[lbo-talk] Americans: doped up for decades

[shag carpet bomb]

At 01:23 PM 8/28/2011, Jordan Hayes wrote:
>shag writes:
>
>>The one thing that is annoying me so far, though, is that
>>Whitaker seems to be using the "productive member of society"
>>trope to subtly persuade. In other words, he's saying that
>>rise in the number of people collecting SSI/SSDI payments
>>is alarming because there are so many unproductive members
>>of society who aren't holding down jobs.
>
>I've always wondered why the Free Market types don't just forget about 
>this kind of thing (call it, I don't know, a "cost of doing business" 
>...?), because really: if The Market was suffering from a lack of workers, 
>we'd all hear about it.  But in this part of the cycle, we're missing 
>about 13M jobs.  If anything, those who can't/won't work are helping to 
>keep down the (official) unemployment rate :-)
>
>A la toys-for-guns, I'd love to see someone say "I'll give you a good 
>paying job with benefits if you stop taking those wretched drugs" ... then 
>I guess I could take something like Whitaker's complaint seriously.
>
>/jordan

I know! I was thinking that too! It's a common structural-functionalist 
marxist argument to analyze social problems - e.g., high imprisonment rates 
in the u.s. - and say that they have a "latent function" of keeping people 
off the job market. Similarly for the s-f analysis of schooling: the rise 
of credential inflation keeps people out of the job market. Additionally, 
today, it's a booming industry as well. the demand for credentials and 
retraining is a whole industry in the adult education market.

Whitaker isn't a marxist, of course. He's just using this as a method of 
persuasion, partially because it's extremely compelling to the people he's 
interviewing. The people who used to be on meds for depression, etc. and 
who got off them and use other treatments, are the people who make these 
arguments. *they* think they are slackers who were using their diagnosis as 
a crutch to avoid working and to avoid taking full responsibility for 
work/chores at home, leaving the burden with their partners and children.

shag

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