
The Fall of the American Worker - amardeep
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/07/the-fall-of-the-american-worker.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
======
rndmize
Ironically, Murray wrote a book in 06 called "In Our Hands" where he advocates
replacing the welfare state with a universal income of $10k/year per person
for every citizen 21 and over. He opens the book by saying his preference
would be to have no welfare of any kind, but that as most people would never
accept that, a universal income program would be the next best thing. In an
America of increasing stratification and decreasing wealth and power on the
lower and middle sides of the scale, I find myself liking the idea more and
more. I don't think we really need so much of the population in the workforce
as we move towards better automation/software processes.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Another thing one could try is to give everyone a guaranteed low wage job.
This has fewer perverse incentives.

It would also help government budgets - for example, BART trains could be
cleaned by some unemployed individual making $10k/year rather than some
unionized worker making $75k + benefits (or whatever the exact numbers are).

~~~
rndmize
On the contrary, guaranteed low wage jobs sounds like it has all kinds of
perverse incentives - for politicians and corporations.

Not to mention, why should people have to do worthless government-assigned
work to get that money? Yes, of course, there will naturally be some people
that would take the 10k and live on it - as best as can be managed - but I
think it would free up a great many other people to pursue work they're
actually interested in, especially in the arts.

In past times, the majority of human work was growing food. Today, less than
2% of the population can feed everyone else. As a result a great many people
had to find other work; and they did. But now it seems that software and
automation will reduce the number of people needed to do all other kinds of
required work to a minimum, as happened to agriculture.

Coincidentally, artistic work by and large pays less than ever today due to
the ease of piracy (you can trace the profits of RIAA over the last 3 decades
for a good example of this) even as more people than ever are able to do
artistic work (better tools) and reach an audience at no cost (better
communications). Art and entertainment will be the last bastions of human
"work" when current trends start to max out.

So - why not have a society where people are free to pursue the work they're
interested in, whether it pays or not; where art and entertainment are
possible to freely create or consume, unconstrained by the bounds of the
market; and where the necessary work for human survival is compressed to a
minimum of needed people that are interested in those matters and/or the money
that comes with them?

~~~
300bps
>Yes, of course, there will naturally be some people that would take the 10k
and live on it - as best as can be managed

That's the thing. If $10,000 is the new $0, then it will be worth $0.

~~~
mdda
No : Potatoes will cost the same for everyone (even the rich). So the cost of
purchasable goods does not decrease (which would happen, if some people got
free potatoes, for instance). Agreed, there would be more money in the
economy, so there would be a step-wise inflation, but the pain would be shared
out (mainly according to ability to pay).

The benefit of a basic income is that any paid work would simply add to your
take-home cash. At the moment, means-tested benefits can cause people entering
into the workforce to have benefits removed - so that their implicit marginal
tax rate can exceed 100% (i.e. they are worse off working). Even if this
perverse situation isn't directly manifested, the very poor suffer some of the
highest implicit tax rates due to benefits being removed. Which is a crazy
situation.

------
saraid216
I don't like this article; I find it argumentatively weak. I fully agree with
the premises and conclusions, but the path it takes to get there is severely
lacking. So I'm going to offer a better path.

Critics of the welfare state, like Murray, prefer to talk about choice rather
than hardship. Their general argument can be summed up as, "They made poor
choices, and are now facing the consequences of those choices." The problem
with this perspective isn't the profound lack of empathy, but rather a
presumption that there exists a system of perfect information that everyone is
tapped into.

Choices have consequences. But we rarely see the many possibilities a choice
can yield, let alone the probable weightings of each one. Even granted the
great presumption that everyone _should_ be perfectly rational, it still
depends on perfect information. "She shouldn't have had a child with the wrong
guy," says Murray, and Maharidge seems to just accept this. The proper
response would have been to dig deeper. Should she have made sure that she
couldn't have children first before having sex? Should she have not had sex?
How could she verify that that guy was the right guy?

And this still presumes that she had a choice in having sex with him in the
first place. But perhaps more to the point, _how_ would she have known each of
those things? How would she have discovered that birth control exists? How
would she have been afforded sex education and family planning strategies?
This isn't a feminism/sexism issue, though I'm veering a little too close to
that.

We know things because we learn them. We hear about them through rumor and
this is filtered through whatever heuristics and analytical brain software we
happen to have available. And yet these pathways for comprehending information
and sifting truth are built on trial and error. We learn something; we believe
it; we find that a certain part wasn't true after all; we adjust; we move on.

This process happens. We make mistakes. That's how we learn what consequences
exist to the choices we make. Yes, we make bad choices, but this is
frequently, virtually _always_ , because we could not see with perfect clarity
what consequences there would be. That's what experimentation _is_. Because at
the end of the day, we don't really have a choice. We can't change the laws of
physics so that a ball we throw into the air doesn't come back down. I might
choose to throw the ball up, but I can't choose whether or not it comes back
down. The limit of choice is reality, and we do not have a perfect
understanding of reality.

By placing the burden of consequences on those who did not know them before
making the choice, you ask them to supercede reality. That's something of a
stretch in to call a reasonable expectation.

When you talk to hardworking poor people about their lives, you'll find that a
common question is, "What could I have done differently? How could I have done
better?" And I ask you this: if choice is the final word, why are these
questions being asked?

~~~
enraged_camel
>>"She shouldn't have had a child with the wrong guy," says Murray, and
Maharidge seems to just accept this. The proper response would have been to
dig deeper. Should she have made sure that she couldn't have children first
before having sex? Should she have not had sex? How could she verify that that
guy was the right guy?

I agree with the rest of your post, but I have mixed feelings about the above.

Within my relatively small circle of friends, two unmarried couples recently
announced that they were expecting babies. Neither couple has announced plans
for a wedding.

I just don't get it. I mean, my mind bends, but cannot fully wrap around the
concept of willingly having kids out of wedlock. I definitely hope things turn
out well for the aforementioned couples and their children, but statistically
speaking the odds are not in their favor.

~~~
rayiner
Eh, babies happen. My friend and I both had unplanned babies in law school.
She and her boyfriend are still together, but unmarried, while my now-wife and
I got married (but not because we felt we had to--we were already planning on
it). Still, it circles back to a point someone made in a sibling comment:
stuff that's life-ruining for people with little means is much less of a big
deal for wealthier people. All four of us have well-paying jobs and could take
care of a baby by ourselves if our relationships didn't work out. Three of the
four of us have parents who have the financial resources and the time
flexibility (by virtue of being professionals instead of people who have to
punch a clock) to help out in numerous different ways. The accidents are,
between us, a joke about how difficult it is to use birth control because we
haven't really had to face any consequences as a result (aside from the whole
not sleeping because of night feedings thing).

Meanwhile, my wife's parents had to drop out of college when they got
accidentally pregnant with her, because their parents didn't have the
resources to support them.

I don't like it when people overemphasize the impact of "choices." Choices
don't have the same meaning for all of us. Life is a different kind of easy
when fucking up doesn't mean derailing all of your plans.

~~~
tsotha
>I don't like it when people overemphasize the impact of "choices." Choices
don't have the same meaning for all of us. Life is a different kind of easy
when fucking up doesn't mean derailing all of your plans.

I'm okay with that. What would be the point of being wealthy if it didn't make
your life easier?

------
davidf18
People frequently focus on increasing wages but the really important thing to
remember is quality of life. With increasing productivity should come lower
cost for the same goods (adjusted for inflation).

The New Yorker is based in New York City where I live. Both renting apartments
and purchasing housing has increased in cost significantly because of an
artificially induced housing shortage through zoning laws meant to favor
wealthy landlords over those who rent or want to purchase an apartment/coop.
(this is called by economists, economic rent)

There are many, many laws like the zoning laws in NYC that cause economic rent
that favor certain groups over others. Another example in New York City are
Taxi Medallions which limit the number of taxis and making them less
affordable for passengers.

Instead of focusing on wage increases which might be limited by globalization,
we should look for all of the _economic rents_ and removing them through
legislation thus allowing markets to do their job.

------
StandardFuture
>social critics who believe that the decline of America’s working class comes
from a collapse of moral values

>They [the two families] have to navigate this HEARTLESS economy by
themselves.

The social critics may be right. However, they point to individuals as morally
incompetent, etc.

But it takes an entire society to define an economy.

So I am wondering if these social critics are right but they are blaming the
moral collapse only on those currently most negatively affected by it i.e.
those impoverished, out-of-work,etc.

However, the Germans under the Nazis were morally incompetent but had raving
economic success.

So, all in all I don't know. I was just thinking that you cannot say that just
because an American is either well-off or filthy rich that they are more
morally competent than the rest of the society.

~~~
smackay
Quite the opposite in fact,
[http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_m...](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_more)

------
DanielBMarkham
"In the words of Tammy Thomas, whose similar story is told in my new book,
“The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” these people do what
they’re supposed to do. They have to navigate this heartless economy by
themselves. And they keep sinking and sinking."

What the fuck?

The country I grew up in didn't tell people what to do. People were encouraged
to figure out what needed doing. Then they went and did it.

I think we do a great disservice to the poor to focus on jobs as some ends to
themselves. They are not. Jobs are the result of innovation and
entrepreneurship. Not everybody has to be an entrepreneur, but you need enough
of them to keep things mixed up constantly for everybody else. There is no
"play by the rules". That's bullshit. You either live your own dream or
somebody else's. There is no middle ground. You don't just "create jobs" for
people who "follow the rules". This is not a maternal society. This is
organized chaos, where the chaos is creatively destroying things that don't
work and replacing them with new things as humanity moves along.

God, I hate this navel-gazing pulp.

~~~
anon1385
I find your description of human lives as 'things that don't work' to be
utterly sickening. The mind of an individualist is a scary place.

~~~
penrod
The phrase "things that don't work" is obviously not referring to human lives,
it is referring to behaviors chosen by people. We make choices as to how we
spend our time, how we sustain ourselves, how we interact with other people,
etc. Some of these choices work out, some do not. Fortunately, we and our
fellow humans can learn from these experiences and adapt our behavior.

The incremental discovery of "things that don't work", and adjustment to these
discoveries, is good and necessary because no one has, or will ever have, a
complete understanding of the perfect society for human flourishing.

Given the limits on knowledge, I find the mind of an individualist far less
scary than the mind of someone who presumes to know how others should live,
and is willing to use force to ensure that they comply with that vision.

------
regal
By the middle of this article, I felt refreshed to be reading something that
seemed to be saying, "There are people who struggle economically, but that's
okay - the world is an imperfect place, and people take their own lives down
their own paths that make them better or worse."

Into the second half though, the overtones began to paint a very Upton
Sinclair-like story of crushing, inescapable poverty, and ultimately the piece
ends with the same message _The Jungle_ ends with: it's unfair that some
people make a lot more money than other people do.

And I'm left with the same question I always have for these arguments: Mr.
Article Writer, how much of your income would YOU like to give to the heroes
of these stories?

Everybody always wants to say, "Oh it's so sad that these people are
suffering," and then generously volunteer that someone else pay for it: "Hey!
Why don't we make THAT guy give that OTHER guy his money!" Nobody ever offers
_his_ own money, though.

Wonder why that is...

~~~
enraged_camel
Are you saying that a writer at a newspaper who makes median income is
actually in a position to give some of that income to poor families, versus a
CEO who makes $15 million a year?

~~~
briandear
Here's an experiment. Let's give 92% of all of the income that the rich people
make to the poor. How much will there be to go around? Not enough by a long
shot. If we taxed the rich at 100% it wouldn't even cover the budget deficit
for one year.

But, these folks that make a fairly middle income suggesting that someone else
give more are exactly the problem. No one wants to give more when it reduces
their quality of life. There are plenty of people waiting for kidney
transplants, yet when was the last time a New Yorker writer went to volunteer
to give up a kidney for someone he's never met?

America should ask why manufacturing has left the US. Rising costs. Yet what
has caused costs to rise? It isn't like greed is a new invention. Something
has changed though .. Burdensome regulation and unfettered litigation for one.
Have you ever tried to open a factory in California? Good luck. It can take
years and sometimes a decade due to NIMBY politics. In China, you can have a
factory opened in just over a year -- construction and government approvals
included. I won't suggest we turn into China but the extreme on the other end
is what we're facing. The increasing numbers of poor are the result of an
economic environment that is primarily caused by limousine left wingers that
think they've been anointed guardians of everyone else's destiny. They'd
rather stop a factory from being built and have the potential workers in
poverty from which they can eventually be saved by government intervention.
The cite boogey men such as "CO2" yet, poverty causes for death than CO2 ever
has.

The rich CEOs aren't stealing from the people, they're players within the
system just like everyone else. They don't make the laws. As far as rich,
there are plenty of $120,000 per year developers on HN that wouldn't think of
working for $60k. To a poor person, 60k is a fortune. I think some religious
figure once said something about casting the first stone.. There was another
dude from India that mentioned something about all life being suffering. There
will always be poor people because life has winners and losers. To suggest any
different is to revisit the 'prosperity' of the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

~~~
gjm11
> Let's give 92% of all of the income that the rich people make to the poor.
> How much will there be to go around? Not enough by a long shot.

The top 1% of people in the US have about 20% of the income. The US's GNI is
about $14T, so that's about $3T for the top 1%. (So an average of about $1M
per person; of course that's the mean; the median will be lower, and the
threshold for the top 1% lower again.)

The official poverty line in the US is about $23k for a family of four; let's
say $6k per person. The number of officially-poor people in the US is about
40M. If we suppose all those people are earning precisely nothing at present,
taking them up to the poverty line would therefore cost about $240B, less than
10% of the income of the top 1%.

So ... it seems like giving 92% of the income of the rich to help the poor
would help them rather a lot, actually.

------
grecy
Sounds like the description of a second or third world country.

~~~
kmfrk
I am sure Hans Rosling has a chart to show something to that effect lying
around somewhere.

------
Tichy
One think I have come to realize (in a non-scientific way, don't have time to
look up all the numbers): I think there never really has been a stable time in
our history. Those golden days of the past where workers could earn well were
also just a fleeting moment, and perhaps at the same time other people were
already struggling and suffering. Today software developers do quite well, but
in a few decades we might get to read the same kind of stories about them. The
world is changing all the time, and people are always struggling to keep up
and survive.

------
tsotha
Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we import thirty million Central American
peasants to compete with these families so they _never_ get a raise!

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Central American peasants

Wow. You don't sound racist at all.

~~~
tsotha
You are correct. I don't.

EDIT: On second thought, I see I am somewhat in error. Let me amend my
statement to say "Central and South American peasants".

------
mark_l_watson
Great article. Shows the heartlessness of a critic of a social safety net. I
believe that people can be motivated and very successful in life, without
having their motivation destroyed by seeing people who can barely get by get a
little help, for example food stamps. In other words, I don't believe that
supplying a minimal social net destroys incentives to get ahead in life.

------
gesman
The world is too connected. Lots of local and expensive labor can now be
outsourced to el-cheapo locations. Which means CEO can produce same stuff at
less cost, keeping more profit. It's almost like law of physics - energy flows
along the pathways of least resistance.

~~~
StandardFuture
Or the "laws of game theory" per say. :P

But yes, with ALL the values that we hold in America: capitalism, a sense of
morality, etc. It is inevitably that we will only grow towards becoming more
merged with the world around us. Simply because: their is more economic
benefit for companies looking more at everything they do in an ever growing
international sense. However, worker Joe does not study game theory and has
zip way of learning about working with Chinese manufacturers.

I get the feeling that we are seeing the inevitable. The 'third worldliness'
that persisted throughout much of the world is melding with the old 'American
isolationist.'

However, we as capitalists now have a taste for the economic fruits of
thinking internationally and we won't give it up. But, still it makes me
wonder because The British Empire had international success and it only made
Brits that much more wealthier (BUT they also had a strong sense of
'frontierism' e.g. colonialism) ... And I think that is the one thing we
seriously lack today. If jobs go to China, then in Imperial days that would
equate to colonies being formed in this 'new land of China' (e.g. Brits moving
to the American/Australian Colonies for new opportunities, etc.)

That is NOT our situation today. If jobs move ANYWHERE, there are already
cooperating entities there that do NOT need more people.

That is because cooperation for monetary reasons is much easier to do in
today's age. Currency exchanges, the digital age, etc. make that much more
efficient instead of old times where everything was purely about 'trade or be
conquered.' ... Just some thoughts.

------
graycat
Here we have been suggesting that part of the problem, for both individuals
and our society more generally, is poor people having kids they can't afford
to support well, i.e., in the sense of good _parenting_.

But from some poor countries there are claims that when outside forces result
in poor people having more money, right away they slow down on having children
-- the rate of births falls.

So, for one related point, using some version of _socialism_ to raise poor
people from poverty should reduce the burden on society of children of poor
people and not increase that burden. Or, in this case, poverty does not cause
people to exercise more discipline and be more responsible but on both points,
less. So, society might calculate an expected return on investment: Invest
some money in raising poor people out of poverty and see how much society
saves later in expenditures on the social problems of children with poor
parents with poor parenting.

But, wait, there's more! Finland beat back the Swedes, Russians, and Germans,
but now they are losing! How? They are having only about 1.5 children per
woman. Extrapolate that out for 100 years and see a smaller Finland; for 300
years and see nearly no Finland. And that figure of 1.5 is close to what holds
in several countries in Europe. Why? So far in the more _advanced_ countries
with the higher _standards of living_ , they have decided they don't want to
be parents.

Joke: Come back in 500 years and find nearly everyone super fired up about
being good parents. Why? Because all the other branches of the tree died out!

Darwin wins again! Of course, there is likely a grain of truth in this joke,
and if so then we stand to be in one of the periods of relatively fast genetic
change, assuming that the desire to be good parents is significantly a genetic
thing.

But, wait, there's more! So, some of the people lost their jobs because in
effect their jobs were shipped overseas. So, we go to a retail store, buy an
item made overseas, pay for it, and then also pay taxes to pay to help the
person who lost their job as we bought this item from overseas. Are we
actually helping the US in this way?

I know; I know; all those textile workers in the Carolinas were supposed to
get much better jobs at Microsoft as Microsoft sold software to the overseas
textile industry. Who believed this?

Yes, apparently in the US we can import items with low or no import tariffs;
I've heard that this policy on imports is rare in the world, that most other
countries _protect_ their domestic workers.

There are claims that such _protectionism_ is, net, bad for the US economy,
but this argument seems to _write off_ the training, experience, and capital
associated with the person who lost their job with this expensive _write off_
ignored.

For more, the economy is _important_. Then destroying the financial system is
a disaster. How to do that? We saw how in the 1920s: Use high leverage to blow
an asset bubble. In response we put in a lot of controls in finance to keep
that from happening again. Then starting in 2000 or so, we did it to ourselves
again, although this time with real estate. Plenty of people, e.g., the COB of
Wells Fargo who said clearly that we would not like the results, saw the
problem coming. Yet, we let the bubble inflate. If we want to say that actions
have consequences, then we should be willing to say that bubble blowing has
consequences and with discipline, we had plenty of information, we wouldn't do
such a thing.

For more, one of the problems in the US is social problems from poor people,
but actually we wanted poor people and have worked, more than once, to import
a distinctive lower class we could have as poor people and cheap labor. We've
deliberately created an underclass, and we are seeing some of the
consequences.

From all I can see, except for new technology in the last 60 years, the US
standard of living was higher in the 1950s. Then we exported a lot but
imported very little. But how did the exporting help the US? Or, workers at
Caterpillar built an earth moving machine and sent it to a third world country
or one of the countries so damaged in WWII that they couldn't make such a
machine again yet. So, the US got paid in foreign currency that we swapped for
gold or some such -- nearly useless. Net, the US was able to do better being
nearly self sufficient. Sure, we might import rubber and tin, but mostly we
were self sufficient. Sounds like maybe we should be self sufficient again.

------
michaelochurch
What happened to agricultural commodity prices in the 1920s (causing rural
poverty that spiraled into the Great Depression) is now happening to almost
all human labor. _Perhaps_ the cutting edge of technology will be spared--
that's what most HN posters have bet their careers on-- but even that's
unlikely if the collapse spreads.

Poverty isn't self-correction or "market discipline". It's a cascading failure
that corrupts the whole society, then as well as now.

------
CleanedStar
Obviously there is very little rational analysis or response on HN to this
article or the issues it covers. It's obvious from the wording of the replies
of those who are more sympathetic and those who are less sympathetic to those
mentioned in the article. Look at the wording:

"poor choices...empathy...choices have consequences...we make
mistakes...morality of altruism", "The country I grew up in....Jobs are the
result of innovation and entrepreneurship", "morally competent", "how much of
your income would YOU like to give to the heroes"

Not much rational analysis. Just a sermon, or morality tale, or an abbreviated
Ayn Rand screed against altruism, which might as well be a religious sermon.

Poverty is an essential cornerstone of the current economic system.

There have been many economic systems over the millenia - hunter-gather
societies, then slave societies, then feudal societies, then capitalist
societies. From the philosopher Hegel to Francis Fukuyama we've had
intellectuals say our current economic system is the last one. From the 19th
century on, some have said other economic systems might become predominant in
the future, particularly socialist ones.

Capitalism is the only economic system where poverty is necessary. When a
company's revenues exceeds its capital expenses, the money has only two places
to go - profit or wages. If there was full employment, strong unions, no laws
banning secondary strikes like Taft-Hartley etc., workers would get more and
more in wages until profits disappeared. When companies have the lever to send
workers into poverty, they become happy "just to have a job". This allows for
companies to make workers work longer hours for less money, or to put in a
more strenuous effort during the time worked.

Everything can be discussed rationaly, but when discussing how poverty exists
in capitalism in a manner it did not in feudalism, or prior economic systems
(or possible future ones), words like "morality" are brought out. People can
rationally discuss VCs and valuations and options. But rationality has to go
out the window when discussing how poverty exists in the current economic
system, we have to get a sermon, rational discussions of the topic are not
allowed.

Also a look at history is not allowed. That our economic system is just one in
a chain of systems, and that "socialism" is still a bugaboo of the people
moving the levers of our economic system is a sign of this. Capitalism is new
historically as a dominating system, and has very shaky elements, so you want
to make people forget that...in Europe countries are still under feudal
trappings. That in the the 1930s, the capitalist west had its factories lying
dormant while the USSR couldn't build factories fast enough. And so forth. You
want to forget that the property in the US was stolen from Indians, or even
the property in Poland or Ireland stole from the Polish and Irish. You want to
forget Africans were dragged to the US in chains and set to work in stolen
Indian property. That even the property accumulated from the profit made off
these people after is similary ill-gained. And that this all happened
historically recent, relatively. History has to be forgotten to, even fairly
recent history. It's a topic which can't bare rational analysis or a look at
recent history. Some type of moral sermon is all that's called for. Not just
the "heartless conservatives" but the "bleeding-heart liberals". Mawkish calls
for the poor to be fed for moral reasons is just as silly as moralistic claims
that the poor are lazy.

------
schoper
Supply and demand. If I wanted to make labor more expensive, I would do
something about the people trying to import cheap labor.

[http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-fourth-of-july-
sermon-f...](http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-fourth-of-july-sermon-from-
slate.html)

