Welcome to Labor Day - if you're lucky enough to have a job, that is. It's a great time to be an American worker - NOT. The economy is in a shambles, and the people who wrecked it insist they won't make it better if we take away their tax breaks. No, the only way forward is for Americans to work harder and longer for less. Or so we keep hearing. It's not like the government is run by people who think they can help. Heaven forbid!
The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. In Conservative Circles, they call that being principled. Elsewhere, it's called being a sucker. The truth is, the American Economy does not work for the majority of Americans any more. The details are out there, but the consequences are being ignored - because to address them would require overturning decades of wrong thinking.
So who is getting it right? Follow me over the jump to find out.
I'll be upfront - this diary is basically a pointer to a couple of resources. One is an article (about a book); the other is a book as well. I'll get to the article first.
Number One: What's the difference between Germany and America for a working person?
But the Germans have a lower GDP than we do. Doesn’t that mean that our quality of life is better?
One day we’ll get beyond that and see that the European standard of living is rising. You can pull out these GDP per capita statistics and say that people in Mississippi are vastly wealthier than people in Frankfurt and Hamburg. That can’t be true. Just spend two months in Hamburg and spend two months in Tupelo, Mississippi. There’s something wrong if the statistics are telling you that the people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than the people in Germany. Despite the numbers, social democracy really does work and delivers the goods and it’s the only model that an advanced country can do to be competitive in this world. I mean that not just in terms of exports, but in terms of being green at the same time. That we can raise the standard of living without boiling the planet shows how our measure of GDP is so crude.
emphasis added
The quote above is from an interview over at Salon, where Alex Jung talks to Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer in Chicago and author of "Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life," The interview covers the subject in this new book, naturally enough, and it brings up comparisons between here and Europe that will make your head hurt. Go read the whole thing - and then get the book.
The contrast between here and there is painful, especially given the pablum our politicians are handing out. If the Europeans Social Democracies are considered socialist hells by so many on the right over here, an honest comparison shows why - we're living in an Anti-Social Democracy. Why did Europeans go in a different direction, and what have we forgotten?
How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans.
emphasis added
Go read the entire interview - it's a story that will get no coverage in the media here. We're working harder for less, if we have a job at all, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Number Two: How is it America can have a huge economy - yet fail to deliver a good life for so many today?
Right now we have a situation where Wall Street seems to be chugging along again, the banks are stable, and corporations keep posting profits. So why are so many miserable - and I'm not just talking about the unemployed. It's possible to be getting by, but not be happy about it. Why are divorce rates where they are? Crime? Drug use? Why are so many people dissatisfied when they should have enough to be happy. Why do so many people have problems with health? Think about it - America is so rich, the poorest among us are dying from things that used to be the hallmarks of the rich: obesity and heart disease. Why?
The short answer is that we've run up against the OTHER limit to growth. (Although the first one - a shortage of critical resources - is looming over us too. But that's a post for another day.) Simply growing the economy further will not significantly improve life for people - and not just those at the bottom. It goes all the way to the top. The phenomenon of Germany (and other developed countries) providing a better quality of life for all of its citizens despite having lower relative wealth is not a mystery. Decades of research have been amassed and boiled down by two researchers, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett - and their conclusions provide a compelling explanation for what Thomas Geoghegan finds in Germany and elsewhere.
What Wilkinson and Pickett found was that by almost any measure (and they sifted through hundreds of studies), In societies of comparable wealth, people had a better quality of life in the ones where the economic distance between those at the top and those at the bottom was less - and it was better for everyone across the board. In fact, the effect of differences in equality was such that people in countries less wealthy than others could still have a better quality of life than their wealthier counterparts who are dealing with greater inequality.
Their work can be found in The Spirit Level. It says a lot about America that while the UK version could originally be subtitled Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, the U.S. edition had to be softened to Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. The latest iteration seems to be Why Equality is Better for Everyone - a more direct subtitle,
Wilkinson and Pickett do a comprehensive job of backing up their conclusions about the corrosive effects of inequality on society. They cite study after study, case after case, and their conclusion about inequality is supported by a range of comparative measures across a number of different countries - and even within countries. (Specifically the 50 states of the U.S.)
There's a tremendous body of resources available online for those who want to look into this at equalitytrust.org - check out the videos and slide shows. The American economy is geared to create more inequality, not less these days, and The Spirit Level is social dynamite - or could be if the word would only get out. It must be having some effect because a conservative think tank has commissioned one of their wing-nut welfare hack writers to crank out a book specifically attacking it.
(I'm not going to enable them by linking or giving the author's name. It's the same think tank that put out a book attacking anti-smoking campaigns with money from a major tobacco company.)
Happy Labor Day - now let's celebrate the virtue of Honest Work by getting America working again for everybody.