Category Archives: American Middle Class

Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?

Frank Rich wrote an interesting article, today, in The New York Times, Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?

Rich tells us that Americans don’t hate the rich; in some cases even admire the rich.  The wealthy who lost elections, he goes on, also provided jobs for people.  Rich, though, tells us that we should worry about another kind of rich American, the unseen:

The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election — those who take far more from America than they give back. They were not on the ballot, and most of them are not household names. Unlike Whitman and the other defeated self-financing candidates, they are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down.

This is serious because a democracy requires an informed citizenry; however, if this citizenry can’t see, we therefore aren’t ever sure where ideas and their motivations come from, thus trust suffers a serious blow.

As Rich suggests, “The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich.” Are we prepared to live in a country where the evidence — physical and otherwise — will uncover an abyss between the superrich and rich and the working class, and by working class I mean, as is evident in Rich’s column, people earning less than $200,000 and below? (Believe me, this isn’t a lot of money)

What happens in this world, this “new normal,” as we like to say, is that we lose our narrative, we can’t trust it; we also begin to sense that perhaps it’s never exited. Rich says, “That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.” The entire American concept is Romantic — it’s a romantic story that grows out of Enlightenment thinking.  The trick, actually, is to reach for the Romantic sense of authenticity that shuns aristocratic values for real experience but never quite really getting there; this keeps us going or moving towards a vision of what’s real, what’s truthful. In my mind, this is what Rich is pointing to — the erosion of this Romance with the real, the lived experience, the authentic self and the journey towards that self.

I read Rich’s editorial as an explanation of the law of unintended consequences — that is, as the rich, those unseen ones especially, continue to garner more of our resources to sustain their lives, we, the workers of America, begin to realize that we’re in fact working to sustain that small percentage of citizens that reap the rewards of our labors.  Thus, a percentage, an increasingly larger percentage of our value — our worth — is determined, according to Rich, by people we don’t know and people who are pulling at strings we don’t see.

How do we work through this? What do we have to do to better understand our roles in the world of labor (yet to come for you)?  How does Rich make you feel?  What is the relationship between Rich’s editorial and McKibben’s Eaarth?

What Democracy?

Following our discussion on Thursday, defining terms — Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and The Yankees — several parallel stories have appeared that suggest the struggle and the tension we discovered in our exercise, in our discussion.

Please examine these, carefully, and again per group (each group, except one, still is behind and has to do the Scott Page post), determine HOW these stories define Democracy/Capitalims/Us and HOW these stories parallel Empire of Illusion.

The first story is from Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, ” ‘Citizens United’ Ruling Opened Floodgates on Groups’ Ad Spending.”

The next 2 are not stories, but rather, commentaries.  First, Bob Herbert, writing for the New York Times, in Policy at its Worst, tells us that, “We can’t put the population to work, or get the kids through college, or raise the living standards of the middle class and the poor. We can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.”

The next opinion, also from the Times, is by  Charles M. Blow, High Cost of Crime.  Here, Blow informs us that, “Our approach to this crime problem for more than two decades has been the mass incarceration of millions of Americans and the industrializing of our criminal justice system. Over the last 25 years, the prison population has quadrupled. This is a race to the bottom and a waste of human capital. A prosperous country cannot remain so by following this path.”  Take a look at how much a single murder costs — then ask yourself: why do we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the industrial world?

The last story, which parallels Hedges’ chapter, “The Illusion of Wisdom,” and written by the indefatigable Camille Paglia, was sent to me by Izzy Ocampo.  In “Revalorizing the Trades,” Paglia asks, “what if a student wants a different, less remunerative or status-oriented but more personally fulfilling career?”  She responds to her question, saying that, “There is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks.”

In a moment, Paglia sounds a lot like Hedges:

Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.

Examine each of the stories and the editorials, then discuss, online, how all this fits our notion of the struggle for democracy, our struggle for the truth?

A Conversation with Noam Chomsky

It’s rare that Noam Chomsky is asked to appear on mainstream media.  That fact that he’s not asked to appear should say plenty about our media establishment, particularly about the owners.

In a rare moment, Chomsky gave an interview, Tuesday, on On Point Radio, NPR, with Tom Ashbrook.

Listen here.  He’s speaking on U.S. rage and ruin.

Roundtable:Teaching at the Intersection (9/24, 4pm)

Middlebury professors discussed the new interdisciplinary minor that Middlebury is offering in Global Health.

1. Svea Closser, Department of Sociology-Anthropology, Middlebury College

Discussed the creation of the minor

-Outlined some of the courses she teaches for the minor (Core course is SOAN 267 Global Health)

-Growing interest in global health led to creation of minor (Supply and demand)

2.Sarah Stroup, Department of Political Science, Middlebury College

Discussed goals of program: To teach humanitarian and charitable action at home and abroad

-“The causes and solutions to disease are political and economic”

This connects to the theme of the keynote speech given by Dorothy Roberts who claimed that social inequalities created by race lead to higher mortality rates for African-Americans.

-Teaches class on international humanitarian action

-Difference between humanitarian relief on a global scale and community scale

a. Global- Developed countries like the US see disasters as oppurtunities for change, but this is impossible because of pre-existing political problems (Rwanda)

b. Community- Easier to take action because easier to understand social/political dynamics of a smaller group.

3. Steve Viner, Department of Philosophy, Middlebury College

Discussed moral responsibilities we have as wealthy citizens of a developed country and moral dilemmas of global health

-Who should get what in terms of relief

-What moral responsibilities do we have to the global poor

Example: 18 million children die prematurely worldwide due to diseases like malaria.

Unicef has a program where you can donate 25 dollars to pay for all the vaccinations for a child in a poor country

-It should be our moral duty to donate this money, yet some don’t

-Those who do donate feel like they did something above and beyond the scope of their duties when in reality just did what they should do

-In the case of natural disasters more people likely to give because no one is to blame for situation

-We need to see global poor as our equals

-Thinks that liberal arts leads to better understanding of global health issues because more in tune with social and political issues

4. Robert Cluss, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dean of Curriculum, Middlebury College

-Discussed the role of liberal arts in minor (side note, this minor perfectly exemplifies an interdisciplinary program, if you look at the professors who spoke they come from chem, religion,soan, poli sci, and philosophy departments)

Study Abroad plays big role in program

5. Q and A session led by James Davis, Department of religion

  1. [Senior student who started globomed at mid] How do you see the future for Middlebury and the study of global health? Are there any limitations?

-We are lucky to have J-term, allows for lots of innovative and creative classes

-No plans to create major out of minor

2. [Linda White Japanese/WAGS] How much is gender a topic in these courses?

-Courses stress that women’s rights are just natural human rights but applied to women.

3. [Sophomore student] What are we not doing as developed countries to help the underdeveloped countries?

-People aren’t doing the easy things like donating 25 dollars.  Many people can do this but don’t

-We need to realize it’s our duty to help, not optional

4. [Jeremy Greene prof. at Harvard]

How does the combination of all these fields lead to a comprehensive minor?

-The beauty of liberal arts is that everything doesn’t have to make sense.  If you pull knowledge from many different fields and it doesn’t all add up to something understandable, you’ve still learned.

Best,

Cooper and Nick

Panel: Finding Meaning

The main idea of the panel was to discuss the complicated issue of global health. The first speaker was Katherine Ott, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.  She argued how culture relates to the issue of public health. Ott says, “We live in a world surrounded by stuff,” referring to the material objects that control and manipulate our society. She discusses the fact that medicine has extended its purpose into mainstream society. It is no longer just a remedial drug, something used to help people recover, but it is now a part of everyday life. With this progression, society has also developed a fear of medicine such as date rape drugs and workout pills.  This transformation from a drug used strictly to help people to something that assists and enhances many facets of someone’s life shows how society has become just as concerned if not more concerned with profit and material wealth as the well being of humans.

The other speaker was Richard Keller, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  He suggested that medicine was essential in building strong empires which is a concept taken directly from Dr. Paul Chatinieres.  Throughout history, powerful nations such as the United States and France have offered medicine to people in underdeveloped countries.  Keller questions why these institutions would provide such help. To most it may seem as if these powerful nations are providing help to be moral and helpful but in reality, some countries are simply trying to gain more resources and expand their nation. There seems to be a linked distrust in two areas you might not necessarily expect- warfare and medicine. In both cases, less fortunate countries are concerned about the help that “wealthier” or more advanced countries are providing. For example, in Morocco, a French based country, Hubert Lyautey stresses the necessity and power of physicians due to their ability to assist and save the lives of those who are suffering. In addition, in recent time, Colin Powell talks about the importance of NGOs  and how they are an important part of our combat team. Obviously the military is the most significant facet, but Powell considers the NGOs almost as important due to their daily interaction with the people in these struggling nations. Due to the language barrier and the dissimilarities of their culture, citizens of impoverished countries do not believe the intentions of countries such as America to be honorable. For instance, David Brooks talks about how many countries such as Haiti resist assistance of different cultures which is often the cause of their problems. There is an existence of a voodoo religion which some believe causes Haitian people to reject and resist outside help. As a result, they are are unable to deal with problems such as the earthquake.

-AJ and Joey

Are We Pulling in the Same Direction?

Or are we pulling against what we need, since, as Thomas Friedman says, all we have are big problems?

In Too Many Hamburgers, Friedman says that, “For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.”

The editorial is interesting in that it points to a particular need for changing our perspective — and our energies, particularly when it comes to work.  It’s very similar to what I said in class, Tuesday, about doing rather than waiting to be told what to do?

Since you guys all determined that geography establishes a context for success — kids with mothers and fathers that are college grads are more apt to go to college and succeed, for instance, to say it in a general way, and the concomitant social class follows this success, thus the inverse is true, too — might the malaise America is in have had some collective affect on the psyche of our citizens, including you?  I mean, your generation’s touchstone is 9/11, since, you’ve experienced decline after decline, negativity after negativity, politically speaking, and you’ve experienced the dumbing down of the public sphere where nothing but a gloss of contemporary America is possible, particularly when mixed with hatred, so I’m wondering what your opinion might be concerning how these conditions affect us psychologically and perhaps hinder what we focus on?

A Recovery’s Long Odds

In A Recovery’s Long Odds, Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, discusses how “Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor.”

Herbert is pointing us in two directions: first, that Americans appear to be delusional — or that somehow we’ve been complacent with the direction leaders — and the media — say we’re heading.  The notion that American citizens are dormant is beginning to get some notice.  Arianna Huffington, in her new book, Third World America, evolves this notion, but gives us some solutions — how to turn this around.  You can hear a good interview with here in On Point: “All countries have rich and poor. What Third World countries don’t have is a strong middle class. Neither, right now, does the United States,” says Huffington.  The second notion is that of course, following on Huffington’s notion of a declining middle class, is that we have a huge gap in wealth acquisition — the disparities are now too great not to be noticed.

The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation’s infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.

Of course, this has everything to do with sustainability – can we sustain the America we have or, perhaps better put: can we sustain the America we’ve had?

Since we’re heading towards Bill McKibben’s End of Nature, it’s appropriate to wonder how deeply the human alterations of nature have gone; that is, it may be that our processes and procedures, our ways of living — socially, economically, intellectually and spiritually — have genuinely altered our ways of being, socioeconomically, and now we find ourselves, like nature, on the ropes.

After reading End of Nature, Herbert and Huffington, I wonder what you think about where we stand in America — and where we may be heading?  To put it another way, as first years, what do you see down the line for you in 3 or so years?  Or, what do you have to do now to prepare to what seems to be an alternate state of being, one quite different than you’re perhaps accustomed to?