One more diagnosis and prescription for liberals' current dire state. By another liberal of course.

Perhaps chest beating Liberal Pundits should as a group be placed in Atrios' Wankers' Hall of Fame. Or perhaps they should be given chains to bloody their chests with.

Two new reports this week served to highlight the central role of the housing market in the U.S. economy and in driving the living standards of Americans. Coming on the same day the Dow reached an all-time high, the housing data is not good.

For the story, see:
"New Reports Highlight Housing Market Woes."

so now we start to get to the heart of the problem.

we are working harder yet making less in terms of real gain while we watch paris hilton traipse about our t.v.s secure in the knowledge that our representatives in D.C. are doing their best to protect her inheritance from evil welfare queens.

Why on earth does Michaels think American "intellectual left" hasn't been concerned about growing income inequality over the last 30 years? Paul Krugman goes on at great length about the subject in books written beween 1985 and 1996, Bennet Harrison and Barry Blustone wrote several books about it (especially The Great U-Turn) in the early 1990s, Mike Davis made the issue the central thrust of at least two books, James K. Galbraith, Rebecca Blank, and a whole slew of other have documented increasing inequality, pointed to its many causes, and recommended solutions.

Now, mind you, not very much of this translated into actual substantial political change over the past 30 years, but its ridiculous to suggest that this is the result of liberals being distracted by identity politics: this has been a function of liberals being on the outs in government. That's the problem, not celebrating diversity.

Maybe identity politics really has distracted us from economic issues.

Err...no. What has distracted our body politic from economic issues is the new opiate of the masses.

To wit: There is no price to pay, no social contract, in order to participate in our capitalist paradise. You don't have to build infrastructure, help the sick and poor, provide adequate supplies, pay and pensions for the military. Paying taxes is for pussies.

While I agree that Corporate and Republican America have completely abandoned their fiduciary responsibilities to the middle class . . . liberals have as well due to . . . "post '60s exhaustion?" I mean, come on.

this is a pretty stupid post all around. republicans have made a living for a generation assailing democrats and the left for "stealing" everyone's money to fund big government.

unlike the right, people on the left can walk and chew gum at the same time. Accordingly, tehy've been fighting for a living wage and diversityh these past 30 years. B ut maybe the problem is that so many can't process a multifaceted message - instead hearing only what they want to hear, and more often than not only hearing lies and misrepresentations fostered by the right against the left.

kevin, you and Walter Benn Michaels need to get the shit out of your ears, and do a little hard work beyond making untruths about the left.
.

You know, every time progressive make some tiny gain in the public consciousness, we're told we should have been concentrating on something else. Good people are working for very some rewards on many fronts, and then it turns out that it's just a silly waste of time to do the right thing. And we're so far along now, we can just make fun of everything pro-human as being overly PC. (Cue eye-rolls here.)

Meanwhile, where's the outrage about those smirking gangsters on the other side gaming every part of the system to rob the public coffers, destroy the environment, and hollow out our economies, both moral and otherwise? Shouldn't we, you know, be concentrating on what THEY are doing wrong?

Or is that target simply too big?

Walter Benn Michaels thinks that liberals have become too obsessed with "diversity." Why? Because, he says, "celebrating diversity" is easy and makes us feel good — we're fighting racism! and sexism! and homophobia! — while doing what we should be doing is hard and makes us feel tired.

This liberal fetishization of "diversity" just makes me want to puke. You've got it right that it certainly makes liberals feel good, for they get to posture to all around them until the cows come home that they are enlightened and progressive and they are so unlike those throwback conservatives. Yet they rightly attack the social conservatives who swoon about how morally upright they are compared to the godless liberals. Both of these tactics of appealing to moral superiority (conservatives) and enlightened attitudes (liberals) are simply very cheap forms of conspicious consumption - it costs the practitioners nothing to bleat and posture and buys them points with those whom they wish to impress but otherwise is pretty worthless.

This whole liberal attitude to diversity reminds me of Jonathon Yardley's review of Cynthia Carr's book Our Town published in the Washington Post:

n certain precincts occupied by certain members of the American intelligentsia, it has for some time been quite the fashion to ferret out racists in one's familial woodpile and then to write books about them. The ostensible purpose of these books is to provide intimate, confessional evidence of the degree to which racial prejudice has infiltrated every conceivable corner of American life. Their obvious if unstated purpose is to show how the (white) author has triumphed over his or her sordid ancestral inheritance to become a person of impeccable credentials on matters racial. Though all due modesty and claims of imperfection are expressed, the reader is expected to stand and cheer as, at book's end, the author's heroic achievement is revealed in full.

[ . . . ]

Perhaps so, but one does quickly tire of Carr's insistence on inserting her own opinions -- most of them banal and gratuitous -- at every turn. When she blurts out, at one point, "This is the unbearable part -- facing the fact that my grandparents went along with it," it's all the reader (OK: this reader) can do not to throw the book across the room and shout, "Get off it!" Self-righteousness is everywhere, and invariably it's self-serving. As was true previously of Ball and McWhorter, Cynthia Carr has written a book not about the subject ostensibly at hand but about herself.

Everything is me, me, me. Carr fusses over "what it would mean for me to truly witness, to truly own the history of my family and my Marion, and to take in the impact racism had had," and then, after splitting those infinitives, she bleats: "If I encountered something uncomfortable, I would have to stay with the discomfort. No guilt-tripping. No distancing." Like too many other journalists writing books these days, Carr is under the impression that how she got her story and how she feels about it are more interesting (and, implicitly, more important) than the story itself. She could not be more wrong.

As for the mindless mantra of diveristy everywhere, all the liberals are doing is wiping out diversity. If every organization, every school, every company, etc must be diverse, then the endgame results in no oganization, no school, and no company being distinctive. The internal diversity that liberals so crave is killing all external diversity. Hello blandness, thy future is a liberal creation.

but the fruits of that growth have been directed by the well-off almost exclusively to themselves.

Been directed by whom? If you and I freely enter into a mutually beneficial exchange and I reap more value from the exchange than you has anyone directed that I should benefit moreso than you? Aren't you free to try to transact the same exchange with another participant so that you can increase the value that flows to you?

The problem here is that both capital and talent have been able to command larger rewards from the marketplace compared to commoditized labor. An employer will more handsomely reward an employee with a unique skill set, that is hard to either replace, or replicate, compared to an employee who produces value that is easily substitutable by others.

There is no grand conspiracy at work where the value of economic exchange is directed by some hidden gnomes.

no need to wait until monday...just go to www.brookings.edu, click on economic studies and read just about anything there.

The Hmailton Project is a good place to start.

or try www.cbpp.org

I am sure more than $10 billion is being spent to try to turn my wittle Ally-kins gay!

Oh, how he struggles every day!

If every organization, every school, every company, etc must be diverse, then the endgame results in no oganization, no school, and no company being distinctive.

Do you mean there will be no disproportionately white organization? Is that your qualm? That's kinda of what it sounds like. Otherwise that's a very amusing sentence to ponder. Of course, this sentence is false.

Maybe everyone could start Eating the Rich or the Poor or both because they're going to start killing each other pretty soon!

Economic Justice = Forced Wealth Redistribution.

Actually, it's kind of amazing how many different nice-sounding euphemisms there are for this.

I haven't read the book so it may not be so bad, but why blame liberals for the widening economic diversity because they've been so obsessed with identity politics? Why not blame conservatives who after all have been obsessed with widening the ecomonic gap in the first place?

The ultimate PC notion in this country is that only the left is PC and only the left is interested in identity politics. Anyone who's seen how the Republican Party and the conservative movement has bowed to the religious right should disabuse themselves of the notion that the right doesn't have its own PC/identity politics obsession. The Republican Party's interest in promoting anty-gay marriage amendments, prayer in the school, anti-abortion laws, etc. doesn't seem to have blunted its economic message too much, so why go around blaming the Democratic Party's ties to "identity politics" for the growing economic gap.

The rich are different from you and me, and one of the ways they’re different is that they’re getting richer and we’re not.

That's pretty rich, indeed. WBM makes well more than the median--if not the upper 1%, then well into the upper 5%. He has done pretty well for himself writing on the gold standard and income inequality.

But like Stanley Fish, who made his money in a similar way, WBM's view of the world has been a bit warped by spending too many decades in the weird land of university politics. That's probably the *only* place diversity is even remotely close enough to the top of the list of things that need doing that it could displace anything else.

Yeah, this is the strange-looking glass world of university politics. The one where an investigation into demographics requires an extensive analysis of the work of some random Iranian filmmake.

As a White gay male in a bi-national relationship with a Japanese male, I think that economic issues are at the VERY HEART of diversity issues. Fighting homophobia, fighting for immigration equity, fighting for integration and against racism is about giving everyone an share of the economic pie. My fellow activists are not just involved with diversity issues, but unionization, living wage, access to quality health care issues as well.

It is true that the party leadership might not be interested in these things, which is why so many of my fellow activists are so disillusioned with party politics. And then they go shoot-yourself-in-the-foot stupid things like voting for Green party candidates. The pseudo populism of the candidates doesn't help either. Only John Edwards, in '04, new at least how to talk about economic issues and not sound like an Upper East Side liberal with some horrible burden to lift.

Kevin:

*arrghh, tearing hair out* ...

Kevin, I'm sure you couldn't help but notice but there's a cultural war going on. And who are the targets of all that incoming? The very groups you claim are obsessing over diversity. Wingnut cultural warriors tell us that gay rights is "special rights," women's equality is dangerously against basic human nature and that our wonderful civilization is at risk of veritably collapsing at the hands of evil alien Muslim fundamentalists.

It's not that the struggles to push this back (the postive side of which is embracing diversity) and the struggles for income equality are somehow two different things. The struggle is one and the same; it's for a reasonably equitable society. The folks who'd like to emphasize nuts-and-bolts economic reform over the other cultural stuff react this way, at least in part, because of their own cultural positions. It's nice to get nostalgic about how the immediate postwar era set up a Pax Americana economic boom where the differential between the earnings of CEOs and workers was 40:1, not 700:1 -- but do you really think that all segments of American society in that allegedly golden age reflected what you see on Nick at Nite?

Some of this is merely a function of misplaced nostalgia, for a time when we had a strong labor movement and not much international competition in manufacturing and trade. That horse is out of the barn; we can't go back.

So what happens is some of the more superficial goals of diversity/identity politics get trumpeted because they're easy, and they appeal to the basic American moral value of fairness for all. And yes -- liberals are entirely too self-congratulatory about it when the real festering problem, income inequality, is so intransigent and so dependent on new economic factors that would give John Maynard Keynes a migraine. So liberals take what they get and try to smile about it.

And conservatives fight back tooth and nail because even these small, superficial gains threaten the hell out of them ...

So let's not blame the victim here, Kevin. The struggles are ultimately for two sides of the same social coinage.

Bob

I know a wealthy lesbian of african american and native american heritage recently hired at a midwest university who is sure Michaels is wrong.

fighting for immigration equity

What kind of Orwellian phrase is this, and what meaning could it possibly convey? Have you been hanging out at the language lab that devised the phrase "compassionate conservative" for it seems that you, like they, are out to make a mockery of language.

I agree that gap between rich and poor is critical. The problem is, our liberal leaders (in congress, at least) tend to stinking rich, just like the Republicans.

The economic inequality issue has a natural undertow dragging it back from greatness as a political issue in America: technology.

The poor may not be getting richer, but damn they can buy some fancy electronics these days, and their kids are as fat as ever, and TV gets better every year. This isn't a bad thing: being fat used to be a luxury of the rich, and now everyone can afford it. Your dollar buys you better and more interesting anything than it did a year ago, and next year the products will be better still.

So don't even waste time trying to stir the pot. Joe Sixpack knows damn well that the poor people he's supposed to feel sorry for have got it better than 80% of humanity, and even the poor don't feel bad enough off to revolt.

Bread and circuses, baby! Excuse me, I'm off to eat Pizza Hut and watch "Law & Order".

And oh, the poor in America don't hate the rich, they admire and seek to emulate them. Rich people are totally respected in this country, which I don't have a problem with.

I saw Bono on Oprah (shit what an admission) and he said something like, "In the U.S. people look up at the mansion on the hill and say, 'that could be someday.' In Ireland people look up at the mansion on the hill and say, 'I'm gonna get that sonofabitch.'"

The truth is that since Reagan became President the Republicans have been winning the general political debate and the economy has been sliding their way.

They've been able to distract with "moral" issues while they reshape the economy in their own image. Low government interference or oversight, oligopolistic markets, tax exceptions and changes to benefit corporations and rich, and, most particularly, the deterioration in (city) public education.

Don't have to worry about the pesky populace asking for more money if they don't have the skills to claim it.

The Republicans have built an edifice where corporate giving rolls into their coffers while they improve the corporate climate. As long as people vote for them they can strengthen this circle, so propaganda, newspeak, lies, "moral" issues while pursuing the almighty short-term dollar, whatever the cost.

When the Democrats regain investigative power, the illegal, corrupt, immoral and gravy-train politics need to be washed in public and reform pushed.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Please.

But Kevin - adjusted for inflation, I am richer, taller, better looking and much better in bed. Or that's what they tell me...

Are the poor really as poor as they were 30 years ago?

I ask because, as measured by the Census Bureau and other various studies, it appears that the poor have access to a number of items, large and small, that they didn't have back then.

For example, a greater percentage of the poor own a home today compared to 30 years ago. Ditto for cars. Ditto for access to health care (thanks to Medicaid). One can walk a list of major items that matter (I'm not discussing color TVs here) and see that the poor are less poor compared to the past.

Now if one plays the percentages game (and no one does that better than you progressive types), the poor are still poor compared to the rich. No doubt. But the poor have a life that is, I would suggest, substantially less harsh than it was before. Some of that is due to government programs. Some of that is due to lower unemployment. And some of it is due to that fact that some of the poor back then are not poor today.

Indeed, remove recent immigrants (legal and illegal) from the tabulations of the poor, and we have some fewer poor today.

If you want to make this argument work, you have to acknowledge the point (as is made somewhat more bluntly by Orkon). Then you might be able to figure out what matters to the poor and near-poor the most and work to help them. Just a thought.

If DEMS spoke of income inequality in those terms, other terms like income redistribution and SOCIALISM.

There must be another way to go at this same topic and that is what we have to figure out.

But really, right now we just have to rip the government out of the hands of these criminals, which is more important.

Orkon writes, This isn't a bad thing: being fat used to be a luxury of the rich, and now everyone can afford it.

Remember when capitalism was accused of starving everyone? Now it's accused of making everyone fat. This is progress.

Notthere writes, Low government interference or oversight, oligopolistic markets, tax exceptions and changes to benefit corporations and rich, and, most particularly, the deterioration in (city) public education.

While we Repubs can admit guilt to wanting less government interference and oversight, the rest is an equal opportunity crime.

Deterioration of city public education is as much a liberal failure as a conservative one. Most of the big cities are led by Democratic mayors and school boards. Almost all of the unions are in bed with the Democrats. Federal funding is a small percentage of the total pot, and every time the Feds spend more (i.e., every year) the money is pissed away.

I live in Chicago. We haven't had a Republican near the city schools in 50 years. Those are Democrats oppressing those poor kids.

Likewise, 'tax exceptions and changes to benefit corporations and rich' is as much a liberal game as a conservative one. Rep. Murtha is in the news lately as an acknowledged master of the earmarking, log-rolling, tax-exempting porkmeister. The public understands that both sides are equally guilty on that one.

And all of that hurts the poor (see, I'm getting back to Kevin's point!). Lousy inner-city schools hurt the poor first and foremost. But allowing Democratic mayors, school boards and unions to continue to play the same games they've been playing won't fix the problem. It's not a matter of money.

And allowing Dems and Repubs together to play the pork game keeps us from focusing on the basics that would help the poor. Let's see the progressive movement work on that one.

As far as I can tell, diversity is the softer side of segregation. I would prefer that people identify with their achievements, not inherited traits. And rather than push income inequality as the greatest ill we face, how about social mobility instead? There are so many entrenched interests (starting with education) that discourage individuals from exploiting their natural talents, most of us have to rely upon personal connections to get ahead.

The other thing, concentrating on wealth misses the fact that most people, while financially comfortable, are not happy with their life style. We work too much and take too little vacations. Our kids are more and more vulnerable, not to our teachings, but to advertisements instead. Our society is raising not happy, healthy people, but avid sleepless stressed out consumers. With some innovation and energy, this is something government can work on.

I'm with nearly everyone else responding, ie. we can't support both deversity and income equality?! Really! It's silly to say such a thing. By-the-way Kevin, If we ever got face to face you'd think you were looking in a mirror, except I'm grayer.

DC1974 -
Wrap your brain around this;
If homosexuality didn't matter, and sex did - then homosexual (male) couples would be, statistically, much better off than hetero couples, because two working males, with fewer children, will earn and save far more money. (as long as they aren't discriminated against in the workforce).

That would be an interesting study. . .

- then homosexual (male) couples would be, statistically, much better off than hetero couples, because two working males, with fewer children, will earn and save far more money.

Exactly the opposite occurs.

Kevin Drum: I'm concerned about growing income inequality. But "free" trade and "globalization" are great! Bill Clinton and the DLC told me so. Oh, both theory and practice say that it will increase income inequality. [Puts head in sand]. Ignore that man behind the curtain!

The obesidy epidemic is sociocultural. There is no denying that. I have a cousin who is a disabled former postal worker. She is 53 and her income is definitely fixed. Her daughter is struggling with her weight, so she asked me to go to the market with her recently and was critiquing her choices. "Don't get the canned peas, get frozen" and "Buy the leaner ground beef, not that stuff." and "Buy whole grain bread, not white."

About half-way through she said "I can't afford to eat like you do. I wish I could. I would love to make a meatloaf out of bison, and I would love to buy organic vegetables from the farmers market, but I just can't afford it."

That was a wake-up call for me.

In my state, the Publican governor immediately eliminated the vouchers that those on assistance were given for use at farmers markets - that was a really good idea...You can't buy snacky-cakes and cheesy-poofs at the farmers market. It benefited the consumers and the farmers, but they are not Matt Blunt's base.

We would be well served as a society to mandate nutrition classes for USDA assistance recipients and we would do well to put strict limits on what can be purchased. This would be very easy to enforce, since the system now operates on a debit-card platform. The epidemic of diabetes that is heading down the pike is going to cost us billions if we don't take decisive action now. I used to work in the hospital that has the highest incidence of type II diabetes in the entire nation. I have been called out of my blood bank to chemistry to verify a critical glucose of 800 when I was the supervisor on duty (that's the kind of thing that you call the doctor at three a.m. about)

I was eating lunch at a food court in DC that's popular with federal employees. I'm right next to a table of fat women in their 40s who are all dressed in pastel colors and there's exactly one of every major racial classification. It was like an ad for Affirmative Action! or one of those other Soviet-esque diversity posters or something.

So the white woman in the group, responding to something another woman said that I didn't hear, says really loud and proud, "Oh, and you just know they're gonna stock it with white males." And the last two words were kind of sneered.

Her diverse group of friends all laughed, and she was SOOOOO proud of herself, I could tell.

One obvious cause of the growth of inequality is the enormous amount of illegal immigration. But Kevin doesn't ever want to think about that because immigration has been turned into an identity politics issue by people who can profit from more immigration, and as a straight white guy he's not allowed to hold an opinion on the subject if he wants to remain respectable.

statistically, 20% of Americans think they're in the top wealthiest 10% of all Americans and the next 20% think they'll get there. right wing marketed fuzzy math: 40% = 10%.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Americans - stupidest people in the world.
.

Conversation between Global Citizen and George Orwell, upon Orwell's cryogenic unfreezing in 2006:

ORWELL: What do people do in 2006?

GLOBAL CITIZEN: We tell each other what to eat.

ORWELL: Really? You tell people what they can put in their own mouths? And it's law.

GLOBAL CITIZEN: Correct, and I approve of The Law. The Law is good for all citizens.

ORWELL: Why couldn't I have come up with that one?

I must be missing something...

I seem to remember just a couple of years ago that income inequality was arguably THE central theme of a certain democratic presidential primary candidate/vp nominee (remember that whole two Americas thing). And isn't the whole "rich getting richer" theme a staple of democratic campaigns, or is that just a misperception caused by the constant republican carping about class warfare?

There was an excellent article at tompaine.com on 9/22/06 called 'The Globalization Excuse' making a pretty decent case for the idea that this growing income disparity is not being caused by globalisation. It's all just a matter of greed.

Instead of "boiling frog," he could have also said "incrementally lugubrious," which was also Global Citizen's nickname in college (Florida State).

Orkon - read the fucking post again - she asked me to go with her because I am a trained medical professional and my mom is a dietician. I did not interject myself into her shopping trip.

And if I am buying someones groceries with my taxes, then yeah, we can put limits on sugar and other empty calories just like we don't allow wine and beer to be purchased with foodstamps. the WIC program is a really good model to look at. "Course, I don't know anything. never worked in public health or nuthin. Never seen the effects myself.

Global Citizen,

I would guess that Orkon is taking issue with your statement "We would be well served as a society to mandate nutrition classes for USDA assistance recipients and we would do well to put strict limits on what can be purchased."

You know, the Nanny State and all. The gov't teaching people the proper way to eat because the people are too stupid to make their own choices.

This type of thinking can lead to well-intentioned do-gooders advocating that the stupid shouldn't be allowed to vote (because no one has taught them how to think about the issues and which side to vote for) or how to spend their money (beautifully illustrated in the last Canadian election, when IIRC, the Conservative leader wanted to send child care money directly to parents and the Liberal campaign director objected that that would only lead to parents buying beer and popcorn with the money - far better to send the money to child-care "professionals" who knew better how to use the funds.)

ORWELL: Why couldn't I have come up with that one?
Posted by: Orkon on October 3, 2006 at 9:58 PM | PERMALINK

Because that would have been stolen directly from the book of Leviticus.

You know - the same book that Republican wingnuts use to justify their gay-bashing. The same book that uses the same language to discuss how evil and abominable it is to eat shellfish.

So no, I don't see how Liberals have the market cornered on "nanny state" politics.

At least there would be demonstratable benefits to me, if my countrymen would take better care of their health - as opposed to whether or not I can tell them how and with whom they can consent to have sex.

The pseudo-populism of the candidates doesn't help either. Only John Edwards, in '04, knew at least how to talk about economic issues and not sound like an Upper East Side liberal with some horrible burden to lift.

Posted by: DC1974 on October 3, 2006 at 8:50 PM

Edwards gets it, which is probably why many of the Democratic party bosses, trying to placate the corporate crowd for fundraising purposes, are uncomfortable with him as the nominee in 2008. However, I sense their number are declining as Dems and progressives increasingly realize that to win the White House, the party needs to appeal to more than the usual mix of blacks and coastal elites. Edwards has the real populism (in a progressive, not demagogic, sense) that Hillary, Gore and Kerry could never genuinely claim, and I sense that he'd have a better chance of winning those "flyover" states that lean slightly red than any other potential nominee. He's in the Truman/Humphrey midwest progressive tradition, only with a southern accent (an advantage, given the demographic shifts since the sixties).

As the other Clinton said in '92, it's the economy, stupid. Democrats should avoid the culture traps set by the GOP and ignore abortion, gay marriage, etc.

Steve White & other selfish libertarians,

Whether or not the poor are better off than they were in the 60's is irrelevant. The problem is that the wealthy are keeping the benefits of economic growth to themselves.

The economic growth of the last thirty years is mostly due to increases in productivity. The folks who actually are working harder are getting the same or less after inflation while the owners of the capital they need to get the job done have horded essentially of the benefit mostly due to the massive deregulation that has taken place since Regan first got into office.
An honest person would call it legalized embezzelment. Wealth accumulated through the use of power to serve greed is not earned and the jackasses who now posses it have no just right to keep it. Redistribution is the ONLY path to economic justice.
All benefits MUST be equitably distributed to all who contributed to success not horded by a self-selected elete.

The problem with identity politics is that it defines people by their differences, not their common bonds, and that approach will always divide, not unite. What ever happened to out of many, one? We will always be many, homogenation of humans is more difficult than just sharing a few t.v hows or mass culture restaurants. I think this is one reason the Democrats are having so much trouble...they have chosen to define themselves by their differences. (I should say "we" as I am a life-long Democrat. )
Much of the very ridiculous stuff I have noticed since my kids started school.....that they can no longer sing Christmas carols or the pathetic efforts of elite secondary schools and colleges to engage in "diversity" by enrolling the children of ethnic professionals or celebrities and then photographing them for their catalogues.
time to wake up and re-read Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee by Matt Hentoff!

Random incident that has stayed with me: I had a business dinner some years back with some corporate types from HP. The conversation turned to Iceland. I repeated a comment made by a friend from Iceland that in Iceland they cared about poverty because it was so small. Everyone is related--your family included the poor as well as the rich.

During the HP dinner, I wondered what it would be like to live in such a small homogeneous country (the population of Iceland is the same as that of St. Paul). I thought it might be nice. You'd know your neighbors.

But the reaction of the HP people amazed me: They squirmed. They were uncomfortable. I had evidently violated a corporate taboo. The HP executive class had been socialized carefully: Diversity is always preferable.

I mention this because the evidence is starting to accumulate that diversity and social capital are inversely related--that is, the more diverse a society is, the less people are willing to volunteer, participate in social groups or give resources to the poor.

So what a conundrum! We live in a crowded world. The corporate class is dependent on an increasingly diverse workforce. But most people, though conforming to the demands of a diverse workplace, will pick up their marbles and vote for tax cuts that make the rich even richer.

So I conclude that liberals will find it difficult to address income disparity because it may require them to give their dream of a multi-cultural society.

Tangoman,

Considering the tone of the self-rightous blithering by yourself and other Libertarians lately maybe it would be more accurate to call yourselves Aristocrats instead.

Global Citizen
...was critiquing her choices. "Don't get the canned peas, get frozen" and "Buy the leaner ground beef, not that stuff." and "Buy whole grain bread, not white."...About half-way through she said "I can't afford to eat like you do. I wish I could. I would love to make a meatloaf out of bison, and I would love to buy organic vegetables from the farmers market, but I just can't afford it."

Making meatloaf out of bison instead of cow, or buying organic veggies or frozen peas instead of canned, won't fix your friend's problems. Not buying preprocessed sugared-up fatted-up polyunsaturated foods and eating less and exercising more will.

I think it is easier and cheaper to eat healthy (small portions of meat, green leafy veggies, fruits, nuts, minimal extra carbs) than to eat unhealthy. The unhealthy stuff costs more money. Except for mac & cheese, but college students have to live too.

Joe illustrates the conundrum of our times - "how is it that "Progessives" claim the label of progress while ignorantly chanting disgarded and disasterous economic viewpoints?" If accuracy, rather than framing, reflected the objectives underlying the naming of a movement, the "Progressives" should really call themselves the "Regressives." I realize that "Progressives" find solace in Marxian fantasies, but there's nothing progressive about failed economic and political systems.

The gov't teaching people the proper way to eat because the people are too stupid to make their own choices.

The embarrassing, non-PC truth here is that sometime people ARE very stupid. Human beings consistently make unwise, uninformed choices that have disastrous results. And if "conservatives" didn't think this was true they wouldn't be trying to eliminate the theory of evolution from textbooks, regulate naughty material on television, and if they were TRUE believers in the wisdom of the individual they sure as hell wouldn't be attempting to suppress inner city voter turnout or jamming Democrats' phone lines.

What it boils down to is people with competing worldviews try to imposse what they think is best on the great unwashed masses. This is a pressure that exists in any society. And it's not that there's anything necessarily wrong with it as long as it doesn't infringe on constitutional rights, but we should be honest and admit that we all do it or tactily support some form of it.

TangoMan: You know, the Nanny State and all. The gov't teaching people the proper way to eat because the people are too stupid to make their own choices.

This type of thinking can lead to well-intentioned do-gooders advocating that the stupid shouldn't be allowed to vote (because no one has taught them how to think about the issues and which side to vote for) or how to spend their money...

I think your conflating a couple of different situations in how you summarized things. It's one thing to complain about a government inserting itself into people's lives where it's not needed or wanted (like in people's bedrooms), but that doesn't equate with a situation where people have already sought the government's assistance. The latter is the situation that Global Citizen is discussing. You want government assistance with paying your gorcery bills? Fine, but we're going to put some parameters around that.

All of which is very different from putting a poll quiz/tax in place.

PTate in MN: the evidence is starting to accumulate that diversity and social capital are inversely related--that is, the more diverse a society is, the less people are willing to volunteer, participate in social groups or give resources to the poor.

Other than your anecdote, where is that evidence? (seriously, no snark).

So I conclude that liberals will find it difficult to address income disparity because it may require them to give their dream of a multi-cultural society.

rmck1 has repeatedly pointed out that we don't have, nor I suspect do many people want, a multicultural society here in the US. What we have, and have always had to some extent, is pluralism. It's been working so far.

Moreover, the changes of the Progressive era and the Depression took place when the the US was just as diverse as it is today.

I think it is easier and cheaper to eat healthy (small portions of meat, green leafy veggies, fruits, nuts, minimal extra carbs) than to eat unhealthy. The unhealthy stuff costs more money. Except for mac & cheese, but college students have to live too.

Posted by: Red State Mike

Not in my experience. Can you make a hamburger for as cheap as MacDonalds? I can't. How much does organic beef cost per pound? Something like $10.00 a pound, I think. I mean there's a reason everyone calls WholeFoods WholePaycheck.

The bad thing is that buying and eating healthy food is more expensive and more time consuming than eating unhealthy food.

In a country with an economy as healthy as ours, the poor and the middle class should be getting richer, but they aren't.

Think for a while of the years 1946, 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006. All things considered, in which year would you rather be living and earning a median income? In which year would you rather be earning an income in the bottom quartile? I think the answer is that 2006 is the best year in which to be earning a median income, or an income in the bottom quartile.

Even lately, from 1996 to 2006, the poor and middle class got richer.

There are aspects of diversity that interfere with becoming wealthier. On the whole, kids who party, play with drugs, or emphasize athletics instead of doing required homework damage their adult earning potential. No matter how you arrange society, observant Buddhists and mystics (other than some charlatans) just are not going to earn as much money as accountants, scientists, and engineers.

They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.

I am a liberal who has seen the effects of piss-poor nutrition among the poor up close and personal.

And the reality is, it's going to cost us dearly if we con't reverse course.

We stopped teaching home-ec in schools, and I would venture a guess that there is a correlation to the obesity epidemic and that reality. And we outsourced the lunchrooms to McDonalds. That's another problem.

Not PC, but reality isn't always.

Avenging Angel: Coming on the same day the Dow reached an all-time high, the housing data is not good.

That's the effect of millions of Americans rebalancing their investment portfolios to take advantage of the record corporation profits. Sooner or later the p/e ratios will rise again, and then housing prices will start to rise again.

cyntax,

I don't necessrily disagree with your point within certain circumscribed boundaries, but where do we draw the boundaries? You wrote:

You want government assistance with paying your gorcery bills? Fine, but we're going to put some parameters around that.

How about this?

You want government assistance with paying your medical bills, or retirement? Fine, but we're going to put some parameters around that. As a senior on S.S. and Medicare we require that you not eat the following, that you report to your neighborhood fitness coordinator every morning at 8 a.m. for the 5 mile walk, furthermore etc. etc.

I can certainly make a case that we could lower our medicare costs if all, or most, seniors in our nation followed some strict regimen. They are getting gov't money, afterall. Why though do we draw the line at for permitting Nanny-State intrusiveness at the feet of the poor and not for students who receive student-aid (no partying, be in bed no later than 11 pm, study 7 hours a day) or academics benefitting from research grants (do not research the following X, Y, Z, teach your class in such and such a manner.)

BTW, I do agree that many of the people in receipt of welfare aid are indeed stupid and do need guidance in life, but then why not extend that guidance to all areas of their lives, so that they refrain from having kids until they are prepared to look after them without the State's assistance, or mandate that they change their social circle for such personal associations often exert strong influences on life outcomes.

cyntax
Not in my experience. Can you make a hamburger for as cheap as MacDonalds? I can't.

Really? Ever look at how little meat is on their hamburger? Get rid of the bun (unneeded carbs) and you have a drink coaster.

How much does organic beef cost per pound? Something like $10.00 a pound, I think. I mean there's a reason everyone calls WholeFoods WholePaycheck.

So don't eat organic beef. Eat the hormone and antibiotic-fed cows. That is still better than chips and soda.

The bad thing is that buying and eating healthy food is more expensive and more time consuming than eating unhealthy food.

I think you are unfamiliar with just how unhealthy the unhealthy people eat. Go to the grocery store and hang out and look in the basket of some fat person towing around their fat kids. Chips and soda, packaged cookies, etc. Lack of portion control.

I agree with whoever said education is necessary.

papago: Think for a while of the years 1946, 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006. All things considered, in which year would you rather be living and earning a median income?

Regardless of the answer to that question, the real point is "where's my share of the pie?". Let's say the median is 5% better off, but the top 1% is 100% better off. It's entirely reasonable for the median to be pissed. Do you think that if the median were 100% better off and the top 1% were 5% better off, they wouldn't be screaming bloody murder?

There are aspects of diversity that interfere with becoming wealthier. On the whole, kids who party, play with drugs, or emphasize athletics instead of doing required homework damage their adult earning potential.

That's funny, George W. Bush is doing ok. I guess the rules don't apply if you're born with a silver spoon up you nose.

No matter how you arrange society, observant Buddhists and mystics (other than some charlatans) just are not going to earn as much money as accountants, scientists, and engineers.

What percentage of the population are "observant Buddhists and mystics"? Doesn't sound like the most significant factor to me.

Liberals need to be working for justice.

Most Americans don't understand the difference between charity and justice - let me explain:

Charity is easy to do, provides immediate gratification, is relatively safe and makes you feel good.

Justice is difficult, may take years to provide gratification, can be very dangerous and can get you killed (e.g. MLK) and is often very painful.

A short parable: A rich man had gardens in his backyard, with a stream that ran through the back. He loved working in the garden, tending his flowers. One day, he noticed a body floating down the stream. It was a man, barely alive, who the rich man took into his home and nursed back to health until he could leave on his own. The next week, the rich man noticed two bodies floating down the stream.

An act of charity would be for the rich man to fish the floaters out and nurse them back to health. An act of justice would be to look upstream and find out the cause of them washing downstream in the first place.

Recognizing and celebrating diversity and working towards equal treament for all races, religions and genders is an act of justice.

TangoMan: BTW, I do agree that many of the people in receipt of welfare aid are indeed stupid and do need guidance in life, but then why not extend that guidance to all areas of their lives, so that they refrain from having kids until they are prepared to look after them without the State's assistance, or mandate that they change their social circle for such personal associations often exert strong influences on life outcomes.

Look I really think you're making a strawman out of this thing. We don't need to advise people on every aspect of their lives. If you really believe that some sort of educational program around nutrition is the top end of a slippery slope leading to telling people when they can have children... well, that's obviously your opinion and you're welcome to it. I really believe it isn't.

Thanks Mike - that was me. We are on the same page enough that I can claim consensus with reasonable conservatives. Thank you for that too.

I think you are unfamiliar with just how unhealthy the unhealthy people eat. Go to the grocery store and hang out and look in the basket of some fat person towing around their fat kids. Chips and soda, packaged cookies, etc. Lack of portion control.

I agree with whoever said education is necessary.

Posted by: Red State Mike

I don't know RSM. I go to farmers' markets and grocery stores and farmers' markets are more expensive. Fast food is cheap. You're right part of the issue is portion control, but part of the issue is that a fast food chain has much better scales of economy and very efficient supply chains so they can make cheap food. When you're poor it can be hard to resist the cheap alternative, particularly if you don't know all that much about nutrition and the effects on your health of bad nutrition.

And I'm with you and GC that education would be good.

Recognizing and celebrating diversity...
Posted by: The Conservative Deflator

People have been killing each other forever for reasons of diversity, using whatever differences they can find to justify dehumanizing each other. It is so common in our past that I would say it is ingrained, and therefore what you are trying to do in celebrating diversity is to directly fight human nature. And guess which will win?

I work at a major university, and see the opposite of diversity. I see student groups that naturally segregate into diverse groups of identical looking people that don't really interact until they see each other's floats during homecoming parade. All in the name of "celebrating diversity". It reminds me of how palestinian women were supposedly "glad" and celebrating that their children had martyred themselves. A million years of evolution and history says bullshit.

We should celebrate commonality. All the things we share in spite of our differences. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. Better life for kids, a search for spirituality. Or as mundane as sports clubs, science clubs, etc.

The military is as close as we get to a race-blind meritocracy in our society because it celebrates the common, not the different. Not saying everyone needs to enlist, but there is something there to be pondered.

cyntax
You're right part of the issue is portion control, but part of the issue is that a fast food chain has much better scales of economy and very efficient supply chains so they can make cheap food.

I'll buy that, but a salad at Wendy's is cheaper than the mongo-burger. Problem is, who wants salad?

Not sure how the discussion turned to food, but keep in mind the prefix mal- in malnutrition is French for bad or evil. Many poor people are malnourished, which doesn't necessarily mean they don't get enough to eat. It can also mean they make very poor selections in their choice of food.

NPR did a series on malnutrition recently that talked about poor, rural Mississippians whose biggest health issue now is not lack of food, but obesity from eating the wrong kinds of food.

By the way, great post TCD!

I'll buy that, but a salad at Wendy's is cheaper than the mongo-burger. Problem is, who wants salad?

Yeah and you can't live on salad. But all of the fast food chains have begun to add items (like salad) that are a little more "healthy." Not enough to get me to eat there, but if their customers were to skew further towards healthy alternatives, that might convince the fast food chains to change their menus further. But eating healthy takes more time and effort than not.

When I was playing around in the social sciences for a few minutes I took a grad level sociology class called "Racism and Discrimination." Part of the core curriculum was the "Eyes on the Prize" documentary series. This was a small Mormon liberal arts school (close to base) where the mose rhetorical question was to ask one of the 30 or so black students if they were on an athletic scholarship. This did not stop the professor from tilting at that windmill.

In that class, the three black kids sat together in one group, the four malaysian students grouped up, the mormon kids grouped up in three or four student clusters and the non-mormons like me comprised the remaining group. We grouped together with our own kind, even though we were grad students taking a course called "Racism and Discrimination!"

And I realized about half-way through the semester that all the good intent in the world doesn't necessarily overcome our basic core instincts.

Another non-PC reality. If I don't watch it my liberal cred is going to be questioned.

Yeah and you can't live on salad.
Posted by: cyntax

Have you seen the stuff they are living on? Not exactly the food pyramid. :)

Global sez...
And I realized about half-way through the semester that all the good intent in the world doesn't necessarily overcome our basic core instincts.

I often reflect on Brown's Human universals when I find myself thinking too much about the differences.

It is my fault we are on the food topic. It is a necessary element of any discussion about socioeconomic justice, because are facing a looming crisis with the potential to break the back of our potemkin-village healthcare system in the form of diabetes and the related disorders. It causes blindness, renal failure, heart disease, stroke, neuropathy. And it is a socioeconomic disease. It is about three or four times as prevalent on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Not many type II's are middle class or wealthy. It is a lifestyle disease of the poor.

cyntax:

Red State Mike is right up to a point. Most of healthy eating is being selective among similarly-priced options, and moderation in all things.

That being said, some lower income people do have problems that aren't entirely of their own making. A single parent may not always be able to spend as much time in the kitchen as needed to make something from scratch. Add to that the lack of decent grocery places in some low-income neighborhoods. The local corner 7-11 does not carry much in the way of fresh food. I don't mind my taxes going to food stamps that could be used at a farmer's market. Why not? Encourages good eating AND small farmers.

I have seen a LOT of improvement in both grocery stores and fast food places in recent years. It's now possible to get a pretty good healthy meal, like a salad with broiled chicken, even at McDonalds, and most Safeways and other grocery chains have a lot more produce and healthy choices than I remember from years ago.

You don't have to eat buffalo. You can spend a small amount extra to get hamburger with 10 percent fat instead of 20. Or you can drain it after you cook it up, which actually helps a lot (my mom does this for my dad). Eat one burger instead of two, and hold the mayo and the fries. A baked potato is good, and less fatty than fries. Cheap, too.

Our kid's school just scrapped the soda pop machines. Yeah!

Most of good eating, like most health things, is just using your head.

RSM: I took a class called "Magic, Witchcraft and Religion" at Wichita State in 1994 with a terrific anthro instructor named Clay Robarchek. Great guy. Actually stood in a lecture hall and called Erich Von Donnegan an idiot the first time I took a class from him in 1985. He won me over that very moment.

That list of Browns could have been the course outline for that class.

And I realized about half-way through the semester that all the good intent in the world doesn't necessarily overcome our basic core instincts.

Another non-PC reality. If I don't watch it my liberal cred is going to be questioned.

Yes, be very careful for you're treading on the boundaries of liberal orthodoxies, and so too is PTate. Did you catch my comment on the Progressive's Dilemma to one of Kevin's posts a few weeks ago?

Have you seen the stuff they are living on? Not exactly the food pyramid. :)

Yeah, not even close. Speaking of which I'm gonna get a bit outside the pyramid myself with some California barley and hops.

PS: as a vet, good comments on the meritocracy of the military.

Tango - That was probably about the time the semester started, and I'm teaching and taking, so I was so busy I got out the door without my shadow a couple of times in late August and I missed it. If you could email me the permalink I would be glad to give it a read.

As for treading on orthodoxy, eh, whatever.

Sacred cows make the best burgers.

Tango - That was probably about the time the semester started, and I'm teaching and taking, so I was so busy I got out the door without my shadow a couple of times in late August and I missed it. I'll go give it a read.

As for treading on orthodoxy, eh, whatever.

Sacred cows make the best burgers.

How the hell did that happen? I edited the post and it threw up both versions? how come no "malicious content" message when fuckups like that happen?

Global Citizen:

A lot of the health problems of the poor might also be related to factors like alcohol, smoking, or work conditions. Don't forget access to routine health care (a whole new thread).

I also have a theory that the work environment of the lower classes has changed over the past decades. My grandparents routinely ate a diet that would jam the arteries of a bull elephant. The difference is that they went out afterwards and spent the day lifting cows, or hauling bales of hay. More lower-class people used to routinely work at the docks, or at some other heavy labor. Most of them work in cities, now, doing a lot less physical labor. Even my garbageman sits in his truck while a robot arm dumps the cans.

And unlike wealthier people with more time, they don't hit the gym.

Wealthy people who eat like pigs and don't exercise probably have the exact same health problems as poor people who eat like pigs and don't exercise. They can just afford to get liposuction and bypasses.

The local corner 7-11 does not carry much in the way of fresh food. I don't mind my taxes going to food stamps that could be used at a farmer's market. Why not? Encourages good eating AND small farmers.

Harry, good points. And I like the idea of steering food stamp dollars towards small farmers as well. A friend of a friend is doing an interesting project with google maps that invloves using the mapping technology to figure out the distribution/availability of grocery stores in low income areas. Then they try to financially incentivise local stores to carry more produce. Kinda cool.

Actually stood in a lecture hall and called Erich Von Donnegan an idiot the first time I took a class from him in 1985. He won me over that very moment.

That's outrageous. The space aliens who improved our gene pool and built the pyramids with their vastly superior ships clearly wanted us to eat nutritious, tasty foods.

In the Urabamba Valley in Peru there is a rock carving of a spaceman handing a farmer a smoked turkey wrap that proves it.

Oh without a doubt, Harry. The lifestyle of the damned for sure. It isn't just the nutrition factor. Smoking, alcohol, substance abuse all take their toll. I have worked enough years in public health that I can give directions for a urine clean catch in more languages than I can number off the top of my head.

I have also served the affluent in toney suburban med centers ("Madame, you will have to take your arm out of that mink coat if I'm going to set this IV") and the prevalence of the lifestyle disorders is far greater among the poor.

thanks for the chuckle, lep.:)

The lifestyle of the damned for sure. It isn't just the nutrition factor. Smoking, alcohol, substance abuse all take their toll.

Which brings me back to my point - why not advocate that the State intervene and enforce upon the poor conditions and behavioral changes which reduce the risk of smoking, drinking, substance abuse, etc? Why just enforce regulations on food intake?

Then we get into the fair market and infringements thereon. In Kansas City, there are no Italian residents between Troost and Manchester Blvds, but every three blocks that is a liquor store owned by one. It would require reigning in predatory businesses, and nobody is going to do that. And yes, people who operate liquor stores in the hood - and cash checks without ID for high fees at a secure cage in the back - and go home to gated communities at night are operating predatory businesses and benefiting from and perpetuating social pathologies.

What I want to know is, how do you explain to the poor that when you redistribute income toward them, you are not taking away their future income when they win the lottery?

Why just enforce regulations on food intake?

Bottom line here is enforcability. We have no control over what is purchased with someones meager cash budget. But some restrictions already apply to nutrition programs, so the appication of the restrictions is more practically possible.

well this time when I screwed up the tag it italicized everything. Usually I cut part of a sentence...

Tangoman,
"Joe illustrates the conundrum of our times - "how is it that "Progessives" claim the label of progress while ignorantly chanting disgarded and disasterous economic viewpoints?" If accuracy, rather than framing, reflected the objectives underlying the naming of a movement, the "Progressives" should really call themselves the "Regressives." I realize that "Progressives" find solace in Marxian fantasies, but there's nothing progressive about failed economic and political systems."

That boat won't sail. Protections against corperate abuses cannot be conflated with a communist command economy. It's nothing more red-scare bullshit. You libertarians with your "I got mine so fuck everyone else BS" make me sick. That is precisely the rhetoric that the Regan administration used to cut taxes and protections and run the highest deficits up to his time while starting the current 30 year expansion of the income gap between the rich and the poor.
As I said above, a libertarian without social responsibility is no better than an aristocrat who believes his economic advantages are a birthright.

That boat won't sail.

Joe shared with us this vision of how the economy functions:

The economic growth of the last thirty years is mostly due to increases in productivity. The folks who actually are working harder are getting the same or less after inflation while the owners of the capital they need to get the job done have horded essentially of the benefit mostly due to the massive deregulation that has taken place since Regan first got into office. An honest person would call it legalized embezzelment. Wealth accumulated through the use of power to serve greed is not earned and the jackasses who now posses it have no just right to keep it. Redistribution is the ONLY path to economic justice.

All benefits MUST be equitably distributed to all who contributed to success not horded by a self-selected elete.

Economic growth fueled by productivity increases is predominantly attributable to increased utilization of tools and labor-enhancing devices, like computers, not to workers toiling harder every year. Today's ditch-digger isn't digging twice the length of ditches using only a shovel that his father dug 30 years ago. The ditch-digger's increased productivity comes from using a back-hoe and other equipment which is provided by the employer. Why should the worker reap the benefit from the increased productivity which the employer's capital provided?

Your modeling of hoarding behavior by the owners of capital needs further elaboration. How are they effecting this hoarding? Why doesn't the employee offer their skill to an employer who hoards the productivity gains just a wee bit less than their present employer? Surely if the work they offer is valuable then another employer will benefit by hiring such a worker.

I particularly enjoyed your Marxist rants on how restribution MUST take place. Yup, you're a progressive of some sorts what with your regressive notions of economics and all.

alex: "Other than your anecdote, where is that evidence? (seriously, no snark