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^^^ January 25, 2004    Davis, Ballard, Wells, and the Reactionary Nightmare of New York

[Richard]
As I've mentioned, I've been reading a collection of articles and essays, Dead Cities, by Mike Davis. It's a very interesting chronicle of social de-evolution, capitalist corruption, and environmental destruction that is informed not only by a Marxist perspective (as thoroughly discussed in last December's Monthly Review), but also, obviously, by science fiction literature. More than a few times, Davis' apocalyptic descriptions of devastated cities remind me of the short stories and disaster novels of J.G Ballard. Davis, himself, makes no secret about this influence, even referring to Ballard in his essay, "Ecocide in Marlboro County," as he compares some documentary photographs by Richard Misrach to a scene from Ballard's story "The Terminal Beach." (Ballard no doubt was aware of his place in this collection when he wrote a very interesting review of Dead Cities in The Guardian last year.)

But the most interesting moment in Dead Cities occurs when Davis extensively quotes from a story by H.G. Wells. This story, "The War in the Air," was written in 1908. It's incredible how accurately Wells was able to predict a dark moment 93 years away:

For many generations New York had taken no heed of war, save as a thing that happened far away, that affected prices and supplied the newspapers with exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt that war in their own land was an impossible thing....

They cheered the flag by habit and tradition, they despised other nations, and whenever there was international difficulty they were intensely patriotic, that is to say, they were ardently against any native politician who did not say, threaten, and do harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonistic people....

And then, suddenly, into world peacefully busied for the most part upon armaments and the perfection of explosives, war came.... The immediate effect on New York...was merely to intensify the normal vehemence... Great crowds assembled...to listen to and cheer patriotic speeches, and there was a veritable epidemic of little flags and buttons...strong men wept at the sight of the national banner...the trade in small arms was enormously stimulated...and it was dangerous not to wear a war button.

One of the most striking facts historically about this war, and the one that marks a complete separation between methods of warfare and democracy, was the effectual secrecy of Washington.... The war was fought by the President and the Secretary of State in an entirely autocratic manner.

Reading these paragraphs, I almost wondered whether H.G. Wells really did have a time machine. But the New York City that Wells predicted may, for the time being, have receded into the past. I don't know if the dark fall-to-winter of late 2001and early 2002 was really a manifestation of the real or typical New York. Or, at least, it wasn't the New York that we normally see. There's still plenty of frightening mindless jingoism to be found in certain corners of New York (especially Staten Island), but by the anti-war protests of last year, a different kind of New York began to (re)emerge. Now, New York, like much of the nation, seems to be changing its focus. And at this point, I'd like to make a point that might seem like heresy to my anarchist or otherwise anti-electoral comrades: It seems to me that the election year so far has proven to be a good thing. Because of the complaints of campaigning Democrats (even those of the chronically noncommittal, independently wealthy variety), as well as the many polls attending every shift in their horse race, the news media have actually been compelled to admit that people are now very concerned about "bread and butter" issues (which I would call class issues) like healthcare and (what happened to all the) jobs. Especially in a place like New York City (ironically, the closer you get to Ground Zero...), the people are not spending all their worry time hoping that a great authoritarian leader will protect them from the terrorists hiding under their beds.

I don't mean to be optimistic -- optimism is not really my forte -- but I'm hoping that the side of contemporary New York predicted in Wells' dystopian nightmare will thoroughly disappear from view. This may happen as we get closer to the Republican National Convention, which seems increasingly unwelcome in the thoughts of many of this city's residents. (That is, unless Noam Chomsky is right and Bush manages to manufacture another threat.) But maybe I should also hope that we don't see these two different kinds of New York City become embattled in some horrifying civil war.

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^^^ January 24, 2004         Competing with Bankruptcy

[Guest - eveellen]
I realized during this morning's journaling entry that I am in a competition with personal bankruptcy. I'm a homeowner on a fixed income. I collect government benefits because of a psychiatric disability, and I've been warned by my doctor not to surrender these benefits and attempt a fulltime return to the workplace. I regularly take medications to ward off symptoms of depression and hallucinations. Because Medicare does not cover drugs, these are an expensive out-of-pocket expense for me. I am able to get two of my prescriptions from a Canadian pharmacy, but I just heard on the news tonight that the feds are planning to limit this or shut it down as an option. I have one parttime job that I've held now for over four years, working for a local community newspaper, The Mid Hudson Times. I can only accept so much 'earned' income every month, up to $810, or I risk losing my benefits. The newspaper is my primary source, followed by a secondary job working as an artist's model at one of the county's community colleges.

I can't seem to cut my expenses sufficiently to get by on the income I do have, and as a result, I dip into savings on an average of three times a year. My account has gone below the amount I feel I need to keep in it. This money is a contingency account for emergency expenses--in addition to the house, I also have a [used] car, a necessity once you're out of the City. So I continue beating the bushes for off-the-books work, modeling mostly. I sometimes travel up to 1 1/2 hours to get to the art studios supplying the work, and they sometimes, as with the Woodstock School for Art, pay peanuts ($11/hr) for all my time and expense traveling.

I do have a roommate, and this additional income does help. One of the issues it raises, however, is disposable cash. After the hiatus of the holidays when I held off advertising my room for rent, I suddenly received three weeks' rent and two weeks' security. Wheeeee! All of a sudden I was in Woodstock buying a $50 pair of earrings and paying another $50 for a local seminar on Ancestral Healing. Now it's the end of the month, and I find this was all money I didn't really have. I'll have to dip into my cash reserves until it's time for my disability check to be autodeposited again on the 3rd of February. Those of us receiving disability did get a cost-of-living increase this year, but after additional monies deducted each month for the raised premium for Medicare, that left me with a big $14 increase in my check amount.

Being a corporate burnout is part of my personal history. Over the years since I've owned my house and moved out of the City, it has been a series of jolts on recognizing things, one by one, that I can no longer afford. My friend Lou would like me to attend a pagan gathering in the early summer, and has been recounting to me how inexpensive it is. I have to repeatedly remind him that I have no budget for vacation travel. If I can't do work exchange, I can't go. I've been enterprising in filling this vacuum with becoming a member of the Mohonk Preserve, and in the warm weather you can expect to find me on my days off in the nude area, skinnydipping and sunbathing. My challenge is to be inventive, living life and enjoying it despite a limited income.

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^^^ January 22, 2004         Survival Startegies

[asfo_del]
I wrote here recently that the worldwide median income is about $1000 a year, and over one billion people make less than $400 a year. When large numbers of people have virtually no income, how do they live? How do they survive? Some people in fact do not. About 21,600 people die every day due to chronic malnutrition, and there are over 800 million chronically hungry people around the world. But for those who manage to struggle along, what are their survival strategies? I've been browsing Google under that term.

-In Bangladesh, women who are widowed or whose husbands are disabled or gone are frequently extremely poor, due to "the disproportionate and oppressive social burden they carry in their patriarchal society.... Societies that have been ravaged by war or that have easy ... marital separation customs contain large numbers of low-income women who barely cope from day to day. They have no visible income. Some of them do not survive, and those who do are destitute." A study found that they cope by networking, buying and selling goods, preparing foods for sale, bartering, selling their own and their children's labor, fishing and gathering food and fuel, and money lending.

-In a survey of 300 urban families in Namibia, significant numbers reported that food provided to them by rural relatives is a significant means of survival, since many who migrated to the city are unable to find work. "The sheer number of people coming in, compared to the expansion of the urban economy in Windhoek, would suggest that there must be an awful lot of people who are not actually earning an income." More than half said the food from rural relatives was 'important' or 'very important' to their survival. Another 10 % deemed it critical.

-According to the UN, in Zambia people have traditionally coped with recurrent droughts by "skipping meals, relying on extended family networks and personal reserves, traditional food gathering skills and humanitarian relief." However, the current situation is so bad that people have resorted to "selling off productive assets such as land and livestock, and running up debts," which only increases their poverty in the long term. And some have been forced to employ frightening survival strategies "such as exchanging sex for food or cash," which places them at high risk for HIV infection.

-In Siberia, widespread poverty has resulted from collapse of the Soviet system. Added to that is the difficulty of dealing with the extremely harsh climate.

"Families close off all but one or two rooms at home and huddle near small makeshift stoves heated by freshly cut larch trees or wood stripped from abandoned houses. To save fuel, they let the fires burn out overnight, sending indoor temperatures down near freezing by morning.

"Some families get by on only bread, potatoes, tea and an occasional packet containing canned meat and buckwheat trucked in by the government as humanitarian aid.

"To help feed their families, men stake out a nearby salt lick frequented by wild sheep and ambush the endangered animals. Hunters, the police chief included, also raid an indigenous herder's nearby turf and pick off her reindeer."

-In many parts of the world, people who live in marginal areas like deserts, steppes and tundra survive by nomadic animal herding, constantly on the move to make the most of scarce resources spread thinly over large areas. Nomadic pastoralists make up significant portions of the population in a number of impoverished countries: Mongolia, 40%, Tibet, 24%, Mauritania, 15%, Kenya, 15%, Sudan, 14%, Mali, 11%, and Ethiopia, 10%. However, the land available to nomadic animal herders is shrinking throughout the world:

"Over the last 40 years the Raika camel nomads in Rajasthan, India, have lost access to half of the common lands previously used as pasture.

"In Kenya, Government attempts to bring traditional Maasai lands under private title have ended up removing large areas of land from grazing. In some cases nearly half the land is now in the hands of non-Maasai.

"In Inner Mongolia much of the best grazing land has been turned over to irrigated farming. With privatization nomads have to contract for the right to graze traditional lands."

-In the United States, welfare recipients typically do not receive enough aid to survive. Some of their coping strategies include:

"Reported/formal work activities; typically $399/month. Unreported/informal work activities (off the books, using a false identity); typically $229/month.Underground work (selling sex, drugs, or stolen goods), often a last resort; typically $228/month.Relying on "family and friends, boyfriends (many were not the father of their children, often lived with families), and absent fathers (covertly or through the formal system). Men, on average, provided an extra $180/month (mostly unreported). Wide range of 'helpers'. Agency-based strategies typically added $117/month for those who sought this help."

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^^^ January 21, 2004         Material World

[asfo_del]
Thirty statistically average families from thirty countries were photographed in their daily lives and each was shot with all of its possessions displayed in front of the family home, creating a portrait of today's Material World. I haven't seen this book, by photographer Peter Menzel, in person, but the web site has a selection of images: http://www.menzelphoto.com/gallery/mw.htm.

These are beautiful photographs, which is always a bit disconcerting. People's daily lives are what they are, but when an oridinary life is depicted in such stunning visual images, it's hard not to be jealous of an existence that seems so sublime. Yes, we are reminded, by looking at these pictures, that most people around the world have almost nothing in the way of material possessions. And of course it's a worthwhile moral lesson that the folks in the photographs seem to be blessed with each other, with simplicity and beauty, and with breathtaking landscapes, rather than saddled with mountains of plastic crapola acquired from Wal Mart like we are here in the U.S. But I'm not sure that they wouldn't prefer central heat and indoor running water. It's shameful to envy farmers in Bhutan because they have beautiful, multicolored textiles and live among a backdrop of stark mountains, when it must be terribly hard to survive by working with the array of hoes that are shown planted in the ground. And those mountains must be very cold.

I do admire these photographs. The collection is an interesting document. If they're too beautiful to be completely honest, so be it.

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^^^ January 17, 2004    It Would Help to Have Better Transportation

[Richard]

Christ it was cold.

And only one glove as usual. The bare hand in the pocket, sweaty against the change counted out for the fare; the other inside the remaining glove, cramped stiff round the handle of the fiddle case. Freezing. Her feet were solid too; just a oneness of dead cold inside her boots in place of anything five-toed or familiar. She stamped them hard for spite, waiting and watching for the fingers of light smudging through the dark, the bus feeling its way up the other side of the hill. The last two had been full and driven straight on. No point in getting angry. That was just the way of it.

-- Janice Galloway, "Frostbite" (from Blood)

Actually, I was just being funny at the end of my last post. I don't hate winter (though I do hate summer). I'm usually very tolerant of winter as long as the temperature stays above about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, which it usually does during winter in New York City. But the thing that has made it more difficult lately, aside from the fact that the temperature has been dipping into the single digits, is the commute. I shouldn't normally have a bad commute from my house into Manhattan, even into Midtown, just a fairly long one. But the commute has been increasingly awful due to delays in the ferry, which have caused the ferry to get out of sync with the buses meeting it on Staten Island, causing us, the passengers, to have to wait another fifteen minutes to half an hour in the icy cold. And sometimes, after rush hour delays and crushes, the buses are simply too crowded to board -- which is a problem I got used to when I lived in Manhattan, but never in Staten Island.

Usually, I don't depend on the buses to get home from the ferry; I can deal with the 15-to-20-minute walk. But after a midnight shift, especially when the temperature is still in the single digits, that task becomes a little more daunting, and under ideal circumstances, I shouldn't have to think twice about taking that bus, considering that the transfer is free.

There have been news reports about the extra delays in the ferry and the rush hour crush. But I'll be surprised if anybody does much about this, especially during the winter.

The ferry itself has not been so much of a pleasure to ride the past few months. This is a little heartbreaking, since it always provided the biggest little pleasure for me (and probably many others) during day-to-day life in this far-off corner of New York City. But ever since the crash, the flow of crowds has been more strictly controlled, causing us to feel just a little more like cattle every day.

When the temperature rises above freezing, I will always go to one of the outside decks. There's no point in having a Staten Island Ferry if you can't be outside, looking out over the ocean (and checking out the sunset or sunrise sometimes); if you can't do that, you almost might as well be riding the subway. But ever since the crash, access to the outside decks has been limited. Often, half the deck is roped off so that people are forced to crowd single-file right outside the entrance; sometimes, certain decks are roped off completely.

Anybody who knows anything about the crash that happened in October knows that roping off half the outside deck of the ferry wouldn't have protected anyone. An entire wall of the boat wasn't sufficient to protect people, since the entire boat was opened on the right side like a sardine can. Roping off half the deck is the kind of measure that might prevent a nut case from leaping off into the water. And how often does that happen? I certainly can't recall any reports

It's clear that all the new "safety" measures have little to do with practical safety and everything to do with ferry workers and supervisors trying desperately to look as though they're doing something, to cover their own asses.

Meanwhile, passenger safety, comfort, and aesthetic enjoyment remain extremely low priorities. The ferry will probably be improved again once the spring starts approaching, because the New York City tourist industry depends on it a lot (which is probably why you hardly ever see problems on Saturday afternoons). But I doubt anybody in power is going to think about improving coordination of the buses with the ferry, or the comfort of the people who depend on the bus. And, the reason for that is clear: the people who depend on the buses aren't as well off as the people who use cabs and cars.

Whenever mass transit shows signs of neglect, you can bet your bottom dollar that this neglect is related to class. In other cities, such as Los Angeles, public transportation actually has been the source of class confrontation (something I will be talking about a little more in an upcoming post). In New York City, it seems that the riders will collectively put up with almost anything. Granted, we have a superbly designed transit system compared to most cities, and we've got a relatively tough transit union (even if they sort of caved in during the last contract arguments). But it would be nice if passengers on public transportation found a way to organize and more effectively advocate for themselves. If that happened, there's just a chance that fewer people would be left waiting for the bus when it's bitterly cold out -- among many other things...

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^^^ January 16, 2004    It's the Dead of Winter Now

[Richard]
I had my own battle with exhaustion on Wednesday, as I tried to recover from a midnight shift that had ended that morning. I can't complain about working too much since I've had only six hours of work all week (now that we're back into the slow season). Nonetheless, it was quite an effort to get to work Tuesday night as the temperatures began to plummet again, the buses took too long, and I got some major frostbite just walking to the ferry. My tolerance for midnight work seemed to have declined too, because it was a huge struggle later just trying to keep my eyes open while reading those legal documents, especially after 4 am.

After a long commute through the bitter cold from 8 to 9:30 in the morning, I stumbled back into my house and passed out on the couch for a couple of hours. The first time that I woke up, sometime around noon, I realized that I couldn't find my glasses, which I could have sworn had been on my face at the time that I fell asleep. Though I was incredibly exhausted, I had to spend the next hour and a half looking for my glasses, panicking because this was the only pair I had since I'd neglected to pick the other pair up from the jewelers, where I had left them two weeks ago to get the broken nose bridge soldered. I looked and looked but I had an awful time finding them, because...I didn't have my glasses on. This time, I was the one who cried. But eventually, they turned up, in a pile of clothes behind the couch (which couch, incidentally, is a broken, sunken mess, but never mind), so I placed them safely and visibly on the table next to the computer monitor before letting myself pass out again.

On Thursday, an agency called me at 1 pm and told me that I was "on call" for work that I would get sometime during the evening. Actually, first they told me it would probably start at 6pm and they would definitely let me know by 2:30. Given this information, I canceled the trip that I was going to make to the Social Security office, where I was hoping to get a new copy of my Social Security Card so that I wouldn't have to endure more trouble trying to get my state ID renewed and applying for much-needed benefits.

But they didn't let me know at 2:30. They didn't let me know at 4:00. They didn't let me know at 6:30. And at that point, I decided to nap for a few hours, just in case I might end up working another midnight shift. But when I woke up, there was still no sign of work, so I began to think about poverty again. It's clear that I'm not going to get my teeth fixed this month. And the gas company is hounding me for $500, with turn-off notices. That bill includes heat (which isn't included in my rent -- the catch in the otherwise pretty good deal here). Would they turn my heat off now? Would they dare to do that in this weather? Is it even legal? (Time to apply for a HEAP grant again -- better get that damn Social Security Card already.)

I thought of going out to get myself some food, but the all-night convenience store is six blocks away, and it was damn cold outside, so I cooked myself an old chicken dog instead and, just as a precaution, washed it down with Pepto Bismol. (Time to worry again about not having health insurance.)

It's 5:30 am Friday now and I just took the garbage out, and my feet are feeling completely frozen from the two-minute walk to the curb, even though I was wearing two pairs of socks inside my sneakers.

It's obviously the dead of winter now; this is as bad as it gets. But I can always console myself that at least it isn't summer. I hate the summer even more.

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^^^ January 15, 2004         I Am a Pit Bull

[asfo_del]
For several days, my chronic fatigue was kicking my ass. I was too tired to move, and I have so much to do, trying to get the first floor apartment at the new house ready to rent, plus packing and moving our own stuff. Mike and I went to Home Depot (yeah, I know it's corporate store...) and got paint and spackle and such stuff, a trip which nearly did me in. That was on Monday. When I get really exhausted I can't even think. We called a cab to pick us up from Home Depot with all our cans of paint plus a couple of boards, and we waited outside, wondering why the hell it was taking so long, while there was a cab stopped not a few feet from us! The company's name on the side of the car was different from the cab company we were expecting, and I was too tired to make the necessary synaptic leap: cab here, we called cab, go find out if this one is ours. Not until it was pulling away did I notice that one of the three phone numbers printed on the car was the same number I had in fact just called to order the cab. I actually started to cry. Mike went to look for more change for the 50 cent pay phone, and he called them again, and the cab came right back. Another lady started to get in, before us, and for a moment I panicked once more, but then we all shared the cab.

Yesterday afternoon when I woke up, I was feeling like I could actually move. All the supplies I needed were at the new house, and I resolved that I would be undeterred from my mission of getting work done on the apartment. I went to the house and started painting at about six p.m. Mike showed up about an hour later and took down the drop ceiling in the bedroom, then he said he was tired and had to go home and go to bed. It was 8:30. He said, I'll see you in a couple of hours. And I said no, I'm going to be here all night. I painted the living room and sun room, including all the trim, windows, doors, and baseboards, both coats. I painted the bathroom, which required three coats, including the ceiling. I painted two walls of wainscoting in the kitchen and one large kitchen cabinet, two coats on each. I spackled some holes in the bathroom wall. I took a few stray nails and staples out of the living room floor. I worked without stopping, taking only a couple of five minute breaks to gulp down some cookies, until nine a.m. I was afraid that if I stopped I would not be able to start again. I told myself, I am a pit bull. I listened to fourteen hours of classic rock, most of it terrible, about ten percent of it great old songs. Then I went to the bank and to buy ink for the printer, which required walking several blocks, since buses are not convenient to those destinations, in 11 degree weather. I was also carrying a bag of curtains from the apartment that I want to launder. But did I mind? No, because I am a pit bull. I think the people at the bank believe that I am a psychopathic bag lady, showing up all bundled up and winded and with a big bag of curtains, with paint in my hair and all over my pants, and my eyes bugging out and surrounded by dark circles from lack of sleep. [No offense intended to homeless women.]

Today Mike and I had to take turns holding a space heater up to the frozen pipes in the basement of our current abode (not the new house). Thaw successful. Burst water pipes averted for the seventh time in two years after said pipes had frozen. This in spite of keeping both the hot and cold water constantly running whenever the temperature dips below 20.

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^^^ January 14, 2004    Fuck Working Assets

[Richard]
Earlier in this journal, I complained that my Working Assets credit card had been attached to Fleet Bank for ten years and wondered how an institution which claims to support progressive causes and fight against powerful interests on behalf of the downtrodden (or something like that) could be connected to one of the biggest, sleaziest, and most destructive financial institutions in the world. I went on to describe some of my own dealings with Fleet Bank through my Working Assets credit card, complaining that they had once raised my interest rate to 28 percent because I had been a few days late with a couple of payments. Then I said something to the effect that maybe MBNA, the new bank through which Working Assets was working, wouldn't be as despicable. But as the saying goes, guess again...

I noticed about two weeks ago, while reading some fine print on a piece of paper that was slipped into my last Working Assets credit card bill, that MBNA was going to raise my interest rates from the present "variable" rates of 18 to 19 percent to an annual rate of 24.98 percent. The reason that's been given has nothing to do with late payments on this particular credit card, since I've been paying the minimum payments on time for years with the exception of one month when the credit card was first sold to MBNA and I was misinformed of the deadline. The reason is that MBNA obtained a bad word on me from a "consumer reporting agency." In other words, because I must have owed someone some money somewhere, because I have been having a harder time economically, because I am less able to pay my bills to everyone on time, MBNA/Working Assets is going to charge me more and saddle me with more debt.

I suppose that most credit institutions work this way: the poorer you are, the more you have to pay. But the mere thought of what they're doing here is highly infuriating. It's one of those things that kind of bring to light the despicable nature of capitalism in a far more personal way than news of foreign wars and far-away bankrupt nations. This is the basic, day-to-day kind of financial injustice that's right up in my face, rubbing my face in it. And the irony is that maybe I wouldn't be dealing with such disgusting banks with such obviously unfair practices had I not been suckered sometime ago into thinking that it was somehow progressive to get a Working Assets credit card.

But most of the people who use Working Assets will forever be oblivious to the sleazier side of these financial institutions, because they won't have to deal with a lot of financial hardship. The kind of "activism" that Working Assets most represents springs from a culture of passivity and affluence. Many of the people who go in for the Working Assets scam -- especially if it's their only kind of activism (that and pulling the flush handle in the voting both) -- do so because they want to feel that they're doing good for some less fortunate people somewhere, and/or because they want to support a few causes that they believe in, without taking any risks, making sacrifices, or posing any real challenges to the ruling order. So, they feel as though they're doing their part if a tiny amount of money from their credit card spending goes to a list of 30-something respectable NGOs, lobbying organizations, and/or charities, and if, maybe, they're occasionally given the opportunity to have a form letter automatically sent in their name to support the liberal cause of the moment.

I suppose it's good that these people are willing to do the above rather than not doing anything. But there's something fundamentally flawed about this kind of "activism," tailored to the comfortable and affluent. The obvious problem here is that this "activism" often couldn't give a shit about people who are really struggling. If you hit hard times economically, then your Working Assets credit card company will penalize you. If you live in an impoverished nation being fucked over by a sleazy bank, don't expect Working Assets to give a shit about you; they've probably just sold the credit card to that bank and are actively supporting it. And how many Working Assets customers are going to know the difference anyway? They're not going to look into the situation that carefully; they've already done their share by spending money on their credit cards.

In any event, I say, fuck all this bullshit. If you don't have a Working Assets credit card and somebody tries to convince you that having one will somehow make you more progressive, then the first thing you should do is laugh in that person's face. Personally speaking, I should never have gotten into this trap. Working Assets is about as progressive as the IMF.

P.S. None of these comments absolutely, necessarily pertain to Working Assets Long Distance or Working Assets Internet services, which I -- thankfully -- know nothing about.

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^^^ January 12, 2004    Shallow "Recovery," Deep Decline

[Richard]
Outdoor temperatures weren't the only stat that plummeted in New York on Friday night. It seems that the wonderful Bullish (aka Bullshit) stock market plunged 133.55 points upon news that the job picture wasn't as good as the "experts" had predicted (which leads to the question of how many of those "experts" actually found themselves unemployed, struggling, and trying to find work in recent months). In fact, only 1,000 jobs were added while the "experts" had been predicting an addition of 150,000 to 200,000 jobs. That sounds like a bit of a difference, if you ask me. And while there was a slight decline in the Unemployment rate, as it turns out, there was really no decline in unemployment whatsoever. Here's a nice summary of that situation, which I found at The Mad Prophet and It's Still the Economy, Stupid:

Unemployment fell to 5.7%. The recent decline has been entirely due to a lack of growth in the labor force. In June, when unemployment peaked at 6.3%, the labor force was 146.917 million. Last month the labor force was estimated at 146.878 million. A constant labor force participation rate would have meant unemployment at 6.2%. The unemployment rate assuming a constant labor force participation rate is somewhere between 7-7.5%. About 1.6 million more people have been classified as "not in the labor force" in the past six months.

Actually, I have to wonder why the investors seemed so surprised at the bleak picture. Is the economic ruling class (which still accounts for most substantial stock investments) so out of touch with the struggles of other people, that they're believing their own propaganda? Unfortunately, they may not be the only ones wearing blinders... I would guess that the vast majority of regularly employed people are never fully aware of the hardships encountered by the unemployed or so many other people who are unable to find stable employment now. The regularly employed might receive some info about unemployment now and then, but most will never understand what's really going on for so many millions of people until they, themselves, receive the old pink slip. And maybe somewhere down the road, in a year or two, let's say, those formerly employed/unemployed might discover what it's like to be a "discouraged" worker who's finally settled for chronic underemployment. (Hey, welcome to the world of temping -- no benefits, no healthcare coverage, no security, no idea what you'll be doing from one day to the next.)

When that cold wind woke up Wall Street on Friday, I just had to laugh. I know it's not a good idea to delight in a decline in the stock market, considering that any continued decline really does, and will, negatively affect my own ability to find work. On the other hand, it's always nice to see the rich get a chilly blast of reality when they're starting to feel warm and cozy inside their insulated bubbles. As many of us are painfully aware, the distribution of wealth within this region called the United States is so unequal, that a lot of people don't even see any improvement in their own wages or standard of living (however you want to define that) during supposed boom times. As reported by Christopher Jencks in an article for The American Prospect:

When America's most recent economic boom ended in 2001, the economy was turning out $7 trillion worth of consumer goods and services a year -- enough to provide every man, woman and child with almost $25,000 worth of food, housing, transportation, medical care and other things every year. If all that stuff had been divided equally, the typical American household, which now has three members, would have gotten about $75,000 worth. Yet as we see in this issue of the Prospect, based on new research by the Russell Sage and Rockefeller foundations, a lot of Americans had to scrape by on far less than that. Almost one American worker in five reported having been paid less than $8 an hour in 2001. That works out to less than $17,000 a year even if you work full time. And many low-wage workers earned considerably less than $17,000 because they were unemployed for part of the year, worked less than 40 hours a week or earned less than $8 an hour.

When you consider that this was the situation during the great boom of the last decade, it's really no wonder that the picture looks so bleak for most workers during the present "recovery" -- a shallow "recovery" in the middle of an extended and deep decline.

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^^^ January 11, 2004         We Don't Know How To Do Anything Anymore

[asfo_del]
I just finished reading a book called The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's the story of a man named Eustace Conway, who taught himself how to survive in the wilderness from a very early age. He became completely self-sufficient and developed a deep understanding of the natural world. He has spent his lifetime speaking to school groups and operating a nature camp in the hopes of teaching others what he has learned: that if you live according to natural laws and in an environment that you have taken the time to intimately grasp, through a lot of diligence and hard work you too are capable of sustaining yourself and the world you inhabit.

Though the man himself may be flawed, like all humans, and the utopian vision he has created may be somewhat less than ideal (most of his apprentices are overwhelmed by the amount of work and his demanding nature and quit before their term is up), he makes a very alarming point about the state of most of us who grow up in the U.S. in this century. Namely, to put it in my own words, that we don't know how to do anything.

"Eustace regularly gets apprentices who have never before held a bucket. He'll give them the simplest task in the world--go fill this bucket with water--and then he'll watch in horror as they try to carry the filled bucket. They don't know how. They hold the heavy bucket as far away from their bodies as they can,... wasting energy and strength just holding their burden. It makes him wince in pain to watch it. Or hammers. Eustace gets young people up at Turtle Island who have never before met a hammer. They have no sense of how a hammer works. They come to him because the claim they want to live "self-sufficiently," but when he asks them to hammer in a nail, they grab the hammer in a tightened fist, way up by its head, and then they punch at their target.
'When I see that,' Eustace says solemnly, 'it makes me want to lie down and die.'"

He sometimes shows school groups an old Indian game, in which kids roll a hoop and try to throw sticks through it, and he invariably finds that modern American children don't know how to get a hoop, which is just like any wheel, to roll. And when they try and fail, they usually will just stare uncomprehendingly instead of setting out to figure out what they did wrong.

Eustace says: "I can guaran-damn-tee you that every child in Africa knows how to roll a fucking wheel. It's a question of understanding natural law. The world is ruled by a few basic physical laws--leverage, inertia, momentum, thermodynamics--and if you're out of touch with these fundamental principles, then you can't hammer a nail, carry a bucket, or roll a wheel.... Being out of touch with the natural world means ... that you live in an environment that you completely do not understand."

According to him, kids today don't know how to use simple tools because they have no need for that skill in their comfortable lives. Their parents can't help their kids learn manual dexterity because, for the most part, they don't have it either. To Eustace, the greatest tragedy is that modern Americans are unlikely to learn these skills, even from someone like him, because "people don't listen. They don't know how to pay attention. They don't know how to focus. Even if they claim that they want to learn, they have no discipline."

I don't exactly share Eustace's views on discipline, which in my mind are excessive, but I too am alarmed at how little the children with whom I come in contact know how to do.

I myself was a fairly inept child, but I don't think it was to the degree of many kids today. My parents' solicitousness and insistence that I concentrate on my schoolwork rather than chores didn't give me great opportunity to learn household tasks. But I still knew how to cut my own food, tie my shoelaces, roller-skate and ride a bike by the time I was six! I was constantly drawing and doing odd craft projects, like making myself shoes out of cardboard. I was forever sewing doll clothes, as well as making props for them like tiny school books and book bags. I was, however, (and still am) excessively fearful, and I could never master diving (except cannonballs), gymnastics (okay, I could do cartwheels), or swimming underwater, for instance. I was and am also hopeless at sports.

When I went to art school, I learned to use a lot of tools. I even took welding, though I was too afraid of the arc welder and only learned gas welding. I know how to throw pots (not terribly well) and make plaster molds. I know how to hammer nails, saw, build a partition out of two-by-fours, and cut sheetrock to size, fasten it and tape it (though not well enough to make invisible seams). It's not much. I wish I could do plumbing, auto mechanics, and repair small appliances but I'm fairly certain that that will never happen. With my constant exhaustion, even the things I know how to do are, for the most part, too demanding physically for me to be able to do them now.

I am somewhat more adept when it comes to traditional women's work. I can cook, though I have no special talents in that area. I can grow vegetables, make compost, and dig a hole in the ground. I can crochet, including complicated crocheted lace, though I don't enjoy all the fussiness and counting of stitches that is involved in the latter. I can hand sew (not well enough to make clothes) and embroider, but certainly not with anywhere near the perfection and exactitude of the women in my grandmother's generation. I once knitted a small square when I was about nine, but I just wasn't into it. My mother and my sister are both accomplished knitters, so that skill is waiting for me within reach should I decide to take it up :).

Our world and our relationship to it would be fundamentally altered if we knew how to manipulate our own physical environment. If instead of expecting that someone else would make everything for us, and we would simply pay for it with the money we earned by the narrow skills that each of us possess, we the people would be much more in charge of our destinies. We have given up our most basic self-sufficiency and allowed corporations to become our in loco parentis. For a fee, corporations will take care of all our needs, even those needs we never knew we had until the corporations made us aware of them.

And for kids, how can they grow up into full participants in their own lives when all their fundamental experiences are mediated through products, services, and media images?

[Edited Jan. 13, 2004]

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^^^ January 10, 2004         The Poor Support the Rich

[asfo_del]
Economic inequality is not just an issue of unfairness. It is actually literally true that the richer some people are, the poorer others have to be. That's because the poor create wealth for the rich, and the less they are able to keep for themselves of the wealth they create, the more those who benefit from their labor are enriched.

In a simplified example, imagine a factory in the global south that makes handbags. There are 100 workers. Each worker gets paid one dollar for every handbag she makes, and it takes one day of work to make a bag. The owner of the company sells the handbags for $20 apiece, and he sells 100 handbags a day. So, every day, each worker makes one dollar, and the owner of the company makes $1900. If he were to pay his workers $10 a day, he would still bring in $1000 a day for himself, but then he would not be as rich, since the distribution of wealth would be slightly more fair. [This example doesn't take the owner's other business expenses into account, but even if did, the basic premise would remain the same.]

The current system requires that there be a large pool of poor people at the bottom of the economic pyramid to create wealth with their labor for the few at the top. Even if the owner were willing to make the handbags himself, he could only make $20 a day because he would be able to produce only one bag a day. Therefore, it's in the owner's interest that there be 100 people who are desperately poor, so that they will be willing to work for $1 a day. There are millions more who are not employed, but they too contribute to the wealth of the few with their poverty, first by driving down wages since there are more available workers than there are jobs, and secondly by having been forced to give up their ancestral lands and resources, which they could have subsisted on were they not in the hands of the rich.

Many people will say that it's a shame that there are a few very rich people and billions who are destitute, but that the former does not cause the latter. Well, actually, it does.

Poor countries pay out far more to rich countries and commercial banks in debt repayments than they receive in aid. The poor are literally supporting the rich, not the other way around.

http://www.debtchannel.org/guide/front.shtml
It is estimated that the Third World pays the developed North nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care.

Ten percent of the debt is owed directly to commercial banks like Citibank, 45% to nations like the U.S., Britain, Japan and France, and 45% to institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Since the IMF and World Bank notoriously bailed out the commercial banks that had made irresponsible loans in the 1980s, much of the money paid out to those institutions also ends up enriching the banks and their stakeholders. This in spite of the fact that many people in developing nations are literally dying from the drain in funds from poor to rich.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17341
Every day, about 6000 children lose one of their parents to AIDS worldwide, according to the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. About 90 percent of these children are in Africa .... And this crisis is further exacerbated by Africa's back-breaking debt burden. The continent spends up to $15 billion on debt repayments and only small fraction on health services - including AIDS drugs - for its people.... Africa spends three times more on repaying debts to rich Western countries and institutions than it does on providing health facilities and drugs for its sick and poor population. Severely indebted countries have higher rates of infant mortality, disease, illiteracy and malnutrition that other countries in the Global South.

[o]:[o]:[o]:[o]:[o]:[o]

^^^ January 6, 2004    Anxiety Culture

[Richard]
There is a good amount of wisdom to be found at the British Web magazine Anxiety Culture. The subject matter of this magazine is pretty apparent from the title, but they also have a good FAQ: Here's an excerpt:

What are the main ideas behind Anxiety Culture?

--We live in a crazy work-obsessed society driven by puritanical fear and guilt (in case you hadn’t noticed).

--There are psychological gimmicks to bring fun and pleasure back. All perfectly legal (currently). AC contains many such gimmicks.

--Most of us spend our lives in pointless, boring jobs due to our financial fears. We then delude ourselves that the work is "enjoyable" or "useful." It’s really no joke.

The magazine/site is divided into a number of sections, including "Features," "Regulars" and "Amusement Arcade." But my favorite section is "Control Systems," which includes descriptions of various psychologically oriented systems used to maintain the social status quo. Examples are The Guilt System, The Distraction System , and The Inner Dictator.

Possibly the most interesting page is their description of The Disapproval System, which strikes some very familiar chords, especially when they start talking about poverty and debt:

Social disapproval of the "underclass" or Low Other (a sociological term referring to social groups who are looked down on) is sometimes rationalised in liberal societies as “concern” (i.e., disapproval = "love") and "assistance" ("tough love," usually mandatory). It seems that respectable society needs a Low Other to disapprove of. Disapproval of racial minorities has become socially unacceptable, so society looks elsewhere for candidates to look down on. A perennial favourite is, of course, the "socially excluded," i.e., the poor (26% of the population according to the latest figures published at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) .

Don’t be fooled by governments which claim to want to "help" the Low Other -- their language of disapproval is clear. We haven’t become a more tolerant society, we’ve simply shifted our intolerance onto different social groups. As long as we keep our disapproval projected on the Low Other, we think we can escape disapproval ourselves.

But what we seek to escape controls us. Advertisers seem to understand this -- most advertisements target our disapproval feelings. As children, we received the message: "you have to be good to get approval." As adult consumers, we receive the message: "you have to own these items to get approval." As a result we have the highest consumer debt levels in recorded history.

Of course, we have been saying similar things here at Living on Less. But as I often like to point out, sometimes we don't incur debt just to buy things that give us status; sometimes, especially in the present rough times (and spare me the bullshit about a "recovery" -- whose recovery?), it is necessary to incur debt simply to get by.

As I've mentioned a few times, I've built up a huge credit card debt just trying to pay for food, root canals, and rent. And now I've just gotten word that MBNA/Working Assets will be dramaticaly increasing my credit card interest rate.

Oh, well. In many ways, as pointed out by this wise magazine, we give in to anxiety too easily. But, then, sometimes there really are reasons to be anxious.

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^^^ January 6, 2004         Tired, Got a House

[asfo_del]
I've been so very tired.

I just bought a house, with money borrowed from my parents, which is a very enviable situation to be in, of course. It's a two-family house, so we plan to live in one apartment and rent out the other one.

I'm not going to go into the Marxist explanation of why it's wrong to use one's access to capital to exploit those who don't have such access [i.e. charging rent to someone who cannot afford to buy a house of his own]. In an ideal society, the renter would be building up his stake in the property by paying rent every month and would, over the years, become an owner. Realistically, in this society, I am in no position to be bestowing social justice on deserving strangers. I am too sick to work. If we lived in a Marxist society [not that I'm a Marxist] where each gave according to her abilities and each received according to her needs, I would not need to be a landlord in order to survive. In this society, I couldn't even qualify for a measly $500 a month in Social Security disability.

Back to my tiredness. I now have to move by February first and get the rental apartment ready before February first so that someone can move in by February first. Plus do a million little bureaucratic chores like ordering a final water bill [in person], making an appointment with the oil delivery company to inspect the furnace, getting the gas meter readings, working out the final repairs that the seller agreed to pay for. Stuff like that. And I've been so tired [because I have chronic fatigue] that I can barely get out of bed.

I spent fewer than three hours at the new house moving stuff from one apartment to the other, to clear out the apartment that we're going to rent, and I had to spend the next day mostly in bed as a result. Mike has been great, on the other hand. He ripped out the old carpeting, tore down paneling we didn't like, removed a window air conditioner. And, like the little Hercules that he is, carried the ripped-out carpeting [two rooms' worth] out to the curb by himself. And carried the air conditioner up to the attic by himself. I don't know how he does that stuff....

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^^^ January 4, 2004         The Obliviousness of the Wealthy

[asfo_del]
I'm a little slow on the uptake, but here's a thought-provoking comment from Slacktivist:

Health Savings Accounts ... are a new tax shelter that encourages those who can afford it to adopt higher-deductible health insurance. To take advantage of this new subsidy/benefit, one needs to have an extra $2,500 to $4,500 in disposable income lying about. Most Americans don't have that kind of money, but most columnists and decision-making editors do. None of the articles we ran seemed to consider that the appeal of this program might be limited by the fact that so few can afford to take advantage of it.

As Rutten points out, this isn't an example of bias, but of obliviousness. The problem is not the journalists' affluence per se, but their failure to grasp that their affluence makes them exceptional. Articles written by and for the exceptionally affluent are irrelevant to the majority of their readers.

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^^^ January 1, 2004    Ten Years Ago This Morning

[Richard]
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, which many of us had the unusual opportunity to follow on our computer screens. (At the time, I was getting lots of bulletins and communiques through some leftist listservs and news lists. I suppose it would have been even more exciting to see this unfold on a Web site, but it was plenty fascinating just seeing the news in text.) I think that many people are correct to point out that this was the first revolutionary uprising to broadcast itself to the world online, but this was a groundbreaking event in many other ways, too.

It's fair to say that at least in North America, the Zapatista uprising -- timed to coincide with the birth of NAFTA -- marked the beginning of the contemporary protest movement against "free trade" agreements and corporate globalization.

It's also important to note that this uprising was a significant breakthrough for indigenous people; and with its radically democratic, anti-authoritarian principles, it was very different from the "traditional" Marxist-Leninist rebellions that had occurred throughout Latin America during prior decades.

For people who don't know much about the Zapatistas or have lost track of them (and I know I have to some extent), you might want to look at the huge list of articles and links over at Zapatistas in Cyberspace. I hope to spend some time there, myself, today.

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