One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is my friends’ regular posting of cartoons, pithy sayings and thought-provoking quotations (some real, some highly doubtful…).
This morning, someone posted a photo of a sign held by a member of the “Occupy” movement. The sign enumerated the “demands” of the 99% –healthcare for all, jobs, good public education and a clean environment.
That really doesn’t seem to be too much to expect.
When we ask THE political question–what should government do?–most liberal democracies have answered that government is the collective mechanism we use to provide those things individuals cannot provide alone. Economists call this “market failure,” but the basic idea is that, in order to flourish as individual citizens, we require an infrastructure. To use a local example, individuals buy their own cars, but they need roads on which to drive them, traffic signals to direct them safely, etc. The over-arching question in free societies is always: what should government provide, and what should be left to the private and nonprofit sectors? What can people do for themselves through the market or through voluntary associations, and what must be provided collectively–i.e., “socialized.” (Yes, Tea Party people, that’s what that word means.)
The list on the placard, while not exhaustive, seems pretty reasonable to me. Individuals acting alone cannot protect the environment. Health and education are not consumer goods, they are public goods–and leaving them to the vagaries of the market leads to huge inequities and inefficiencies. As for jobs, I’m one of those throwbacks who thinks we ought to seriously debate the merits of government as the employer of last resort.
Health, jobs, education and clean air and water. What will the ungrateful masses demand next?
A former student of mine is a researcher for Indiana’s Institute for Working Families. (I strongly encourage those of you who are interested in evidence about the status of working Hoosiers to visit and like the Institute’s Facebook page.) He was the lead researcher for the Institute’s recently released report, The Status of Working Families 2011. That report, which he shared with me, is a sobering corrective to the political hype that passes for news these days.
The punditocracy has characterized Indiana as an economic “success story,” as a state that weathered the Great Recession better than most. As the Institute’s report makes clear, that rosy evaluation ignores a number of highly inconvenient facts: the state has 231,500 fewer jobs than before the recession (Indiana is among only 17 states that have continued to experience absolute declines in the labor force since the recession began); our median wage for those with a bachelor’s degree is $0.80 lower than the national average (and a mere 14.6% of Hoosiers even have a bachelor’s degree–we rank 42d in the nation); since 2000, the state has seen a 52% increase in poverty.
These and similar statistics in the report are depressing enough, but I think the most significant analysis centers on wages. Although our political rhetoric regularly conflates job creation and wages, they are two very different indicators of economic health, and both sides of that equation are important. We need more jobs, but not just any jobs. We need jobs that pay a living wage.
So how does Indiana stack up?
Indiana workers earn 85% of what workers in the rest of the country earn. We rank 41st in the nation.
Since 2000, wages have decreased for workers in both the 50th and 10th percentiles (by 3.4% and 10.6% respectively). This cannot be explained by decreased productivity, because productivity increased by over 14% during that same period.
Median household income fell by 13.6%–the second largest decrease in the nation. (Michigan was first.)
Median family income also decreased dramatically, falling 29.6%
Since 2000, Indiana has experienced a 52% increase in poverty.
The current administration believes that low tax rates and decimated unions will attract jobs to our state. Evidence does not support this belief. Businesses relocate to areas offering–among other things–an educated workforce and consumers with the discretionary income to buy their goods. They relocate to environments offering a high quality of life–parks, public transportation, good schools and a reasonable social safety net. These are the very things that suffer when lawmakers care only about slashing taxes and depressing wages.
There’s a reason businesses aren’t moving in droves to Mississippi.
If we continue to starve public education and local government, if we continue to pursue policies that depress wages and make it more difficult for families to escape poverty–if we continue to emulate states like Mississippi–businesses won’t move here, either.
For reasons only sociologists will understand, Americans have chosen this particular time to revisit issues about the status of women that I thought we’d settled decades ago.
There are a lot of parallels with racism. We elected a black President, but–faced with that stark evidence of progress–the not-inconsiderable numbers of remaining bigots crawled out from under their rocks. So this President “isn’t American” “wasn’t really born here” “is Muslim” and must be defeated at all costs, even if that means opposing measures that are demonstrably good for the country.
Here in Indiana, gubernatorial candidates have each selected a woman running-mate. At the federal level, our Secretary of State is a woman; when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, a woman (gasp!) was Speaker. Everywhere you look, there’s evidence that women really have “come a long way, baby”–a long way from the days I still remember. When I went to law school, women couldn’t even have credit ratings separate from those of their husbands, there were still cultural barriers to women entering the workforce, and young women had few if any role models if they wanted to be anything other than wives and mothers.
Equal pay for equal work? Forget about it!
Family planning? Well, there was the rhythm method and condoms….
What really set women free, what really opened opportunity and set us out on a road to equality was an invention called the Pill. When women had access to reliable contraception, when we could control our reproduction, the world changed.
But just as the election of a black President horrified the throwbacks still clinging to white privilege, women’s steady progress has infuriated the throwbacks clinging to male privilege. (Not that the two categories are mutually exclusive.) There is no other explanation for the eruption of legislation aimed at rolling back the clock. That legislation has attacked women’s rights on multiple fronts (including, unbelievably, equal pay laws), but it is no accident that most of the assault has aimed at our ability to control our reproduction. That ability is the foundation of our equality, and the old men who resent that equality know it.
In this morning’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd takes on the Bishops of her own Catholic Church over their claims that HHS regulations requiring health insurers to provide birth control violates their religious liberty. The column is well worth reading, but her final sentence really sums it up: “And the lawsuit reminds the rest [of us] that what the bishops portray as an attack on religion by the president is really an attack on women by the bishops.”
Jefferson was right: liberty requires eternal vigilance. Those of us who thought the fight for women’s rights had been won had better go dig out our battle gear.
The article detailed the multiple ways in which Romney has ignored the advice of seasoned members of his foreign policy team, and rejected the more nuanced positions that Bush junior came to embrace in his second term (after learning lessons the hard way). Instead, Romney–who has zero foreign policy experience–has repeatedly engaged in hard-line, uninformed saber rattling.
Of all the things we are learning about the man who could very well become the most powerful person on the planet, this lack of appreciation for the complexities of the world America inhabits is the most worrisome.
Given Romney’s approach to campaigning–a full-throated pander to the most retrograde elements of the GOP base–it is certainly possible that his foreign policy positions are simply as self-serving as his domestic ones. This is, after all, a man whose only obviously genuine belief is in his own entitlement to be President. But unlike uninformed, simplistic statements about domestic issues, a presidential candidate’s foreign policy pronouncements are news around the globe. They become part of the intricate diplomatic calculus that the United States must engage in every day. When those statements are unreflective or contrary to current U.S. policies and interests, they complicate and disrupt ongoing international discussions.
If Romney the candidate is unaware of the effect of his bellicose statements, what evidence do we have that he would be more thoughtful as President? Thus far, we have seen no signs of self-reflection or intellectual curiosity–and certainly, no hint of recognition that there might be deficits in his understanding of a complex world.
The more we learn about Mitt Romney, the more convinced I become that he would be a disaster as President. Not because he is an evil man, but because he is an empty one.
The theory behind freedom of speech was pretty simple: a robust consideration and debate of all ideas will lead to adoption of the better ones. When all points of view can be examined, people will opt for those that are best for that society.
The history of civil rights in the U.S. would seem to support that thesis; despite some pretty grim periods, the nation has consistently—if sometimes painfully– moved to a more inclusive, more humane interpretation of equality.
During the past several decades, however, the advent of an ever-more pervasive electronic media has facilitated spin and micro-targeting. As a result, political operatives have been able to target their respective base voters with messaging that rarely breaks through to the general public, depriving that public of the sort of arguments that free speech advocates believe are essential to good policy decisions.
Thanks to Barack Obama’s endorsement yesterday of same-sex marriage, however, we are going to have one of those truly public debates.
On the one hand, Obama has come out (no pun intended) for the equal protection of the laws, for a government that applies the same rules to GLBT folks that it applies to heterosexuals. On the other, Romney has endorsed a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and has personally contributed to anti-gay and anti-marriage equality organizations.
Perhaps more importantly, this stark difference of position comes at a time when those who do not follow politics closely are beginning to see just how radical the Republican base—to which Romney is in thrall—has become. Here in Indiana, the 2-1 defeat of Richard Lugar by a Tea Party yahoo has been a wake-up call. Despite being routinely characterized as a moderate, Lugar was a very conservative Senator (probably a great deal more conservative than many of his supporters realized). As E.J. Dionne noted this morning, he wasn’t “moderate”—he was civil. He actually engaged in conversation with people he disagreed with. To the rabid know-nothings who currently control the GOP, that was evidently sin enough.
Indiana is not alone, unfortunately; the radicalization of the once Grand Old Party has been proceeding for a long time now. But that radicalization has occurred largely out of view of the people who are simply going about their everyday business. What has been obvious to us political junkies is just now becoming obvious to the general public.
With Obama’s announcement, however, the “agendas” of base voters, Republican and Democrat alike, are receiving widespread attention. The choice is stark, and it isn’t limited to same-sex marriage.
If you think about it, positions on same-sex marriage are indicators of political and moral philosophies. People who favor civil liberties and equality for LBGT people tend to believe in separation of church and state, in women’s rights, in government neutrality and even-handedness. They value diversity.
People who are adamantly opposed to the extension of equal rights to gays and lesbians, on the other hand, tend to believe in authoritarian government, tend to support the GOP’s “war on women,” and tend to reject the principle of separation of church and state in favor of a belief in America as a “Christian nation.” Diversity makes them uncomfortable, and–let’s be honest—so does the presence of a black man in the White House.
Bottom line? Different positions on same-sex marriage are often proxies for dramatically different world-views.
What Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage has done is shine a very bright light on these differences. It was a decision to reject the continued micro-targeting of messages—the “wink-wink” approach favored by political operatives of both parties—in favor of the very public, very robust debate envisioned by the Founders.
It’s a debate well worth having. I just hope the Founders weren’t overly optimistic.
