Money is very important. You should not waste it by paying too much for the goods you buy. So people drive out to the edge of town to go to the big box stores where prices tend to be very low. They want to get as much as possible for the money they have.
But now come the "buy local" people – you can find them in many cities and towns in the United States. They tell us to avoid the big box stores where the prices are really low. Instead, they tell us we should go to the smaller stores in our neighborhoods owned by one person or a family. Their prices may well be a bit higher, so why should I go there and "waste my money"?
Here are some reasons for thinking that buying from the local retail store is not wasting your money.
The local store has been there for a long time. Every time you go there, the same people wait on you. After a while they know your name; you know theirs. They get to be like your neighbors on the street. You get to know a bit about their families and their kids. They are part of the local community. You may know some of the people in the big box store but the odds are they will not be there very long. Buying in the box store is doing business with strangers.
There used to be a locally owned hardware store near my house. When I had a question about some problem in the house, the hardware store owner would be helpful--until a large chain came into the neighborhood and put him out of business. The employees in the large chain are, by and large friendly, but they often do not know a lot and do not stay on the job for more than a few months. The people in the chain hardware store never become part of the neighborhood.
You may pay a little bit more in the small store but that money is not wasted. It is the price you pay for living in a neighborhood where you know people and are known by them. It is the price you pay for getting free and competent advice when you have home maintenance problems.
Add to that that the low prices in the big chain store depend in part on employees making very little money. The money you save at the big chain store often comes out of the pocket of people just like yourself -- people who are trying to make an honest living. It is not wasting your money patronizing businesses that treat their employees decently.
It is important not to waste money but paying the very bottom price is not always a good policy. Quality of life is tough to measure but is surely worth some pennies.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Going to school to make money?
Everyone knows that money is very important.
Everyone equally believes that "money does not buy happiness."
But many people, including many"important" people, do not understand that, however important money is, a lot of things are much more important.
Take love.
Take friends and family.
Since summer is slowly coming to a close and schools are starting again, it is time to think about the importance of education. Many people -- important people like legislators or college presidents -- keep telling us that the goal of education is to equip people to fill the jobs in the community. In other words, education is valuable only for the money. If it should turn out that the price of education is higher than the money it would bring in, you would be better off being uneducated and ignorant. If school does not make you rich, remain ignorant.
But surely that is not right. Ignorance is not justifiable. It is not bliss, it is not good under any conditions. So we need to think some more about why education is good. It is not just good for the money it might help you earn.
Education may get you a better job – a job that may not pay more but that is much more interesting. But jobs are interesting only if you are interested in what the job provides. You must first be interested in things before a job can be interesting to you. School may benefit you by opening your mind and arousing your interests in all sorts of things you did not even know about before. The benefit here is being interested. An interesting job may not pay terribly well but it leaves you feeling that you did not waste your time doing it. That is worth a lot.
Think of a young couple who settled down to have several children. Often it is the mother who stays home to bring up their children; but these days frequently also the father quits his job to stay home with small children and look after the house. Was their education wasted because they do not have the job the education supposedly prepared them for? A good education should equip you to be a better parent.
An education that prepares you for a job but does not prepare you to live your life well is a very poor education indeed. If all you learn is how to keep books, how to manage employees, how to invest money, or how to draw up a business plan, your school did not give you value for your money. A good school will communicate to you the excitement of learning new things. It will give you an understanding of a larger world in which many exciting things go on which you might want to know about or participate in. A good school will enlarge your horizon.
An education will expand the scope of your interests. After work is done there will be many other things you want to do or experience that you learned about in school. Away from your job there will be many things you will want to share with family and children. When the work life comes to an end and you look at another 20 years or more of healthy life, you may spend 20 years in front of the tube, mowing the lawn or walking the dog, or you can keep busy with many different interests and activities some of which you first encountered in school.
Traditionally, in the US, education for everyone was thought to be important because everyone was going to vote and, as a citizen, participate in public deliberations. If the country was going to be run by all adult citizens—to be sure for a long time only adult white males—all citizens must be as well educated as possible. They needed to know American history, they needed to know something about science and they needed to be citizens whose minds were as well developed as possible, who would think as clearly as possible about national and local affairs. Education for most of our history was not about money but about being free by running our own country.
Today college presidents assure the business community that our college are turning out future employees well prepared for the jobs there are. Our students are no longer considered as future citizens learning to be autonomous and helping to run the country. They are now looked at as employees, as people who take orders, and for that, get paid.
When education serves only to make money, democracy and our traditional freedoms are in danger.
Everyone equally believes that "money does not buy happiness."
But many people, including many"important" people, do not understand that, however important money is, a lot of things are much more important.
Take love.
Take friends and family.
Since summer is slowly coming to a close and schools are starting again, it is time to think about the importance of education. Many people -- important people like legislators or college presidents -- keep telling us that the goal of education is to equip people to fill the jobs in the community. In other words, education is valuable only for the money. If it should turn out that the price of education is higher than the money it would bring in, you would be better off being uneducated and ignorant. If school does not make you rich, remain ignorant.
But surely that is not right. Ignorance is not justifiable. It is not bliss, it is not good under any conditions. So we need to think some more about why education is good. It is not just good for the money it might help you earn.
Education may get you a better job – a job that may not pay more but that is much more interesting. But jobs are interesting only if you are interested in what the job provides. You must first be interested in things before a job can be interesting to you. School may benefit you by opening your mind and arousing your interests in all sorts of things you did not even know about before. The benefit here is being interested. An interesting job may not pay terribly well but it leaves you feeling that you did not waste your time doing it. That is worth a lot.
Think of a young couple who settled down to have several children. Often it is the mother who stays home to bring up their children; but these days frequently also the father quits his job to stay home with small children and look after the house. Was their education wasted because they do not have the job the education supposedly prepared them for? A good education should equip you to be a better parent.
An education that prepares you for a job but does not prepare you to live your life well is a very poor education indeed. If all you learn is how to keep books, how to manage employees, how to invest money, or how to draw up a business plan, your school did not give you value for your money. A good school will communicate to you the excitement of learning new things. It will give you an understanding of a larger world in which many exciting things go on which you might want to know about or participate in. A good school will enlarge your horizon.
An education will expand the scope of your interests. After work is done there will be many other things you want to do or experience that you learned about in school. Away from your job there will be many things you will want to share with family and children. When the work life comes to an end and you look at another 20 years or more of healthy life, you may spend 20 years in front of the tube, mowing the lawn or walking the dog, or you can keep busy with many different interests and activities some of which you first encountered in school.
Traditionally, in the US, education for everyone was thought to be important because everyone was going to vote and, as a citizen, participate in public deliberations. If the country was going to be run by all adult citizens—to be sure for a long time only adult white males—all citizens must be as well educated as possible. They needed to know American history, they needed to know something about science and they needed to be citizens whose minds were as well developed as possible, who would think as clearly as possible about national and local affairs. Education for most of our history was not about money but about being free by running our own country.
Today college presidents assure the business community that our college are turning out future employees well prepared for the jobs there are. Our students are no longer considered as future citizens learning to be autonomous and helping to run the country. They are now looked at as employees, as people who take orders, and for that, get paid.
When education serves only to make money, democracy and our traditional freedoms are in danger.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Poverty is Not Good For you
Everyone knows that poor people have more health problems than people who are well-off. Many poor people also do not live as long as people in better economic conditions. Poor middle-aged men have much low life expectancy than rich ones. The same is true for poor women and the discrepancies in life expectancy between the poor and the rich have grown in recent years.
We understand the reasons for this: poor people can't afford to see a doctor. If they work they usually do not get health insurance from their employers. Many poor people work several jobs and wear out their bodies prematurely. Good food is more expensive. Vegetables, especially organic ones, are really pricey. Soda is cheaper than milk. Poverty is enormously stressful. It is more difficult to have a well organized life with regular of home-cooked meals when you are constantly struggling to make ends meet. Poor nutrition, spotty healthcare, and a life full of stress all work together to shorten lives.
But now comes news of the Perry Preschool Project. In the 1960s researchers took African-American children, born into poverty, and assigned some of them to a high-quality preschool program .while others received no preschool education whatsoever. They then followed these children, who are now in their 40s, into adulthood. Those who were assigned to the preschool program were more likely to have graduated from high school and less likely to have had problems with the law. Men and women who had attended the preschool program as infants showed more are self-control as adult and more perseverance in the face of challenging tasks. They were able to lead better lives because their personalities were stronger.
It is not too difficult to think of reasons why children, especially children growing up in poverty and targets of racial discrimination, should thrive as adults after they attended the high quality preschool program. Small children need attention. What better attention than to have adults take them seriously by teaching them various skills, social and intellectual. Being attended to regularly during these early years leaves an important message: You are an important person, you are valuable, you have reasons to be proud of yourself. Children who learn that when they are small are less likely to be discouraged when life becomes difficult. They are more likely to take themselves and their goals seriously enough to persevere until they succeed. They are less likely to sabotage themselves by getting into trouble with the law.
Most poor children-- white and black -- do not get that sort of attention. And thus they grow up more likely to be easily discouraged, to be easily distracted from long range goal by momentary temptations. Their adult lives often show the consequences of these early neglects.
This is not only about poor people, it is about all of America. We like to say of children that they can become president but we know, if we only think about it, but that is not true. Poor children are held back by the poverty. Their abilities to not develop as fully. Their health is likely to be worse. Their future is gloomier from the very beginning.
If we want to be serious about America as a country that offers opportunities to everyone, we need to be more serious about poverty. Instead of giving billions and billions to bankers who then get a million-dollar bonuses for Christmas, we need to start another “War on Poverty” to put an end to poverty as we know it.
We understand the reasons for this: poor people can't afford to see a doctor. If they work they usually do not get health insurance from their employers. Many poor people work several jobs and wear out their bodies prematurely. Good food is more expensive. Vegetables, especially organic ones, are really pricey. Soda is cheaper than milk. Poverty is enormously stressful. It is more difficult to have a well organized life with regular of home-cooked meals when you are constantly struggling to make ends meet. Poor nutrition, spotty healthcare, and a life full of stress all work together to shorten lives.
But now comes news of the Perry Preschool Project. In the 1960s researchers took African-American children, born into poverty, and assigned some of them to a high-quality preschool program .while others received no preschool education whatsoever. They then followed these children, who are now in their 40s, into adulthood. Those who were assigned to the preschool program were more likely to have graduated from high school and less likely to have had problems with the law. Men and women who had attended the preschool program as infants showed more are self-control as adult and more perseverance in the face of challenging tasks. They were able to lead better lives because their personalities were stronger.
It is not too difficult to think of reasons why children, especially children growing up in poverty and targets of racial discrimination, should thrive as adults after they attended the high quality preschool program. Small children need attention. What better attention than to have adults take them seriously by teaching them various skills, social and intellectual. Being attended to regularly during these early years leaves an important message: You are an important person, you are valuable, you have reasons to be proud of yourself. Children who learn that when they are small are less likely to be discouraged when life becomes difficult. They are more likely to take themselves and their goals seriously enough to persevere until they succeed. They are less likely to sabotage themselves by getting into trouble with the law.
Most poor children-- white and black -- do not get that sort of attention. And thus they grow up more likely to be easily discouraged, to be easily distracted from long range goal by momentary temptations. Their adult lives often show the consequences of these early neglects.
This is not only about poor people, it is about all of America. We like to say of children that they can become president but we know, if we only think about it, but that is not true. Poor children are held back by the poverty. Their abilities to not develop as fully. Their health is likely to be worse. Their future is gloomier from the very beginning.
If we want to be serious about America as a country that offers opportunities to everyone, we need to be more serious about poverty. Instead of giving billions and billions to bankers who then get a million-dollar bonuses for Christmas, we need to start another “War on Poverty” to put an end to poverty as we know it.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Cost of War
We do not think much about the cost of war. A few years after the end of the latest military engagement, we erect war monuments—plaques with names, statues of soldiers, civic buildings. We call our soldiers heroes, especially if they did not come home and that's about it.
But a spate of recent news stories about the Iraq war cannot be ignored. They force us to face up to the horrendous cost of this war. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 4328 soldiers are officially listed as killed, 31,431 officially listed as injured. Unofficial numbers for injuries are much higher. Many of the injured have brain damage. We need to pause a minute with these numbers to consider that for every soldier killed, there is a grieving family—parents, brothers and sisters, often grandparents, uncles and aunts. Friends and neighbors are affected as well. Many soldiers killed are fathers and mothers who leave their spouse behind and often also their children. More than 900 children in the US lost one parent in Iraq. The war memorials we erect so diligently do not mention the wide swath of grief left by each death or the lives seriously affected by the loss of a son, a life companion, or a parent.
Nor do they remember the soldiers who attempt suicide after their return—estimated currently at 1000 a month. They may have returned with their bodies intact, but their spirit is suffering profoundly; they do not want to continue living. Others cannot find their way back into civilian lives with jobs and families. They end up homeless, asking for money at the stoplight or offering to work for food, shunned even by the citizens who like to speak of veterans as heroes.
Recent stories report that children of soldiers are seeking psychiatric help in increasing numbers. The total number of outpatient mental health visits for children increased from 1 million in 2003 to 2 million in 2008. The marriages of returning veterans are more likely to founder; family violence is more common in the families of servicemen and women, as is alcoholism, drug abuse and child neglect. Each of these has long run effects that last throughout the lives of military children and may well leave its mark on the grandchildren of men and women in the military today.
The human cost of war is inestimable. The cost in dollars is more easily counted up. It now stands at $687 billion for the Iraq war. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is approaching $200 million. In the seven years of the war thousands upon thousands of American children went hungry; many Americans died a premature death because they could not afford to see a doctor or, if they did, could not buy the medicines to control blood pressure or keep diabetes under control. Many led wretched lives because there are not enough places in clinics to help sufferers overcome drug and alcohol addiction. Many young people could not get the education to develop their intelligence and other aptitudes because there was no money for scholarships or cheap public education. If we had been able to use those $687 billion dollars to improve medical care, education, rehabilitation and nutrition programs many Americans would have better lives today. Remember also that drug addicts also have families who suffer with their addict members; hungry children develop more slowly and thus their lives are impaired as long as they live. Early deaths spread sorrow in families of the victims. Few remain untouched by the cost of war.
Now comes the latest story from Colorado. In the area around Fort Carson, 14 murders have been committed by returning soldiers. Members of combat units that suffered particularly high casualties in Iraq were more likely to murder innocent civilians here—including a couple about to put up a sign for a garage sale.
So far we are thinking about American losses. The devastation of lives in Iraq is much worse. Here the numbers are much less precise. But the count is definitely above 110,000. Some estimates of war orphans in Iraq are as high as 5 million. Five million young people whose entire lives will be burdened by their early loss and the hard lives awaiting orphans.
An avalanche of terrifying facts forces us to consider the cost of war more carefully and to face up to the multiple destructive repercussions of war. The war in Iraq spreads its evil influences throughout Iraq and throughout our own country and those of our allies not just today and tomorrow but for generations to come. Is anything worth such enormous sacrifices?
But a spate of recent news stories about the Iraq war cannot be ignored. They force us to face up to the horrendous cost of this war. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 4328 soldiers are officially listed as killed, 31,431 officially listed as injured. Unofficial numbers for injuries are much higher. Many of the injured have brain damage. We need to pause a minute with these numbers to consider that for every soldier killed, there is a grieving family—parents, brothers and sisters, often grandparents, uncles and aunts. Friends and neighbors are affected as well. Many soldiers killed are fathers and mothers who leave their spouse behind and often also their children. More than 900 children in the US lost one parent in Iraq. The war memorials we erect so diligently do not mention the wide swath of grief left by each death or the lives seriously affected by the loss of a son, a life companion, or a parent.
Nor do they remember the soldiers who attempt suicide after their return—estimated currently at 1000 a month. They may have returned with their bodies intact, but their spirit is suffering profoundly; they do not want to continue living. Others cannot find their way back into civilian lives with jobs and families. They end up homeless, asking for money at the stoplight or offering to work for food, shunned even by the citizens who like to speak of veterans as heroes.
Recent stories report that children of soldiers are seeking psychiatric help in increasing numbers. The total number of outpatient mental health visits for children increased from 1 million in 2003 to 2 million in 2008. The marriages of returning veterans are more likely to founder; family violence is more common in the families of servicemen and women, as is alcoholism, drug abuse and child neglect. Each of these has long run effects that last throughout the lives of military children and may well leave its mark on the grandchildren of men and women in the military today.
The human cost of war is inestimable. The cost in dollars is more easily counted up. It now stands at $687 billion for the Iraq war. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is approaching $200 million. In the seven years of the war thousands upon thousands of American children went hungry; many Americans died a premature death because they could not afford to see a doctor or, if they did, could not buy the medicines to control blood pressure or keep diabetes under control. Many led wretched lives because there are not enough places in clinics to help sufferers overcome drug and alcohol addiction. Many young people could not get the education to develop their intelligence and other aptitudes because there was no money for scholarships or cheap public education. If we had been able to use those $687 billion dollars to improve medical care, education, rehabilitation and nutrition programs many Americans would have better lives today. Remember also that drug addicts also have families who suffer with their addict members; hungry children develop more slowly and thus their lives are impaired as long as they live. Early deaths spread sorrow in families of the victims. Few remain untouched by the cost of war.
Now comes the latest story from Colorado. In the area around Fort Carson, 14 murders have been committed by returning soldiers. Members of combat units that suffered particularly high casualties in Iraq were more likely to murder innocent civilians here—including a couple about to put up a sign for a garage sale.
So far we are thinking about American losses. The devastation of lives in Iraq is much worse. Here the numbers are much less precise. But the count is definitely above 110,000. Some estimates of war orphans in Iraq are as high as 5 million. Five million young people whose entire lives will be burdened by their early loss and the hard lives awaiting orphans.
An avalanche of terrifying facts forces us to consider the cost of war more carefully and to face up to the multiple destructive repercussions of war. The war in Iraq spreads its evil influences throughout Iraq and throughout our own country and those of our allies not just today and tomorrow but for generations to come. Is anything worth such enormous sacrifices?
Sunday, July 19, 2009
When America falls short
Somalia, a country in East Africa has suffered from civil war for many years. 200,000 Somalis fled to the US; 70,000 of them live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the largest settlement of Somali refugees in the US. Many of these refugees came as children, often without parents. They graduated from high school here. Many are now in college. They have become American citizens.
The FBI has conducted a major investigation of the Somali community in recent years after 40 young men “disappeared”--supposedly they returned to Somalia and joined a radical Islamist organization that is trying to take power in the country. One of the young Somali-American men died on a suicide mission in Somalia last October.
The FBI is asking who persuaded these young men to return to a country they barely knew since they, after all, had been children when they left. Many of them are said not to speak Somali any more. It is clearly important to find out who is persuading these young men to leave Minnesota to return to fight for a cause they are unlikely to understand fully.
But there is another important question: what moved these 40 young men to allow themselves to be persuaded? Most of the Somali-American young people were not moved to leave their friends and their education in the US to return to their distant home land. But these forty were sufficiently unhappy here to be willing to go an fight for a cause that is remote from the life they have lived in the US. At least one of these young men was sufficiently unhappy in the US to be willing to sacrifice his young life in a terrorist bombing.
Not knowing these men personally, we cannot really answer the question about their unhappiness with any confidence. We could reject the question altogether by saying that these forty men were “misfits”, permanent malcontents, or perhaps so damaged by their war torn childhood and emigration without their families that they could never be happy anywhere. But, of course, we do not know whether that is true.
Others claim that the Somalis had more problems “integrating” themselves than other Muslim immigrant groups. But here we must remember that integration is a two-way process. I may, as an immigrant, try as hard as I can to become a regular American but if the other Americans keeping seeing me and treating me as a foreigner, all my efforts to integrate myself will fail. We must therefore ask ourselves whether these Somali young men were touched by pervasive American racism and xenophobia.
A friend of the Somali-American, Shirwa Ahmed, who returned to Somalia and died a suicide bomber, reports that when they would meet, Shirwa “ just used to encourage me to pray, and do good, and think about life." These are not the concerns of many young people in the US. Before turning to Islam and Islamic politics, Shirwa, like his friends had a job the offered little satisfaction—other than money. He worked at the airport. In their time off, they would hang out at the Mall of the Americas. Life consisted of earning money and spending it, not of doing good and thinking about life. It was a life lived by many young, and older, Americans: a lot of work—often quite boring—and some fun on the weekends. But such a life has not much meaning, it is not really a good life.
This life of work and some fun is, in the end, very isolated. You work to earn money for yourself and, at best, for your family and you spend it on yourself and on them. You are not part of a larger effort. After 9/11 people placed bumper stickers on their cars saying “United we Stand” but there were no common efforts, not citizens organizing themselves for defense or to support the families of victims. “Go shop” the President told us. Although we have been at war for 7 years now in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no war effort at home. Communities do not come together to help returning veterans or the families of soldiers. We leave that to the government while we go to work and shop. We lack a common effort, a community.
A good life does not just consist of work that is bearable only because one gets paid for it. Good work is challenging. It requires skill. We learn new things when we do good work and at the end of the day we can be proud of what we have accomplished. Valuable work benefits someone else or the community. In the course of working you establish some important ties to people whom your work benefits, or perhaps to the employer you work for. But most employees are dispensable. The company will talk a lot about the “team spirit” but you get fired with minimal notice if the company decides to move overseas. The employer tries to make your work as routine as possible so that anyone can do it, allowing your wages to be kept as long as possible.
A good life includes plans, not just for oneself but plans for improving the community shared with one's neighbors. ( I am not referring to communities unified by narrow, hate filled ideas—I big topic I cannot explore here). It is guided by shared ideals. A good life includes moral principles and perhaps religious commitments. But most Americans believe that “everyone chooses his or her own values.” Moral values are not shared, they do not connect us with others; they are all our own—and we are all alone. Yes, some people are “activists” they work to improve their community, to make change somewhere. But they are often quite marginal. Most people react to the life of work-and-spend by being cynical--”you can't fight city hall”-- or simply disinterested--”It is no concern of mine.”
Many people lead lives, as Thoreau said, “of quiet desperation.” In response to that empty and isolated life some young men may well seek meaning and community in fighting for Islam in Somalia. For them, America did not offer the good life promised.
The FBI has conducted a major investigation of the Somali community in recent years after 40 young men “disappeared”--supposedly they returned to Somalia and joined a radical Islamist organization that is trying to take power in the country. One of the young Somali-American men died on a suicide mission in Somalia last October.
The FBI is asking who persuaded these young men to return to a country they barely knew since they, after all, had been children when they left. Many of them are said not to speak Somali any more. It is clearly important to find out who is persuading these young men to leave Minnesota to return to fight for a cause they are unlikely to understand fully.
But there is another important question: what moved these 40 young men to allow themselves to be persuaded? Most of the Somali-American young people were not moved to leave their friends and their education in the US to return to their distant home land. But these forty were sufficiently unhappy here to be willing to go an fight for a cause that is remote from the life they have lived in the US. At least one of these young men was sufficiently unhappy in the US to be willing to sacrifice his young life in a terrorist bombing.
Not knowing these men personally, we cannot really answer the question about their unhappiness with any confidence. We could reject the question altogether by saying that these forty men were “misfits”, permanent malcontents, or perhaps so damaged by their war torn childhood and emigration without their families that they could never be happy anywhere. But, of course, we do not know whether that is true.
Others claim that the Somalis had more problems “integrating” themselves than other Muslim immigrant groups. But here we must remember that integration is a two-way process. I may, as an immigrant, try as hard as I can to become a regular American but if the other Americans keeping seeing me and treating me as a foreigner, all my efforts to integrate myself will fail. We must therefore ask ourselves whether these Somali young men were touched by pervasive American racism and xenophobia.
A friend of the Somali-American, Shirwa Ahmed, who returned to Somalia and died a suicide bomber, reports that when they would meet, Shirwa “ just used to encourage me to pray, and do good, and think about life." These are not the concerns of many young people in the US. Before turning to Islam and Islamic politics, Shirwa, like his friends had a job the offered little satisfaction—other than money. He worked at the airport. In their time off, they would hang out at the Mall of the Americas. Life consisted of earning money and spending it, not of doing good and thinking about life. It was a life lived by many young, and older, Americans: a lot of work—often quite boring—and some fun on the weekends. But such a life has not much meaning, it is not really a good life.
This life of work and some fun is, in the end, very isolated. You work to earn money for yourself and, at best, for your family and you spend it on yourself and on them. You are not part of a larger effort. After 9/11 people placed bumper stickers on their cars saying “United we Stand” but there were no common efforts, not citizens organizing themselves for defense or to support the families of victims. “Go shop” the President told us. Although we have been at war for 7 years now in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no war effort at home. Communities do not come together to help returning veterans or the families of soldiers. We leave that to the government while we go to work and shop. We lack a common effort, a community.
A good life does not just consist of work that is bearable only because one gets paid for it. Good work is challenging. It requires skill. We learn new things when we do good work and at the end of the day we can be proud of what we have accomplished. Valuable work benefits someone else or the community. In the course of working you establish some important ties to people whom your work benefits, or perhaps to the employer you work for. But most employees are dispensable. The company will talk a lot about the “team spirit” but you get fired with minimal notice if the company decides to move overseas. The employer tries to make your work as routine as possible so that anyone can do it, allowing your wages to be kept as long as possible.
A good life includes plans, not just for oneself but plans for improving the community shared with one's neighbors. ( I am not referring to communities unified by narrow, hate filled ideas—I big topic I cannot explore here). It is guided by shared ideals. A good life includes moral principles and perhaps religious commitments. But most Americans believe that “everyone chooses his or her own values.” Moral values are not shared, they do not connect us with others; they are all our own—and we are all alone. Yes, some people are “activists” they work to improve their community, to make change somewhere. But they are often quite marginal. Most people react to the life of work-and-spend by being cynical--”you can't fight city hall”-- or simply disinterested--”It is no concern of mine.”
Many people lead lives, as Thoreau said, “of quiet desperation.” In response to that empty and isolated life some young men may well seek meaning and community in fighting for Islam in Somalia. For them, America did not offer the good life promised.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Is Government the enemy?
Many Americans think that. On April 15, tax day, a national organization held a series of “tea parties”all over the country to commemorate the colonists' resistance to government and specifically to taxation. They are planning more events for the 4th of July. At present, the Republicans in Congress are are resisting the proposal to have government provide health insurance for some Americans. Anything done by the government, they believe, is worse than anything done by private business.
This is an old belief among Americans. The authors of the Constitution wrote that document after having successfully freed themselves from the British government and established their own. The political system they created is very concerned to preserve individual liberties against government attempts to limit freedom. It is, we think, a good system. Citizens have elaborate rights to a protest, to tell the government what they think. The leaders of the government are elected; they hold their jobs by the will of the citizens and can be removed from office if they ignore the citizens' wishes.
These are important institutions, but our country has changed fundamentally since the end of the 18th century. Then a citizen's freedoms were threatened by the government and by lawless fellow citizens. We face a third and much more formidable threat today: big business.
In 2005, WalMart had annual sales of $312 billion. In the current fiscal year the budget of the state of New York – one of the larger states in the US-- amounts to $120 billion. Wal-Mart is almost 3 times as large an enterprise as the state of New York.
The governor, the legislators, the attorney generals, the mayors, the city councils, and other officials are elected. They are therefore subject to a certain amount of control by the citizens. What happens if you don't like a policy at Wal-Mart? Who do you write to? The people who run Wal-Mart are not elected. They sell $312 billion worth of goods every year. So they don't really care a lot what you think.
Things get much worse if you actually work for Wal-Mart. Wages are notoriously low. Employees who try to organize unions get fired – even though that's illegal. The employee has nothing to say, nowhere to complain. The Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to assemble peacefully, that means that we have the right to organize; citizens have the right to petition the government, that means, to say what bothers them. Employees of Wal-Mart do not have those rights. If you complain or try to organize you are out the door. Its like living under a dictatorship. The greatest threat to individual freedom are big employers.
Private business, the enemies of government say, is much more efficient. To be sure, government bureaucracy is horrible. But have you ever tried to get your insurance company to pay for a medication, prescribed by your doctor, which was not on the insurance company's approved list? Everyone has horror stories about the inefficiencies of private insurers.
Everyone knows that. Why do people nevertheless keep coming around to say: don't trust the government, trust private enterprise? Look again at the Republican objection to government insurance. Republicans regularly speak for the interest of large business. The large insurance companies do not want to have to compete against the government. That might be bad for the almighty bottom line. Big business has always been opposed to what they call “big government” because government has had the job of enforcing antitrust legislation passed by Congress at the request of ordinary citizens. If it were not for the government enforcing wage and hour legislation, if it were not for OSHA enforcing (sometimes) health and safety standards, if the government did not limit the hours that children are allowed to work, if the government did not protect workers as imperfectly as it does, you can imagine how much more oppressive ordinary employment would be.
Big business does not like the government protecting workers. Big business does not like the government trying to clean up the environment polluted by business. Big business does not like the government supervising, however imperfectly, the formation of huge companies that have too much power. And so they keep harping on the evils of “big government.” But if you think about what your citizen's freedoms are in relation to the government and what your freedoms are in relation to your employers, may be government doesn't look quite so bad. You have to admit that the greatest threat to individual freedom comes from the folks you work for.
This is an old belief among Americans. The authors of the Constitution wrote that document after having successfully freed themselves from the British government and established their own. The political system they created is very concerned to preserve individual liberties against government attempts to limit freedom. It is, we think, a good system. Citizens have elaborate rights to a protest, to tell the government what they think. The leaders of the government are elected; they hold their jobs by the will of the citizens and can be removed from office if they ignore the citizens' wishes.
These are important institutions, but our country has changed fundamentally since the end of the 18th century. Then a citizen's freedoms were threatened by the government and by lawless fellow citizens. We face a third and much more formidable threat today: big business.
In 2005, WalMart had annual sales of $312 billion. In the current fiscal year the budget of the state of New York – one of the larger states in the US-- amounts to $120 billion. Wal-Mart is almost 3 times as large an enterprise as the state of New York.
The governor, the legislators, the attorney generals, the mayors, the city councils, and other officials are elected. They are therefore subject to a certain amount of control by the citizens. What happens if you don't like a policy at Wal-Mart? Who do you write to? The people who run Wal-Mart are not elected. They sell $312 billion worth of goods every year. So they don't really care a lot what you think.
Things get much worse if you actually work for Wal-Mart. Wages are notoriously low. Employees who try to organize unions get fired – even though that's illegal. The employee has nothing to say, nowhere to complain. The Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to assemble peacefully, that means that we have the right to organize; citizens have the right to petition the government, that means, to say what bothers them. Employees of Wal-Mart do not have those rights. If you complain or try to organize you are out the door. Its like living under a dictatorship. The greatest threat to individual freedom are big employers.
Private business, the enemies of government say, is much more efficient. To be sure, government bureaucracy is horrible. But have you ever tried to get your insurance company to pay for a medication, prescribed by your doctor, which was not on the insurance company's approved list? Everyone has horror stories about the inefficiencies of private insurers.
Everyone knows that. Why do people nevertheless keep coming around to say: don't trust the government, trust private enterprise? Look again at the Republican objection to government insurance. Republicans regularly speak for the interest of large business. The large insurance companies do not want to have to compete against the government. That might be bad for the almighty bottom line. Big business has always been opposed to what they call “big government” because government has had the job of enforcing antitrust legislation passed by Congress at the request of ordinary citizens. If it were not for the government enforcing wage and hour legislation, if it were not for OSHA enforcing (sometimes) health and safety standards, if the government did not limit the hours that children are allowed to work, if the government did not protect workers as imperfectly as it does, you can imagine how much more oppressive ordinary employment would be.
Big business does not like the government protecting workers. Big business does not like the government trying to clean up the environment polluted by business. Big business does not like the government supervising, however imperfectly, the formation of huge companies that have too much power. And so they keep harping on the evils of “big government.” But if you think about what your citizen's freedoms are in relation to the government and what your freedoms are in relation to your employers, may be government doesn't look quite so bad. You have to admit that the greatest threat to individual freedom comes from the folks you work for.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
General Motors goes bankrupt
Congratulations, Ms. and Mr. America. Overnight you have become industrialists. You are now owners of what used to be called General Motors, and perhaps should now be called US Motors. GM went bankrupt and now the US gov't—your and my government—owns about 60% of the company.
But then something really odd happened. The man who looks after our interests in Washington—at least that's what he is supposed to do—Barack Obama said that he is not interested in running GM. I presume that means that the previous management will continue to be in charge.
Imagine this: suppose you can't pay your mortgage and the bank repossesses the house. But the bank says “We are not interested in doing anything with that house.” So you stay there, you keep mowing the lawn and tending the flowers. You clean the house and make repairs where needed. The bank is not exercising its ownership rights. It is not taking real possession of the house. In fact, it looks as if it just gave you a chunk of money by allowing you to live in the house even though you are not paying the mortgage.
But of course we are dreaming. Banks don't act that way. If you don't pay what you owe, the banks takes back the house and you have to leave and move back in with the in-laws. There is no such thing as free rent.
Except if you are General Motors and you are in hock for billions of dollars to Uncle Sam.
That strikes me as fishy. The American tax payer—not Barack Obama—has given GM billions of dollars. GM now belongs to the American Taxpayer. But the folks who are elected to mind our affairs refuse to do so. We don't want to run GM, they say. All they want to do is to give GM billions of dollars of our money.
Maybe we should send letters to the White House saying “Barack are you minding the store? First you buy GM with our money and then you don't want to take possession what you just bought for us. This looks a lot like giving our money to General Motors without any return.”
It looks like one more example of different rules applying to big corporations from the rules that apply to you and me. If you or I go bankrupt, we loose the house. If GM goes bankrupt they get to help themselves from the public till—to our money. You figure it.
Who is the President working for anyway: ordinary voters or global corporations?
But then something really odd happened. The man who looks after our interests in Washington—at least that's what he is supposed to do—Barack Obama said that he is not interested in running GM. I presume that means that the previous management will continue to be in charge.
Imagine this: suppose you can't pay your mortgage and the bank repossesses the house. But the bank says “We are not interested in doing anything with that house.” So you stay there, you keep mowing the lawn and tending the flowers. You clean the house and make repairs where needed. The bank is not exercising its ownership rights. It is not taking real possession of the house. In fact, it looks as if it just gave you a chunk of money by allowing you to live in the house even though you are not paying the mortgage.
But of course we are dreaming. Banks don't act that way. If you don't pay what you owe, the banks takes back the house and you have to leave and move back in with the in-laws. There is no such thing as free rent.
Except if you are General Motors and you are in hock for billions of dollars to Uncle Sam.
That strikes me as fishy. The American tax payer—not Barack Obama—has given GM billions of dollars. GM now belongs to the American Taxpayer. But the folks who are elected to mind our affairs refuse to do so. We don't want to run GM, they say. All they want to do is to give GM billions of dollars of our money.
Maybe we should send letters to the White House saying “Barack are you minding the store? First you buy GM with our money and then you don't want to take possession what you just bought for us. This looks a lot like giving our money to General Motors without any return.”
It looks like one more example of different rules applying to big corporations from the rules that apply to you and me. If you or I go bankrupt, we loose the house. If GM goes bankrupt they get to help themselves from the public till—to our money. You figure it.
Who is the President working for anyway: ordinary voters or global corporations?
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