Let me start with a line from, of all things, the movie "You've Got Mail."
Tom Hanks is in Meg Ryan's book store. He picks up a pricey book and the nerdish clerk gives him its background (the details of which I forget, but it's "first edition" type stuff).
Hanks asks if that's why the book costs so much, to which the clerk replies, "That's why it's worth so much."
This line pops into my head from time to time, most recently after I read amerikanYippie's diary,
Well Done, Worthy GOP Opponents, Well Done. AmerikanYippie shows a GOP graphic of what the Kyoto Treaty will
cost American families, assuming that, like Tom Hanks in the book store, those families don't much care what that treaty is
worth.
Americans apply this concept in some of their purchasing decisions. Cars are a good example. A Corvette costs a lot of money, but for the people who buy (and can afford) them, it's not a function of cost so much as worth. Houses are another example. Unless they're buying or selling, and assuming no financial calamity has struck, the value many people attribute to their homes has more to do with neighbors and community than with market value.
And how could Tiffany's survive if cost was the sole driver of its customers' purchasing decisions?
The problem is that not enough people consider the worth of much more mundane goods, like cookware, clothing or linens. For these things, the consideration is no different than the environment to the GOP: What does it cost?
Of course, visitors to DailyKos and other websites in the progressive blogosphere understand the value component. We know that we used to contribute to economic security and decent working conditions for the people who made the stuff we buy. Now we make rich people richer with precious little trickling down to the masses.
Our task, it seems, is to convince our friends along other points of the political spectrum that they should incorporate the same sort of value component into their own spending. Yes, it's nuanced. But it's also a point that could resonate.
What I'm talking about here is simply a matter of reconnecting economic decisions with politics. Several recent diaries have touched on this, as does Thomas Frank in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" We have to pick up the ball that the Democrats dropped when they wrote American workers out of the party platform.
How to accomplish this goal of elevating worth above cost is the tricky part. Some of the effort comes from supporting candidates who genuinely understand the full impact of American trade policy and who support change. (Like Sherrod Brown, who's running for the Senate and has always been a champion of the little guy. Links to similarly minded candidates are welcome!)
Some of it, obviously, comes from our own purchasing habits.
And some of the effort must be directed at learning how to talk to people who continue to vote as if gay marriage somehow undermines wages and work conditions. Oddly enough, the GOP has made this easier for us because, while we're talking about Delphi breaking its union, Pillowtex closing its doors, or United Airlines dumping its pensions, they won't even realize we're talking politics.