[lbo-talk] "The Trouble With Class Interest Populism, " by Stephen Rose

[Julio Huato]

Doug wrote:

> Rose is really cherry-picking - he builds his
> argument towards the incomes of two-earner,
> prime-age, married-couple families, who are
> hardly representative of the population.

Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's op-ed:

> But as Robin Toner and Kate Zernike of The
> New York Times pointed out yesterday, what
> actually characterizes the new wave of
> Democrats is a "strong streak of economic
> populism."

Stephen Rose wrote in his anti-Frank piece:

> What it does mean is that Democrats
> should modernize their policy agenda and
> political message based on a sound understanding
> of American society as it really is.
> The party must speak to the plain realities
> of middle-class aspiration in the 21st century.

You say "potatoe."  I say "potato."  You say "middle class."  I say
"working class."

> Moreover, it is an occupational hazard of those
> with big hearts to overestimate the share of the
> population living in economic distress. That is
> easy to do with yearly income data because annual
> figures can be deceptive.

And looking at a lifetime can be *very deceptive* when there are no
good markets for regular individuals to smooth consumption and risk
across points in time.  It's not only the expected income over a
lifetime that matters.  The dispersion of individual incomes (around
the mathematical expectation) also matters.  In fact, in an economic
environment with a large degree of uncertainty, accumulating large
lumps of private wealth is the way most people try to hedge against
fluctuations.  Poverty is by and large exposure to everything "the
economy" may throw at you.

Public insurance makes a difference.  Economic uncertainty doesn't
look the same to a graduate student in the U.S. and one in, say,
Canada.  Even if in Canada the expected return on grad education is
lower, the distribution of returns may more normal.  Here it has fat
tails. Most U.S. workers would recognize their situation when framed
in terms of "risk" -- as opposed to "poverty."  Rose fails to note
they are equivalent.  Even if current (and expected) income is higher,
the U.S. "middle class" is poorer because the higher risk discounts
their future income more heavily.

Frank's analysis is rough.  His body of evidence is weak.  But his
main point stands: It is feasible for U.S. workers to develop a class
political identity on the basis of their common needs in U.S. society,
through a process that *starts* with those needs closer to their
livelihood, pay, working conditions, etc.

It starts there, but it doesn't stop there.  And it doesn't require
the notion of a predominantly blue-collar working class.  It seems to
me that Frank's (implicit) definition of the U.S. workers is -- close
to mine -- of those who, over their lifetimes, formally or not, live
off their work, i.e. fund regular lives with a wage or salary -- as
opposed to living in affluence off the returns of accumulated wealth,
position, or power.

I haven't read Rose's more technical papers, but on his articles to
the broader public he caricatures the position he criticizes. And his
is a narrow, ad-hoc, definition of workers.   It is a low trick to use
the existing safety-net legislation and regulations as the benchmark.
In a sense, it is Rose who clings to the outdated notion of workers as
mostly blue-collar paupers.

I can see how the tremendous differences in income, backgrounds,
living conditions, etc. among U.S. workers may lead to believing that
the working class (in itself) does not exist.  These differences
replicate themselves and globalization, technology, etc. -- shoved
through markets -- enhance the differences and pit workers against
workers.  That may lead people to question the possibility of U.S.
workers taking collective action within the life of our generation,
developing a class identity.  And ideas inform people's actions, thus
becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.  With flexibility, but we have to
keep trying.  We can break the spell.

And people are really ill informed about the broader economic and
political context of their lives.  With their minds fogged by ideology
and ignorance, we can shoot themselves in the foot at the polls.  If
not, what's the reason for the existence of this enormous propaganda
machine made up by media, academia, and organized mysticism.  The
deeper causes that buffet our lives are not always apparent.