intrusive. Yet those years also offered the means of redressing the very wrongs they contained: for example, strong government, enlightened business, and activist labor were important bulwarks of the civil rights movement. Nostalgia is a useless emotion. Like any era, the postwar years had their costs. But from where we stand in 2011, they look pretty good.

End of Part 1

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 2

THE RISE OF ORGANIZED MONEY

Two things happened to this social arrangement. The first was the 1960s. The story is familiar: youth rebellion and revolution, a ferocious backlash now known as the culture wars, and a permanent change in American manners and morals. Far more than political utopia, the legacy of the 1960s was personal liberation. Some conservatives argue that the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s prepared the way for the economic revolution of the 1980s, that Abbie Hoffman and Ronald Reagan were both about freedom. But Woodstock was not enough to blow apart the middle-class democracy that had benefited tens of millions of Americans. The Nixon and Ford presidencies actually extended it. In his 2001 book,The Paradox of American Democracy, John Judis notes that in the three decades between 1933 and 1966, the federal government created 11 regulatory agencies to protect consumers, workers, and investors. In the five years between 1970 and 1975, it established another 12, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Richard Nixon was a closet liberal, and today he would be to the left of Senator Olympia Snowe, the moderate Republican.

The second thing that happened was the economic slowdown of the 1970s, brought on by "stagflation" and the oil shock. It eroded Americans' paychecks and what was left of their confidence in the federal government after Vietnam, Watergate, and the disorder of the 1960s. It also alarmed the country's business leaders, and they turned their alarm into action. They became convinced that capitalism itself was under attack by the likes of Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, and they organized themselves into lobbying groups and think tanks that quickly became familiar and powerful players in U.S. politics: the Business Roundtable, the Heritage Foundation, and others. Their budgets and influence soon rivaled those of the older, consensus-minded groups, such as the Brookings Institution. By the mid-1970s, chief executives had stopped believing that they had an obligation to act as disinterested stewards of the national economy. They became a special interest; the interest they represented was their own. The neoconservative writer Irving Kristol played a key role in focusing executives' minds on this narrower and more urgent agenda. He told them, "Corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested."

Among the non-disinterested spending that corporations began to engage in, none was more interested than lobbying. Lobbying has existed since the beginning of the republic, but it was a sleepy, bourbon-and-cigars practice until the mid- to late 1970s. In 1971, there were only 145 businesses represented by registered lobbyists in Washington; by 1982, there were 2,445. In 1974, there were just over 600 registered political action committees, which raised $12.5 million that year; in 1982, there were 3,371, which raised $83 million. In 1974, a total of $77 million was spent on the midterm elections; in 1982, it was $343 million. Not all this lobbying and campaign spending was done by corporations, but they did more and did it better than anyone else. And they got results.

These changes were wrought not only by conservative thinkers and their allies in the business class. Among those responsible were the high-minded liberals, the McGovernites and Watergate reformers, who created the open primary, clean election laws, and "outsider" political campaigns that relied heavily on television advertising. In theory, those reforms opened up the political system to previously disenfranchised voters by getting rid of the smoke-filled room, the party caucus, and the urban boss -- exchanging Richard Daley for Jesse Jackson. In practice, what replaced the old politics was not a more egalitarian new politics. Instead, as the parties lost their coherence and authority, they were overtaken by grass-roots politics of a new type, driven by direct mail, beholden to special interest groups, and funded by lobbyists. The electorate was transformed from coalitions of different blocs -- labor, small business, the farm vote -- to an atomized nation of television watchers. Politicians began to focus their energies on big dollars for big ad buys. As things turned out, this did not set them free to do the people's work: as Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, once told me, he and his colleagues spend half their free time raising money.

This is a story about the perverse effects of democratization. Getting rid of elites, or watching them surrender their moral authority, did not necessarily empower ordinary people. Once Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers and Walter Wriston of Citicorp stopped sitting together on Commissions to Make the World a Better Place and started paying lobbyists to fight for their separate interests in Congress, the balance of power tilted heavily toward business. Thirty years later, who has done better by the government -- the United Auto Workers or Citicorp?

In 1978, all these trends came to a head. That year, three reform bills were brought up for a vote in Congress. One of the bills was to establish a new office of consumer representation, giving the public a consumer advocate in the federal bureaucracy. A second bill proposed modestly increasing the capital gains tax and getting rid of the three-Martini-lunch deduction. A third sought to make it harder for employers to circumvent labor laws and block union organizing. These bills had bipartisan backing in Congress; they were introduced at the very end of the era when bipartisanship was routine, when necessary and important legislation had support from both parties. The Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, and the bills were popular with the public. And yet, one by one, each bill went down in defeat. (Eventually, the tax bill passed, but only after it was changed; instead of raising the capital gains tax rate, the final bill cut it nearly in half.)

How and why this happened are explored in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics. Their explanation, in two words, is organized money. Business groups launched a lobbying assault the likes of which Washington had never seen, and when it was all over, the next era in American life had begun. At the end of the year, the midterm elections saw the Republicans gain 15 seats in the House and three in the Senate. The numbers were less impressive than the character of the new members who came to Washington. They were not politicians looking to get along with colleagues and solve problems by passing legislation. Rather, they were movement conservatives who were hostile to the very idea of government. Among them was a history professor from Georgia named Newt Gingrich. The Reagan revolution began in 1978.

Organized money did not foist these far-reaching changes on an unsuspecting public. In the late 1970s, popular anger at government was running high, and President Jimmy Carter was a perfect target. This was not a case of false consciousness; it was a case of a fed-up public. Two years later, Reagan came to power in a landslide. The public wanted him.

But that archetypal 1978 couple with the AMC Pacer was not voting to see its share of the economic pie drastically reduced over the next 30 years. They were not fed up with how little of the national income went to the top one percent or how unfairly progressive the tax code was. They did not want to dismantle government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which had brought economic security to the middle class. They were not voting to weaken government itself, as long as it defended their interests. But for the next three decades, the dominant political faction pursued these goals as though they were what most Americans wanted. Organized money and the conservative movement seized that moment back in 1978 to begin a massive, generation-long transfer of wealth to the richest Americans. The transfer continued in good economic times and bad, under Democratic presidents and Republican, when Democrats controlled Congress and when Republicans did. For the Democrats, too, went begging to Wall Street and corporate America, because that's where the money was. They accepted the perfectly legal bribes just as eagerly as Republicans, and when the moment came, some of them voted almost as obediently. In 2007, when Congress was considering closing a loophole in the law that allowed hedge fund managers to pay a tax rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings -- considerably less than their secretaries -- it was New York's Democratic senator Charles Schumer who rushed to their defense and made sure it did not happen. As Bob Dole, then a Republican senator, said back in 1982, "Poor people don't make campaign contributions."

MOCKING THE AMERICAN PROMISE

This inequality is the ill that underlies all the others. Like an odorless gas, it pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off. For years, certain politicians and pundits denied that it even existed. But the evidence became overwhelming. Between 1979 and 2006, middle-class Americans saw their annual incomes after taxes increase by 21 percent (adjusted for inflation). The poorest Americans saw their incomes rise by only 11 percent. The top one percent, meanwhile, saw their incomes increase by 256 percent. This almost tripled their share of the national income, up to 23 percent, the highest level since 1928. The graph that shows their share over time looks almost flat under Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, followed by continual spikes under Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton, and the younger Bush.

Some argue that this inequality was an unavoidable result of deeper shifts: global competition, cheap goods made in China, technological changes. Although those factors played a part, they have not been decisive. In Europe, where the same changes took place, inequality has remained much lower than in the United States. The decisive factor has been politics and public policy: tax rates, spending choices, labor laws, regulations, campaign finance rules. Book after book by economists and other scholars over the past few years has presented an airtight case: over the past three decades, the government has consistently favored the rich. This is the source of the problem: our leaders, our institutions.

But even more fundamental than public policy is the long-term transformation of the manners and morals of American elites -- what they became willing to do that they would not have done, or even thought about doing, before. Political changes precipitated, and in turn were aided by, deeper changes in norms of responsibility and self-restraint. In 1978, it might have been economically feasible and perfectly legal for an executive to award himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while shedding 40 percent of his work force and requiring the survivors to take annual furloughs without pay. But no executive would have wanted the shame and outrage that would have followed -- any more than an executive today would want to be quoted using a racial slur or photographed with a paid escort. These days, it is hard to open a newspaper without reading stories about grotesque overcompensation at the top and widespread hardship below. Getting rid of a taboo is easier than establishing one, and once a prohibition erodes, it can never be restored in quite the same way. As Leo Tolstoy wrote, "There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him."

The persistence of this trend toward greater inequality over the past 30 years suggests a kind of feedback loop that cannot be broken by the usual political means. The more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the well-connected rich acquire, which makes it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price. That, in turn, frees them up to amass more money, until cause and effect become impossible to distinguish. Nothing seems to slow this process down -- not wars, not technology, not a recession, not a historic election. Perhaps, out of a well-founded fear that the country is coming apart at the seams, the wealthy and their political allies will finally have to rein themselves in, and, for example, start thinking about their taxes less like Stephen Schwarzman and more like Warren Buffett.

In the meantime, inequality will continue to mock the American promise of opportunity for all. Inequality creates a lopsided economy, which leaves the rich with so much money that they can binge on speculation, and leaves the middle class without enough money to buy the things they think they deserve, which leads them to borrow and go into debt. These were among the long-term causes of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Inequality hardens society into a class system, imprisoning people in the circumstances of their birth -- a rebuke to the very idea of the American dream. Inequality divides us from one another in schools, in neighborhoods, at work, on airplanes, in hospitals, in what we eat, in the condition of our bodies, in what we think, in our children's futures, in how we die. Inequality makes it harder to imagine the lives of others -- which is one reason why the fate of over 14 million more or less permanently unemployed Americans leaves so little impression in the country's political and media capitals. Inequality corrodes trust among fellow citizens, making it seem as if the game is rigged. Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can -- immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms -- and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers. Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective. Inequality undermines democracy.

First: the key is issue is not ”who has done better by the government -- the United Auto Workers or Citicorp?” The question is, or ought to be, who has been more productive despite government? There can be little doubt that big labour productivity – which we can measure in membership and wages – has declined, by both measures but so, I would argue, has the Western, not just American, financial, industrial, scientific/technical and service sectors.

I do not believe that there is any merit in the inequality between 'workers' and executive which has grown rapidly and measurably, since, say, the 1950s. The CEO of, say, Air Canada is not 'worth' 200 times as much as a flight attendant or 100 times as much as a pilot. The last half dozen CEOs of Nortel were not 'worth' 100 times a senior engineer in Nortel but that's how much they were paid.

 

[a_majoor]

The real issue is Crony Capitalism, which uses connections and State power to distort markets and send taxpayer monies in a circular flow between the various crony partners (politicians, crony capitalists, big labour, lobbyists etc.). This ability to distort markets and gain access to taxpayer monies is one factor (and a large one I would say) in the disparity between worker and executive compensation and the decline of innovation and productivity.

In the market, rewards have to be earned, and a company which spent its capital and distributed its profits in such a distorted fashion would rapidly pay for this as competitors who allocated their capital more efficiently (funding innovation and keeping overall costs low) would overtake them and drive them from the market.

In today's world, companies like GM can get bailed out to the tune of $50 billion dollars, and the numerous small American automakers (yes, read the Let Them Fail thread) are shut out of the market since the corpse of GM remains like a beached whale sucking up the potential investment capital and blocking market access. Companies like Carbon Motors or Aptera *could* have expanded, or individual GM divisions like Saturn that were profitable could have carried on alone. (Incidentally, Saturn was one of the profitable GM divisions, so ask yourself why a non union division in Tennessee was axed while non profitable divisions in Detroit were retained....)

The TEA Party movement and the OWS are looking at the two sides of the coin, although only the TEA Party movement seems to have a workable solution; reduce the size and scope of government. (Memo to the OWS movement: more government regulation is not the answer to crony capitalism).

I look forward to Glen Reynolds (Instapundit) reportage of this issue, he brings up points the Legacy media constantly seem to overlook.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I don't buy the author's argument that it is a recent phenomenon, or that there was some sort of magical "contract" that arose in the immediate postwar years.  It is just the historical way of the world, and the "establishment" was briefly caught napping in the wake of WWII - which was an enormous upheaval - and temporarily lost control during the sudden expansion of wealth (ie. movement of time and resources from applications of "low utility" to "high utility").  That control is being steadily reasserted.

The enabler has been mentioned ad nauseum in many places, but few are willing to acknowledge it because they are simply set on believing they can win the game ("permanent 'X' majority"): the bigger the stakes, the bigger the struggle.  The breadth and depth of government powers escalate almost without interruption, so government is the go-to institution for any and everyone who seeks power, influence, wealth, whatever.  Those kinds of people rarely pursue goods for the human race in an altruistic manner; their centres of interest are much closer.

The only way to turn the tide is to reduce that authority - to reduce the payoff - because there will always be political factions (parties) who disagree as to specific aims.  Good news is that if the authority doesn't systematically act to reduce itself, it will eventually be shrunk forcibly.  Bad news is that the latter will be violent.  Those who advocate more government involvement in any particular area probably never stop to think, but in some not very distant future their great-great-great...grand-daughter's throat is being cut in this universe's track of reality - and it is, in part, their fault.

 

[a_majoor]

No TEA Party movement protest ever featured speakers like these (and there are thousands of blogs posting about the TEA Party since it's inception in 2009, peruse the links and try to find some):

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/11/occupy-l-a-speaker-violence-will-be-necessary-to-achieve-our-goals/

Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals

Citizen journalist Ringo captured this speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles camp a few days ago letting the cat out of the bag: After dismissing nonviolence as a dead end, he admits that for the Occupiers to achieve their goals, violence and bloodshed will be necessary:



Here’s a transcript, starting at 32 seconds into the video:


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Occupy L.A. Speaker: “One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution.

Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental transformation. But it was bloody.

India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty.

So, ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class.

Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”

Crowd: [Cheers.]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incredibly, he praises the massacres of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror rather than Gandhi’s nonviolent philosophy.

And the crowd laps it up.

Every single day, more videos emerge from the Occupy movement showing people saying things that, if they had been said by a Tea Partier, would have been front-page news for weeks and discredited the movement forever. But since it’s the Occupy Wall Street movement, darlings of the media and Democratic politicians, they get a pass.

More photos and videos from L.A. can be seen at Ringo’s Pictures.

Also see (in case you missed it earlier):

Occupy New York chant:“You Can Have Sex With Animals.”

 

[Edward Campbell]

Every time I have some, tiny hope that the liberal* political elements will talk a little sense they let the inmates run the asylum again, as evidenced by this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/arrest-bush-when-he-visits-bc-amnesty-tells-ottawa/article2198617/

Arrest Bush when he visits B.C., Amnesty tells Ottawa

The Canadian Press

Published Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011

Amnesty International Canada says the federal government should arrest former U.S. president George W. Bush when he visits British Columbia next week.

The rights body says both Canadian and international law oblige Canada to detain Bush and investigate him for war crimes and torture.

Amnesty Canada's secretary-general, Alex Neve, says Mr. Bush admits in his memoirs that he authorized the use of torture against terror suspects.

Mr. Neve says the Americans used a variety of torture methods, including waterboarding, beatings and sleep deprivation.

He says Amnesty has sent a lengthy document to the federal government, outlining its responsibilities under international law.

Mr. Bush and former president Bill Clinton are scheduled to attend an economic conference in Surrey, B.C., next week.

Alex Neve is terminally f__king stupid and appears hell bent on destroying what few shreds of credibility Amnesty International Canada might have.

Bush is not equal to Mugabe or even to Putin, for that matter - both of whom need to be hauled in front of some court of justice before we even think about George W Bush. But this will make the Canadian loony left so happy ...

Alex Neve
Secretary-General
Amnesty International, Canada

 

[a_majoor]

Look at the link and read the various screeds the OWS people are putting up as their justification. The response these got from me was "how is that my problem?"; if you choose to spend tons of money to buy an inferior education or major in an economically useless degree, "choose" non renumerative work or blog against your employer then you will have to live with the consequences of your actions. The examples are paraphrases of the actual signs these people made and published...

Only one individual seems to have grasped the issue, although she does not seem to have followed through to the solution (although she may yet, I believe in redemption and always look to the good in people).

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/11/scenes-from-the-so-called-99/?singlepage=true

Scenes from the So-Called 99%

Our third foray into the “We Are the 99 Percent” web site finds that while they still don’t represent 99% of America — who does? — some of the photo posters accidentally make sense. Take this one, for instance.

She has clearly done the math, and found that she is taxed enough already. That being the case, the movement she’s looking for probably isn’t the one that’s camped out in parks and pooping on police cars.

This one should have done the math before pursuing a classical studies degree.

As I wrote in the first “open letter,” no one cares about much of the stuff that seems earth-shakingly vital when we’re in the throes of getting a degree. The world doesn’t need scholars all that much, it needs engineers and nurses and people with actual usable trades or skills. It needs people with a work ethic and ambition. It needs people who can adapt. The volunteer hours with a Greek organization won’t matter much unless your job interviewer happens to have been a member of the same organization. And if that’s the case, your networking will help, a lot. In fact, networking is probably the most useful, least taught skill at any university. Adaptation as circumstances change is a close second.

If you made the choice, why are you whining? And what are the rest of us supposed to do about it?

Let’s quote from this one, to distill it a bit.

    I’m $31,000 in debt from my education, and the average yearly salary where I live is $19,000. Household is $31,000. I would gladly pay double my taxes to not have the stress of mounting educational and medical bills for the rest of my adult life.

Clearly she didn’t do the math, or she would have done one of two things: Skipped the debt, since the jobs in her area don’t pay that well; or moved somewhere where there are better paying jobs available that make the expensive education worth it.

And whatever you do, never ever say that you will “gladly pay double” in taxes. The elected will take you up on that. And you’ll still have plenty to worry about. Government is not put on this earth to make your life worry-free. The sooner you get that notion out of your head, the better off we’ll all be.

This guy could’ve stopped after the first sentence of his poster. It explains much.

And finally…

I don’t mean to mock anyone and I’m not one to quarrel with the value of an education, but the content of that education matters. What does the modern university actually teach about citizenship? When it comes to getting and keeping a job, a degree is a utility, a means to an end. The common thread that keeps emerging from many of these photos (excepting the ones posted by people who ran into major health problems through no fault of their own, or who voted for Obama and now expect that keeping him in office will change anything for the better) is that the higher educational establishment sold them a bill of goods. It made it too easy for them to rack up huge debt, while teaching them little to nothing about what the real economy needs and values in workers. The professors keep their tenure, the university presidents keep their lavish homes and manicured lawns, and the students who pay exorbitant fees to keep the bubble inflated get left unprepared for the real world, with little but a lifetime of debt to show for it.

Many of these protesters have legitimate beefs. They’re just misdirecting their anger, thanks both to the political rhetoric coming from the White House, and to the poor quality of the education their hard work has purchased.

 

[ballz]

And finally…

I don’t mean to mock anyone and I’m not one to quarrel with the value of an education, but the content of that education matters. What does the modern university actually teach about citizenship? When it comes to getting and keeping a job, a degree is a utility, a means to an end. The common thread that keeps emerging from many of these photos (excepting the ones posted by people who ran into major health problems through no fault of their own, or who voted for Obama and now expect that keeping him in office will change anything for the better) is that the higher educational establishment sold them a bill of goods. It made it too easy for them to rack up huge debt, while teaching them little to nothing about what the real economy needs and values in workers. The professors keep their tenure, the university presidents keep their lavish homes and manicured lawns, and the students who pay exorbitant fees to keep the bubble inflated get left unprepared for the real world, with little but a lifetime of debt to show for it.

Many of these protesters have legitimate beefs. They’re just misdirecting their anger, thanks both to the political rhetoric coming from the White House, and to the poor quality of the education their hard work has purchased.

This is a gem. I'll have to post this on g+ for all my peers who think there is a 90k/year waiting at the other end of the Business Admin building.

 

[ModlrMike]

I'm having this very discussion with my kids right now. They want to go into astronomy and paleontology, I suggest something in healthcare. This downturn is going to last 10-15 maybe 20 years before full recovery. They need something that puts food on the table and a roof over their heads. Neither of which belongs to me.

 

[Kalatzi]

This downturn is going to last 10-15 maybe 20 years before full recovery.

Hmmm, thats rather long for a recession, is'nt it. Seems awfully, what's  the word I'm looking for, Depressing, sort of. Greatly Depressing.

 

[Brad Sallows]

That's what happens when you pull future spending into the present.  If I have $5,000 per year "disposable" income and I blow $30,000 this year on some sort of recreational toy, it means the government books the revenue on the $30,000 transaction (and trickle down transactions this year) and does not book the revenue on my $5,000 for several succeeding years as I pay off the debt.  If governments are stupid enough to calibrate their spending to the revenue they booked on the $30,000, I expect them to cut whatever is necessary when they come up short next year.

The recent bubble caused a lot of people to pull future spending into the bubble period.  Governments got all excited at the increased revenues and ramped up spending.  (See how smart all those people really are?)  Now people have debts to pay.  Governments are suddenly finding the promises they made unsupportable.  Those promises should never have been made, so it's time to break them.  Clawing more future spending into the present isn't a solution; it just ensures the eventual correction will be much more violent.

 

[ModlrMike]

Excellent summary, Brad.

Every time someone tells me that we need more stimulus spending I respond with:

"You can't borrow your way to prosperity."

They usually stop talking after that.

 

[Kalatzi]

Thank you, both.

 

[cupper]

I'm having this very discussion with my kids right now. They want to go into astronomy and paleontology, I suggest something in healthcare. This downturn is going to last 10-15 maybe 20 years before full recovery. They need something that puts food on the table and a roof over their heads. Neither of which belongs to me.

Tell them Law and Politics. That's where the money is. :Tin-Foil-Hat:

And if they are willing to relocate south of the border, they'll have it coming out of their ... umm.... ears.

Bonus, you can spend the colder parts of the year living off of them. PAYBACK!

 

[Nemo888]

I don’t mean to mock anyone and I’m not one to quarrel with the value of an education, but the content of that education matters. What does the modern university actually teach about citizenship? When it comes to getting and keeping a job, a degree is a utility, a means to an end. The common thread that keeps emerging from many of these photos (excepting the ones posted by people who ran into major health problems through no fault of their own, or who voted for Obama and now expect that keeping him in office will change anything for the better) is that the higher educational establishment sold them a bill of goods. It made it too easy for them to rack up huge debt, while teaching them little to nothing about what the real economy needs and values in workers. The professors keep their tenure, the university presidents keep their lavish homes and manicured lawns, and the students who pay exorbitant fees to keep the bubble inflated get left unprepared for the real world, with little but a lifetime of debt to show for it.

Universities were not trade schools in my day. They taught critical thinking and college was vocational. Those "useless" Arts and Humanities degrees were gold. Corporations and governments actively sought out people who knew how to think and reason.  Knowing that someone with that skill could be taught anything. Now universities are reduced to second rate trade schools. University then was hard. You needed to think. Now I can get a 75% without even reading the course material. (I didn't even open the book.) The loss of the arts has gutted more than you know. I had a teacher tell me last week that she is sure my generation is the last smart one. Education as utility makes good drones and horrible citizens.


P.S. It was dirt cheap back then too. Society thinking that education gave a greater return on investment than any other tax expenditure. My brother actually paid his mortgage and supported his family on scholarships. 1700$ tuition per semester was not a hardship. If your parents made less than 40k OSAP gave you grants, not loans. Canada was really something back then IMO.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

P.S. It was dirt cheap back then too. Society thinking that education gave a greater return on investment than any other tax expenditure. My brother actually paid his mortgage and supported his family on scholarships. 1700$ tuition per semester was not a hardship. If your parents made less than 40k OSAP gave you grants, not loans. Canada was really something back then IMO.

It's still dirt cheap,.....I am amazed at how little my Daughter will owe when all is said and done.

It makes me cringe now when I think of all the whining I have had to listen to during my lifetime from those who attended. Actually they sounded like you with your "back in my day it was hard" claptrap.

 

[Nemo888]

I did not know this till I went back to the same University after 22 years. The courses are much easier now. I was busy with work and kids but still sailed right through. I didn't even buy the books on the reading list. All I needed was google and bull crap. I actually considered a side business writing essays. Not that I was smart, just so many of the kids seemed retarded or lazy.

In my day going to school was easy. Summer jobs were always available and would pay your entire tuition. Scholarships were abundant . The courses were harder though. It may be anecdotal but it is my direct experience. This offends you?

 

[lethalLemon]

Universities were not trade schools in my day. They taught critical thinking and college was vocational. Those "useless" Arts and Humanities degrees were gold. Corporations and governments actively sought out people who knew how to think and reason.  Knowing that someone with that skill could be taught anything. Now universities are reduced to second rate trade schools. University then was hard. You needed to think. Now I can get a 75% without even reading the course material. (I didn't even open the book.) The loss of the arts has gutted more than you know. I had a teacher tell me last week that she is sure my generation is the last smart one. Education as utility makes good drones and horrible citizens.


P.S. It was dirt cheap back then too. Society thinking that education gave a greater return on investment than any other tax expenditure. My brother actually paid his mortgage and supported his family on scholarships. 1700$ tuition per semester was not a hardship. If your parents made less than 40k OSAP gave you grants, not loans. Canada was really something back then IMO.

:bullshit:

Hahaha... You can say what you want, but my education is not so easy as you make it out to be, and I was an honour roll student in high school (and not the "privileged, the world owes me everything and I shouldn't have to work for anything" honour roll type) and I bloody well work my ass off... yet there are some that showed up for the first class and I only seem them show up for exams and they're pulling A+'s out of their arse. What gives? I'm not retarded or lazy. Explain that?

How little education costs? Sure a lot less than in the USA... but it's still bloody expensive, but I guess that's because you're lucky enough to make real good money or had very generous family contributions and scholarships raining down like snow on Christmas 

 

[Edward Campbell]

lethalLemon: your university costs (tuition, books and fees) is cheaper for the average family - when measured as a percentage of average family income - than was the tuition etc for Nemo88 a generation* ago and much cheaper than when I was your age, nearly a half century back.

While neither knowing nor caring about your specific circumstances, most Canadians pay too little for education: directly (through tuition etc) and indirectly through taxes.

Two problems:

1. Too many Canadians borrow for university because their families made choices to satisfy optional 'wants' leaving insufficient funds to buy the "user's share" their children's education - i.e. they bought a 50" flat screen TV when the old 30" CRT still worked well enough rather than saving for their child's tuition.

2. "Free" health care eats up an ever increasing share of provincial budgets. Taxpayers are unwilling to pay more in taxes. Governments cut highly productive spending on R&D and education in order to buy votes pay for less productive health care.


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* 20 to even 30 years these days