By Tom Kando
Inequality is progressing as rapidly as ever, and our reaction to this is as misguided as ever:
1. We learn now that median pay for top business executives in 2010 skyrocketed by 23% from the previous year, to $10.8 million (Sacramento Bee, July 10). The chief executive of Viacom made $85 million, one of Target’s executives made $24 million, etc.
Meanwhile, 9.5% of American workers remain unemployed. Those who have a job take home $752 a week, less than what they made a year earlier.
Executive pay is not even tied to company performance. Companies’ median revenue gain only rose 7%. Yet voting shareholders approved 98.5% of the fat executive pay packages.
2. California has adopted its budget. It is based 100% on cuts, with zero revenue enhancement. It’s a total Republican victory, even though both the governor and the legislature are democratic.
And within the dwindling state budget (down from over $100 billion a few years ago to $86 billion now), the priorities keep getting worse and worse. This is a long-term sickness. When I began teaching at the State University in the late sixties, the State spent 8% of its money on the University of California, and 4% on its prisons. Now, it’s 3% on the University and 10% on prisons! (Sacramento Bee, July 10). As I said, a sickness.
The tragedy, to repeat the obvious, is the progressive dismantlement of public education and of other public services.
Yet, the media and the population don’t have a clue, as the country’s lemming-like march to the right is accelerating.
3. Even a democratic paper such as the Sacramento Bee diverts a gullible public’s attention by continuing to harp on some of the excesses which take place in the public retirement system - for example the practice of “spiking.” This means that public employees approaching retirement sometimes receive 3% to 10% pay raises during their last 3 years on the job. Since retirement benefits are based on what you earn during your last 3 years at work, this can raise your pension check permanently. It’s done primarily by administrators who work for cities, counties, states, colleges, police and fire departments, etc.
It’s noteworthy that very few rank-and-file teachers, cops, etc. - in other words people in the trenches - can do this.
But, yes, there are some public employees with pensions in the six figures. Whoop Dee Doo!
In Sacramento County (Pop. 1.5 million), there are 14 Office of Education retirees whose pension exceeds $100,000. Whoop Dee Doo!
Is THIS the problem? Is THIS what should upset us? Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t like the fact that administrators always make more than the people who do the real work. I agree that “spiking” is bad.
But surely the REAL problem lies elsewhere, no?
As Alan Clark writes in the Sacramento Bee on July 10: the nation has a new fixation. There is a general attack on retired firefighters, teachers, public health workers. While corporate executives enjoy jaw-dropping raises, there is a push to obliterate retirement security for public workers. The average public worker collects $2,200 a month in state retirement! Yet, he is in the political bull’s-eye, due to the pandemic anti-government anger of private sector workers, caused by the disintegration of their retirement accounts (which they now want to foster on public workers).
Makes me angry. leave comment here
13 comments:
I go around and around trying to sort out the collective mind of my fellows. Why is it that they defend so vociferously, the indefensible predations of their "betters"?
Is the collective mind deluded by short-sighted individual self-interest rooted in human nature? Maybe it's simply the blind stupidity that comes from dogmatic belief. Marxists say it's "false consciousness"--we are all Capitalists now. Or maybe the collective mind is fully cognizant of what is going on but is so intimidated and manipulated by corrupt power that it is paralyzed in fear.
How is it possible that Church dogma ruled the collective mind of Western peoples for more than a 1000 years despite what was seemingly insufferable injustice based in superstitious nonsense? Did the "Age of Reason" really changed anything? Are people any more reasonable today than before?
Millions are still starving. Wars are more endemic and consequential than ever. The rich continue to feed off the poor. We persist in devouring our young by sending to fight in our wars and by despoiling our planet to ever-greater affect.
I have lots of ideas about the processes at work by which we come to live in paranoidal fear and loathing. It makes no sense to me that this adversarial state of mind was "selected for" from an evolutionary standpoint. Something more innovative is going on, but I have no idea how we might change the course our cultural juggernaut.
All suggestions appreciated.
Hi Marc,
yes your washlist of the world's evils is eloquently put.
The $64.000 question is whether or not - despite our current foibles -there is long-term progress or not. I still believe (hope?) that there is. The Middle Ages were pretty bad, the Romans crucified thousands, etc.
I know, I know, recently we had the Holocaust...
So I am not sure..
Lenin said 2 steps forward, 1 step back.
Obviously, this is way too big a question. But your comment does suggest it...
Yes, too big a question, but maybe the only question worth answering today. With 7 billion people afoot and conservatively speaking 10 billion projected in 30 years, some back-of-the-napkin accounting is in order.
Maybe the overall proportion of the world's population living better has increased, It can be argued that some "progress" since the Dark Ages has surely been made by some measures--avg. body weight, longevity, television, "organic" produce? But percentages belie our situation. The arrow of time travels in one direction only.
In the Dark Ages, just 500 years ago, humans numbered 400 million and most of the planet was Terra incognita. There was lots of room for error, which was most fortunate, there being plenty of error to go around.
Today it seems, our error rate has not decreased by much but our room for error has become dramatically reduced. The planet is crawling with people burning and scraping and digging and blasting and fighting and killing to make a living, using tools and methods that would have been regarded as Satanic sorcery back in Camelot.
So what constitutes progress? Is there anything more of which would be helpful--more people, more food, more weapons, more fuel, more money, more IPads? It seems to me that the only valid measure of progress today--even if only two steps forward and one back-- would be that which makes it more possible for humans to live together in the same little house, husbanding resources and making do with less.
This idea of co-habitation does not seem so terrible to me, though I recognize that many of my cherished personal prerogatives would come under pressure. But it is only by living together with less that we can possibly hope to restore some margin for error, and if we have learned nothing else about ourselves we should know that we humans are very error prone.
So how are we doing in our co-habitation project? Are we making progress--two steps forward and one step back? Or are we just making more and more, calling it progress, and begging the day when the consequences of our errors will eat us alive?
My father expressed his take on all this by muttering the phrase, "Après moi, le déluge". It seems this view is more widespread than we would like to admit. Was this always so?
This is why it often seems to me that we are living in a new Dark Age. It is also why I continue to enjoy the illuminating ruminations of Kando and Kando. Thanks for the light!
Have a nice day ;-)
Erudite and meaningful, as always, Marc.
I do agree that we are living through a period of retrogression.
But maybe my pessimism is the typical attitude of grouchy aging men - “the world is going to hell, when I was a kid everything was better, I walked 10 miles in the snow, etc.”
So maybe this is just Lenin’s one step back, before we take another 2 steps forward. Hopefully temporary and cyclical (the decline-of-Rome cliche analogy).
Who knows....
Tom,
Yes, I often dwell on the "grouchy old man" theory. Two of the proverbial conditions are met. I am both old and grouchy. But a third conditions is not met. I do not yearn for the "good old days", with the possible exception of primitive tribal man, a lifestyle I know little about nor one to which I yearn to return.
I was born in 1947. This was I think, a turning point in human history marked by two contemporaneous events.
1. The Holocaust: A deliberate, rational, scientific enterprise unequaled in human history.
2. The atom bomb: A product of deliberate and rational human enterprise that invested humans with the capacity, in theory at least, to obliterate humanity.
These two precedents mark a sea change in the human project. Never before have the consequences of our industriousness outstripped the random and impersonal "acts of God" that so terrified our ancestors--solar eclipses, floods, earthquakes, fires, locust and frogs.
To be born in 1947 was to be born into a new world in which, for the first time in history, mankind literally held in its hands, the levers and buttons of a self-destruct system. (Sci-fi notwithstanding, an "Eject" button has yet to be devised.)
To the cyclical thinker--history goes round and round---the Holocaust and The Bomb seem like historical aberrations---the act of a madman and a Cold War game now quelled by the triumph of Democracy. But these were not aberrations. They were and are symptoms of theory and methods whose errors have overtaken the entrepreneurs. The decline of fisheries and coral reefs, global climate change, fuel depletion, water quality debasement, antibiotic resistant disease agents, and cultural clashes triggered by global communications, are all testimony to the paradoxical truism that success=failure.
So the bad news is that history is not cyclical nor does it repeat itself. We can't just sit around and expect the pendulum to swing back in our favor. The arrow of time moves in one direction only. Never before where there 7 billion people on earth. Never before did we play with 50,000 year half-life nuclear materials. Never before did humans burn billions of gallons of finite oil each year.
Although what's done cannot be undone the good news is that the future is always an open proposition. Unlike the genetically determined dinosaurs--too big and stupid not to fail--we humans have the capacity to change our game, but to do so we must change it before the world "out there" changes it for us. The rear-view mirror of reaction is too little too late. New theory, new methods, new actions moving forward are required.
So my sign does not say, "The END is nigh", it says "The END nigh UNLESS we change our game plan."
Am I hopeful? Not really. But then again, the final outcome of life is a pretty onerous proposition and that knowledge hasn't stopped me from living.
Go figure.
It is unbelievable the degree of misinformation that people have about the economy it seems nobody has the energy to change the system we should believe that we can make a difference one person one change at a time
Thanks for your comment, Victorius. I agree.
Fantastic, Marc.
Getting mad when you see large disparities is a reaction that people have to a sense of injustice. And, you may be exemplifying the frustration-aggression hypothesis. The response to frustration can be reactionary, revolutionary, or constructive (integral).
When you examine the reasons for the disparity, you find that government laws and tax structures create, allow, and even encourage this disparity. Ironically the response of people who get mad is to punish the rich, which only makes things worse. What we need are changes in the rule of law that encourage economic decentralization and tax wealth taken out of corporations, but not the corporations themselves--that just drives them to other countries where tax rates are lower, increasing unemployment in the U.S., making it more difficult to pay those $2,200 per month pensions.
Please distinguish between "democratic" and Democratic Party. The Governor may be somewhat "democratic" as may his party, but it's a mixed bag as you know. The Sacto. Bee is a bit to the left of center on most issues compared to Fox TV or The Wall Street Journal, but it isn't "democratic" especially and it's pretty far right on any union issues. Otherwise your points well-taken.
There’s a great book, The Spirit Level, which demonstrates conclusively using a robust data set that inequality---whether in a state (like California) or in a nation---leads to high levels of social pathologies. Inequality erodes the trust that undergirds democracy; without it, a nation can slide into decline.
As usual, you're right on the money. There must be something wrong with you. I agree with you too often.
What I like about Gordon is that he always gives me an argument, a dialogue. Where we differ, temperamentally, is his total absence of resentment. I admire that, although there is something to be said for “class consciousness,” which is so lacking in this country. (“class consciousness” can be defined as hatred of the rich). I don’t know whether such hatred is sinful or not, but I am in good company. Remember who said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven?
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Gerry, yes, of course, Left-Right is relative. The Bee and the Gov. are what they are. I must say, I have a feeling that the Bee has moved somewhat rightward in recent years, maybe...
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Scott, sounds like a good study. This gets back to what we were saying about Durkheim and social solidarity on one of Madeleine's posts a few days ago.
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David, I know what you mean.
In my own defense: Many years ago, I went through a period of error. But I recovered my senses long ago, already.
Question: Is inconsistency bad?
Some years ago there was this Dr. so-and-so who testified at some Senate hearing or investigation. One of the senators said to him: “Well, Dr. so-and-so, ten years ago you said this-and-that, and now you are contradicting that statement.”
Aha! Thought the Senator, this’ll put him in his place!
But the testifying expert replied: “Well, sir, I’ve changed my mind.”
The moral: sometimes, consistency is for the small mind, and change is for the evolving mind...
But you know all this. I’m just responding to your comment, and dealing with history.
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I couldn't agree with you more!
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