Oppressed and Oppressors-Freire Style

Paulo Freire developed an interesting body of work on the "pedagogy of the oppressed," a way to view people in terms of their economic relation to a system with problems of inequalities.  Michael Johnson applied his knowledge of Freire to a recent work by Joseph Natoli.

Transforming Our Dark Affinities
"....(Joseph Natoli) seems to see this condemning disposition as having "no moral divide, but only a moral monism." I see it as a major moral dualism involving an "us" that is good and a "them" that is bad. The "clarity of a moral dualism" would lead to the "oppressed" turning against and condemning the "oppressors." Well, who among us is not moved in some way by that "wanting it all?" Natoli suggests that is the case of the 80 percent of us in the lower economic groupings. If there is anything needing condemning, it is the core values and beliefs that have the vast majority of us "wanting it all," not those of us caught in the cultural conundrum he so beautifully describes.

Getting Beyond Moral Dualisms

I believe, on the other hand, that to work our way out of our "unconscious common core," we need a new kind of dialectical space, not a moral dualism. I think Paulo Freire can point us toward it. In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire sees that the core dynamic of oppression is dialectical. It is a dance between oppressed and oppressor that cannot happen without each playing out their role to the music of our "unconscious common core." He argues passionately that for oppressed people to liberate themselves from their oppression, they have to confront a radical choice: to become an oppressor or to start becoming more fully human:

The struggle for humanization … to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity … become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both. [44]

So for Freire - at least as I read him - the only real alternative to oppression - that is, to the "unconscious common core," is what he calls "re-humanization" - love and compassion - along with a clear-eyed understanding of the external oppressive dynamics.
This re-humanization is a process of transforming the "unconscious common core" to create alternatives to the winner-loser mentality that is embedded in the cultural marrow of our being. Freire also warns:

… Almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors or "sub-oppressors." The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. [45]

Maybe, I am misconstruing what Natoli means by "moral dualism." He may be calling for what Freire is referring to here:

To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. [47]

Certainly" Losers" must see how they are "being had" by their sharing a particular cultural mentality with "Winners." But they also must see how they are trapped into this mentality by their own agency, their choosing the "wanting it all" beliefs and values...."

Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is an editor with Grassroots Economic Organizing and co-author of a book on regional co-operative economic development, forthcoming from Levellers Press. He is also a co-founder of SolidarityNYC and the Ganas Community.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21498-transforming-our-dark-affinities

Frank Thornton

•a day ago

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This piece focuses too exclusively on the minds of Americans. Most of "the oppressed" do not live in this country and do not share the cartoon-like "moral dualism" that afflicts almost everyone here. Being victims of imperialism does not mean the world's masses, as tings now stand, speak with one voice or are free from dangerous illusions, but neither do they follow the thought-patterns described in this piece.
Another way to talk about American "moral dualism" is to focus on the vulgar dialectic of transcendance that infects American discourse. This thoroughly secularized "spiritual" paradigm for the most part recoils in horror from materialism and requires all human beings to posit political virtue as the product of a private spiritual or quasi-spiritual struggle for personal superiority.
Whether one's example is Mother Teresa, Thoreau, Gandhi, John Galt, Tom
Brokaw, or John Wayne, the obtuseness resulting from this pervading narrative is probably the main instrument in reducing the left in this country to powerlessness.
It prevents the 99% from arriving at a realistic appraisal of the class struggle that stands in the way of optimizing the lifespan of our species.
Moreover the debate about human intrinsic goodness versus that "sense of sin" that every young professor of literature invokes in his seductions of students, is irrelevant to the realities of political action and social life. Hawthorne and Melville vs. Emerson and Thoreau is a historical sideshow, not the main event.
Morality, whether "dualist" or otherwise, is first of all simply a rationalization for all the cruelties to which most individuals have historically submitted in the name of large-scale society, and secondarily a condition that humanity aspires tp create, rather than a precondition for society.

BAckFromMars

That the "masses" may have more than one voice is certain, since individuality is a biological condition. However, the psychological condition of people in response to shared socioeconomic circumstances has a limited range of options, say, in Guadalajara where NAFTA put a lot of Mexican people to work in low wage conditions, or in China. China perhaps shows a more hopeful side, since one writer in Nat Geo cites about 100,000 protests there per year. Yet, the basic dynamic pointed out by Marx holds- Employer-employee. Scholars talk of a "corporate-consumer culture" because most people have stopped being artisans making their own shoes, metalwork, and clothes as small businesspeople, and instead depend on corporations in the industrialized system. Read Marx-Engels Manifesto, Ivan Illich on Tools for Conviviality, and Richard Robbins Culture and the Problems of Capitalism for starters. As for "obtuseness," the model makes a difference. John Wayne represented the dominant, imperialistic system, while Gandhi challenged it with a profound and holistic authenticity. Produce and protest with a spiritual basis was most of his message. As for literary education, I agree in part. However, it is not principally the literature, it is the INTERPRETATION of those works. Heard of Marxist theory? I prefer more modern approaches, Gandhian, for example, or American economist David Ellerman or Sociologist Joyce Rothschild. Or Cornell West, for that matter. Thus Moby Dick has racial symbolism, but can be given modern interpretation in light of fishing co-operatives and Greenpeace's efforts to achieve ecologically-based moratoriums. Mark RegoM

Michael, nice to see your writing here! I know you from GEO.coop. I think your reference to personal and cultural transformation to reconstitute our "common core" using Freire's ideas is interesting and important. An example that I've delved into a bit recently is the Mondragon industrial Co-op Corp. They are no government co-op offshoot. They were founded in Franco's Fascist Spain, a child of Hitler-Mussolini military assistance. Padre Arizmendiarrieta, a young Basque journalist who survived the war against Franco's forces, started a more public and grassroots polytechnical institute in his town. He taught the sociology of grassroots democracy, and five graduates became engineers who started the first Mondragon factory. Arizmendi's teaching lead them to want to create a co-operative firm, which they did with his help. They grew and diversified to become what they are today, a dynamic network of co-operatives which includes a co-op university. In Brazil, the MST have grown from the original inspiration of Joao Pedro Stedile who got his masters in Mexico and came back understanding the legalities of squatter occupation for farmland. They now utilize Freire's teachings as they have expanded all over Brazil, starting settlements and then co-operatives. They have started their own co-op association. MST even has a project to teach the settlements to build their own micro wind turbines.
In the US, I owe some credit to the Food Co-ops in New York City for contributing strongly to the transformation of my activist vision. Organic Valley farms shows that a similar vision occurred there recently, since they only began in the 1980s. Going from oppressed to socially responsible and liberated isn't necessarily easy, but like most things, it's about making the necessary effort that then makes it much easier to understand. William Greider, Marjorie kelly, and Nadeau and Thompson have written some decent books on the subject, for example.

NAFTA's Bad Dream

NAFTA, such a joy to remember, and so important to recall.  I guess the Maquiladora sector has lost out since China had come on the scene so much.  I studied Fair Trade, and learned how NAFTA had disenfranchised local indigenous farm communities and contributed to the refugee immigrants.  It's a tragedy, and the beer is a tragic symbolic illusion.

Twenty Years on, Mexico Is NAFTA's Biggest Lie

  Friday, 03 January 2014 11:13 By Jaisal Noor, The Real News Network | Video Interview

TRANSCRIPT:
JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Removing barriers for trade between Mexico, Canada, and the United States, NAFTA created the world's largest free trade area, now linking 450 million people producing $17 trillion worth of goods and services.
Now joining us to discuss this is Timothy A. Wise. He directs the Policy Research Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He's the author of the recent article "How Beer Explains 20 Years of NAFTA's Devastating Effects on Mexico".
Thank you so much for joining us, Tim.
TIMOTHY A. WISE, DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND POLICY PROGRAM, GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE: It's a pleasure to be here.
NOOR: So, Tim, much of the media is celebrating 20 years of NAFTA. I was reading a piece in The Economist which talks about the benefits that NAFTA has brought the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It singles out Mexico for having received the greatest amount of benefits from NAFTA. And the article says the only problem is that we're not expanding free trade quick enough. What's your response? What's been the real story of NAFTA, especially on Mexico, in the last 20 years?
WISE: Well, I think it's--that kind of interpretation really misses the--it ignores the underlying and very clear economic evidence that Mexico has performed far more poorly than other middle-income countries who have not been part of agreements like that. And that's all the more remarkable given that, as one of my coauthors on the piece--I think it was our retrospective on NAFTA at 15--Eduardo Zepeda, then of the Carnegie Endowment, said no country will ever have the benefits, the advantages that Mexico had entering NAFTA, and if Mexico can't make it work, we really have to rethink these agreements. Mexico had a 200 mile border with the United States, the largest--the United States being the largest consumer market in the world to consume Mexico's products. It had the longest economic expansion in the United States' history going on right after NAFTA was signed. And it had a surge--it got the surge it wanted in foreign investment, which tripled. It got a surge in trade, which increased dramatically. It kind of got everything it wanted and yet still showed remarkably slow levels of economic growth, incredibly poor job creation, and a real lack of strategic development over the course now of 20 years. It's anything but a poster child for development. In fact, I think out in the world it's seen as more of a warning sign to other developing countries about signing such agreements.
....
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21005-twenty-years-on-mexico-is-naftas-biggest-lie

Nuclear Clean Up- Bechtel and Hanford

While Fukushima is a relatively new disaster, it's easy to forget the others all around.  I remember reading about Hanford what must be decades ago now.  The corporate executive and investor system is making Marxism look good.

Nuclear Disaster in the US: How Bechtel Is Botching the World's Costliest Environmental Cleanup Wednesday, 02 November 2011 04:38 By Joshua Frank, AlterNet | News Analysis

Razor wire surrounds Hanford’s makeshift borders while tattered signs warn of potential contamination and fines for those daring enough to trespass. This vast stretch of eastern Washington, covering more than 580 square miles of high desert plains, is rural Washington at its most serene. But it’s inaccessible for good reason: It is, by all accounts, a nuclear wasteland.
During World War II, the Hanford Reservation was chosen by the federal government as a location to carry out the covert Manhattan Project. Later, plutonium produced at Hanford provided fuel for the "Fat Man" bomb that President Truman ordered to be dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, killing upward of 80,000 Japanese. In all, nine nuclear reactors were built at Hanford, the last of which ceased operation in 1987. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that as a result of the nuclear work done at Hanford's facilities, 43 million cubic yards of radioactive waste were produced and more than 130 million cubic yards of soil ultimately were contaminated.
During Hanford's lifespan, 475 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater were released into the ground. Radioactive isotopes have made their way up the food chain in the Hanford ecosystem at an alarming rate. Coyote excrement frequently lights up Geigers, as these scavengers feast on varmints that live beneath the earth's surface. Deer also have nuclear radiation accumulating in their bones as a result of consuming local shrubbery and water. The EPA has deemed Hanford the most contaminated site in North America—a jarring fact, as the Columbia River, lifeline for more than 10,000 farmers and dozens of commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, surges along Hanford's eastern boundary.
In 1989 Hanford changed from a nuclear-weapons outpost to a massive cleanup project. Since then, the site has become the largest and most costly environmental remediation the world has ever seen.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the agency that oversees energy and the safety of handling nuclear material, supervises the cleanup efforts, which are currently undertaken by Bechtel National Inc.—infamous for its mishandling of Iraq reconstruction efforts—and a handful of other companies like URS and CH2M HILL. But despite more than two decades of cleanup efforts and billions of dollars spent, only a tiny fraction of Hanford's radioactivity has been safely contained. And the final costs for the Hanford cleanup process could exceed $120 billion—higher even than the $100 billion tab for the International Space Station.
Now outrage is brewing at Hanford. Some prominent employees working on the project are blowing the whistle over what they believe to be dismissals of internal scientific assessments, as well as alleged abuses of managerial power that have been called to the attention of the Obama Administration, to no avail. These staffers point to institutional failures within the DOE and Bechtel as toxic as the nuclear waste they're tasked to clean up, asserting that the DOE lacks critical experts on staff to oversee the project and Bechtel rushed through shoddy design plans in order to pocket some quick cash. The consequences are not only jeopardizing safety and putting the project at risk of failure, they are also likely to cost taxpayers even more money should fatally flawed construction ultimately require a complete overhaul.
"We need alternatives to the current plan right now," Dr. Donald Alexander, a high-level DOE physical chemist working at Hanford, says in distress. "We need a different design and more options on the table. This appears to be a hard thing for [DOE and Bechtel] management to accept. They have spent years of time and money on a bad design, and it will delay the project even more."

It's the tail end of summer, and Alexander is about to head off on a weekend camping trip with his son in northern Idaho. While his spirits are high at the thought of his upcoming retreat, Alexander somberly assesses the Hanford situation from his vantage point.
"One of the main problems at Hanford is that DOE is understaffed and overtasked," Alexander explains. "As such, we cannot conduct in-depth reviews of each of the individual systems in the facilities. Therefore there is a high likelihood that several systems will be found to be inoperable or not perform to expectations."
Alexander knows his nuclear disasters well, as he led one of the DOE's first scientific delegations to Russia's Mayak nuclear facility in 1990. Mayak, one of the largest nuclear production plants in the former Soviet Union, suffered a deadly accident in 1957 when a tank containing nuclear materials exploded. The Mayak facilities are comparable to the plutonium production units built at Hanford, which is considered a "sister facility." Since they are so close in design and makeup, Mayak is often seen as an example of what can go wrong with the production of plutonium and the storage of nuclear waste at Hanford. Alexander's team negotiated the transfer of data collected by the Soviets on the health effects of Mayak's radioactive release, establishing a program that allows Russian and U.S. scientists to share nuclear cleanup technologies and research.
Currently, federal employees at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., are evaluating whether Bechtel's construction designs at the site have violated federal law under the Price-Anderson Amendments Act (PAAA). An amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the PAAA governs liability issues for all non-military nuclear-facility construction in the United States, which includes Hanford.
These concerns are triggering other investigations, some of which have yet to be publicized. Last month, the DOE's Office of Health, Safety, and Security headed to Hanford to conduct a follow-up investigation about safety-culture issues. Their findings could be released as soon as the end of the year. This visit comes on the heels of a June investigation by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), an independent organization tasked by the executive branch to oversee public health and safety issues at the DOE's nuclear facilities. In a report addressed to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, DNFSB investigators wrote that "both DOE and contractor project management behaviors reinforce a subculture . . . that deters the timely reporting, acknowledgement, and ultimate resolution of technical safety concerns."
After reviewing 30,000 documents and interviewing 45 staffers, the DNFSB reported that those who went against the grain and raised concerns about safety issues associated with construction design "were discouraged, if not opposed or rejected without review." In fact, according to the DNFSB, one of these scientists, Dr. Walter Tamosaitis, was actually removed from his position as a result of speaking up about design problems.
It's not just the DNFSB that is concerned with the safety culture and management at Hanford. Seattle Weekly has obtained official documents revealing that the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional arm in charge of investigating matters relating to contractors and other public fund recipients, visited the Hanford site last month. In an outline sent to DOE personnel in advance of their visit, the GAO wrote that it will look into how contractors are addressing concerns over what they call "relatively lax attitudes toward safety procedures," "inadequacies in identifying and addressing safety problems," and a "weak safety culture, including employees' reluctance to report problems." Their findings likely will be made public in early 2012.
This wasn't the first time the GAO investigated DOE contracts with Bechtel. In 2004, the agency released a report critical of the DOE and Bechtel's clean-up plans, warning of faulty design and construction of the Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), a structure at the heart of the clean-up effort. The WTP building was not designed to withstand a strong earthquake, but only after prodding from the DNFSB did the DOE force Bechtel to go back to the drawing board to ensure the plant could withstand one. As a result, Bechtel's design and cost estimates to finish construction skyrocketed from $4.3 billion to more than $10 billion. And in 2006, GAO released another paper critical of Bechtel's timeline and cost estimates, which seemed to change annually, saying that they have "continuing concerns about the current strategy for going forward on the project."
These flawed plans flew under the radar because the DOE does not have enough staff to thoroughly review every design piece put forth by Bechtel, says Alexander. As a result, expensive mistakes like these could occur again. The lack of key staff to oversee Bechtel's work continues to plague the WTP project to this day.
The concerns of the GAO, the DNFSB, and Alexander all point to a flawed relationship between the DOE and Bechtel, which is both the design and construction authority on WTP. Once operable, the plant will turn the millions of gallons of radioactive sediment currently in the site's waste tanks into glass rods by combining the toxic gunk with glass-forming material at a blistering 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit—a process called vitrification. The rods will then be shipped to an offsite location to be stored indefinitely.
Bechtel's contract is what is known in contractor parlance as "cost and schedule performance based." Such contracts, standard in the defense world, reward contractors like Bechtel for "meeting milestones" within their proposed budget—in some instances, even if plans and construction turn out to be critically flawed. Despite certain mistakes, including those made during the first three years of building the WTP with seismic deficiencies, Bechtel boasted in 2004 that they had received 100 percent of the available milestone fees available to the company through their Hanford contract with DOE.
The DOE is tasked with overseeing the project and signing off on their recommended procedures, but Alexander argues that the agency is incapable of proper oversight. "In the past 45 years, about 400,000 people . . . have been irradiated [because of the Mayak disaster]," reflects Alexander. "It's quite possible that a similar accident could happen here. That's why it is so important that we get the Hanford cleanup facilities up and running properly, as soon as possible."

There is something ominous about Hanford, and it's not just the radioactivity.
The Wanapum Tribe, which survived here for centuries, feasting on the once-mighty Columbia River salmon runs, was evicted less than 70 years ago by the federal government so the feds could manufacture fuel for the A-bomb. It was certainly a marvelous scientific achievement when the first plutonium rolled out of Hanford's B Reactor, which is now just one of the many structures that haunt this dry landscape. But cleaning up Hanford's aftermath may prove even more of an accomplishment than it took to create the nuclear reservation in the first place.
Richland, population 48,000, is the city closest to Hanford. Local bars on the weekends overflow with Hanford contractors, and the cash they put down for shots and rounds of cold beer is abundant. The local watering hole, aptly named the Atomic Ale Brewpub, is decorated with Hanford artifacts and memorabilia, and serves beer like Plutonium Porter and Jim's Radioactive Rye. Richland High School's mascot is the Bombers. Despite its toxicity, locals have evidently embraced Richland's nuclear lore.
Richland's economy has long been sustained by the nuclear industry. Before the current cleanup of Hanford began to bring money into the community, the development of nuclear technologies ruled the town for decades. Just outside a more upscale neighborhood is a sprawling industrial park that serves as the district office for Hanford contractors and DOE employees. Without Hanford contracts employing thousands, Richland certainly would be struggling.
....
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/4520

This is tragic and outrageous, but as noted below by SWB, nothing new. Learning about the problem of corporate executives and their tricks and abuses is essential. However, to change it requires recalling and participating in the structures for change, although these are not political votes first and foremost. The Green Party's Jill Stein has a long way to go to get elected President of the US. It won't happen anytime soon. However, voting with dollars and starting community enterprise all can happen yesterday, or tomorrow. Mondragon Co-op Corp in Spain got started in Franco's fascist Spain, and Danish citizen's started the modern wind turbine industry with anti-nuke protests. Check out the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Environmental Prize to get a look a various movements taking steps. The US already has plenty of food coops and credit unions, besides natural foods stores and other alternative enterprises. These are the kinds of changes that will have to happen to get back to pre-Reagan US democracy, and go beyond to the levels that can be find in the EU and elsewhere in various outposts.

Cato/NPR's Welfare vs Min Wage

Welfare Isn’t Too Generous—Wages Are Too Low

Real earnings for workers, by gender, 1973–2011 (2011 dollars)

Note: Shaded areas denote recessions.
Source: Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement Historical Income Tables, Table P-41, "Work experience- All Workers by Median Earnings and Sex: 1987-2011," and Table A-4, "Number and Real Median Earnings of Total Workers and Full-time, Year-Round Workers by Sex and Female-to-male Earnings Ratio: 1960–2011."
http://www.epi.org/publication/lost-decade-poverty-income-trends-continue-2/


http://www.epi.org/publication/the-ceo-to-worker-compensation-ratio-in-2012-of-273/
 

Posted October 11, 2013 at 4:57 pm by Elise Gould

• 
• Elise Gould

NPR recently published a story that gives undue credence to a Cato Institute study lamenting the generosity of US safety net programs. In reality, welfare benefits are not nearly as generous or accessible as the study claims. The NPR piece provides useful stories from actual welfare recipients, whose experiences more faithfully represent reality.
An important part of Cato’s assertion is that these programs offer a higher level of income than do many low-wage jobs. The real problem here is that wages for the vast majority of Americans are too low, and haven’t kept up with the increased productivity of the labor force.
When the study was first released, we pointed out some of the problems with their analysis. Here’s a quick summary of why their study was so misleading:
The Cato Institute recently released a wildly misleading report by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, which essentially claims that what low-wage workers and their families can expect to receive from “welfare” dwarfs the wages they can expect from working. Using state-level figures, their paper implies that single mothers with two children are living pretty well relying just on government assistance, with Cato’s “total welfare benefit package” ranging from $16,984 in Mississippi to $49,175 in Hawaii. They then calculate the pretax wage equivalents in annual and hourly terms and compare them to the median salaries in each state and to the official federal poverty level. Tanner and Hughes find that welfare benefits exceed what a minimum wage job would provide in 35 states, and suggest that welfare pays more than the salary for a first year teacher or the starting wage for a secretary in many states.
So what makes this so misleading?
For one, Tanner and Hughes make the assumption that these families receive simultaneous assistance from all of the following programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Housing Assistance Payments, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). It is this simultaneous assistance from multiple sources that lets the entire “welfare benefits package” identified by Cato add up to serious money. But it’s absurd to assume that someone would receive every one of these benefits, simultaneously, and it ignores the fact that some programs have time limits.

What’s more, their report carries the clear implication that welfare is (or should be expected to be) pulling low-wage workers out of the labor market by making life on welfare so attractive. In actuality, many low-income working families receive assistance through these programs.
Sharon Parrott and LaDonna Pavetti at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provide some solid evidence against some of the claims made by Tanner and Hughes. They provide detailed statistics on how little overlap there is in the assistance families receive for multiple programs, and how few eligible families actually receive any benefits at all.
What’s striking to me is that even Cato’s overblown and exaggerated welfare benefits would leave families in eight states with incomes below the federal poverty line. I’d add that it’s a bit odd to look at hypothetical data, when real data on what low income families actually receive from welfare and work is available. The Congressional Budget Office provides comprehensive data on sources of income for households by income fifths. We looked at this in some detail in the poverty chapter of State of Working America (see here). These reputable data tell a very different story about how low-wage workers live their lives. They are getting far less from government assistance than the Cato report implies and are relying much more on income gained from working.
In 2009, average transfer income for the lowest fifth of workers was $4,633 and average labor income was $12,871. (To be comparable with the Cato report, I’m not including Medicare and Social Security income.) Two things are clear here: government transfers are far less than what Tanner and Hughes claim, and labor income far exceeds government transfers for the lowest income group, meaning that real-world low-income families don’t feel so coddled by lavish welfare benefits that they don’t need to work.
Tanner and Hughes are not telling a realistic story about the lives of low income Americans and the income provided to them by transfer programs. Where they have a point is how poorly work pays for too many American families, particularly low-wage workers. If they want to insure that work pays well for single mothers with two kids, it would seem more worthwhile to push for increases in the minimum wage and affordable child care. Cato’s view instead seems to be that since work alone is failing to provide secure living standards for many Americans, we should take away other sources of income from them, too.

- See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/welfare-isnt-generous-wages/#sthash.KXCWP4tr.dpuf
Comments-....

• bigdnyc
  •3 months ago
  
  Minimum wage jobs are not meant to provide income to support a family. I'd like a questions answered: why haven't adults working for minimum wage developed a skill that allows them to earn more? Why have children you cannot support?
  

Mike bigdnyc

• •3 months ago
  Perhaps that used to be the case, but it isn't anymore. In 2000, the average age of a fast food worker was 22. Eleven years later, it's almost 30. Older people aren't taking these jobs because they're unqualified for better paid work, they're taking them because they can't get work elsewhere. Productivity gains and overseas outsourcing have contributed mightily to the bottom line of many corporations, but the American workforce is paying the price.
  

My turn (Mark of this blog....)

• In fact what's determining the "minimum wage" is an economic philosophy, not any "economic science" that minimum wage jobs are legitimate, or that sufficient job training and better jobs actually exist or are possible in the current policy environment. People are paid "minimum wages" because corporate executives want to "maximize profits," and because they have bullied society into accepting wage slavery of the rest of humanity as acceptable.  Moreover, as suggested by Mike here, US corporate policies most of all have ignored their social obligations in salary arbitrage overseas. Australia seems to be a good example of some insight into this, since their minimum wage is a "living wage." They pay salaries because jobs are means of allowing human beings to plan their lives and their families with their Human Rights, not just for gambling, get-rich-quick corp exec fantasies to come true to rule the world. Of course, given their current state of tyranny, I advocate co-op enterprise to create new jobs where there are owner-operators, as was begun in Rochdale, UK in 1844, Germany in 1850, Mondragon, Spain in 1959 and Emilia-Romagna, Italy since before the Second World War. The US has some examples, even if the Knights of Labor became defunct in the 1800s. New York City had bunches of food co-ops in the 1970s, some survived, and more have been created recently, as well, in fact.
  

.....

Climate Justice-James Boyce, UMass

This article on Environmental Climate Justice has been sitting at Truth Out for a little while.  It presents the basic issue well enough, but I added a touch of greater depth including the likes of Occupy Wall St. and the 1%/99% divide after it.

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
Now joining us from Amherst, Massachusetts, is James Boyce. He's the director of the Program on Development, Peace Building, and the Environment at the PERI institute. He's also a professor of economics at Amherst.
Thanks very much for joining us, James.
JAMES BOYCE, PROF. ECONOMICS, UMASS AMHERST: Nice to be back, Paul.
JAY: So, James, you've written a new book titled Economics, the Environment and Our Common Wealth. Before we dig into some of the issues in the book, what was your kind of overriding objective in producing the book?
BOYCE: Well, what I wanted to do was bring out the fact that when we worry about environmental degradation, when we worry about pollution and depletion of natural resources, we should be thinking not only about the relationship between humans and the natural world, but also the relationships among human beings, because, basically, when we find problems of environmental degradation, we find problems where some people are benefiting at the expense of other people. If nobody was being harmed, it wouldn't be a problem, at least not from the standpoint of economics.
So what I wanted to do in the book, Paul, was lift up the notion that these environmental problems are also social and economic and political problems and point to the implications of starting from an ethical standpoint that every human being on the face of the earth, present and future generations, we all have an equal right to a clean and safe environment, and think through what it would mean to actually organize our environmental policies around that fundamental principle.
JAY: So the thing is that, if I get it correctly, we're—to a large extent here, the reason there's such environmental degradation and the reason there's such, I guess, opposition to dealing with issues like climate change—but it also includes issue of toxic poisoning of our environment—is that there's interests there, there's people that make money out of it, and that ethical concerns or the issue of human rights is not very paramount to those people.
BOYCE: Yeah, that's right, Paul. I mean, these things don't just happen by accident; they happen following various patterns, right? And we have to ask, whenever we see a problem of environmental degradation, who benefits from activities that are causing the problem (if nobody benefited, it wouldn't be happening), who gets harmed, and why is it that the beneficiaries, the winners, are able to impose these harms on other people. And that really is the starting point for the book.
JAY: So what should be done? In this sense: it seems that—I guess there's short term and long term. There has been some victory, you could say, reforms in mitigating some environmental degradation. But are we facing issues that are so profound, so deep, that in fact there needs to be a bigger social transformation before they can be dealt with?
BOYCE: Well, I think we need to build on the victories we've achieved in the past, which are not inconsequential or minor, and move forward. But it's clear that we do need some big changes down the road. We've still got big problems to address.
I think what we need to build on are not only the victories of the environmental movement which brought us the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act and so on, but also the victories of the civil rights movement, of the voter rights movements, and so on which have helped to empower the people who tend to be on the losing end of environmental problems, the people who tend to be victimized most. Pollution, resource depletion, these don't affect everybody equally, Paul. Some people get hit harder than others, and it tends to be low-income communities and people of color who get hit the hardest here in the United States. It tends to be low-income people around the world who get hit the hardest.
And so if we want to address environmental problems, we also have to think about how to improve the ability of those who have the most to gain from addressing these problems to make their voices heard and to make their health and well-being and their children's well-being a central issue in the protection of the environment.
JAY: So what would you like to see? And concretely, what do you think needs to be done, given the current state of politics and such?
BOYCE: Well, I think we need to lift up the basic democratic and human rights principles that underlie environmental protection. We're not just interested in protecting the environment and nature for its own sake. It's not just about polar bears or spotted owls. It's about real people here and now, and it's about the well-being of future generations. And we need to think about those people when we're thinking about protecting the environment. We need to think about kids whose life opportunities are being affected by the pollution to which they're being exposed as infants and as small children. Air pollution, water pollution, these are human issues, human rights issues, and we need to be thinking about that and thinking about our commitment as a society to making sure that every child has an opportunity to live to their full potential and to have a productive and healthy and happy life. And I think if we broaden out our concerns with the environment to include our concerns with people, we can broaden the constituencies for doing something about the really serious environmental problems that we face today.
JAY: Because, like, I'm in Baltimore. In places—you know, some of the very poor areas of East Baltimore, West Baltimore, it's very hard for people to relate to, for example, climate change, which seems rather abstract when you're facing such, you know, difficulties getting through the day or very immediate issues of pollution. Like, there's a guy in East Baltimore that does a toxic tour, when they take you around east Baltimore, the amount of toxic dumps right next to where people are living, yet they sit there year after year.
BOYCE: Yeah, that's right. These are immediate environmental problems, and we ought to be paying attention to them. And there's no conflict between doing that and paying attention to climate change. After all, burning of fossil fuels, which is the main culprit in climate change, also releases lots of other nasty pollutants that impact local communities. And it is the kinds of communities you're talking about in Baltimore, in metropolitan areas across the country, that tend to be impacted worst by those emissions of pollutants from refineries, power plants, etc. It's also the case that as the climate changes, the people who are most vulnerable to those climate changes are low-income people who don't have the resources to adapt, don't have the air conditioners, don't have the ability to live in the leafy suburbs, don't have the ability to even get out of town when a hurricane like Katrina hits.
So I think that dealing with the environment is really a social justice issue, Paul, and I think, to move forward, that's how we need to increasingly frame it. We need to recognize that piece of the picture.

and my response-

Mark RegoM

•7 hours ago

• −
• +

This is a good start on an essential issue that Jay brings out from Boyce. Love Canal in 1978 in the US and Minimata in the 1950s in Japan were disasters that both contained these basic elements. However, the resistance of corporate executives in the Coal, Oil, Nuclear, and Financial industries, for example, goes beyond the lowest income and most discriminated communities. Since the 2008 crash, Occupy Wall St., and the 1%/99% slogan, some greater awareness was raised of economic problems. Beyond Coal, the Sierra Club's grassroots campaign against coal plants, has been able to stop more than a hundred plants already.
      Some utilities have promoted green power options, some non-profits like NYPIRG has helped those green power options, and best of all, some people have begun co-operative enterprises that are promoting household installations, like Co-op Power in Massachussets, solar power co-ops in Maryland, and others sprinkled across the US. The fact that modern wind power was developed in Denmark in the 1970s shows how their population was not dominated by a corporate culture at that time. They protested nuclear plans, and artisan mechanics started producing a new generation of micro turbines for starters. Germany then followed Denmark, and both implemented Grid Access Incentive payments, or Feed In Tariffs, which have proved their effectiveness. German farmers were the first to organize into partnerships there. A similar thing happened around the same time in the UK at a smaller scale. Spain has had some success, but has not benefited like Germany because of its corporate-based wind installations. The new business model, the new grassroots citizen model for any and all who can wake up. Americans and immigrants with the lowest incomes and the most discriminated against have good reasons to organize, but clearly face the greatest obstacles. Let those who have fewer obstacles be the focus of a turnaround, just as Ralph Nader, then Michael Moore have been able to as major activists.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14973

From Occupy to Mondragon

After a lightweight article about Occupy, author Carl Davidson entered into a lively exchange with an obnoxious ideologue.


November 28, 2013

If Occupy Is a Battle, the First Round Was a Success

Understanding that the tides of social movements bring challenges and victories.

BY Carl Davidson

....
Matthew Richard’s essay on Occupy was, for me, a trip back in time, to my rebel youth, nearly 50 years ago. In his voice, I heard the full range of my own ideas and feelings from those “glory days.” In the 1,000 battles I’ve been through since then, I’ve tempered, reframed and even changed some of those views. It would be easy enough for me, in commenting on the essay, to slip into the role of wise old grio. But that’s not what I want. So I offer a few remarks from a different role, that of “co-conspirator.” I made it to Zuccotti Park and a dozen other encampments, too.
First, I don’t think Occupy failed, or has even disappeared. But to understand why, you first have to grasp what it was.
Occupy was largely an elemental rising of the “precariat,” today’s new working class, a distressed young generation burdened with debt and facing a precarious future of frequent joblessness in a wider order of savage inequalities. They had the audacity to choose the right target, Wall Street. They had the wisdom to seek allies, the 99% vs. the 1%. For at least a year, they changed the national conversation and spotlighted the main enemy.....


lessthantolerant to                                                                                                                                                                      Carl Davidson

• 6 days ago

                         

You should move to Cuba or maybe Spain, after all those two socialist countries are so successful, right?
Mondragon could not exist without subsidies from the government as I ca see from the research.
While I see nothing wrong with a Cooperative, silly ideas like yours and other union thugs just will not work.
Please let me know when you leave for Cuba.

 

• 

  Carl Davidson lessthantolerant

  • 6 days ago

  Mondragon could not exist without subsidies from the Spanish government? Nope. Your research leaves a lot to be desired, to put it kindly. I've spent time studying at MCC in the Basque country, and 'government subsidies' has nothing to do with how they started or how they succeeded. Quite the contrary. They succeed because they create a quality product at competitive prices, and the workers control the entirety of the surplus value they create, relying on their own bank, research institutes and university. I've read a half-dozen books on the topic, and written one of my own as well. Now if you want to talk about the Bankster on Wall St, you have a good case.
  • 

    lessthantolerant Carl Davidson

    • 5 days ago

    Since our first New Markets Tax Credits (NMTCs) closing in 2004 we have recieved $704 million in NMTC allocation and invested in 78 projects in 24 states. These projects generated total investments of $1.4 billion and created 7,495 jobs. Our 78 projects are located in urban and rural communities, are large and small, and include for-profit and not-for-profit developers. From a community center in a severely distressed and densely populated area of the South Bronx, NY, to a manufacturer of truck parts in Council Bluffs, IA, our projects represent a cross section of our nation’s communities
    Like all delusional ideas, one can not see the forest for the trees. Your life blood is tax credits and public tax dollars channeled to you through sham corporations fed by government.
    You have to be able to turn a profit to exist once the feeding tube of government funds ceases.
    We shall see, I will follow this typical pipe dream venture for a couple of years, be prepared when I send you a "I told you so"
  • 

    lessthantolerant Carl Davidson

    • 5 days ago

    By means of “Subordinated Financial Contributions”, which is an instrument provided for by the Cooperatives Act of the Basque Country and paves the way for accessing the capitals market through the so-called secondary market or AIAF fixed-income market. Eroski was the first one to use this instrument in June 2002.
    
    It did so through the corresponding issue, which was approved beforehand by Eroski’s Congress and by Spain’s Securities and Investment Board (CNMV), initially amounting to 60 million euros, a figure that was subsequently raised to 90 million in view of the positive response made by investors.
    
    The main features of this extremely successful issue were: interest indexed to the Euribor +3 points, fixed interest not linked to results, instruments favouring liquidity, security and guarantee assured by Eroski and the fact that the issue and subsequent development were submitted to the approval of the CNMV.
    As one can see, they could not operate with out controlled market and special consideration of government regulations and financing.
    As I said Co-Ops are Ok but on a very limited scale and as long as they chase profit they are shams of your socialist dream.
    Also, feeding off low wage workers in Mexico and Turkey sort of make them hypocrites.
    But you keep your delusion going.
    One question though, where might one read this great socialist/communist manifest YOU wrote?
    • 

      Carl Davidson lessthantolerant

      • 5 days ago

      So MCC borrowed money, putting up solid collateral, to build a chain of over 200 supermarkets, which will be repaid, expanding employment and worker-consumer coops throughout Spain. They also lend money, at low interest, for people to buy cars and build homes....And you think this is parasitic subsidies? That's rather odd. Make me wonder what you would think of the federal government here giving land grants to railroads, the Morrell land grants and other support that built our system of state universities--and not even to mention huge military contracts from the Pentagon? But in any case, yes, as transitional measure and for immediate relief to the unemployed workers, I'm much in favor of a green energy industrial policy over a military industrial policy, for a variety of startups, not unlike the New Deal's TVA, whether they are coops or not. I'm interested in smart government, not the right wing fantasy of an anarcho-capitalism of no government. As for my book, you can buy it at http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop...
  • http://inthesetimes.com/article/15902/if_occupy_is_a_battle_the_first_round_was_a_success/

Worker Rights- Germany's Co-Determination

Germany's Co-Determination system came to my attention a few years ago, but somehow I wasn't able to grasp its significance.  However, as events have transpired over the years, my interest keeps returning to Spain's Mondragon Co-op complex, Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, the superior distribution of income in the Northern European countries, and the inequalities elsewhere, especially the US, well, now.  Oh, and then there's China, not to mention Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil, and elsewhere, each with their powerful role to play.
      I wanted to find a historical article on Germany's situation, and found an article in a UK journal article apparently from 1998 which claimed to have found scant details.  Then I turned up an article coming from Germany with some important specifics.  Hmm, US dog-eat-employees "free markets," or real social democracy and labor human rights.  Let me think a minute.  Well, yeah, that sounds about right.
     Finally, I found two EU sites, one about worker participation and the other about labor news.

Co-determination: the secret history of workers' control?

Christopher Winch

....    

One key aspect in Germany’s economic success is Mitbestimmung, or ‘co-determination’. This is a system of corporate governance and labour relations very similar to the one that the Bullock Report recommended, although without any explicit reference to Germany. At the time, the Bevin Society argued that the Bullock recommendations of one-third employer, one third employee and one third from nominees determined by the first two groups (the 2x + y’ formula), would lead to higher productivity and greater competitiveness and that this would result from the greater orientation towards production of a workforce holding a real stake in the company. ....

http://ltureview.com/user/story.php?id=82

 

Rebecca Page

 

Co-determination in Germany –

A Beginner’s Guide

The word “co-determination”, or “Mitbestimmung” in German, is commonly heard outside of Germany but

 

it’s actual meaning is often unclear. What it actually refers to, is a concept for employee consultation and

participation (in certain cases) in company decisions at both establishment and company/group level within

private sector companies in Germany. This co-determination concept has a long history – dating back

originally to the 1920s – and is today regulated by a number of detailed laws.....

 

www.boeckler.de

 Thanks to the Boeckler Foundation, I found this EU site- http://www.worker-participation.eu/

More than 1,000 active EWCs and counting – News from the EWC Database

October 2013

The ETUI’s database of EWCs currently records 1,039 active EWCs in 962 multinational companies. The highest number of EWCs has been established based on the German (351), French (260), British (186) and Belgian (179) law. Since the entry into force of the recast EWC Directive 2009/38/EC, the pace of establishment of new EWCs seems to be increasing steadily: at least 58 negotiations are known to be currently underway, and the sectoral European trade union federations report that more initiatives to open negotiations are in the pipeline.

Interim report on 2013 bargaining round

The Institute of Economic and Social Research has published an interim report on Germany’s 2013 round of collective bargaining. The study evaluates collective agreements concluded in the first half of 2013, affecting about 45% of all workers covered by such agreements – around 8.7 million employees, 1.2 million of them in eastern Germany. The average annual increase in collectively agreed wages and salaries will be 2.8% in 2013, slightly above the average of 2.7% in 2012.

 

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2013/07/articles/de1307019i.htm