So, I've been dutifully reading all the news and opinion pieces on the vote by the Senate in Wisconsin to strip collective bargaining rights of workers, and I'm left with more questions than answers.
One side says that collective bargaining rights is a civil right. Really? Voters put these Republicans in place, whether we like it or not, and they are frustrated that state workers aren't listening to them. The other side said that teachers will get paid better and education will improve, if the unions are gone. Yeah, no evidence on that one. And it's quite a leap to think that teachers that are hurt and angry are going to go into the classroom with increased vigor next week.
Help. I need some middle ground. Where can I find it?
Apt. 11d 
That’s basically my take on the situation. I’m happy to let another state have people beat each other up about this so we can kind of get an idea of what might happen locally.
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Also, I really enjoy how everybody flips sides on the procedural issue (e.g. compare to the U.S. Senate healthcare filibuster) without a Charlie Sheen level of self-awareness.
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should be “with a Charlie Sheen level of self-awareness”
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I don’t know what to think anymore.
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Voters (and those who bothered to vote in Wisconsin appear to have been older and more conservative than, say, those who voted in 2008) may have wanted state workers’ benefits and pensions reduced, but it’s not at all clear that even those who voted for Walker and other Republicans were in favor of stripping collective bargaining rights. Looking for middle ground is not useful when one side is trying to shove the middle so far to the right.
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Looking for middle ground is not useful when one side is trying to shove the middle so far to the right.
If they shoved it too far, they lose the next election. Running away to prevent a quorum is a bit underhanded, but physically trying to block a legislature from meeting is a whole different thing.
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On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge ‘cross the state line!
Run the senate out the state,
A quorum, not this time.
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on ev’n if lame
A! F! S! C! M! E!
We’ll win this game.
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This is very good:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/261815/what-s-next-wisconsin-josh-barro
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It’s pretty obvious to me what to think. I think living in NJ, which you admit is a pretty f-d-up state, has made the glaring truth less obvious to you.
Unions protect labor. They give labor bargaining power. They help to create the middle class in this country.
You’ll never hear me say any institution is perfect. Everything can be reformed. Should things change about unions? Um, yes, of course. All institutions should adapt and change and become better at doing what they need to do.
But what Walker is trying to do is serve his corporate overlords, as most politicians do, and weaken or eliminate unions. That is a bad, evil thing. Yes, evil. I’m not apologizing for saying it. If you think eliminating these unions will lead to a better society, you are *dreaming*.
Listen, I don’t belong to a union. None of my family members currently do, either, though my BIL is retired NYPD and may technically still be a member. Though my dad was at one point a union rep, it was a brief tenure, and we didn’t sit around the dinner table being indoctrinated into union support. If you’d asked me when I was 16 if my dad was a union member, I probably would have said no because I had no idea.
It’s just crystal clear to me that unions and the right to collectively bargain are essentially positive things in this society.
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keep it coming, guys. Really interested in your opinions.
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If Wendy could set that to a song, I might be more convinced. Otherwise, I’m going to continue thinking public sector unions are about as good for the middle class as the AIG-counter party bailout.
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MH, I think unions are good because they give labor the power to bargain for a large number of middle class jobs with stable incomes, which mean people will buy houses and settle in communities.
And oops, I am sorry. Another BIL is a teacher, so he is a member of a union. (I don’t want to misinform anyone of my relationships to unions.)
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It may be that the only hope the US has to hold on to current jobs and to get new jobs is through a recalibration (i.e. collapse) of wage levels to match the actual international market value of our labor. I suspect that that’s part of what’s happening right now during our lingering 9+% unemployment–expensive old workers being replaced with new, cheaper workers. Another way to erode wages while simultaneously decreasing the burden of mortgages is via inflation. The resulting wage structure may wind up being a lot flatter than previously, which some of us are theoretically in favor of, but may not enjoy when it actually happens.
A combination of inflation and lower wages is an unpleasant prospect, but there are a couple of pieces of good news. Housing has been edging down for years now and continues to do so, so it should be possible to buy the same house with a relatively smaller salary, just as inflation will make it easier for wage-earners to pay off a mortgage. College and medical are the wild cards.
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That not a song. Nor does it really get at the issue of public sector unions.
I just did my taxes, which means I am once again reminded that I pay more in local taxes (property plus wage*) than I do for my mortgage. It is entirely possible for public sector unions to kill a city by pricing out the middle class.
*That is, setting aside the other local taxes (parking, liquor, part of the sales tax) that I don’t need to calculate to do my return.
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Collective bargaining is a civil right: “[a] basic right of . . . people to form free trade unions and to strike. ”
It is a collective freedom, up there with the right to collectively assemble, protest, and speak.
Closed shops, compelling people to join a union, how dues are paid, well those things can be negotiated, and to the extent to which those things are being negotiated is not a civil rights issue. But the right to work collectively to protect your rights is a civil right.
I’d be more sympathetic to an argument for a middle ground, not on the right to collectively bargain, which is a civil right, but on the details of how that will be done if Wisconsin was stripping requirements for all taxpayer-paid personnel (i.e. fire & police) and not a subset. Then, the enterprise wouldn’t look like the naked power grab to squelch the power of one segment of society (one in favor of more regulation, stronger labor laws, more social network privileges, stronger government). The exclusion of police & fire workers, who are more conservative, but feed just as strongly from the public purse exposes the operation as being about power and not money.
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BJ, I’ve never heard of collective bargaining outside of a closed shop. Given the tendency of people to be free riders, I don’t see how you have one without the other.
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Look what’s happening in PA this week. There seems to be a belief that public colleges will actually be cheaper if they receive less state funding. And Corbett said he was for college accessibility and affordability, right before he cut 50% of the state appropriations for the 14 state system schools.
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Those schools suck. The real issue is the three state-related ones.
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Four. There are four state-related schools. I keep thinking Temple is private.
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it’s entirely possible to have a union and collective bargaining without a closed shop. At least two university unions (one for faculty and one for TAs) that I know of operate on that model, and yes, free riders exist and are annoying.
I agree that being in NJ provides one distinct angle on public sector unions. Other places are not screwed up in the same way and don’t suffer from the overabundance of local government that you’ve described before, Laura.
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it’s entirely possible to have a union and collective bargaining without a closed shop.
I suppose you can do it, but I’m fairly certain that proposing it would get you booed out of a Madison protest. Passing open-shop laws is seen as union busting.
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The UW-Madison TA union, which has been extremely prominent in the protests, is an open shop. (And I just checked this, it wasn’t the TA union I referred to earlier.)
http://taa-madison.org/home/faq/#how
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Jen, I looked at the web site and that is a closed shop. You can not join the union, but join or not you are part of the collective bargaining process and you are required to pay dues. If you don’t join, you can get back the portion of your dues used for political purposes, but you have to file to get it back and if you don’t file, the union keeps the money. All unions have to allow you that, per the Supreme Court (Communications Workers of America v. Beck).
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Well, they’ve passed the bill and he’ll sign it tonight most likely.
I don’t really stand in the middle ground on the policy issues (as my posting indicates) but I might on the broader issue. Unions are there to protect the interests of their members, not to improve schools — that is the job of school boards, state superintendents and district leadership teams. Is there any real sign that such people have a handle on how to do it — not just what practices would constitute improvement but actually getting people to adopt them. You simply cannot do this by passing laws/creating incentives because people can’t just suddenly start doing what they don’t know and haven’t been shown how to do. And you cannot get the people who you need to adopt new practices to do so when you are simultaneously telling them they are hopeless (which is how teachers interpret the attacks on the unions, and how anyone interprets attacks on their unions). Now, of course, unions will protect teachers against incompetent managers — that is their job. IN my experience unions are much less inclined to defend teachers — at least bad teachers — against competent managers. Unions will not make the schools better, it is just not their job. But they will not stand in the way of changes in professional development and instructional practices if they have reason to believe that the people trying to introduce them are trustworthy. Often, maybe most often, in the US unions and the teachers they represent have very little reason to believe that (even when it is true). Attacking unions nearly always (not always) is a ruse to let crappy management off the hook (we’ve mentioned the car industry in Britain in the 70s, which is a great example of this).
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My take, in one long sentence and one short sentence: I recognize that there really ought to be a better way to deal with the systemic problems (particularly income inequality) which cause much of the struggle that characterize working class life than unions, particularly public employee unions, but I don’t see how the good they do, particularly when they are so thoroughly woven into the everyday life and history and public culture of a particular place like Wisconsin, could be possibly outweighed by their flaws. So I support them, and oppose Walker.
My take, in a much longer and overly philosophical format, here.
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I have to admit, my main problem is when is it tyranny by the majority, and when is it tyranny by a vocal minority? Leaving aside the fact that politicians always over-assume mandates.
The whole situation’s making me think too much about the weaknesses in democracy and I’m not really happy about that.
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Unions will not make the schools better, it is just not their job.
You’re too British to do PR.
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“One side thinks collective bargaining is a civil right” – I have to say that is NOT necessarily the case for a majority of us out there protesting.
I actually agree with Walker on a few things. I think there are important bargaining reforms that he could have implemented (especially with the seniority rules for teachers unions and the overtime rules for some public sector unions.) I think that his proposal in which public sector employees pay more of their health care costs is a valid one.
But I’ve been out protesting almost every day. Why? Because of the following provisions in the overall budget proposal (beyond the budget repair bill:)
1) changes to the earned income credit that will affect many of the working poor in our state
2) changes to the Badgercare program that will take health insurance away from poor children
3) $900 Million taken away from state aid to schools
Also, I’m really angry about the WAY he did this. In Wisconsin, the Governor is a very powerful figure. He has the broadest veto power of almost any Gov. in the nation. (partial veto over line-item veto.) Our budget doesn’t start until July. He did NOT need to ram this through in 5 days, or pass it in middle-of-the-night or 2-hours-notice votes.
Yes, he won the election. But there is a big difference between implementing your policies and trying to completely obliterate the other side.
The people out protesting are NOT the left-wing fringe. There are many of us in the middle.
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Question for the Wisc natives — If Walker had gone for a middle ground approach and had pushed simply for reforming seniority rules and getting public employees to kick in more for their health care costs, would there still be protests? What are your friends and neighbors saying? I’ve seen some polls that show that the public is now slightly in favor of the unions over Walker.
Is this the downfall or the resurgence of the unions?
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Oh, there’s no question, without the collective bargaining portion of the bill, he would have almost exactly the budget repair bill he wanted in place by now (maybe amended to make it better, though he seems to find it inconceivable that any other elected official could make good advisory input). Even as it is the upsurge against him took everybody — everybody — by complete surprise. And Kristen is right — not only is it the case that the left wing fringe would find it hard to fill a meeting room in that building let alone the entire building with many 10s of thousands outside — but the crowds are just full of real people. I’ve been in bigger protests (god knows, I’ve organised bigger protests) but almost nobody there has been in a protest that size, none of the organisers has organised a protest that size and the vast majority of protesters have NEVER BEEN ON A PROTEST before. (Isn’t that true of you, Kristen?).
Now, as for your last question: god knows. We’ll find out over the coming year. If Prosser (a supreme court justice who a month ago was thought safe as houses) goes down next month (as I think he will) that will be an indication. If the recalls of the Senators come through that will be another. If (and I think this is very unlikely, though they already have more than 25% of the signatures needed, which’ll get to 50% in a week, but then there is a lot of hard slog needed) they get enough signatures to recall Walker, and if Feingold can be made to understand what his duty is, then my answer is resurgence. But I didn’t get where I am today being an optimist.
Thanks MH — that made me laugh. So you all know, I take discussions here, more than anywhere else, to be discussions among reasonable and decent people who often disagree, and almost always learn something from people I disagree with here (much rarer on CT, when it comes to political disagreement!). Sorry to respond to such a witty quip with a serious comment…
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Harry, this is my first protest since moving to Wisconsin 15 years ago. (I grew up in the DC area and one is almost obligated to go to protests when one lives there.) For most of my friends, it is indeed their first protest. I have Republican/Libertarian friends who went out too!
Laura, I don’t think I would have protested if Walker had shown some willingness to compromise. One of the Republican Senators put together a more reasonable compromise bill. If Walker had accepted that, I think he could have avoided this level of discontent.
I don’t see a resurgence of the unions coming, but I do see a more educated & energized electorate who realize that some of the dire “cut spending/cut taxes at all costs” rhetoric of the Republican Govs might have significant consequences on the level of public services our states/cities are able to provide. I think that is a worthwhile debate to have.
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Let me contrast the situation in Providence. Angel Tavares (the Mayor) fired all the teachers. ALL the teachers. It sucks. But here’s my feeling. I trust Tavares. I don’t think he wants to bust the unions. I don’t think he wants to essentially gut public programs that do good for poor people. He did what he had to do in a bad sitation that he inherited from a crook who now represents the people of RI (Cicilline). Angel Tavares doesn’t take phone calls from David Koch. Angel Tavares isn’t trying to change laws he didn’t campaign on. He’s using the same rules the unions decided on, which shows as much respect as he can in this situation.
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This is very dificult to deal with at the level of generalizations. Even in tiny Rhode Island, the situation varies markedly from town/city to town/city. I live in a town where the local affiliate of NEA had agreed to pay a reasonable portion of their health benefits years ago. The town next door — no such agreement and teachers paid 0%. It led to strikes, firings, accusations, yelling, protests, court cases, etc. Last year, when fiscal times were tough, our local teacher’s union agreed to 0% COLA even though their contract entitled them to 2%. It was all done through bargaining and discussion with good intentions and good leadership on both sides. Some nearby towns and cities can’t seem to do that. I’m not sure of the cause for this wide variation other than good individuals running both local government and the local union and willingness to talk and bargain in good faith and to use fact-based arguments and reason.
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Thanks Kristen, I’d probably have protested regardless, but I agree his utter intransigence did a lot to animate people. I agree, really, about resurgence of unions — I meant to say that there might be a resurgence of a very broad left electorate, which can make an impact. I will also say that the Democrats played an extraordinary (from my point of view) role: they stayed absolutely solid, and maintained a publicly reasonable stance, which is part of what explains the radical shift in the opinion polls (Walker’s public persona — he looks like he’s on a very powerful mood-stabilizing drug, and it is not a very appealing mood — must have something to do with it too.)
I make a variant of DWs point often — there are TWO parties in contract negotiations, one of them with a duty to advance the medium term interests of its member, the other with a duty to do the most they can to improve the quality of learning (of all kinds) that happens in schools. When teachers see the other party fulfilling that part of their duty, they are much more inclined to demand transigence (is that a word?) from their union. My dad spent 20 years of his career as Superintendent of 2 different districts (one about the size of Chicago) and he never had any trouble firing teachers that he believed needed firing. Never. Because teachers throughout the districts (and the unions that represented them) knew that he was doing the best he could to fulfill the instructional part of his duty (and it was a pretty good best). He is still the (now ex-) superintendent most respected by teachers (and their unions) in England, and has probably fired more teachers than any other English person alive. (And one aspect of this is that he never talked publicly about it, because if you actually want to be able to do it, not in the mass way of Rhode Island, but because individuals don’t meet the level of competence the job requires) you do it, and don’t talk about it.
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“Angel Tavares isn’t trying to change laws he didn’t campaign on.”
What are we supposed to think about Obama attacking HRC for a mandate (obligation to buy insurance) in her health plan during the primary campaign, then signing a version of Obamacare with a mandate after becoming president? That was a pretty big bait-and-switch, right there. There’s nothing uniquely horrible about a politician not having a fully-worked out plan as a candidate–you learn more as you go along. (In Obama’s case, the mandate is the only thing that will allow Obamacare to function at all–take away the mandate, and it collapses.)
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/20/barack-obama/obama-flip-flops-requiring-people-buy-health-care/
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Amy, I supported HRC in the primaries, and I am happy to see Obama see reason. 🙂
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The mandate was the only part of the thing that made sense to me. I’m hoping Ralph Nader runs in 2012:
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Isn’t the Obama point that the mandate shouldn’t be the starting point of the argument? (Not endorsing that — the whole thing makes much more sense to me than to MH, but without the mandate it would make much less sense).
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I was speaking flippantly. I like health insurance reform more than I would like health care reform. You need to make it so that the non-group insurance market has reasonable risk pooling and that requires a mandate.
I thought Obama’s point on the mandate was the usual focus-group tested campaign blather. You are either for a mandate or for nationalization of health insurance or for the current system. Obama pretended there was another option.
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Well, and I think a lot of people who supported Obama thought he’d support a “public option” (what we on the left prefer to call the “nationalization of health insurance.”
(and, a comment. Say “obamacare” and I’ll tune out on anything else you say, including simply not reading the comment.)
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I don’t feel as confident about a resurgence of folks realizing the importance of government. I think the protests *are* about that — ordinary folk, and not just left-wingers seeing that the government does important things that effect our daily lives and those things are valuable.
But, I think that the cuts are being targeted at the powerless, the children and the poor. Our Democratic governor (and CA’s) are cutting the equivalents of “Badgercare” in our states. Walker may have done it in a way that made people mad, with glee, rather than with a heavy heart like Gregoire & Brown, but they’re doing the same thing. So, no protests here. And, there are no protests because for most of us it won’t matter, because we’re not poor or disabled or ill.
The cuts to the children do have advocates in their parents, but they’ve been surprisingly inadequate at supporting their children’s interests. I suspect that’s at least partially because parents are hoping to balance that budget on the teachers’ backs. Or, they’re fantasizing that the money will come from central administration, a magical budget that doesn’t effect the children.
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Lots of people think there is a “public option” distinct from nationalization. That bit of gray area was part of how Obama beat Clinton.
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They lose the next election. Jogging away to prevent a quorum is a bit underhanded, but physically trying to block a legislature from meeting is a whole different thing.
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“(and, a comment. Say “obamacare” and I’ll tune out on anything else you say, including simply not reading the comment.)”
What’s your shorthand for it, then? Do you really want to say “Obama’s health care reform plan” every single time?
Speaking of pet peeves, one of mine is when people say “health care reform” (as in, so-and-so is against health care reform) when what they really mean is a particular version of health care reform, one of an infinite number of possible reform plans. Even worse is using “health care” as the same sort of shorthand, so that if you oppose a particular plan, you are against “health care”. The term “Obamacare” is not anywhere near as misleading or tendentious.
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If the Dems can’t even persuade the CAPTCHA sweatshop workers, Walker has won big.
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I just saw this over at Instapundit. Brian Leiter, the 800-pound gorilla of philosophy department rating, is demonstrating the new civility:
“Meanwhile, the Republican criminals in Wisconsin forced through their attack on workers’ rights, leading to an uproar in Madison. (Thanks to Steve Nadler for the link.) At some point these acts of brazen viciousness are going to lead to a renewed philosophical interest in the question of when acts of political violence are morally justified.”
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/pennsylvania-universities-also-facing-massive-cuts-from-republican-governor.html
This remark was in the context of PA public university budget cuts. Somebody needs to listen to Obama’s Tucson speech again. Also, in MH’s phrase, it takes a Sheen-like lack of self-awareness not to realize that it’s not going to fly to threaten violence against the people that you want to give you more money.
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Brian Leiter doesn’t speak for public faculty in PA, and his words cannot be held against them.
Again, I fail to see how the privatization of the public schools in PA–Penn State, Temple, Pitt and Lincoln are already essentially private, only receiving funds to subsidize instate students–will make college less expensive for Pennsylvanians. Private universities are more expensive than public ones. The average student at my institution has parents with an annual income of 35,000 per year. They can’t afford even Penn State. Goodbye upward mobility.
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What’s your shorthand for it, then? Do you really want to say “Obama’s health care reform plan” every single time?
I say “ACA,” Amy–or, if I must, “the Affordable Care Act.” Because that is, you know, it’s name.
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We don’t have any excess money. No dorms built since the 60s. When they renovated our building (due to health concerns)instead of getting new furniture, we had to scramble to find decades old chairs from old crumbling buildings around campus. They didn’t even remove the blackboards because they are considered furnishings and the state wouldn’t pay for that. No whiteboards, no smartboards, like my kids in elementary school have.
But oh when the first college students in the family graduate come May.
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At my children’s rich suburban school, which I have no complaints about, they are going to deal with budget cuts by getting rid of the janitors. Yes, they’re getting rid of middle school latin and a few other things, but come on. We are not NJersey. We have low real estate taxes, a 2% state income tax. We could easily pay an earned income tax as many areas do, and not outsource the janitors.
You can bet the new janitors will have minimal or no benefits and be paid nothing. Way for the extremely rich, low taxed people in my community to say they care nothing, NOTHING, for the people who pick up after them.
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“I say “ACA,” Amy–or, if I must, “the Affordable Care Act.” Because that is, you know, it’s name.”
How many ordinary people understand you when you describe it that way? Because although I’ve seen “ACA” a few times around the internet, this is actually the first time that I understood what ACA was.
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Again, I fail to see how the privatization of the public schools in PA–Penn State, Temple, Pitt and Lincoln are already essentially private, only receiving funds to subsidize instate students–will make college less expensive for Pennsylvanians.
It will probably make college cheaper for Pennsylvanians, but not for Pennsylvania students and the cuts will probably get whittled down. I don’t know how this will turn out in the end, but many of the small schools and the branch campuses of the big ones don’t seem to have any reason for existing outside of legislative politics.
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At the school I taught in in the Russian Far East, the children were in charge of cleaning the classroom after school(a pretty daunting task, given the tendency of some kids to surreptitiously shell and eat sunflower seeds). The homeroom teacher organized this, and the kids took turns being on duty. There were school cleaning ladies, but they mainly just mopped the hallways. I think the same is true of some places like Japan.
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In the Russian Far East, bigger kids also were also expected to whitewash the school, among other basic maintenance tasks. The homeroom teacher collected money from parents for paint for the floors, but I forget if the kids themselves painted. In the classrooms, the duty kids also cleaned desk tops and watered plants.
Something similar even applied at the university level in the RFE.
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That would be a fine lesson for my children. Better than both being star of the week and also having an in-class birthday each year. One whole week plus another separate whole day in school devoted to them, with treats expected.
But I kind of doubt that the parents around here would go for their children scrubbing school floors.
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“But I kind of doubt that the parents around here would go for their children scrubbing school floors.”
Now that I think of it, a Scooba or something similar might be helpful, too. They used to require a proprietary cleaning solution, but you can now also use either water or water and vinegar. It’s still kind of expensive, though ($400 or $500).
http://store.irobot.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=3334444
Lawn mowing is also on the way to being automated.
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“But I kind of doubt that the parents around here would go for their children scrubbing school floors.”
Yeah, I wouldn’t go for that. If I wanted to teach them that lesson, I’d have them scrub our floors.
In schools in a remote 3rd world village, the kids all had to ride on bicycle treadmills to generate electricity for the lights.
(OK, not really. Turns out that was a UC campus, and that, unfortunately, you generate very little electricity that way. But probably just as relevant as thinking about ways of reducing cleaning costs by putting the children to work in an American suburban classroom).
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“But probably just as relevant as thinking about ways of reducing cleaning costs by putting the children to work in an American suburban classroom).”
Why not? Are they too good to clean up after themselves?
Russia can be 3rd worldish (although it’s technically 2nd world, and they have done some pretty neat stuff with rockets and eye surgery and math research), but Japan is a very developed 1st world country, and they do it there, too. Here’s a link:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20011130ag.html
“It’s a little hard for non-Japanese to grasp why kids should be cleaning at school. With all the concern about falling academic achievement, shouldn’t they be using that time for learning?
“But students are learning during o-soji, Japanese parents and educators will tell you. They are learning to respect their surroundings. They are learning that it’s better not to make a mess if you are the one who has to clean it up.
“Having watched the students at our school clean, I’m a little skeptical. I don’t think many kids are taking those lessons to heart. And while I wish I could report an improvement in my own children’s habits since they started attending Japanese school, they are as messy as ever.”
I’d add that from my observations in Russia, the early middle schoolers are conscientious little critters, while high school boys are much less so.
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In Northern Manchuria, the students also clean up after themselves. The teachers have no more than a middle school education, there is one computer in the whole school district, the classes have a black square painted on the wall instead of a black board, and the students sit on very narrow wooden benches. There is no heat, so everyone must wear multiple layers and gloves, no indoor plumbing, and no running water. If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for American children?
I mean, geeze, why don’t Americans accept that if they’re not one of the wealthy elites, they deserve to live a 2nd world lifestyle?
The biggest problem with firing janitors and then outsourcing to a private company is not that students and teachers work in a filthier environment. It’s that an already low-paying, low benefit job suddenly becomes more so, and a bunch of people get laid off and either become unemployed and/or have to do their same jobs (usually with more work) for less money. I guess not everyone feels pangs of guilt to realize the people who clean up after their children have to live in their car/work full time and are on foodstamps, etc.
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I actually like the Scooba option best, myself, but the technology may not be durable enough yet for heavy use. The thing is, if the robot technology improves as I fully expect it to do, a lot of those janitorial positions are going to disappear anyway, just as a lot of auto assembly, lumber mill, and logging jobs have.
In any case, I think nearly all of us are going to be a lot poorer than we are now in 5 years (I’m hoping the more distant future will be sunnier). I think it’s prudent to expect that the standard of living here and abroad will gradually converge. As long as there is a substantial wage difference between the US and competing workforces that is unjustified by greater US productivity, both blue and white collar jobs will continue to leak overseas. It’s a good idea for all of us to think seriously about whether a robot or a cheaper foreigner could do our job just as well. As the standard of living here and abroad converges, the US private sector will be progressively less and less able to carry its current level of public sector obligations.
Earlier in the recession, there was a lot of talk about public works jobs and the CCC and the WPA, etc. That never really materialized. Part of the reason for that is that government workers are so gosh darn expensive now that it was never very reasonable to expect that that government jobs could soak up more than a very small number of the unemployed. Is it so very wrong to suggest that what we need right now is twice as many cheap jobs, rather than half as many expensive jobs?
Back in 2009 when unemployment was 9.7%, Larry Summers said that “The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” and that it “will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27052.html
I was looking around, and the current non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 9.5%, while the adjusted rate is 8.9% (a nice drop).
However, a year ago, Joseph Stiglitz (who would have preferred a bigger stimulus) said last year that it could take until 2015 for unemployment to return to normal in the US.
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20100518/FREE/100519888
Think about all of the people you know that have been out of work for 2-3 years, and think about what it means to lose half a decade of your life to unemployment. This is serious and it is going to last much longer than a lot of people expect.
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The problem with paying for the public sector can not be fixed by having children clean up after themselves (although it’s a nice thing to teach). The problem with the public sector is the overall costs of salaries and benefits. Healthcare costs are soaring and the states cannot pay for them. Laying off janitors (or getting rid of collective bargaining)is a minor and temporary fix that will not fix the problem in the long term and hardly has effect in the short term (and, as B.I. notes, diminishes the social safety of those to whom the job is outsourced)
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Amy P–
You’re right, in that Americans are global resource hogs, and that lifestyle is no longer sustainable. In that sense, I think Americans do need to accept that we will have to create a smaller carbon footprint, and the days of massive consumption and waste should probably be behind us. What people are (or if not, should be) upset about is the massive and growing inequality in our country. Measured by gini coefficient, our inequality index is 40.8, tied with Ghana and Turkmenistan (well below all other industrialized countries except for Singapore and Hong Kong). Conventional scholarship holds that once the gini coefficient passes 45, massive violent social unrest breaks out. R/P 10% is 15.3, slightly more equitable than the Ivory Cost and slightly less equitable than Nepal. When it comes to inequality, we are doing worse than a lot of the third world. Other industrialized countries have made the decision to provide a minimal quality of life for all of its inhabitants and seem to be able to do so, even though they face the same problems of globalization the US has.
White blue collar Americans shouldn’t have to be asking why a Chinese or Indian person shouldn’t be doing their job for $3 an hour, but rather why their Australian or Danish counterparts don’t have to be facing the same dilemma. Likewise, I don’t see why 85% of Americans should settle for being low paid flexible workers with few benefits living with the realization that any medical crisis will bankrupt them. I also don’t understand why we should be happy about the outsourcing of basic and essential communal social goods and services to corporations. As bureaucratic as government can be, I fail to see how a private corporation, whose fundamental motivation is profit, can ever provide a service more efficiently than an organization who provides the same service with no expectation of profit.
The problem is not that America is not wealthy. We have a massive store of wealth. The problem is that it is concentrated in the hands of a few, and we as a society seem no longer committed to the effort and expense of maintaing a first world democracy.
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As bureaucratic as government can be, I fail to see how a private corporation, whose fundamental motivation is profit, can ever provide a service more efficiently than an organization who provides the same service with no expectation of profit.
They expect to profit in the public sector. Just not as straight forwardly.
Right now, we’ve got a state senator (and sister of a current PA Supreme Court justice) who just got a mistrial in her trial for using state money to pay for her reelection expenses. She got the mistrial because some of her evidence was forged, badly. The prosecutor didn’t notice until after the jury went out, meaning some say she can’t be tried again. The DA is the son of a retired Supreme Court justice and the brother of one of the owners of the private juvie jail that had earlier (but not lately, one hopes) paid two judges well over a million dollars to keep the jail full of children. His father is now a “consultant” for the casino. At least they are from different parties and hate each other, or nobody would know half of this.
In other words, local government in the big cities (and the ones that used to be big) is a mix of feudalism, racketeering, and actual governing.
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“White blue collar Americans shouldn’t have to be asking why a Chinese or Indian person shouldn’t be doing their job for $3 an hour, but rather why their Australian or Danish counterparts don’t have to be facing the same dilemma.”
When I go to IKEA, just about everything is manufactured outside of Sweden.
“As bureaucratic as government can be, I fail to see how a private corporation, whose fundamental motivation is profit, can ever provide a service more efficiently than an organization who provides the same service with no expectation of profit.”
Where to begin…Well, as Liza Minelli and Joel Grey sing in Cabaret, money makes the world go round. It’s the carrot that keeps the donkeys pulling the cart.
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MH–that may be the case, but it’s not an inherent feature of government per se. One also finds criminality and corruption in the private sector. In fact, half of the corruption you mention (e.g. the privately owned juvie jail), is actually the result of government outsourcing of services to their cronies in much more lucrative private businesses. The outsourcing of formerly public services to private contractors is one of the right’s main modus operandi. Nepotism and favoritism is as common if not more so in the private sector, as we’ve seen recently with private defense contractors in Iraq.
Amy P-
Ok. Swedes don’t make their cheap furniture they sell in the rest of the world. I don’t see how that in any way addresses the point that Swedes have both a flatter wage structure, lower unemployment, and much less poverty. They also perform better than the US in almost any measure of quality of life–happiness index, health of population, standardized educational tests, etc. They also have one of the strongest union systems in the world. All this is also true of almost any other industrialized country in the world, and even some non-developed countries. If the US wants to be Nigeria writ large, fine. If we want to be a country that can provide its average citizen (not just its top 10%) with a comfortable standard of living, we’re heading in the wrong direction.
Finally, show me evidence that the government providing essential services–education, road/sewage maintenance, police, fire fighters, healthcare, etc. is less beneficial and less cost effective than privatization. The statistics on, say, healthcare spending shows the US spends more per person than other industrialized countries, we just do it less efficiently. By definition, a well-run non-profit has more resources to devote to providing the same service than a for-profit, because they do not have to divert funds to, well, earning a profit. I agree that complete elimination of the free market or monetary transactions is not plausible nor necessarily desirable. I just don’t see how eliminating all public infrastructure leads to anything good, and empirically, the evidence supports this. If you provided anything beyond your personal IKEA shopping experiences and Cabaret lyrics, it would be easier take your argument more seriously.
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Measured by gini coefficient, our inequality index is 40.8, tied with Ghana and Turkmenistan (well below all other industrialized countries except for Singapore and Hong Kong). Conventional scholarship holds that once the gini coefficient passes 45, massive violent social unrest breaks out. R/P 10% is 15.3, slightly more equitable than the Ivory Cost and slightly less equitable than Nepal. When it comes to inequality, we are doing worse than a lot of the third world. Other industrialized countries have made the decision to provide a minimal quality of life for all of its inhabitants and seem to be able to do so, even though they face the same problems of globalization the US has.
I wonder why massive social unrest hasn’t broken out here? It’s almost as if the Gini coefficient is merely one particular way for collapsing a full income distribution to a scalar, is completely unrelated to whether there’s a “minimal quality of life for all of its inhabitants” (in fact, scaling away those issues is considered the Gini’s coefficient’s benefits!), and isn’t a measure for proving why everything we dislike about a particular county is morally wrong because Science Said So.
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“I just don’t see how eliminating all public infrastructure leads to anything good, and empirically, the evidence supports this.”
I didn’t realize that was even on the table.
The funny thing is, your argument that there’s no benefit from the profit motive is an argument for totally abolishing the for-profit sector. And you really did say basically that right here:
“As bureaucratic as government can be, I fail to see how a private corporation, whose fundamental motivation is profit, can ever provide a service more efficiently than an organization who provides the same service with no expectation of profit.”
That is an argument for nationalizing everything from hospitals to hot dog stands. If total nationalization isn’t a good idea, why not? The answer is simple–the profit motive is crucial to a functioning economy. Every economy that is tightly state-controlled (the Soviet Union, etc.) has a black market to provide basic goods if it is going to function at all.
With regard to services provided by profit or non-profit entities, I think you are forgetting that there are human beings inside both that have very similar needs. Individually, we are all for-profit. We all need food, shelter, clothes, etc. You go to work, you get a check, profit! There’s no magical distinction between wages and business profit.
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In fact, half of the corruption you mention (e.g. the privately owned juvie jail), is actually the result of government outsourcing of services to their cronies in much more lucrative private businesses.
Yes, I know. The Democrats managed to persuade me to be against that type of privatization by taking bribes to imprison children. (I don’t know the party of those offering the bribes, but the judges taking them is the worst part.) Which is why I started this agreeing with the “plague on both their houses.”
P.S.: The head judge who took the bribes is suing to get his pension. He’ll very likely win.
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Amy P-
This is what I wrote: “I also don’t understand why we should be happy about the outsourcing of basic and essential communal social goods and services to corporations. As bureaucratic as government can be, I fail to see how a private corporation, whose fundamental motivation is profit, can ever provide a service more efficiently than an organization who provides the same service with no expectation of profit.”
If you want to quote me out of context, do not expect me to consider your argument in good faith. If you don’t think we should privatize “essential communal goods and services,” then you are actually agreeing with what I wrote.
MH: I agree that government corruption can be a big problem, I just don’t think it’s an issue that is connected to or can be solved by privatization. In fact, once you allow the opportunity for a public official to make lots of money by engaging in private/public deals, outsourcing to contractors, etc., the opportunities and pervasiveness of corruption seems to increase.
It would be interesting if we looked at government corruption indexes from around the world. My guess is that in places where there less social inequality, a representative government structure, and a strong social welfare state, corruption is lower. Where inequality is great and government as an institution is weak, and individual power is great, I suspect corruption is much greater. I doubt any would disagree (except maybe Amy P and Siobhan) that on the whole, corruption is a bigger problem in the third world than in Industrialized countries, and they have in general weak government institutions, corporations have a much more powerful say, and leaders have much more individual control. If we consider what the governor of Michigan has just done, (appointed himself powers to unilaterally dissolve local governments and appoint corporations to take over towns), I would be far more worried about corruption and accountability in that sort of circumstance than in one where the corrupt were people who could be elected out of office, even though in practice it can be difficult and doesn’t always happen like it should, as in your case.
Siobhan: Living in the South Side of Chicago, “minimal quality of life” here approaches in many ways third world standards. Also, I would say Wisconsin may be the beginning of “massive social unrest,” but we’ll have to see how it plays out.
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In fact, once you allow the opportunity for a public official to make lots of money by engaging in private/public deals, outsourcing to contractors, etc., the opportunities and pervasiveness of corruption seems to increase.
Shhh, or somebody will tell the PA Turnpike commission you’ve ratted them out. People in government are worried about the new private/public deals to protect their own jobs, but those types of things are everywhere and have been for well over a century.
The unions are people looking to protect their jobs, which is understandable and commendable if done fairly. But, I really don’t see how helping them helps me anymore than ‘trickle down’ helped me. (Actually, trickle down helped me quite a bit because dad saved thousands, but you know what I mean.)
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“If you don’t think we should privatize “essential communal goods and services,” then you are actually agreeing with what I wrote.”
But what is and is not an essential communal good or service that must be provided by government is highly debatable. For instance, eating is essential and is ideally a communal act, but I don’t think any of us want to eat most of our meals in federally-funded cafeterias, and federal subsidies for food production have created a lot of distortions, both in our diet and in the economy. While I hear that there are some pretty good elite federal cafeterias in DC, the federally-subsidized school lunch program has historically been at best adequate. When you consider all the high quality counter-service restaurants that have appeared in the private sector over the years (Panera’s, Rosa’s Tortilla Factory, Pei Wei, Chipotle, etc.) it’s very hard to make much of a case for the superiority of government management of this “essential” and “communal” good. Even McDonald’s and Chik-fil-a put together a pretty decent salad these days.
I think we probably have large areas of practical agreement, with large philosophical disagreement. I suspect neither of us is particularly charmed by the spectacle of the federal government in bed with large corporations (although our lists of favorite examples probably differs considerably–with probably a lot of overlap on the banking bailout). I like to see the feds as a referee, rather than trying to both referee and score points. If the feds are going to be a respected arbiter between parties, they need to avoid corrupting entanglements and have a bit of humility as to what they can actually accomplish with legislation and regulation. As P.J. O’Rourke once said, if buying and selling are legislated, the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators.
Social inequality seems to be your big issue. I’d point out here that “diverse” and “unequal” are, if you think about it, actually synonyms. The more diverse a group is, the more unequal it is, pretty much by definition. It may be necessary to decide which you like more, diversity or equality. There is good reason to believe that diversity (even under that name) is very bad for communal life, too. Here’s a snippet of an article from a few years back on Putnam’s findings:
“IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
“But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.”
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
I’d also note here that income inequality is what enables female professionals to combine motherhood and high-earning, high-performance occupations. If Siobhan were making $10 an hour, she wouldn’t also be paying a nanny $10 an hour to take care of her kids or a daycare $1,000 a month per kid, at least not for the long term.
I think social equality is swell, but I don’t think you really understand how costly it is, in terms of other things you may value.
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I’ve been to places with much higher social equality, and I liked them very well. What are you worried about giving up?
I agree that the places with social equality were very homogeneous. But if diversity is a stumbling block to kindness and civic engagement, and wanting to give up something of yours to help somebody else, that doesn’t say much for human nature. The only implication of that in my mind is that we need to change what we are.
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I’ve been reading this title as “A plaque on both their houses.” I think whatever MH has is catching.
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“But if diversity is a stumbling block to kindness and civic engagement, and wanting to give up something of yours to help somebody else, that doesn’t say much for human nature. The only implication of that in my mind is that we need to change what we are.”
Or, alternately, if we value kindness and community, we need to become a more homogeneous society.
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I think whatever MH has is catching.
Is there a rule about when you should get checked for strep? Thursday I felt weakish and my throat has been sore since.
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“.. that doesn’t say much for human nature. The only implication of that in my mind is that we need to change what we are..” – LisaSG, I have my doubts. I do not see human nature as malleable, it is what it is – within fairly broad limits, but they are limits. Our best bet is to make our institutional arrangements as carefully as possible for good lives within the envelope of human nature as we find it.
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“Our best bet is to make our institutional arrangements as carefully as possible for good lives within the envelope of human nature as we find it.”
Amen!
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