Rule by ideology is far more dangerous than it was in the 1990s, because this shutdown takes place in extreme economic vulnerability. Like the current shutdown, the current unemployment crisis has no precedent. The great lesson of the past decade was that any employee can be arbitrarily deemed nonessential or unworthy of pay.
In an era when entry-level jobs become unpaid internships and full-time jobs turn into contingency labor, it is easy to imagine the cuts from the sequester becoming permanent. Shutdown furloughs may turn into layoffs, as elected officials, now marketing survival as the new American Dream, will assure us we did fine without them.
The nonessential worker is the archetypal hire. Our worst-case scenarios are simply scenarios.
Socioeconomic Astigmatism
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a War on Poverty. Over the next half century, that war turned into a war on the poor. This war was once disguised as “compassionate conservatism” and debated with words like “responsibility” and “opportunity.”
Compassionate conservatism assumed that we could take care of ourselves so we did not need to take care of each other. It was an attractive concept, simultaneously exalting the successes of America while relieving the individual of responsibility for those whom it failed. Many good people believed in it.
Today the attack on the poor is no longer cloaked in ideology—it is ideology itself. This ideology is not shared by most Americans, but by those seeking to transform the Republican Party into, as former GOP operative Mike Lofgren describes it, “an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.”
These are the people who have decided that poor children should be denied food as a result of elected officials wanting poor people to have health care.
The government shutdown only formalizes the dysfunction that has been hurting ordinary Americans for decades. It is not a political shutdown but a social breakdown. Fixing it requires a reassessment of value—and values.
When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.
—Originally published October 4, 2013
The Men Who Set Themselves on Fire
On October 4, a man poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire in Washington, D.C. He committed suicide in the National Mall, the open-air park surrounded by national museums and monuments, now closed due to the government shutdown.
Witnesses say he had set up a tripod to film his self-immolation. They say that before he killed himself he was yelling about voting rights. The man on fire was black. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key parts of the Voting Rights Act, proclaiming racial discrimination a thing of the past.
Now it is the government that is struck down, paralyzed by vindictive partisanship while its most vulnerable citizens suffer.
As I write this, no one knows who the man was or why he did it. But his act is not unique. He joins a long list of men who have self-immolated since the global financial collapse and subsequent austerity. Around the world, men are setting themselves on fire because they cannot find work.
This is happening in the world’s richest and poorest nations, in its allegedly stable democracies and in its most ruthless dictatorships. The men who do this are young and old, of all races and religions, united only by their joblessness and their despair.
In the U.K., an unemployed forty-eight-year-old man set himself on fire outside a job center after not receiving a needed payment. In Morocco, a group of young law students, belonging to a group called Unemployed Graduates, set themselves on fire after not finding work. In Spain, a man burned himself alive because he did not have enough money for food. In Greece, a fifty-five-year-old man set himself on fire after screaming that he was in debt. In Bulgaria, several unemployed men self-immolated after condemning graft and corruption. In France, over a dozen people—both French nationals and immigrants, from different occupations and social classes—set themselves on fire because they could not find jobs.
This is a partial list. Unemployed men have self-immolated in Germany, Iraq, Jordan, China, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. Many cases receive little media attention.
The week before the man burned himself alive on the National Mall, a man in a business suit tried to set himself on fire in Houston, Texas, after telling passersby that he could not find a job. The case did not make the national news. The government shut down four days later, pushing another 800,000 people out of work.
It’s the Austerity, Stupid
Unemployment is not only the loss of a job. It is the loss of dignity. It is the loss of the present and, over time, the ability to imagine a future. It is hopelessness and shame, an open struggle everyone witnesses but pretends not to see. It is a social and political crisis we tell a man to solve, and blame him when he cannot.
When you are unemployed, your past is dismissed as unworthy. Your future is denied. Self-immolation is making yourself, in the moment, matter.
The most famous recent case of an unemployed man setting himself on fire was Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose actions are said to have spurred the Arab Spring revolutions. When Bouazizi killed himself in December 2010, the youth unemployment rate was 30 percent in Tunisia and 25 percent in Egypt, where uprisings quickly followed.
In Spain, three years later, youth unemployment is 57 percent. In Greece, it is 64 percent. The youth unemployment rate is 23.5 percent for the combined European Union and 16 percent for the United States, a statistic which does not take into account the millions whose jobs do not pay enough to take them out of poverty. The youth unemployment rates of Western nations now mirror or surpass those of the Arab world before the uprisings.
When Bouazizi self-immolated, the case was initially covered as an act of economic desperation. Only after it triggered a mass outcry was it acknowledged as a political statement, a final stand against decades of corruption and autocracy. It is pointless to ask whether the self-immolation of an unemployed man is an economic or political act: the two are inseparable.
The knowledge of their inseparability is in part what inspires these men to act. One can call it austerity or one can call it apathy, but the end result is that states are letting their citizens die—slowly and silently in poverty, or publicly in flame.
As journalist Kevin Drum observes, in every previous recession, government spending rose. In this recession, they cut benefits, food stamps, jobs. They cut and blame us when we bleed.
In authoritarian states ruled by tyrants, in democracies allegedly ruled by law, we find the same result: hardworking people let down by the systems that are supposed to support them. When the most you can ask from your society is that it will spare you, you have no society of which to speak.
The Suffering Silent
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the saying goes. “But it was burned in one.”
Today Rome does not burn—its stocks continue to rise, its wealthy continue to profit. Rome does not burn. Only its victims do.
For every person who sets himself on fire there are millions suffering in silence. For every person who becomes a symbol, there are millions who watch quietly, in shock and resignation, resigned to our shock, shocked by our deference.
Self-immolation has long been an act of protest against corrupt and tyrannical rule: Tibetans against the Chinese, Czechoslovakians against the Soviets. The difference between these acts of protest and the unemployed men on fire is that today we are not sure who is in charge.
The U.S. government, after all, cannot even govern itself. State attempts at improving social welfare are trumped not by public will or political disagreement but by what appears to be a pre-planned, funded attempt by fringe conservatives to shut the government down.
In every country with massive unemployment—which is, incr
easingly, every country—citizens see the loss of a functioning social contract, and the apathy with which that loss is received.
We do not know the identity of the man on fire. We do not know what prompted him to kill himself in open view in the nation’s capital. We know he was a man who died. That should be enough. In every act of agony, that should be enough.
—Originally published October 7, 2013
Charity Is Not a Substitute for Justice
On November 15, thousands of people in San Francisco worked together to make an ailing child’s wish come true. Miles Scott, a five-year-old boy recovering from leukemia, dreamed of becoming “Batkid.” At the behest of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a charity that grants the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses, San Franciscans staged an elaborate series of events for Scott and his family. He rode in the Batmobile, rescued a damsel in distress, and received national press coverage and a personal message from President Barack Obama.
The public effort for Scott shows what a difference kindness and compassion can make for a family in need. But one of the reasons the Batkid outreach was so moving is that it is such a rare occurrence.
In an era where bad luck is mistaken for bad character, the plight of those worse off tends to be ignored or portrayed as a perverse form of retribution. Poverty becomes both a crime and its own punishment, even for children. In many U.S. schools, a child who cannot come up with lunch money is expected to go hungry. In Texas, a twelve-year-old’s lunch was thrown in the trash because he could not come up with the 30 cents to pay for it.
The outreach for Batkid was celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit. But what it demonstrated is how much better society could be if generosity were consistently applied toward all, instead of concentrated into brief celebratory affairs.
“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld,” Saint Augustine once declared. This is painfully clear in San Francisco and its surrounding area, home to some of the highest income inequality in the country.
“San Francisco itself is turning into a private, exclusive club,” noted Anisse Gross in The New Yorker. “The city, long reputed as a haven for provocateurs and cultural innovators, has quickly transformed into a playground for the rich, where tech money sends rental prices soaring as the less fortunate tenants battle it out with the rent board.”
As journalist Alyssa Rosenberg argues, Batkid was supported by the tech community, who saw the event as a way to indulge in their own superhero fantasies. Yet the broader message of the tech community is that most children do not deserve to be saved. Silicon Valley is a region of “masters and servants,” where homelessness has increased 8 percent, as salaries skyrocket. A proposal for Silicon Valley to secede and therefore deny taxpayer money to social programs benefiting low-income residents, including children, was met by many with approval.
Charity as a Substitute
Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty.
The same week that the nation cheered a charitable effort to make one child’s wish come true, the largest employer in the U.S. held a charity drive for some of its own workers. Walmart, whose six heirs to the company fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of Americans, pays its workers salaries so low that many qualify for food stamps.
The costs are then transferred to taxpayers. A report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated that one Walmart Supercenter employing three hundred workers could cost taxpayers at least $904,000 annually.
Yet instead of raising salaries to allow employees to live above the dole, Walmart encourages charity—a common panacea to social plight. Universities employing adjunct professors, who are also paid below poverty wages, have held similar food drives for their employees.
In September, Margaret Mary Vojtko, a Duquesne University professor, who had worked at the school for twenty-five years, died in abject poverty with an annual salary of less than $10,000. Responding to accusations of callousness, Duquesne noted that they had offered Vojtko charity, such as an offer to fix her furnace. A Slate article promising the “real story” of Vojtko argued that she brought her troubles upon herself by refusing Duquesne’s gifts while working with a growing movement of adjuncts attempting to unionize.
In other words, Vojtko refused charity while pursuing justice. This is not a position to condemn.
Fiscal stability that relies on gifts is not stability. It is a guarantee of insecurity: income based not on work but on whim. Capricious generosity is not a replacement for a living wage, nor is it a basis for a functioning society. Charity is no substitute for justice.
Living on a Gamble
In rural Missouri, there is a store called Nick’s Gun and Pawn. Locals can trade their weapons for household items, or vice versa. It is one of many examples of one of the most overlooked stories in the great recession: the explosion of pawnshops and payday loan outlets throughout the U.S. Between 2009 and 2011, the rate of Americans using high-cost nonbank credit soared to 14 percent, and included a rise in population segments once considered economically advantaged, but now unable to afford daily needs.
Pawnshops and payday loans are the flip side of the United States’ turn to charity over justice. Both phenomena speak to a seemingly permanent impermanence: the replacement of a reliable salary for hard work, with high-cost gambles and unpredictable donations.
In much of the U.S., possessions are not things you own. They are disaster protection, what you trade to survive. The consequences are not only material but psychological. When you are constantly gambling, the future comes to look like a bad bet.
Journalist Gillian Tett notes that poorer Americans, living check to check, are “more likely to perceive the future as a chaotic series of short-term cycles.” When people are expected to work unpaid for the promise of work, the advantage goes to those immune from the hustle: the owners over the renters, the salaried over the contingent. Attempts to ensure stability and independence for citizens—such as affordable health care—are decried as government “charity” while corporate charity is proffered as a substitute for a living wage.
“We don’t plan long-term because if we do, we’ll just get our hearts broken,” wrote Linda Walther Tirado, a blogger who described her own struggle with poverty in a much circulated essay. “It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.”
“Taking what you can get” is also the path pursued by corporations and people who prefer cheap acts of charity to long-term investments in justice. It is a path that encourages citizens to depend on arbitrary generosity while decrying stable programs that help people through tough times. It trades in racial stereotypes, portraying the poor as lazy, violent, and “undeserving” of either assistance or the benefit of the doubt.
On November 23, East Saint Louis, an impoverished city with a high rate of gun violence, offered a trade to city residents: bring in your gun and receive a $100 gift certificate at a local grocery store. At 9:00 A.M. a long line had formed of residents with guns in hands. Within ten minutes, $10,000 of grocery store gift cards had been given away.
Some were surprised by the outcome. They should not have been. Ours is an economy of survival. Violence is often the last resort for people out of options. When presented with options, they chose food.
Charity, for the giver, is the trade of cash for a moral fix. As the Make-a-Wish showed, charity can be beautiful. But it is an investment in the present, not the future. If you value the future—if you value a society where people can imagine their future—work for justice.
—Originally published December 6, 2013
The Unaffordable Baby Boomer Dream
On February 12, President Obama declared that his administration was taking steps to address a crisis in American higher education: the skyrocketing cost of tuition coupled with the significant unemployment rate for recent college graduates. He announced the creation of
a College Scorecard that would rate schools based on “simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”
Released online the next day, the College Scorecard drew criticism from education experts. Most noted that it was missing important information on employment rates and income levels for graduates of particular schools. But Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust had a different critique. After stating that the point of a college degree was not a “first job” but “a lifetime of citizenship, opportunity, growth and change,” she recounted her own experience.
She wrote in a letter to The New York Times:
I graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1968, and my first job was working for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. My starting salary was low, but I was inspired by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty to regard public service as an important calling. I went on to graduate school, joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and ultimately became the president of Harvard University. Should Bryn Mawr have been judged based on what I was paid in my first year at HUD?
Faust’s is an inspiring tale—and one beyond the comprehension of most young graduates in America today. “Don’t trust the boomers!” warned Paul Campos in a 2012 article on the misguided advice the elder generation peddles to their underemployed, debt-ridden progeny—including gems like “higher education is always worth the price” and “internships lead to jobs”—and Faust’s rebuke proves him right.
What is most remarkable about Faust’s career is not its culmination in the Harvard presidency, but the system of accessibility and opportunity that allowed her to pursue it. Her life story is a eulogy for an America of the past.
Unpaid Labor
Let’s review what life was like for an American of Faust’s generation. In 1968, when Faust graduated from Bryn Mawr, tuition and board at a four-year private university cost an average of $2,545. As the scion of a wealthy political family, it is doubtful Faust had to worry about affording tuition, but neither did most members of her generation, since the cost of attending college was relatively low. Today, Bryn Mawr costs $53,040 per year—more than the American median household income.
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