New York state is on the verge of becoming the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage, President Obama is weighing whether to explicitly support gay and lesbian unions, and the issue is becoming more of a divisive headache for Republicans than a theme to rally their base. Time is not on the right's side, either, because sexual orientation is just less and less of a big deal for younger voters.
Sunday's New York Times gave three whole pages to a Father's Day story about an extended family made up of a mom, her toddler, the lad's donor dad and his gay partner. In a few more years, this story would be no more newsworthy than a piece about how divorced and remarried straight couples and their children manage complex relationships that go well beyond traditional nuclear families.
It's worth reflecting on two questions. First, how did we make such stunning progress in three decades on issues involving tolerance and inclusiveness? And how is it that, during the same period, we have gone steadily backwards on a whole set of economic issues? The society has become more inclusive in according rights to women, African-Americans, the LGBT community, people with disabilities -- and far more unequal and precarious economically.
This is not to say, of course, that the struggles for tolerance and inclusion are over. Bigotry still persists; it is especially vicious when it comes to immigrants. And immigrant rights issues connect to economic issues. At a time of dwindling opportunity and security, immigrants, who can easily be exploited and compelled to work for less than their economic worth, are sometimes seen as an economic threat to the locals.
Still, to invoke Dr. King, there is little doubt that the arc is bending toward justice. The momentum is in the direction of more acceptance, less bigotry.
So, what happened? It's not as if homophobia and racism were exactly pushovers.
The entire social order based on white privilege was very handy if you happened to be caucasian. Blacks did all the scut work and they did it for cheap wages, reserving the good jobs for white folks. Likewise, male privilege: very convenient for men. And gays and lesbians were the last group who could be openly ridiculed even in polite liberal company.
What happened, simply, was political struggle -- and from the bottom up. To review the various documentaries commemorating the 50th anniversary of the sit-ins and freedom rides is to appreciate the sheer impossibility of the odds, and the extraordinary personal bravery. To challenge the racist order, especially in the south was to risk economic ruin and death. Feminists and gays were the object of scorn. Disability rights were not even on the radar screen. Individual acts of gays coming out slowly engendered compassion. The HIV epidemic moved from an object of disgust to one of empathy.
But these individual acts of heroism only gained traction because they combined with a social movement. They changed norms, then laws, which reinforced the shift in norms.
Slowly, we have become a kinder, more inclusive society.
Why, then, are we going backwards when it comes to economic justice? It comes down to power. Owners of financial wealth have become more and more politically powerful, while the countervailing movements have become steadily weaker.
I recently wrote about the bravery of the housekeeper at the Times Square Sofitel who reported the assault by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. But she could take this step without fear because she was not alone. The Times Square Sofitel, like nearly every one of New York's large hotels, is unionized. And the union, Local 6 of the hotel and restaurant workers, backed by a powerful hotel and motel trades council, is one of the strongest local unions anywhere in America -- not strong because of union bosses, but because the union is intrinsic to the daily life of the workplace.
When the manager of the Sofitel balked at letting some housekeepers join a vigil in support of their colleague on the morning that Strauss-Kahn was to be arraigned, workers at the hotel told him they would suspend their jobs and sit down in his lobby. He quickly relented.
A housekeeper in a non-union hotel would think twice about complaining about an assault from a rich and powerful guest. She could get fired. In the "hospitality" industry, by definition, the guests come first. But members of Local 6 are protected by a contract that requires due process, and a whole system of shop stewards called union delegates who assure that rights are enforced.
A housekeeper at a non-union hotel in much of America makes eight or nine dollars an hour. In Manhattan, a union housekeeper makes almost $25 an hour, or $50,000 a year, enough to live a middle class life, even in New York. The difference between a living wage and a starvation wage affects the client's hotel bill by a few bucks.
There is no good reason why all people in service occupations, from Wal-Mart clerks to nurse aides and pre-k teachers, can't be paid a living wage. But this will take political struggle and social movements -- just as progress in the battles for inclusion did.
As bankers call the tune in both parties, and as the economy becomes more precarious for the working middle class, the political base of a just society needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. For all the hopes we've placed in the Obama administration, it won't be built from the top down.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a Senior Fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
Economic inequality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Income Gap Between Rich, Poor the Widest Ever - CBS News
The Widening Economic Gap - washingtonpost.com
The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools
Income Gap Widens: Census Finds Record Gap Between Rich And Poor
NationalJournal.com - Obama's Economic Narrative Gap - Wednesday ...
Something to think about.
I hope our socio-economic thinkers, writers, academic professors and progressive (and sometimes socialistic) bloggers accept that the current model of "Supply and Demand" is outdated and has reached its own "bubble and bust" cycle.
Huffington Post is loaded with socio-economic gurus that are still wedded to past thinking and econimic models; even as we witness the high social and economic price for that model.
If it were only so. But you're up against a pretty fundamental force, i.e. our greedy simian nature. Now if we were evolved ants I would feel a lot better about our prospects for reforming our society and economy.
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Thank you and Tokyo Tea for your comments to my post a page or two prior. To your specific point, a third of healthcare budget (700 Billion) and presumably 1/3 of the premiums go to end-of-life care.
On surverys, 90% of seniors wish to die in the security and comfort of their own home surrounded by friends and relatives. In actual practice, only 20% do with the help of family and hospice. The single biggest impediment to dying at home +/- hospice is the lack of family support.
Care of the chronically ill would be much easier and cheaper; saving hospital admission if there was home help.
Hospital re-admission rates costing additional billions of dollars is mainly attributed to patients being discharged to a setting of inadequate family support.
For a single care-taker at home, caring for a sick person can be difficult and taxing. Yet if we have a one-income family are a societal norm, much help would be available from relatives (first and second degree) friends and neighbors.
"For a single care-taker at home, caring for a sick person can be difficult and taxing. Yet if we have a one-income family are a societal norm, much help would be available from relatives (first and second degree) friends and neighbors."
I see. So you are saying that Maw and Pa, sister Susie, cousin Mary, and old Mrs O'Hara across the road - not one of them with any medical training - have all the medical knowledge and nursing skill that a patient released too soon from hospital requires.
Or that after a day of childcare, housework, dragging kids to music lessons and scouts, and after preparing dinner, serving it, and washing up the dishes, pots and pans, the Happy Housewife will be delighted to prepare special meals and deliver them to families whilst she settles down for a 12-hour stint of ar*e wiping, changing IVs, changing soiled sheets, giving meds to uncooperative old coots, and tidying up someone else's house, so the primary caretaker can get some rest.
I would expect to get paid for that, just as a plumber gets paid for his work, and a doctor for his. Only a fool allows a profit-driven society to be built on his/her free labour.
Yet just to clarify, you are not providing medical care. You are providing the vital supportive care (helping the patient eat, get out of bed, provide TLC, encouragement and a good reason why the sick person (usually seniors) should recover and look forward to living.
The persons to pay you for your hours of service are first degree relatives. Likely they will need your help for 2-8 hours (adult baby-sitter - a new and growing job description). This is a lot better that making a hospital or nursing home provide the same care with highly skilled staff and in costly setting staffed 24 hrs a day 7 days a week.
Over the last 200 years average daily spending has gone from $3 to between $30 & $100 in today's dollars depending on how you account for products that did not exist 200 years ago.
Socialism could never deliver this rate of economic improvement.
Perhaps our generation has fought so diligently to overcome social injustice we have strayed away from the importance of voting economic policy.
That being said, corporations certainly have a lot to do with a decaying democracy, which, in turn, reflects on our economy. I would be interested in digging into this further.
Check out Dylan Ratigan, Amy Goodman, and check out some of the early speeches by Robert Welch (founder John Birch Society). Things might seem hopeless at first, but Americans aren't stupid and evil will fall.
On the other hand, our economic woes have to do with larger-than-individual forces which are not compatible with the neo-liberal paradigm. To solve our economic woes means thinking in terms of classes of people, including the financial elite, as well as systems that are not reducible to individuals and their rights.
These two ideas happen to be lumped together as "progressive" but they are really two different types of problem. We are woefully lacking in tools to deal with the latter problem, as almost everybody has embraced neo-liberal ideas and/or do not have a positive alternative to them that is progressive.
1. People feel an economic insecurity they aren't used to and are afraid they won't have enough. It's costing Joe Average more and more to keep health insurance, buy a home, and keep the kids in decent schools (via a good neighborhood). Fear is rampant, showing in the lying, exaggeration, or fear-mongering all over.
2. In light of this, social issues matter less. I think these issues were inflamed repeatedly to make people vote Republican Gay people marrying is not going to make a straight person suffer like a tax hike or loss of health care will. Also, young people (being more likely to have openly gay classmates and coworkers) just don't see it as such a big bogeyman.
3. We haven't seen deep and widespread economic suffering here for a long time, partly because of the prosperity of the 1940s-1960s and social safety nets. (Someone wrote a good post on this below.) Some people therefore close their eyes and insist that the problems aren't real and that, say, the unemployed are just lazy. (Funny how many people got lazy all at once...) This lets them off the hook as far as helping or making changes. Also, one way of keeping fear at bay is to insist that it could never happen to you because you're good in some way that "those others" aren't.
Have you seen major sporting events on TV? Are there any empty seats in the stadium?
Come to our near-by casino. Place is packed on the weekend by middle income persons wearing tank tops and shorts.
Now that summer is upon us, event concerts at $60 to $100 a ticket are sold out.
Superior class status was purchased to replace the old order, but the new gang has all the faces of the old one with the same entitled mentality.
A living wage law would do wonders.
Job losses would be minimal as our service economy is quite dependent on labor.
Higher wages would stimulate the economy tremendously.
Apple is a left-leaning organization and even they can't find a way to make $400 to $800 products here in the US.
In the long arc of history we are still transitioning away from a tribal/ family dominated world. In a tribal world everyone was a competitor in a zero sum game. The only way to gain wealth was to take it from an enemy. With human innovation this is no longer true. Now the more we work together, trade and share ideas the more wealth is created. Competition still plays an important role. Competing for customers directs investments and innovation in ways that people value. When we purchase something we commit scarce resources and deciding we want this more than that.
So now we compete through business, trade and cooperative venture to create value for others and increase personal wealth in the process. Given this reality it is not surprising that we are becoming more accepting of differences between people.
UNIONS
Unions are based on exclusion. Unions exclude non-union members from competing for employment. Demand benefits to themselves at a cost to everyone else. It is no different than a government enforced business monopoly, resistance to immigration or government redistribution.
SOLUTION:
Educate people to embrace a non-tribal world. Embrace and encourage competition to channel scarce resources to the long term benefit of all. Unfortunately politicians on the Left and Right want to divide us. The Left uses class and “social justice”; the Right wants us to view the “other” as evil. They do this to maintain their power.
We need to reject both.
However, unions aren't based on exclusion but on collective bargaining as a balance to an exploitative employer large enough to make effective individual bargaining impossible. I've worked both union and non-union in a unionized industry and, let me tell you, unions don't get started where people aren't getting exploited and/or mistreated.
That said, I commend your civility and larger vision and hope more of us will work on our vision of a better world and how to get there and less on name-calling.
Thanks.
We will probable have to agree to disagree on unions but I do have a couple of questions.
If unions only appear in cases of exploitation then why are public unions so strong? Was the government really such an abusive employer?
Second, regardless of their stated aim, unions must achieve their power from excluding other workers otherwise they would have no issues with so called right to work states. They would welcome the competition.
I would have no problem with workers joining together in unions, if those unions had to offer their services to potential employers. The unions would have to offer efficiency or some other value in the market to justify higher wages.
Look forward to your response.
SMV
http://www.alternet.org/news/85728/
"The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."
Among the factors that have promoted inverted totalitarianism are the practice and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country, and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge. Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation..."
Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled
A new book offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how the U.S. has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation.
Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin (Princeton University Press, 2008)
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