August 22, 2005

The Poor, The Unlikeable

Last weekend, I came across this blatant example of the kind of subtle and not-so-subtle "blame the poor" angle that one often sees in the stories regarding low-income people (if it wasn't bad enough how rare such stories are).

Now, if you were a journalist and were assigned to write a story about how the rising energy costs were making life hard for low-income people, who would you pick? And what would you cover?

Certainly, most low-income people live frugal lives, out of necessity, which often becomes an admirable habit, and find their budgets strained by even small fluctuations --such as an increase in gasoline prices. Plus, in a country with scant public transportation, many low-income people are forced to drive to work whether they like it or not. So, it shouldn't be too hard to go to, say, a job search center, a welfare-to-work office, or any of the myriad of places one can find huge numbers of people struggling to make ends meet.

Or, if you are really unimaginitive, one could ask the janitor that cleans your office every night about how gas prices are effecting them, or people they know. (And one can be against gas being too cheap, since it is a non-renewable, limited resource, along with some subsidies for low-income people as well as subsidies for mass transit).

Then again, you might spend your time and find an unsympathetic character. (Extra points if that person is black).

So, here's the person chosen by a Washington Post reporter:

Alfred Jones used to steer his sporty Mazda MX-6 onto the Beltway and drive the entire loop for the thrill of it. He knew the trip was senseless, but he could afford the gas.

Things have changed. Jones lost his job, and rising gas prices have forced him to give up driving his car entirely.

Higher pump prices have drained his savings and left him unable to renew his vehicle registration. Jones, 48, of Upper Marlboro spends much of his time at his mother's house, where he lives, frequently checking online job listings.

"You have to make choices now between food or gas," Jones said. "It hurts. It's killing me."

It's not like the rest of the story is that bad -- except perhaps for the family that -bohoo- had to cancel the Pizza Hut outings and stop buying PlayStation games. It's just that when you start with someone reckless enough with money --and earth's resources-- to loop around the beltway for the fun of it, you are rolling your eyes by the time you get to the it's now food or gas line.

Plus, the story also ends with this person, with the line, "moving and grooving," which seems to me to be aimed at reminding everyone that our wanna-be gas-guzzler is black (with an additional picture on the side if anyone is still underinformed at this point.)

When his car registration expired, he did not have enough money left to cover it, so he has parked his Mazda for now.

When he does leave the house to run errands for his mother and he sees other people driving, he realizes what he is missing.

"I'm supposed to be out there moving and grooving too," he said.

Yeah, moving and grooving. That's all poor people think about, get it? Nudge-nudge. I say, let's not stop with Social Security, let's abolish Medicaid too.

Posted by zeynep at 09:02 PM | Comments (1)

July 21, 2004

Second Time the Charm?

In an informative post explaining the similarities between the current economic environment and the pre-"New Deal" economy, Billmon highlights a striking fact about the current non-inflationary environment: partitioning of economic gains between the workers and the bosses has to come through explicit action. In other words, some of the mechanisms through which class warfare could be carried out circuitously depended on the presence of mild inflation, which seems no longer to be the case. Circuitous mechanisms help greatly with continuing to pull ideological blinders over people's eyes. One can imagine that most people would protest loudly if their paychecks had a line-item called "deduction for corporate welfare."

As Greenspan himself noted in his testimony yesterday, productivity gains have been gobbled into profitability rather than shared with wage-earners. There are many factors going into this result all of which add up to the fact that workers have been steadily losing leverage with which to force employers to share the spoils. Greenspan expects the trend to slowly even out and result in increased wages, but then what's he supposed to say?

Here's the kicker. In the past, inflation would slowly eat into wages, requiring some form of regular adjustment. Regular adjustment was expected and non-noteworthy. And every adjustment provided an opportunity for quietly realigning the division of the surplus between profits and wages. By keeping the adjustment somewhat below the rate of inflation, employers could eat into wages while still providing nominal "raises." In the current environment, they have to push wage-cuts -- and history has shown that people are much more resistant to nominal wage-cuts than they are to declines in their real wages accompanied by a nominal increase.

In other words, if a worker were earning $100 this year and boss offers $98 for next year (in a non-inflationary environment) one can't but immediately notice what's going on. It's much more confusing when you are offered $102 in an environment with, say 4 or 5 percent inflation.

In other words, the economic structure (which is to say, the social structure) of Old Deal America has been at least partially recreated. But that means workers and employers are once again confronting each other directly across the table. If wages need to be frozen, or cut, to keep them in line with the global competitive realities, or to meet Wall Street's relentless demands for earning growth - employers will have to do it. Inflation isn't going to do the job for them. Conversely, if workers want a raise, they're going to have to fight for it. The New Deal social convention of "X plus inflation" won't do it for them.

See a pattern here? We have inequality levels approaching the Gilded Age, "Old Deal" patterns of inflation and wage returns, a stock market bubble has just burst...

Let's just say that I'm still torn about the WPA's Federal Arts Project and wouldn't mind a rerun.

Posted by zeynep at 05:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack