Curtis Bowman

The Working Poor

The pinkos over at some obscure leftist rag called Business Week just published a very interesting article about the working poor. Authors Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein juggle anecdotes and facts to paint a depressing picture. Here are a few of the facts:

Today more than 28 million people, about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64, earn less than $9.04 an hour, which translates into a full-time salary of $18,800 a year -- the income that marks the federal poverty line for a family of four . . . .

[. . .]

Overall, 63% of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau. They're not just minorities, either; nearly 60% are white. About a fifth of the working poor are foreign-born, mostly from Mexico. And the majority possess high school diplomas and even some college -- which 30 years ago would virtually have assured them a shot at the middle class.

[. . .]

The federal minimum wage, too, long served as a bulwark against low pay by putting a floor under the bottom as the rest of the workforce gained ground. At $5.15 an hour, it remains 30% less than it was in 1968, after inflation adjustments. It hasn't moved in nearly seven years, victim of a divided political Establishment in which programs for a relatively powerless group often get jammed up in bipartisan gridlock.

And one anecdote:

Pittsburgh native Edward Plesniak, 36, lost his $10.68-an-hour union job as a janitor when the contractor fired all the union workers to make way for cheaper, nonunion labor. So far, Plesniak has been able to dredge up work only as a part-time floor waxer. The pay: $6.00 an hour, with no benefits. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare," says the married father of three. "And I can't wake up."

All followed by a grim conclusion:

The U.S. has long tolerated wider disparities in income than other industrialized countries, mostly out of a belief that anyone with enough moxie and hustle could lift themselves up in America's vibrant economy. Sadly, it seems that path is becoming an ever steeper climb. Strong recovery and vigorous growth will again get wages growing. But as a new phase of prosperity begins, it may be time for some added advantages for those struggling in a brutal global economy. Otherwise, the outcome could be more polarization and inequality. The farther down that road the country goes, the harder it will be to change course.

I never had to work a low-wage job as an adult. (I worked in a retail store during my last two years of high school and during the Christmas and summer vacations during my first three years in college.) But I was cheap graduate student labor for several years and then spent nearly a decade as a part-time adjunct at several schools. I was never desperate like the people mentioned in the article, but I was more than a little anxious from time to time.

If I learned anything about dead-end jobs from my experiences in academia, it's this: most of the people who don't have such jobs don't really care very much about the people who do have them — regardless of what they say to the contrary. Consequently, I don't expect much political will to do anything about the working poor to arise anytime soon.

Offshoring the Audience

This article from the June 2004 issue of The Atlantic helps to explain the poor quality of American films. David Kipen argues that Hollywood is paying more attention to foreign viewers and less to the domestic audience. Box office returns bear out this notion:

The movie business is booming abroad precisely because Hollywood is making pictures for the world market—at the expense of customers in America, where, not surprisingly, business is tanking.

[. . .]

If France makes movies for the French, and America makes movies for the world, who's left to make movies for America? Would masterpieces like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, played against a background of Washington senatorial skulduggery, and His Girl Friday, with its muzzle-loading, too-fast-to-translate comic dialogue, even get produced nowadays?

The new movie that I enjoyed most in the past year — that is, one I saw in a theater when it first came out — was Shattered Glass. I still can't believe that it was made, even though it probably didn't cost that much. No one was shot. Nothing blew up. The characters sat around and talked about a magazine that very people read. (I'm a loyal subscriber to The New Republic, and so I read all of the Stephen Glass articles when he was writing them in the mid- to late-1990s.) It was great. Totally gripping from start to finish. I can't imagine that it made much money. Too bad that we see so few movies like it nowadays. Character and dialogue. Where did they go?

Kipen concludes on a bleak note:

Can American film be saved from the multinationals who are heedlessly globalizing it into gruel? Probably not. Hollywood persists in offshoring its audience, with the direst consequences for which movies get made and how. It grows ever harder to believe that the Writers Guild actually used to give an annual award for the "screenplay dealing most ably with problems of the American scene." It was the Robert Meltzer Award, named after a promising screenwriter who died following the Normandy invasion. In 1949 there were eleven nominees for the Meltzer Award. In 1951 the award was suspended—perhaps because, by then, even admitting that the American scene might have its problems was a great way to get yourself subpoenaed. But in the 1970s (regardless of who gets the credit) movies dealt more ably with problems of the American scene than they ever had before, or have since. And today? Today the American film landscape increasingly resembles a decrepit city, ringed by lucrative international markets like so many prosperous suburbs, but burnt out and hollow at its core.

He's right, I think. To judge from my video and DVD collection, there's hardly been a good movie made in the U.S. since black and white cinematography became the exception instead of the rule. I'm a throwback, I admit, but how many intelligent, well-written movies make it to theaters nowadays? TV screenwriting is often superior.

Republican Tax Mutiny

The Republican party has long enjoyed, and inexplicably so, a reputation as the party of fiscal responsibility. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. never submitted a balanced budget to Congress. One of President Bush's most courageous decisions was to vote for the tax increases that helped pave the way for balancing the budget during the Clinton years. Naturally, Bush was pilloried for breaking his pledge not to raise taxes, even though it was the right thing to do.

Bush Jr. squandered the surplus that he inherited from Clinton and pushed through tax cuts that were not favored by the majority of Americans, who are more concerned, and rightly so, with the future of Social Security and Medicare.

Some Republicans in the Senate seem to have had enough, as this article shows:

Congressional analysts have estimated that the cost of making the tax cuts permanent could total nearly $2 trillion over the next 10 years. The budget impasse, which began in March, was over whether to impose a "pay as you go" rule that would require Congress to offset the cost of new tax cuts.

Mr. Bush and House Republicans adamantly opposed any such restrictions, as they would have made it almost impossible to make last year's tax cuts permanent.

But in the Senate, a handful of centrist Republicans teamed up with Democrats in March and succeeded in attaching the pay-as-you-go rule to the budget resolution by a two-vote majority. House and Senate leaders agreed on a compromise that would have essentially postponed the major decisions until next year, but all four of the Republican dissenters rejected the deal as unacceptable.

[. . .]

Four Senate moderates - John McCain of Arizona, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island - had insisted on attaching a provision that would have applied pay-as-you-go-rules for the next five years.

The House budget resolution called only for a pay-as-you-go rule that would apply to new spending programs outside of defense and domestic security. The Bush administration staunchly supported the House approach, determined to permanently extend the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 rather than let them expire over the next several years.

Senate Republicans needed two more votes to reverse the earlier budget vote in March, but none of the four moderates were willing to give much ground.

"It sounds like an obscure technical issue, but it is extremely important," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonprofit research group that campaigns for lower budget deficits. "It is becoming a major rift within the Republican Party."

Mr. McCain let it be known this month that he would go along with imposing pay-as-you-go rules for three years instead of five, but House Republicans said they would only accept the restriction for one year.

In what seemed like a last-ditch effort at agreement, Mr. Frist and other Senate leaders agreed with House leaders on a one-year plan that would allow Congress to extend for one year three major tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year.

But as the pressure to reach a deal increased, Mr. McCain scathingly attacked the "fat cats" who were not willing to make sacrifices while fighting a war. That prompted an angry retort earlier this week from the Republican House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who said Mr. McCain, a decorated war veteran and former prisoner of war, ought to appreciate the sacrifices being made by soldiers in Iraq.

Mr. McCain fired back on Thursday. "I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility," he said. "Apparently, those days are long gone for some of those in our party."

It's good to know that a Republican like Hastert is willing to smear a fellow Republican like McCain with an implicit accusation of being insufficiently patriotic. I thought that GOP rules required that such treatment be reserved exclusively for Democrats. (Okay, okay, GOP accusations of being unpatriotic are always grindingly explicit when made against Democrats.) As for McCain's response, well, Senator, Republicans have always stood for fiscal responsibility. They've just refused to practice it.

Ferguson's Empires

A little over a year ago Niall Ferguson published Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. A short version of the general argument of the book can be found in "America: An Empire in Denial", an article excerpted from the introduction and the conclusion and published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in March 2003. The theme of America's state of denial about its empire plays a large role in his latest book Colossus.

At the beginning of March 2004, Ferguson gave a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute entitled The End of Europe?. Europe, he says, is an "impire" — yes, that's spelled correctly — or, put more perspicuously, an imploding political entity whose future is anywhere from uncertain to downright bleak.

The continent's declining population, Ferguson says, is the biggest threat to Europe's future. This notion of "impire" is the subject of chapter 7 of Colossus.

Al Qaeda vs. al Qaedaism

Foreign Policy has just published an article by Jason Burke on al Qaeda and its worldview.

Burke argues, in short, that Osama bin Laden is not the leader of a centralized, tightly organized movement that threatens the West. Furthermore, he claims that the real threat is not al Qaeda itself, but rather "al Qaedaism," the worldview of al Qaeda and those who sympathize with its goals:

Today, the structure that was built in Afghanistan has been destroyed, and bin Laden and his associates have scattered or been arrested or killed. There is no longer a central hub for Islamic militancy. But the al Qaeda worldview, or "al Qaedaism," is growing stronger every day. This radical internationalist ideology—sustained by anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric—has adherents among many individuals and groups, few of whom are currently linked in any substantial way to bin Laden or those around him. They merely follow his precepts, models, and methods. They act in the style of al Qaeda, but they are only part of al Qaeda in the very loosest sense.

This article in The Washington Post made the same point not quite two months ago.

Fortunately for us, says Burke, the threat posed by WMDs is small: "Although Islamic militants (including bin Laden) have attempted to develop a basic chemical or biological arsenal, those efforts have been largely unsuccessful due to the technical difficulty of creating, let alone weaponizing, such materials." After citing the difficulties they face in developing such weapons or obtaining them from another country, e.g., Pakistan, Burke adds, "Confronted with such constraints, Islamic militants are far more likely to use conventional bombs or employ conventional devices in imaginative ways—as was the case with the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Spain." Burke advises us to calm down.

On the one hand, I agree with him. We don't seem to be facing an apocalyptic threat from a tightly knit conspiracy. On the other hand, though, I worry about his easy confidence with regard to WMDs. The war in Iraq, like it or not, was followed by revelations about weapons programs in Libya and Pakistan that were more than a little disconcerting. Much of the world that is predisposed to be sympathetic to al Qaedaism is opaque to us in important respects.

I'm undecided about this, but it might be wiser to err on the side of caution and pursue a more aggressive policy than the one Burke seems to recommend, even if this increases hostility towards us in the short run. Too many experts have been mistaken or ignorant about too many things for us to be complacent.

Regardless of my reservations, Burke's article is to be recommended. It offers a wider perspective on the issues than we normally get.

Dust & Daemons

This article by Greg Easterbrook first made me aware of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, a trilogy of fantasy novels published between 1995 and 2000. (Easterbrook's article is entitled "In Defense of C. S. Lewis" — I plead guilty to never having read The Chronicles of Narnia — and tries to rescue Lewis from some contemporary critics, Pullman among them.)

Anyway, I read His Dark Materials a few months ago. Consequently, I was glad to see this insightful article in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books. It's fair to say, as the author Michael Chabon does, that as the trilogy progresses Plot and Theme become the enemy of Character. This is especially the case in the third volume, what with its all-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. I can just hear Pullman saying to himself, "I need more characters and conflicts to make the finale truly spectacular!" It's all a bit exhausting by the end, but hardly disappointing.

Ardent Christians will probably take offense at Pullman's portrayal of organized Christianity, which, to be fair, is mostly located in one of the alternative worlds described in the novels. But Pullman clearly has a larger agenda with regard to Christianity, one that is critical of it. Adults in general can enjoy the books, since they're written at a fairly high level, even though the target audience is young adults.

Moses Mendelssohn on Immortality

About a year ago I suggested to Thoemmes Press — now known as Thoemmes Continuum — that it reprint an 18th century translation of a dialogue by Moses Mendelssohn entitled Phaedon. The topic is the immortality of the soul, and the structure of the work, though not the particular arguments, is drawn from Plato's dialogue of the same name.

I wrote an introduction of not quite 6000 words to accompany the reprint. The book should appear in a month or two. Here is some information about it.

It's not the sort of thing that many individuals will be buying, given its expense. But if you happen to have access to an academic library, you might do me the favor of recommending the book to the librarian who handles acquisitions.

An Armadillo in Israel

My former Penn student Marla Goldfinger, who is now living in Israel, recently gave birth to a daughter named Michaella Efrat Goldfinger. It didn't seem right to me that Michaella should grow up without an armadillo for a companion just because she lives in Israel. (That ain't right, as we say in the Lone Star State.) I found a volunteer at the Ft. Worth Stockyards, mailed him off at the beginning of April, and anxiously waited for him to arrive safely.

I received word a few days ago that his trip was uneventful, and that he's glad to be out of the box. He got to work right away, and so here are two pictures of Michaella and her new friend.

Around the house we were calling him "The Kid," since we thought that Marla and her husband Avishai should name him themselves once he arrived in Israel. I suggested that they give him an appropriately Texan name. You know, something authentic — "Slim," "Tex," or the like.

I'm happy to report that "Curtis the armadillo" is doing well and enjoying his job, even if he is a bit puzzled by his new name.

American Power, Past and Present

Robert Kagan and Niall Ferguson are exchanging letters this week on the Slate website. The pseudo-chumminess of this format, which Slate employs now and again, is rather annoying, but at least it can lead to interesting reading, which is certainly the case this time around.

Kagan, as I mentioned in my previous post is the author of Of Paradise and Power, a book well worth reading. Niall Ferguson, who recently left Oxford to join the faculty at NYU, has just published Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. He's perhaps best known for a revisionist account of World War I entitled The Pity of War, which I heartily recommend. Not too long ago he published a book on the British Empire entitled Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. I have yet to read this one, but it's on my list.

Colossus is an important book. It's written by a serious historian who specializes in economic history. Ferguson, being British, doesn't have a partisan ax to grind about American politics, the forthcoming elections, and the like. I take him to be a fair witness.

To get an idea of Ferguson's project, I recommend this op-ed piece that he recently wrote for The New York Times.

Power and Weakness 3.0

Robert Kagan published "Power and Weakness" in the June 2002 issue of Policy Review. The article became very influential, and justly so, for its controversial claims about diverging American and European views of power in the realm of foreign policy. A year later Kagan expanded the article into a book entitled Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.

The paperback edition, which recently appeared in bookstores, has been supplemented by a 54-page afterword. You can download a PDF of the afterword (260 KB) if you already have the hardback edition and don't want to purchase the paperback.

Kagan adapted the new afterword for an article in the March/April 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs. Only a preview is available on that site, but the entire article was re-printed by The New York Times.