politics
Carnegie & contemporary excuses
09/16/2009 21:15
Carnegie (1835-1919) was a self-made industrialist, possibly the original “rags to riches” story. He was also worth $298 billion (in 2007 dollars) at his death. “The man who dies…rich, dies disgraced,” he said at the end of “Wealth.”
The essay was written for the June 1889 North American Review (Boston, est. 1815 to “foster a genuine American culture”). On July 1 1889, the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers struck at the Homestead steel mill July 1, 1889 after manager (Frick) cut wages, arguing that better technology (paid for by company) allowed them to produce 2x the steel as before. Some of Carnegie’s arguments are annoyingly paternalistic, but also funny. Higher wages, he suggests, would be squandered by workers. Better to retain them as corporate profits, so the industrialist can use them to endow a park, and art museum, or a library. Wait a minute! What happened to property rights? Isn’t this socialism directed by the oligarchy? Don’t we have a word for that? Oh, yeah. Fascism.
Of course, he does have a point. A bump in wages would probably put more beer in the bellies of industrial workers. So there’s a question behind all this, about public and private spending, and who decides what constitutes the “public good.” But is it credible that a guy like Carnegie, living when he did, knowing who he knew, could say the rich are more virtuous than the poor, or better qualified to decide on, then manage programs for the public good? “If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap,” Carnegie warns all the ne’er-do-wells who’d like a piece of that public pie. He forgets to mention, “oh, by the way: I fenced in all the fields.”
It’ll be interesting to see what the undergrads do with this piece. It couldn’t be much more contemporary – all the language, assumptions, and arguments are in play every night on the news. “Imperfect as they may appear to the idealist, [capitalist ideals] are…the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.” Leads directly to “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good…” Thanks anyway, Mr. Obama. I’m not buying your false choices.
blah blah Middle Class blah blah
02/22/2009 17:06
I checked out the Vice President’s MiddlleClass Task Force, because it’s always hovering there on the top right of the screen at whitehouse.gov. I read Jared Bernstein's introductory blog post. (he’s the Executive Director and Joe Biden’s chief economic advisor) It was all well and good, as far as it went. But that was the problem.
35,000 people have already emailed the Task Force with questions and comments, so i went ahead and left mine. I think they're trying to paper over the big rift in American society. It isn't the split between the rich and the middle class, who often see eye to eye (as an example, the recent CNBC rant about not wanting to help fix the housing crisis). The big problem in America is the split between the rich/middle alliance (the administration and its main allies) and the working class.
The government and the media can pretend all they want that "the poor" are just people who've lost their “middle class” jobs. But I think deep down they know this isn't true, and at some point they're going to have to deal with the fact that they not talking to working people. Because the Repubs are going back to race-bating, using country and now hip-hop music to try to fool working-class people into thinking that just because the Dems can't see them, the Repubs are the party of the workers. That is a big mistake. It will come back to bite the administration and the Dems in general. They're institutionalizing the new class war.
