There’s an excellent op-ed in Saturday’s NY Times entitled, “How Do You Say ‘Economic Security’?” by Theodore R. Marmor, a professor emeritus of public policy, and law professor Jerry L. Mashaw, both of Yale. (Together, they also co-authored “America’s Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities.”)
Here’s how it opens…
How Do You Say ‘Economic Security’?
By THEODORE R. MARMOR and JERRY L. MASHAW
New York Times Op-Ed
September 24, 2011
IN the face of nothing but bad economic news, Americans often take heart in remembering that we have been here before — during the Great Depression, when conditions were far worse than they are today — and we survived…
The authors note the “…crucial difference between then [1934] and now: the words that our political leaders use to talk about our problems have changed. Where politicians once drew on a morally resonant language of people, family and shared social concern, they now deploy the cold technical idiom of budgetary accounting…"
Translating it all: Economic spin and corporatocratic monospeak have trumped compassion.
Marmor and Mashaw state that it’s “…more than a superficial difference in rhetoric. It threatens to deprive us of the intellectual resources needed to address today’s problems.“
They note that in 1934, millions of Americans were “…out of work, losing their homes and facing more of the same.”
How did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt respond back then? Marmor and Mashaw remind us that it was by forming the Committee on Economic Security. And, at the time, Roosevelt told Congress…
“…the security of the men, women and children of the nation first.” All Americans, he emphasizes, “want decent homes to live in; they want to locate them where they can engage in productive work; and they want some safeguard against misfortunes which cannot be wholly eliminated in this man-made world of ours.” Roosevelt asks the committee to propose “sound means” to secure against “several of the great disturbing factors in life — especially those which relate to unemployment and old age.” Those “sound means” eventually emerge as the programs of Social Security pensions, old-age assistance and unemployment insurance…
Today, we are witnessing record-breaking, long-term unemployment, a housing and mortgage foreclosure crisis which is actually worse than what we experienced in the 1930’s, and income inequality and overall economic disparities between our social classes which are greater than any reliable metric has ever recorded it, at least since reliable metrics were first created to measure these types of statistics, which was back in the nineteen-teens.
Nowadays, our President acts to establish a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
…The commission’s task is to “improve the fiscal situation,” to “achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run” and to address “the growth of entitlement spending.” The commission recommends, true to its charge, cuts in entitlement spending — that is, the programs established in 1935 and later years to aid the unemployed, aged, disabled and sick.
In August 2011, Congress acts, not to aid those in distress but to cut federal spending. The stated goal of its new “super committee” is to create fiscal balance by recommending measures “to reduce the deficit” by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade…
We’re told that
“social insurance programs," designed to protect ordinary Americans against the ever-recurring
“hazards of a market economy” are now labelled
“entitlements” that we need to cut, in some instances to downright draconian levels. All in the name of
“fiscal balance and deficit reduction.”
But Marmor and Mashaw provide us with a “a more fundamental observation about language and the collective imagination that language reflects.”
Collectively, they observe that we’ve lost the words that convey the concept that we’re all in this together.
…In 1934, the focus was on people, family security and the risks to family economic well-being that we all share. Today, the people have disappeared. The conversation is now about the federal budget, not about the real economy in which real people live…
…
…In 1934, the government was us. We had shared circumstances, shared risks and shared obligations. Today the government is the other — not an institution for the achievement of our common goals, but an alien presence that stands between us and the realization of individual ambitions…
Concluding their brief op-ed, they point out that “…we’ve lost the words — and with them the ideas — to frame our situation appropriately.”
They close out their column with an abrupt and stirring shot of reality…
Can we talk about this? Maybe not.
But, like many of my progressively-minded fellow Democrats, I sure as hell will do my bit to continue to bring it up.
And, as Robert Reich just noted it a week ago, given the likely “parameters of public debate for the next 14 months,” you should, too!
The Election of 2012: Why the Most Important Issues May Be Off the Table (But Should Be On It)
Robert Reich
RobertReich.org
Friday, September 16, 2011
…Within these narrow confines progressive ideas won’t get an airing. Even though poverty and unemployment will almost surely stay sky-high, wages will stagnate or continue to fall, inequality will widen, and deficit hawks will create an indelible (and false) impression that the nation can’t afford to do much about any of it – proposals to reverse these trends are unlikely to be heard.
Reich states the inconvenient truths that “neither party’s presidential candidate will propose…”
--to cut CEO pay,
--raising marginal tax rates back to the levels they were at in the 1950’s and 1960’s
--to “strengthen labor unions and increase the bargaining power of ordinary workers”
--“…resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act, thereby separating commercial from investment banking and stopping Wall Street’s most lucrative and dangerous practices”
--to not cut Medicare and Medicaid, nor will Medicare for all be supported by anyone running for President
--nobody running for President will question “…the absurdity of spending more on the military than do all other countries put together, and the waste and futility of an unending and undeclared war against Islamic extremism – especially when we have so much to do at home…”
--“Nor are you likely to hear proposals for ending the corruption of our democracy by big money.”
…Don’t be silenced by Democrats who say by doing so we’ll jeopardize the President’s re-election. If anything we’ll be painting him as more of a centrist than Republicans want the public to believe. And we’ll be preserving the possibility (however faint) of a progressive agenda if he’s reelected.
Most importantly, by continuing to push and prod we give hope to countless Americans on the verge of giving up. We give back to them the courage of their own convictions…
Yes, by continuing to -- in Reich’s words -- “push and prod,” as Marmor and Mashaw referred to it, we can return to the “…morally resonant language of people, family and shared social concern.”
As far as I’m concerned, there’s been nothing shared as far as the sacrifices the masses have made to prop up our nation’s top 1% over the past few years.
To hell with this shared sacrifice bullshit! Let’s talk about Marmor and Mashaw’s not-so-shared social concerns.
Now, THAT is messaging I can believe in.
“Can we talk about that?”
Last I checked, we didn't have to ask anyone's permission!
The answer is: Yes! We Progressives Can!
(Comment away. I’ll be back in a little over three hours to follow-up…busy weekend ahead.)