OT: Strangers In Their Own Land, Arlie Hochschild

After losing elections at all levels of government for years, democrats have a choice of 2 paths

1. Humbly review their policy positions and adjust them to meet the voters desires
2. Arrogantly declare voters too ignorant and racist to understand the wisdom of democrat leadership

Thank you for consistently choosing path 2. Enjoy your time in the wilderness !

^^^^ Mark, I see your POV. Democrats are always trying to follow path 1. The democratic party currently holds 48 of the 100 US Senate seats.

As far as option 2, yes that is in a way what Thomas Frank's book is saying. Arlie Hochschild is trying go beyond that.

What I have long said is that we can't depend on candidates, we need other promoters. The Right certainly has its own promoters.

I also said, and I feel this relevant to Hochschild, "If you preach liberal values, it doesn't work. But if you give people a liberated lifestyle, then the people will defend it."

I believe that Hochschild is going to show, that these Red voters are just living in an entirely different reality than the Blue voters. And so she wants to explore how this happened. I feel that our country has always been like this, at least as far back as slavery.

So lets read it and see.

I feel that our local Democratic voters actually have views far to the Left of the Democratic candidates.

SJG

Pauline Kael famously said she didn't understand how Nixon won since she didn't know anyone who voted for him.

As long as Democrat leadership is clustered in a few urban areas where everyone shares their viewpoint, it's natural for them to think the rest of the country is mistaken. In fact, they don't learn how to defend their positions. All they need to do is point a finger at flyover country and scream "moron" "racist". In San Francisco, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago that works just fine. Their friends nod in agreement.

Then, some academic writes a book describing the mouth breathers and knuckle draggers that live in places like Kansas and New Orleans. Urban liberals read these books and congratulate themselves on their refined intellect.

Meantime, Republicans keep gaining seats outside the urban enclaves.

Here's a review I found of Strangers

Simply awful. On the pretext of being open minded to how others process information, this book is so left leaning and at times merely a voice of the agenda of the political left that it was painful to read. If you want to believe that all the wisdom is housed in blue states, this book is your voice. However, as a lifetime resident of a blue state, this makes me feel sad for the way it paints others. If you're going to be lording your organic, recycling, better educated, rural white hating snarky attitude in such a manner, save it for your like minded neighbors

Don't know who Pauline Kael is, but I have heard things like that before. It is funny. But where I live, I did know people who voted for Nixon, Reagan and Trump.

Democratic leadership exists everywhere. In most states the Democratic candidates do get a substantial number of votes, even if not enough to win. So Democrats are in all areas.

As far as thinking people are mistaken, I think it is normal to think that when ever someone disagrees with you.

As far as not knowing how to defend their positions, many commentators have pointed out the the Right just runs on whipping up fear and hatred. Where as to make the argument for the Left it is more complicated, necessary to communicate a systemic view, inter-related causes and effects.

Democratic candidates campaign everywhere.

Thomas Frank was not intending to be mean, he was just showing that people are voting against their economic interests, and trying to explain it. Arlie Hochschild is trying to take the analysis further to better explain it. I think she does.

Democrats have held both houses as recently as the 2008 start of the Obama Administration. And Democrats are getting elected in Mountain Time Zone areas.

Much of the Democratic Party's doctrines did start in the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement, as well as the Anti-War in Vietnam movement. I fully support all of these. Prior to that, it came from Franklin Roosevelt, whom I also fully support.

Now admittedly, these kinds of ideas don't seem to automatically draw the votes as they once did. And this in part explains the rise of the Clinton's and the Southern formed Democratic Leadership Conference, which I do not support. . Side note, calling the party "Democrat Party" instead of "Democratic Party", as I know, it started with Bob Dole of Kansas in 1976 when he was Gerald Ford's running mate. He listed all America's major wars and called them "Democrat Wars". Many feel that by being so mean spirited, that Dole cost Ford the election.

SJG

Marxism 101 youtube.com

Well mark, obviously you get your book reviews from different places than I do. Personally I think the rise of Right Wing media is a huge part of the problem in how elections are going.

Hochschild went on her 5 year specifically to listen to people who think very differently than she and most of her neighbors do. She explains this right off.

As far as her actual conclusions, I need to read the book fully before I comment.

SJG

Marxism 101 youtube.com

Mark, your reviewer mentioned recycling. In the first few pages of the book, Hochschild is explaining that where she lives Berkeley, CA, people do recycling. She is explaining that she went to Louisiana to see how people think and live in red states. She hasn't said yet whether or not they do recycling in Louisiana.

SJG

Stormy - Classics IV youtube.com

Consider this. San Jose is majority renters. Even for our suburbs they are often majority renters. But renters don't vote. And so these cities are run for economic harvesting.

Why don't renters vote? I think its because they feel too pressed, and that they don't have the right to speak up.

Any time anything is wrong, homeowners fill the city halls and they demand and insist, and sometimes even threaten.

But renters don't feel that they can do this.

So Arlie Hochschild starts her book, showing the same sort of paradoxes that Thomas Frank showed to conclude that people are voting their identities instead of their economic interests.

She starts there, but I think she wants to explain it a different way, similar to why renters don't vote and protect their economic interests. I think just staying out of view, avoiding humiliation, and that they just don't feel that they can, override a strict economic interest.

SJG

Oh bullshit, SJG, I rent. I vote. Not that it will slow down your BS.

Sjg is clearly in the middle of his own echo chamber of idiocy.

res.cloudinary.com

apartmentlist.com

San Jose and many of the surrounding communities and much of the entire Bay Area is majority renters. But even citizen renters are much less likely to vote.

Feel their votes don't matter, feel they are not entitled to have a different POV.

I am quite sure that changing this would swing most local elections. As it is now, most of the municipalities are run to maximize economic harvesting.

I think this is similar to where Arlie Hochschild is going to go with her Red state analysis. Yes, people are voting their identity, and against their economic interest. But this is not just because they are being duped. Its because they don't think their votes matter and because they don't feel entitled to hold progressive views.

SJG

Polly Superstar themoralminority.net

And in the UK she was with: houseofharlot.com

Tiny House, San Jose. Does this come off of the trailer? State law specifies 13' 6" max on the roads. Does look to be a clever design. mercurynews.com

drivinglaws.aaa.com

ops.fhwa.dot.gov

sanjoseinside.com

From the Washington Post

Then Hochschild attends a Trump rally in New Orleans, and it feels like a revival. “His supporters have been in mourning for a lost way of life. . . . Joined together with others like themselves, they now feel hopeful, joyous, elated,” she writes. “As if magically lifted, they are no longer strangers in their own land.”

This may well be the mind-set of some Trump supporters; certainly, it is the candidate’s pitch. But it’s hard to entirely trust Hochschild’s conclusions. Early in the book, she notes how federal assistance for strengthening environmental protections, combating global warming and reducing homelessness faces a “closed door” on the right. “If we want government help in achieving any of these goals, I realized, we need to understand those who see government more as problem than solution,” she writes. “And so it was that I began my journey to the heart of the American right.”

“Strangers in Their Own Land,” then, is not an academic’s impartial effort to understand conservatives but rather a means to an end — an end toward which the writer regards conservatives as obstacles to overcome.

There’s a deep story for you.

Thank you for posting that Mark.

There is no doubt that Arlie Hochschild is a liberal, and that understanding why liberal support is gone in some enclaves, is the motivation for her book. I read what you posted of her above, and it makes sense to me.

Of what came across in the media of Trump rallies, yes they did seem like religious revivals, and it did seem like his crowd was of people who for some reason felt that they were now strangers in their own country. They cheered Trump because they saw in him someone who would remedy this.

A friend of a friend from Latin America and Africa says that Trump talks the way dictators do there, trying to whip up fear and hatred. Where as when Hillary Clinton spoke she was nothing at all like that. She was rational. Trump appealed to negative emotion.

Hochschild did go to the Lake Charles area of Louisiana to listen to people, not to lecture to them.

And she is trying to get beyond her jumping off point, Thomas Frank's 2004 "What's The Matter With Kansas?" In effect he was saying that people were being duped. Hochschild starts there, but I believe she will be able to go far beyond Frank.

SJG

Erik Satie: Relâche (1924) youtube.com

The underlying premise of these books is " I'm really smart and these people don't believe what I believe, so I need to find out where they went wrong". When an author/researcher uses that as a jumping off point, the conclusion is predictable. For example, everyone in the state of Kansas is too dense to understand what is in their best interest.

Ocham's Razor would suggest a simpler answer. The people of Kansas ARE voting in their best interest, but the PhD from California is too dense to understand.

Is tixtittyfag losing it, giving up on typing gibberish, and instead just using copy and paste to try to make sensible conversation impossible?

Mark94 wrote, "The underlying premise of these books is " I'm really smart and these people don't believe what I believe, so I need to find out where they went wrong". When an author/researcher uses that as a jumping off point, the conclusion is predictable. For example, everyone in the state of Kansas is too dense to understand what is in their best interest.

Ocham's Razor would suggest a simpler answer. The people of Kansas ARE voting in their best interest, but the PhD from California is too dense to understand."

Well it depends on how you define interest. Thomas Frank was first of all only using Kansas as a metaphor. His title is a reference to something from long ago.

en.wikipedia.org

That working class people voting Red are voting against their economic interest is hard to deny. Frank is claiming that they are voting their identity.

Others have disputed Frank, as I believe Hochschild does, saying in effect that their identity is their interest.

But then the question is, why would this be so? So Hochschild is pushing the matter deeper, not satisfied with Frank's conclusions. So she spent five years listening to Red voters, trying to understand why they see things the way they do.

And she has always made it completely clear that she holds liberal views.

SJG

Erik Satie: Relâche (1924) youtube.com

That working class people voting Red are voting against their economic interest is hard to deny.

No it's not. It's quite simple. Working class people have hope that they will improve their economic condition or, if not them, their children. They do not believe they are stuck in their station, relying on government largesse. The best chance they have of rising above the working class is a high growth economic environment, which they rightly associate with a world of low taxes, low regulation, and limited government.

Downward wealth transfer via the ballot box and taxation is what makes our economy grow. It is what makes us, or used to make us, different from 3rd World Banana Republics. Our greatest era of growth was during the Eisenhower years, 91% top tax rate.

Many of those voting Red and advocating for Red policies are already working in industries which do little business other than government contracts. And the leaders and founders of these firms are often far right Republican activists.

And like Frank and others say, they are voting for Prayer In School and Criminalizing Abortion, but they are getting Capital Gains Tax Cuts and increases in Corporate Welfare and Gutting of Environmental Regulations, and then also cuts to local school budgets and making higher education unaffordable.

The greatest time for the working man's purchasing power was around 1969 to 1972. Since then it has been downhill, and this corresponds exactly to when the cuts on upper income tax brackets started.

I can't paraphrase Frank, I read him a long time ago.

But this is awesome: amazon.com

And he doesn't even live in Berkeley, he is obviously from Louisiana.

SJG

Badge, Clapton youtube.com

You've repeatedly mentioned Eisenhowers 91% tax rate and suggested that is reason for rapid economic growth.

1. The rate only applied to incomes over $200,000. That's the equivalent of $2M today. So, it applied to almost no one.
2. The Eisenhower years followed World War 2. There was incredible pent up demand for everything, millions were returning to the workforce, and families were forming at record rates. So, these were incredible drivers of economic growth. The 91% rate, not so much.

The next lowest rate down would have applied to many more people. And if there were not such progressive taxation, there would have been less benefit for workers and the middle class, but far huger fortunes accumulated and used to inflate the stock market and concentrate land ownership.

I'm certainly not denouncing entrepreneurialism. Working to use it for myself and others. Just saying that you can't use an ideology to justify keeping so many people delegitimated and on the margins. Poverty is caused by social marginalization.

SJG

When trying to understand a situation, I sometimes project it to the extreme.

If every person in America was receiving a Basic Income, would that be effective ? No one would be working, growing food, keeping electricity running, and so on. Plus, the government printing presses would working full time, making inflation similar to that of Weimar Germany.

How about if half the country was getting Basic Income ? Well, at least somebody would grow food, until they realized they were better off with Basic Income rather than paying 91% tax. Pretty soon you are back to starvation and Weimar.

Would 25% work ? Maybe 10% ?

Or, maybe it's better if we have an open economy where anyone who wants to can get any job, assuming they work for it by developing skills. We save Basic Income for the disabled.

Of course, there's that pesky problem that some people might get rich. Maybe a migrant saves his money and opens a wildly successful restaurant. I guess we'd just have to tolerate that.

Mark94, you are assuming that people do meaningful work only because they need to in order to survive. Never in my life have I been motivated that way. Certainly by the time I was in elementary school, I saw how silly and what sort of a sell out that sort of an idea was.

No one actually needs money to survive. They just think they do. Air is free. Water usually is. Free food and clothes are available many places. And we have the sunlight for when we will be awake, and we have darkness for when we need to sleep. What more could anyone ask for?

If I felt a need to beg or be subjected to humiliations in order to survive, I would know that something was seriously wrong and so I would just pick up a weapon, aim, fire, repeat. And I would hope that anyone else in such a situation would do the same. That people have been made into Uncle Tom's is at the core of what is wrong in our society.

There is no one in an industrialized country who is poor, where there is not someone else who is giving a reason why they deserve to be poor. And so we all need to stand up and put an end to such rationalizations.

You are assuming that work has to exist to keep people in line, just as today we also have a little bit of welfare, always set up to denigrate the poor to keep them in line. This kind of thinking is the problem; and it is why things are coming to a crisis, as because of industrialization we need very little labor.

Everyone wants to do well. For one thing, they want to win the admiration of family and friends. People only deviate from this, or come to seek a life of luxury and idleness, when they are taught to devalue the fruits of their own abilities, and come to see work as only a burden to somehow be gotten out of, as a means to an ends.

Aristotle understood this, teaching that the greatest life is one of ends activities, not means to ends activities.

I have always sought to live this way. I have lots of on going affairs, but I have never thought of any of it as 'work', in the way that strivers and parent pleasers do.

And Marx taught that when workers are not devalued, then they will have lots of leisure, for educating themselves and for creative purists.

And so Basic Income is a way of making good on this, on the fruits of industrialization.

Of Basic Income, usually it means some money, enough to live off of, and it is different from welfare because it is not needs tested.

But many working people today don't even get that. To make it function as intended, you also need to have cost controls or government enterprises providing all necessities at regulated prices, or for free; like food, shelter, medical, clothing, and transportation. Otherwise, as Frank Lloyd Wright explained in the 1930's, it will all just go to rentiers. And indeed this is how it is already, any gains made by working people just goes to inflating the real estate market and raising housing costs.

If we had those kinds of services for the basic necessities, then Basic Income and the Minimum Wage would have their intended effects.

Now you might tax the Basic Income back, even at low wages. Or you might only tax any of it back at the highest tax brackets. Taxing only higher up means that more money will be in higher velocity circulation, and this is generally better.

The idea is to separate survival from employment, and thus have a far more efficient and less wasteful society. Using public policy to create more jobs and to try to minimize unemployment is very inefficient on the public sector expenditure side, and horribly destructive on the environmental side. Far far better to have as many people as possible spending as much time as they can reading Plato and Aristotle, and Marx and Engels too. Or you can just have them fucking their brains out.

In the organization I am building, besides running a number of industries, people will be doing all of the above on a daily basis.

Democracy can never work if people are in dire need or subject to ridicule and humiliation. People first have to stand up for themselves and others.

And always remember, Religion Is A Business, and Business Is A Religion. Most people already understand the first, but the second is a little more challenging.

And I am not suggesting a utopia, all this amounts to is people taking what they are entitled to and stopping it from being usurped by the denigration of working people, and by people who have children in order to exploit them.

And none of this will happen until it is taken, and there will have to be ample use of 5.56, 7.62, 9, and 10mm force.

Very good as first places to look at these issues, of how industrialization gives us plenty. We can produce enough for every single person to live better than kings and queens did. But expecting people to prove that they can "earn a living" actually makes the situation worse and worse, and has pushed us to the brink of environmental suicide and destruction by nuclear weapons.

amazon.com

amazon.com

SJG

Side note, I have not read this, but Hardt and Negri make much of it in their Commonwealth. It was an unfinished manuscript of Karl Marx, not well read because it was not published until 1939, when Moscow released it in Russian.

en.wikipedia.org

From today's vantage point of using a bike for very high commute mileage instead of just for recreation, cogs, sprockets, and chains wear out too fast. And the new indexed shifting stuff is not as durable as the old friction shifting systems.

What SJG plans to get, if not even make himself, is like this, Shaft Drive, Internal Gear Hub, Disc Brake, Hub Lighting Alternator: telegraph.co.uk

Clapton's Greatest Hits, 2017 youtube.com

SJG: A response of 21 paragraphs and, best I can tell, not a single word in response to what I said.

Me: We can't afford to pay Basic Income to a big portion of the population because that money has to come from somewhere. You: People would be happier if they didn't have to work and somebody magically paid their bills.

Everyone wants to do worthwhile work. It only gets to look otherwise when they have been degraded for long periods of time, or taught what you seem to believe, that work is something to do only until you don't have to do it anymore.

So as far as how many people would take that option, I would hope it would be zero percent.

No one has to work now, and no one should ever have to, if by 'work' you mean labor just to survive and pay bills, stay solvent, stay housed, stay fed.

Everyone wants to do well, apply their abilities in good ways and be recognized for that.

The government controls all the central levers of our economy, like the printing press, the furnace, and more importantly the money multiplication factor which is controlled by interest rates. Money recirculates the fastest when you give it to those at the bottom. So as enough food, shelter, and clothing are already produced, there would be no net increase in drain upon labor or other material resources. The issue then of simply currency is entirely artificial and contrived. The real economy, as Buckminster Fuller explained, is that of life support, the things one needs to live on Space Ship Earth. The economy of currency and balancing government accounts, is completely arbitrary.

The main issue then in all such moves to Social Democracy is just that the government would become a larger portion of the GDP. This is how it is right now in the Social Democracies of Western Europe.

Good Book: amazon.com

SJG

When you find that magic money tree to let 300 Million people lead a life of leisure, please send me the location.

No magic money tree needed. Our society already produces what is needed, very little change needed. Its only a matter of people deciding that they want it.

Now as far as my own group, yes we will be enjoying that ourselves, but our group is invitation only.

SJG

Our society produces what we need because people work. If people stop working, we'll starve. I mean, there are 3 year olds that understand that.

The one with the money tree is the federal gov't. Its simply green ink and paper.

It's not really leisure, because the idea is to remove the artificial barrier defining work and leisure as being separate.

For my own group we are at the very beginnings of building this for ourselves. For the rest of society, its just a matter of when they decide that they are going to claim it and stop accepting middle-class values.

SJG

amazon.com

Should show that the privatization and regulation of sex started with agriculture and the invention of land ownership.

Ideas just like those of Comrade Engels?

Yes, but the only people we want to have stop 'working' are those who do it because they feel erroneously that they need to in order to survive, or to maintain social standing, or until they have enough money that they don't need to anymore.

Of those who do not separate work and leisure, we want to enable them to more fully apply their abilities. Eventually the others will come to see this, and then want to join in.

SJG

So, the federal government just prints money. Go research something called the Weimar Republic. They tried that. Inflation got so high so fast, people literally had to use wheel barrels to carry enough cash to buy groceries.

Our government continually expands the money supply. Interest rates are the main way.

Weimar was a disaster, but that is because they refused to control the big cartels.

SJG

If the government printed enough money to provide basic income to the population, it would increase the money supply by about $6 Trillion every year. The total money supply now is about $4 Trillion. Money would quickly become worthless.

The idea I've seen for the arguement FOR basic income, is in the near future when capitalism will only have employment for 1-in-10 people. So we need a solution for the other 9-in-10, who are unemployable.

If you follow the post-1970 productivity charts, the economy is really only working well (well wages and wealth track productivity gains) for the top 10%, or the top 17% in actuality. So we are heading there (unless the bottom 83% shapes up and retools their skills). Ask dougster or subraman. They claim there aren't enough skilled applicants so we need visas to hire foreigners.

^^ WHERE wages and accumulated wealth track productivity gains. (Sorry, type).

Most everyone else sees flat wages or no growth. That is not good.

So, we're going to go from 4% unemployment to 90% in the near future. I'm glad I got a few months notice.

This all reminds me of Malthus, or the Limits to Growth in the 1970s, where someone proved that population growth would result in starvation because, obviously, we couldn't grow any more food, or discover any more oil.

Clearly, as automation increases, there is no way to create new jobs. We're screwed. ( that's sarcasm ).

Well, we did create a generation of boys who can't fix exhaust leaks. ;-)

I think the claims of 1-in-10 is a little hyperbole. But when you look at some of the job applicants today, ... well ... ?

I'm still trying to claw my way out of the bottom 90%. pay down here sucks. :-( I'm not looking for a handout.

I read Limits to Growth when it first came out in the 1970s. A group of the world's best economists, computer scientists, and other experts gathered to put together a model of the world. It proved that the earth was headed for calamity. Starvation and Pollution were on the horizon For a couple years afterward, I was despondent. I thought we were doomed. Then, someone took the same computer model and plugged in data from some other eras, like 1700 and 1800. In all cases, the model predicted economic doom within a few years. So much for the World's smartest people.

The same people have been claiming that the world is going to end _----(pick any date you like) in the meanwhile, the sun has come up every day so far.

I agree, I'll believe it when I see it. No harm in thinking about it as long as we don't waste too much energy thinking and as long as we don't enact dangerous government policies are it either. :-)

mark94, most of those promoting Citizenship Pay, along with a Euro style Social Democracy say it comes down to 10 to 15% extra tax on higher income. Its just a matter of making a society which works a bit differently. And the tax and payouts are what keep things humming along.

And what Dominic77 is saying about his is absolutely correct. Just a matter of facing the truth and deciding that industrialization is going to benefit our society, rather than be used to support denigration of the poor.

Its not just a matter of Malthusianism. Its simply that hard needs are met with very little labor, and after that its all soft needs, pandering to status seekers.

The world is not going to end, but our economics system is based on entirely out of date ethics. We either make voluntary gentle changes, or we are forced to make changes by disasters and violence.

No one earns money or has money which is 'there's'. All they have are contractual and legal conventions which has placed it in their control. They have gotten themselves a cut of the action. But that this be continued, is not ever to be guaranteed.

SJG

So, when I work, I don't get paid for the work I do but because of a " legal convention". There is this magic pool of money that simply exists and someone or something distributes it based on some criteria. It has nothing to do with the effort put forward.

All you are asking is for an adjustment in how the magic money pool is distributed, to better favor people who sit in their mom's basement smoking pot over the guys outside in August replacing roofs in 110 degree heat.

Madness. Absolute madness.

Let's say we live in San Jose Guy's Utopia of America, where rich guys pay 91% tax rates and the government guarantees $30,000 income to everyone.

Joe Millionaire has a chance to start a new business that will provide 100 good jobs to an impoverished area. If the business succeeds, he will keep 9% of the profits. If it fails, he will lose his entire investment and be bankrupt. Does he start the business ? No one in their right mind will start a new business in SJGU.

Larry Laborer is receiving $30,000 from the government, plus doing some work under the table for cash. He gets free health care and other benefits from the government. He sees an ad for a full time job in a small factory paying a wage of $50,000 for 40 hours a week. There is a contributory benefits package. Does he apply for the job ? No, and neither does anyone else in town. The factory closes.

Life in Utopia.

Replying here to mark94:

"So, when I work, I don't get paid for the work I do but because of a " legal convention"."

Well, this work you do, I would rather call it employment, a more neutral and accurate term. You get paid because you have a contractual arrangement, written down or not, and this is enforceable in court. What is not true is that you have some claim to this payment or ability to hold the money, which transcends the contractual arrangement. Such monies may be subject to taxation. It is not out of the question that someday their could be some sort of wealth taxes or accumulated funds taxes, or some system by which accumulated monies depreciate over time.

"There is this magic pool of money that simply exists and someone or something distributes it based on some criteria. It has nothing to do with the effort put forward."

Well I don't know about any magic pools of money, but there certainly are great cash flows, and your employment income ( self-employed or otherwise ) is simply a way you and others have of getting a cut of that cash flow.

Well, yes, people put forward effort and they hope that this will increase their cut of these cash flows. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Sometimes great effort yields zero money. Often those who work the hardest, are those who get paid the least.

On consolation, if you are employed by someone else, they have a legal obligation to pay you. But often those in the bottom tier of the labor market, do end up getting stiffed, and have very little in the way of legal recourse.

At core, what I am saying is that there is no natural law or divine right to such money. Merely contractual, and usually those who do the hardest work get the least and get the worst collateral treatment.

"All you are asking is for an adjustment in how the magic money pool is distributed, to better favor people who sit in their mom's basement smoking pot over the guys outside in August replacing roofs in 110 degree heat."

Again, no magic money. Just large cash flows, and contractual agreements and other schemes and gambits to get some of it. Most people will not accept employment obligations unless they know they will get paid, and paid fairly. So to replace a roof, you usually need to pay the people who do it.

What I am saying is that the idea of Citizenship Pay, means that there is some minimum which is guaranteed. And in the larger sense, most paid employment produces far less social value than the resources it consumes, especially when you consider for example the use of fossil fuels in commuting too and from work.

Our society is stilted, by government policies, in order to create employment. And then it is just individuals coming up with schemes in order to gain employment. We would be better off if some of this no longer existed. We don't need more people making up stuff to sell to rich people, or more people selling stuff by pandering to greed, fear, and ignorance. Most businesses which grow do increase their number of employees, but they are also reducing the number of employees elsewhere. Overall, the number of value producing jobs continues to shrink.

And FWIW, I am 100% opposed to marijuana and all street drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, and I have never lived in any basements. I keep the worst of TUSCL's trolls on ignore. So with me, they do not provide anyone with cover.

Poor people are not immoral, no more so than rich people. They are simply workers who have been pushed off the bottom end, and usually by completely unjust means.

But trying to employ them or otherwise create jobs, has costs and consequences, and the extra labor is completely unneeded. All it amounts to is ritual humiliation in order to justify a stratified society.

Recommend the works of Frances Fox-Piven, and R. Buckminster Fuller.

SJG

So, let's say the $30,000 Basic Income go into effect on Jan 1. Here's what the country looks like 30 days later.

Every person making less than $30,000 quits their job and applies for Basic Income. Most of the people making less than $50,000 also quit. Nearly every small business in America closes because they have no workers. There is not a single restaurant, grocery store, or gas station left open. Society is in chaos. The National Guard is activated to control riots and distribute emergency food. Cities go up in flames. Industries are nationalized and taken over by the military.

And, that's just the first month.

I started my above post before mark made his most recent post. So let me try and reply to his most recent.

"Let's say we live in San Jose Guy's Utopia of America, where rich guys pay 91% tax rates and the government guarantees $30,000 income to everyone."

There is nothing utopian about anything I have said. Most of those talking about Citizenship Pay and Euro Style Social Democracy are saying about 10 to 15% more top bracket tax, so like about 50 to 55% tax, far less than it was in the 60's and 70's. And then Citizenship Pay, like about $15k per year. But I also add to this that there need to be controls or gov't programs on things like housing, medical care, and a few other necessities, in order for Citizenship Pay and the Minimum Wage to have their intended effects.

"Joe Millionaire has a chance to start a new business that will provide 100 good jobs to an impoverished area. If the business succeeds, he will keep 9% of the profits. If it fails, he will lose his entire investment and be bankrupt. Does he start the business ? No one in their right mind will start a new business in SJGU. "

Well again, 50% to 55% top tax rate. But, usually a corporation just reabsorbs the money for expansion. So probably he would pay no tax, except for tax on his own salary. At some point he may be taking more money out and paying Capital Gains, currently about 1/2 of the personal income tax rate. And we know what the government does with that money, it spends it. So this is part of what keeps money recirculating and the economy going.

Government spending is what props up the middle tier of the jobs market. It is not that everyone works for the government, or is a contractor or supplier. But enough people are that that is what gives us a middle tier. Without that we would quickly become like most other societies, dividing into rich and poor.

Two things that would help small biz entrepreneurs are Universal Single Payer Health Care, and the Cradle To Grave Safety Net, including good unemployment, relocation , and retraining funds.

So say I work for a big company, which has given me salary and benefits competitive with what defense contractors give. Say Joe Millionaire wants to hire me for his new venture. Or say I am the Joe Millionaire starting such a venture.

Better if the government backs up the employee with health care and the saftey net and retraining.

Better if the government backs up the entreprenuer, making it easier for him to complete in the labor market with this health care and safety net.

This is what people have figured out in the Social Democracies of Europe. But it is also very consistent with how America was originally intended, everyone gets a chance, results, rather than explanations trying to say that the poor deserve to be poor.

" Larry Laborer is receiving $30,000 from the government, plus doing some work under the table for cash. He gets free health care and other benefits from the government. He sees an ad for a full time job in a small factory paying a wage of $50,000 for 40 hours a week. There is a contributory benefits package. Does he apply for the job ? No, and neither does anyone else in town. The factory closes. "

Well there is no shortage of applicants for good jobs when there are people qualified. So if Larry is not qualified for TwentyFive's openings, or for Dougster's, then we should not be expecting him to apply.

When there are reasonable job openings, you get lines of applicants which extend around city blocks, you get people sleeping on the sidewalk at night, to hold their place in line.

People want to do well. And we want people to have that chance. But we don't want people accepting employment because they feel that they are being forced or coerced. We actually need to have less people employed, not more. And we need to make the kinds of structural changes which will let this work. Atlantic Monthly recent published about this issue, futures of only occasional employment. We should be welcoming this, not fighting it.

It was during the Enclosure Movement, at the beginnings of Capitalism, that peasants were driven off of public lands, usually via starvation and gun point. They were forced into the cities, where they had to work in factories for starvation wages. We don't want to be repeating that. And we don't want to be denigrating the poor, in order to enforce any 'work ethic'.

Rather we want to be dealing with the reality we have, and also recognizing that the world is basically social, and that people contribute in different ways.

SJG

more reply to mark's most recent post:

" Every person making less than $30,000 quits their job and applies for Basic Income. Most of the people making less than $50,000 also quit. Nearly every small business in America closes because they have no workers. There is not a single restaurant, grocery store, or gas station left open. Society is in chaos. The National Guard is activated to control riots and distribute emergency food. Cities go up in flames. Industries are nationalized and taken over by the military."

No one is going to quit any reasonable job, unless they have some real need to do so. Everyone wants to continue to develop and apply their skills.

But the idea of Citizenship Pay is to stop exactly what you are putting forth, this idea that everyone needs to be controlled by this need of employment to avoid starvation and homelessness.

That idea is what keeps a completely unworkable situation in place. And this is what Piven and Fuller are specifically responding to.

SJG

@san_jose_guy “No one is going to quit any reasonable job, unless they have some real need to do so. Everyone wants to continue to develop and apply their skills.”

so according to you none of those people working entry level minimum wage jobs earning $20,000 per year are going to quit so they can sit on their ass smoking weed and get a check from the government for $30,0000 per year. do you want to know why despite your claim that they will ALL quit? because they are ALL, every single one of them, smarter than you dumbass.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

― Adrian Rogers

When I hear "Citizenship Pay", I think of the novel and movie Starship Trooper. Citizenship is awarded to loyal party members, who get special rights and privileges. It's a cautionary tale.

Familiar with Starship Troopers, and the ideas of its author. What it was really about were the ideas of Cold War America. Citizenship pay, as being talked about now is not like that. Good point though. And its not like there won't be areas of contention.

So the exact amount would have to be determined. But many questions:

1. Should there be a housing cost component, which varies from place to place? Or should there just be public housing offering on top of it.

2. Eliminate Unemployment Benefits?

3. Eliminate Minimum Wage?

4. Eliminate Earned Income Tax Credit?

5. Need to have Universal Single Payer Health Care

6. Still to have Food Stamps? Probably because it works and it controls where the money goes.

Then after all those decisions are made, then to adjust tax code accordingly. Keeping the tax burden upwards does the most to stimulate economic activity.

Need to learn to live with far less than full employment, and we want people self actualizing, not applying for jobs just to stay fed and housed, or to maintain social legitimacy. Can't run a country on the idea that the poorest people are somehow immoral.

Government run industries is the most underutilized option in this country. No good to be selling off natural resources when they could be used to generate public money, and employment too.

As it stands now its the survivors of the middle-class family who are most likely to end up living under bridges. This is why I stepped forward and helped three sisters put their father into San Quentin. Otherwise it could have been they someday found to be living under a bridge.

Utopias are things like Thomas More's and Plato's, which were never intended to be realized. Here we are talking about a series of legislative changes which would put us back on the track we were on with Western Europe, before Richard Nixon unveiled his Southern Strategy in 1968 and gave the Republican Part a huge boost. There would of course be endless debate and need to solve new problems.

Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela are not examples to follow. Those places had zero experience with Democracy.

The examples, both good and bad, are in Western Europe. And just as it is here, there are people in those countries on all sides of every issue.

SJG

about the failed Clinton Campaign: amazon.com

Though I find Hochchild's Strangers In Their Own Land to be more interesting. There is a deep rooted problem in this country. More interested in that, than in how to get more Hillary Clinton's elected. I want people to the Left of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein anyway.

Finite And Infinite Games, James P. Carse

goodreads.com

jamescarse.com

en.wikipedia.org

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life (Live In Las Vegas) youtube.com

youtube.com

youtube.com

youtube.com

It's like going to a Ferrari showroom and carefully deciding options and colors, when you are flat broke. We can't afford Citizenship Pay for any sizeable part of the population. We can't tax enough, borrow enough, or print enough to let 10% of our population sit on their butts and self-actualize. And, even if we could, the other 90% would would vote out any politician who voted for it.

Well, we already have too many people in paid employment, we need less. Butt sitting does no harm. Neither does writing, painting, or composing music. Nor does literacy tutoring, community organizing, or bringing meals to shut ins. But driving an automobile to work uses up scarce resources, and it causes environmental damage. The vast majority of paid employment does not yield anything of social value equal to the resources it consumes. Its just a meaningless ritual we subject people to.

Remember about Citizenship Pay, as opposed to Welfare, is that it is not needs tested. Everybody gets it. What money is payed out, recirculates. And this means that each time, some goes back into the tax coffers. It is not so much really a government cost, it is just making the government into a bigger portion of the GDP. Keynesian theory has presented different ways of determining what this size should be. Keynesianism protected us from any serious economic troubles for over 40 ears. After that it was just the fact that we depended on finite natural resources which caused problems. And then it was Reagan.

Some additional money will be recouped by tax hikes, and maybe by government enterprises. But the higher you can shift the tax burden, the more quickly and the more times the money will recirculate.

Letting a segment of the population, the bottom segment, be made into scapegoats, is destructive of democracy, no less so than racism is.

Another new book: amazon.com

also just found: amazon.com

Here is what I was looking for. Probably better to call it "Basic Income", more neutral.

Andy Stern, Raising the Floor youtube.com

amazon.com

And here: The End of Work and the Case for Universal Basic Income youtube.com

SJG

Read a little bit more of Arlie Hochschild. She meets with a man in his 80's.

Again, Lake Charles Louisiana.

He had been from Seattle and from a family of progressive Democratic activists.

In 1960 he left for the South and became Republican.

He worked for decades in a glass factory, doing maintenance on things with toxic chemicals and personally doing unlawful disposals of toxic wastes.

Once he got soaked from head to toe in hydrochloric acid. It burned his clothes right off of him, even his underwear, even his shoes. The supervisor told him to buy new clothes. He did, they cost $60. When presented with the receipt, the supervisor deducted for wear and tear on his old clothes, and gave him $8.

Injuries from that episode really hurt him bad, till today when he has to use a walker. And then they fired him because they did not want to pay any medical bills.

Once he was dumping some of their stuff in water ways, and the fumes took down a bird mid-flight.

So he was an environmental activist. That county ( parish in Louisiana ) has one of the highest exposure levels to toxins, and many of the people she is talking with have been personally impacted by environmental problems. For men it has twice the national average for cancer rates.

The most extreme of the Red voters she is finding to be the Tea Party backers. Remember she started 5 years back. And these Tea Party backers are about 1/2 of the Republicans.

So why is this environmentalism activist in his 80's, now in the Tea Party and backing anti-environmentalist candidates?

Hochschild feels that if she can unscramble this, see why people so effected by environmental problems have now become anti-environmentalists, that she can understand the broader phenomenon of the Red voters.

This is already going far beyond Thomas Frank.

SJG

Thin Lizzy | Still in love with you | National Stadium Dublin 1975 | HQ | youtube.com

youtube.com

youtube.com

Ah, the anecdote from one person that disproves all other evidence.

By implementing more reasonable environmental laws, tens of thousands of working people in the energy belt now have good paying jobs. Still, the air and water in the US is cleaner than it's been for 200 years. We are no longer beholden to OPEC.

But, one guy in his 80s had a bad experience in the 1960s, so that negates all other evidence to the contrary.

Who is smarter, the tens of thousands in Louisiana who vote Republican and get great jobs, or the academic who still thinks they are voting against their interest ?

She spent five years there talking to all the people she could.

That Louisiana Parish still has a serious toxins and cancer rate problem. It is everywhere.

And they don't have a good employment situation. It sucks, and this is a big part of why they all seem so angry, and to be going along with the Tea Party slant.

So, why are people doing as Thomas Frank said, voting against their interest?

Have to read the rest of the book to see what she can conclude.

I think part of it is going to be similar to something going on here, renters who don't vote, or won't vote differently from how the neo-liberals and real estate speculators tell them to.

SJG

Thin Lizzy youtube.com

mark94 -->"Let's say we live in San Jose Guy's Utopia of America, where rich guys pay 91% tax rates and the government guarantees $30,000 income to everyone.

Joe Millionaire has a chance to start a new business ... if [it] succeeds, he will keep 9% of the profits. If it fails, he will lose his entire investment and be bankrupt. Does he start the business ?"

Yes, he might. Here's why. Because 9% of X plus $30,000 is more than just $30,000 by itself. Whether than return is worth it to Larry or not, I can't say. But ( (0.09 *X) +30,000) > (30,000). More money is more money. Realize you are talking to a Tuscler 'scraping by' on only $60,000. So my perspective is likely different that yours.

mark94 --> "Larry Laborer is receiving $30,000 from the government, plus doing some work under the table for cash. He gets free health care and other benefits from the government." -->

^^^ This sounds like Basic Income. Let's assume it is.

mark95 --> "He sees an ad for a full time job in a small factory paying a wage of $50,000 for 40 hours a week. There is a contributory benefits package. Does he apply for the job ?"

^^ Larry might. Again, because ((50,000) +(30,000)) > (30,000). He may want to live on $80,000 and value is his 40h/7d of idle less than and extra infusion of $50,000.

Though in all seriousness, the business owner, Joe, knowing that Larry gets 30,000 Basic Income, would offer the job at ((50,000) - (30,000)) = 20,000. There would likely be a lot of 10,000 jobs in an economy with Basic income. But a 30,000+20,000 proposition is a bit different than 30,000+50,000. I would be ecstatic to make 80,0000.

From Larry's POV which is more evil? Joe being taxed at 91%? Or Joe using 50% of his profits to do stock buy backs? I guess it depends what's in it for Larry and if either choice makes jobs disappear (or if Larry owned stocks).

We want people to be employed because they want to apply and contribute their abilities, not because other people will insult them if they are not employed. We already have too many people, both rich and poor, of that second type.

SJG

I just first learned of this Bernard A. Lietaer. He has written books. He talks about how the rules of money and the rules of sex are closely related. Duh!

Seriously, are people into owning or controlling, or into openness and sharing.

en.wikipedia.org

All patriarchal societies in history ... youtube.com

And also along those lines: amazon.com

Saying that in hunter gatherer times there was no monogamy. Rather, when land ownership was invented for agriculture, then also was monogamy invented.