At 7:07 PM +0000 6/5/01, delong at econ.berkeley.edu wrote:
>Why, then, did I look at this book after I finished it like I might
>look at a dangerous insect? Because of its politics--or, rather, its
>antipolitics. In this book the government does not appear (save in
>footnotes discussing the lack of enforcement of the Fair Labor
>Standards Act). Yet if you look at the things that make the lives of
>America's working poor better, the actions of government have to
>rank high on the list. The government sets and enforces
>(imperfectly) the minimum wage; contrary to what you would believe
>if you read only the footnotes, the Fair Labor Standards Act does
>change the way America's workplaces function; for those with kids,
>the Earned Income Tax Credit provides low-wage workers with a wage
>boost of forty cents on the dollar for each of their first fifteen
>hundred hours of work (if they file an income tax return with the
>IRS and claim it--a big if); what inadequate health care the working
>poor receive is paid for by the government; and if we are ever going
>to change the supply-demand balance of the American economy and
>significantly close the income gaps between working rich and working
>poor, publicly-funded education must play the major role.
>
>Yet all these are invisible to Barbara Ehrenreich
Not invisible, just largely irrelevant. I'm about one chapter into the book, and for all of the lovely things the government does for the working poor, their life still sucks. Why should they thank the government for a lousy life, just because it could be worse?
The government barely figures in the daily lives of most of BE's co-workers. The one's in the first chapter don't make the minimum wage, since they are waiters and waitresses, and there is a rumor that the housekeepers will be paid per room, not per hour (is that legal?). The government does little to help them meet their urgent needs for housing, so they live in their cars or at hotels since they can't come up with enough money for a security deposit. And so on. The working poor are basically on their own.
Even the things Brad mentions aren't very impressive. The minimum wage is what, 75% of what it used to be 25 years ago? I don't know the exact numbers, but the qualitative point is valid - the purchasing power of the minimum wage is significantly below its peak even after the recent increases. The characters BE writes about pay their own way when they go to the doctor, they don't get any help from the Feds. The health care that is provided is, as you describe, inadequate - which, while better than nothing, is still a bad situation.
>Because all these are invisible to the Barbara Ehrenreich (see "When
>Government Gets Mean: Confessions of a Recovering Statist, _The
>Nation_ (November 17, 1997)), she can write that it is time for
>America's left to ditch the government. She believes that it is time
>to stop supporting it, to stop defending it, to stop arguing that
>what the government does is by and large good, to "...no longer let
>progressivism be understood as the defense of government." Why?
>Because "[b]y setting ourselves up as the defenders of... 'big
>government'... progressives have boxed themselves into a
>pragmatically and morally untenable position." To Ehrenreich,
>American government today is made up of "petty-minded bureaucracies
>like the I.R.S. and the D.M.V." when it is not made up of cops
>violating people's civil rights.
BE isn't writing in a vaccuum. She wants to ditch the goverment because it has failed to deliver for the poor even when the Dems have had power. There are lots of reasons to be pessimistic. Doug is correct - the Dems failed to raise the minimum wage when they controlled Congress and the presidency. As you say, health care was their first priority, but they failed to deliver on that too. Clinton later brought us NAFTA and welfare reform. And BE has made it clear that these considerations are the reason for her new position.
>And from her point of view a Democratic victory in the 2000 election
>would have been something to fear, because of its "almost certainly
>debilitating effect on progressives and their organizations" (see
>"Vote for Nader," _The Nation_ (August 21/28, 2000)). Never mind
>that a Democratic Labor Secretary would place a higher priority on
>enforcing labor laws in a worker-friendly manner, never mind that
>under a Democratic president the NLRB is more union-friendly, never
>mind that a Democratic congress would pass and a Democratic
>president sign minimum wage increases that did not come with enough
>riders to make their overall benefit questionable, and never mind
>that under Democratic congresses and presidents the tax code becomes
>more progressive. None of these are on Ehrenreich's radar screen.
For BE a Dem victory would have been hollow. Despite having a Dem president and a booming economy, the economic outlook of the poorest americans is hardly any better than it was when Clinton came into office. The suggestion that a Dem controlled government would close the income (not to mention wealth) gap between the working rich and poor seems to be at odds with the empirical evidence. In addition, there is the tendency of liberal and progressive groups to look the other way when things like welfare reform get passed since they want to preserve their influence within the administration. This is Ehrenreich's point - when they have power, the Dems haven't helped the poor all that much, very often they still do the bidding of business, and Dem administrations tend to act as a sedative when it comes to progressive activism.
Maybe Brad is happy with the wares the Dems are selling, and that's fine. But BE is clearly not satisfied, and is looking elsewhere for a better deal. She may or may not find it, but she's got every right to change her shopping habits.