There are Jobs and Then There are Jobs

I remember admonishing my then teenage sons that “any job is worthwhile.” But the summer jobs we were discussing were highly unlikely to be permanent.

Things are a bit different for the adult working poor in the Great State of Indiana.

When our Governor or Mayor announces that–thanks to his mighty economic development prowess–Indiana or Indianapolis will be the site of X new jobs, everyone applauds. The media dutifully reports that jobs are being created (or stolen from elsewhere). If the story mentions the average salaries those jobs will generate, it’s toward the end.

There’s a reason for that.

Derek Thomas (full disclosure, a former student of mine) is an analyst for and blogger with the Indiana Institute for Working Families. His most recent blog demonstrates why we need to pay attention to the quality of jobs, and not simply the quantity.

We reported last year that as of 2011, Indiana had a higher percent of jobs in occupations with poverty-level wages than all neighboring states, the Midwestern average and the U.S. average, and that job growth was largely concentrated in low-wage work. New analysis shows that among neighboring states, Kentucky took the 2012 title back by a slim margin. However, Indiana still holds the dubious distinction of having the largest percent growth in occupations with poverty-level wages over the past three years – nearly 12% from 2010 – 2012. Additionally, the percent of jobs in occupations with median annual pay less than twice the poverty threshold is up from 71% to 72.1% – of neighboring states, only Kentucky has more (slightly).

Translation: even when we get new jobs, they aren’t good jobs. The people who fill them aren’t going to fill Hoosier tax coffers, they aren’t going to have disposable income to spend in Hoosier stores, and some percentage of them will have to rely upon social welfare services funded by our tax dollars. (But they’ll have the “right” to work.)

Well, we were recently ranked as the 8th dumbest state.

Honest to goodness, Indiana…

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Politics and Protectionism

I think I know why Santa Claus punishes disobedient children by leaving lumps of coal in their stockings.

It’s been interesting to follow the response of Indiana coal interests and the politicians they influence to the EPA’s recent–and long overdue–efforts to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants.

It may surprise readers to know that there are currently no limits to the amount of carbon pollution a power plant can dump into our air. (It surprised me!)

The lack of any rules governing how much carbon an existing plant can spew has had significant consequences–not just for our climate, but for public health. An IU Medical School study calculated the public health cost of burning coal at five billion dollars annually, due to the effect on heart disease, lung disease, asthma and related respiratory disorders.

Recently, a speaker at Carnegie Mellon’s Distinguished Lecturer Series reported that air pollution kills as many people each year as smoking. (While smoking is riskier, only 20 percent of the population smokes. Everyone breathes.)

Indiana’s coal industries have long been accustomed to favorable treatment by state agencies, and their hysterical reaction to these overdue rules shows just how dependent they are on political protection from the forces of the free market, and on the indirect subsidies we taxpayers provide by allowing them to pollute with impunity.

Here’s an analogy: We don’t allow manufacturers to dump toxic waste into our rivers; we expect them to dispose of their effluent properly, and to include the cost of that disposal in the price of their products. That may make it more difficult for them to compete, but it’s a cost of doing business–we don’t say, well, if it is too expensive not to poison our water supply, just go ahead and poison us.

Some of the hand-wringing and dire warnings are a recognition that the price of clean energy–especially wind and solar–has plummeted; in fact, utilities all over the country are seeing wind and solar bids that are cheaper than coal, the price of which has been steadily rising. (Austin Energy in Texas recently announced that it’s buying solar at half the price of coal, and that electricity costs for Austin residents will drop; an Oklahoma utility (AEP) says its purchase of wind power will save customers over 50 million dollars.)

The policy question is pretty simple: why should government protect the coal industry from market forces by asking taxpayers to continue paying for the industry’s externalities?

The answer is pretty clear, too: why in the world would we subsidize something that is costing the state clean energy jobs, contributing to climate change and making Hoosiers ill?

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Money money money….

Ignore all the sanctimony in political oratory. The most reliable guide to the real priorities of our elected officials is where they spend our money. Talk is cheap.

War, however, is very expensive.

A new study says the Iraq War has cost the United States $2 trillion. By the time all the veterans’ bills are paid, it will likely cost us up to $6 trillion.

Let that sink in for a moment. Per National Priorities, here’s an estimate of how much money is allocated for various programs in President Obama’s 2015 federal fiscal year budget:

Education: ~ $70 billion
Health: ~ $58 billion
Unemployment and labor: ~ $58 billion
Energy and Environment: ~ $35 billion
International Affairs: ~ $35 billion
Science: ~ $35 billion
Transportation: ~ $23 billion
Food and Agriculture: ~$11 billion

Think about what we could have done with $6 trillion. With a “t”. As in, one thousand billions.

Almost eight years ago David Leonhardt wrote about what $1.2 trillion could have bought, which was the estimated cost of the Iraq War at the time:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

From City Hall to Washington, D.C., our elected officials have made it very clear where their priorities lie. And it isn’t with veterans’ health care, or education, or public safety or the many  admittedly dull public services that virtually all citizens believe government should provide.

Instead, too many of our lawmakers think they’ve been elected to tell everyone else how to live. At home, that means trying to control women, marginalize gay people and impose their narrow religious beliefs on others. Abroad, it means showing “strength” –which for people like Dick Cheney means spending trillions of dollars on wars of choice, and opting for military “solutions” to any and all problems.

I guess it’s more fun to play soldier than it is to make sure that our children are fed and our bridges don’t fail.

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Why I Think It Matters

Yesterday’s post dealing with privilege generated a number of responses, both here on the blog and on Facebook. One of those was from Doug Masson, who is always thoughtful and balanced: his (fairly lengthy) comment seemed to me to boil down to one very fair question: what does discussion of privilege accomplish? What purpose is served?

My post on the subject was motivated by several articles I’ve recently seen dismissing the notion that “privilege” exists. In each case, the concept itself was mischaracterized–the classic “straw man” technique–in order to justify criticizing or ridiculing it.

But an explanation of what prompted my post doesn’t answer the question about why the discussion matters.

It matters, I think, because reasonable debates over policy, reasonable discussions about our different policy preferences, need to originate from a shared reality.

I’d analogize to the periodic accusations that extending civil rights to GLBT people would be granting them “special” rights.  If someone’s reality doesn’t include an understanding of the ways in which gay people are marginalized, calls for equal treatment may seem like special pleading. (Granted, most of the folks making these accusations probably know better, but some do not.)

Or take global climate change. The people who don’t believe it exists are much more likely to accept the arguments against moving to Green energy sources being made by those with a vested interest in the status quo.

If it has never occurred to a white guy living his life in accordance with the social conventions of his time and place that those conventions confer benefits not available to women and minorities, he’s likely to reject efforts to level the playing field. Once he understands the ways in which social attitudes advantage people who look like him, he may be more open to change.

Or he may not.

It may well be that humans will never really occupy the same reality–it may be that we all have worldviews based upon religion or philosophy or personality that require us to see  realities consistent with those worldviews, and to ignore facts that are inconvenient or disturbing. If that’s the case, however, there’s no point to blogs or other efforts to communicate with each other.

At the end of the day, I use this blog to describe the reality I inhabit, and to generate discussion of appropriate policy responses. When my reality isn’t familiar to those of you reading my posts, I hope you will tell me why. I learn a lot from those who comment here.

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Race, Gender, Privilege

There are some arguments that are just unedifying. Recent discussions of “privilege” fall in that category,  for the same reason that so many of our public debates generate so much more heat than light: we’re mostly talking past each other.

It would be so helpful if people would just begin by defining their terms.

Privilege–at least in the sense being debated– isn’t an individual attribute. Some individuals can certainly be more privileged than others–we can be well-educated, wealthy, healthy, etc. But that isn’t what “white privilege” or “male privilege” is about. That latter kind of privilege is a cultural attribute; it is a description of systemic social attitudes and assumptions that favor white heterosexual males and make their lives, on balance, easier than the lives of women and minorities.

What are some of those privileges?

The odds of a white male being hired over equally-qualified women or minorities is demonstrably higher–and when a black male or woman does get the job, co-workers are far more likely to assume the hire was based upon affirmative action rather than merit. When a white guy fails to perform, the odds are that his failure won’t be attributed to– or reflect on others of– his sex or race.

A white guy who is loud or obnoxious in public is just an obnoxious white guy–not a representative of “those people.”

White males are unlikely to be followed in stores by clerks who suspect they’ll pocket merchandise,  and far less likely to be stopped and frisked by police. There’s a good list of similar examples here.

People who deny the existence of privilege tend to ignore such systemic attitudes, and to argue from individual experience: I didn’t have it so easy, I was poor, I’ve been mistreated, I overcame obstacles in my life. Such arguments entirely miss the point.

Are there women and African-Americans and members of other minority groups who are demonstrably better-off than many white males? Of course. Are there many white men who have overcome crushing adversity? Of course. But even they benefit from social privilege, whether they recognize that fact or not.

There are also a whole lot of angry white guys who refuse to recognize or acknowledge the multiple ways in which social attitudes advantage them, who cling to and defend the status quo and who resent any and all challenges to the “traditions” that protect their privileged status.

Just turn your TV to Fox, or listen to talk radio if you don’t believe me.

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