Collective Responsibility versus Individual Pathology

Over lunch I was watching MSNBC and saw two things of note. First, Obama did say that “it's time to let the drug and insurance industries know that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair." This does reconcile my criticism that his plan needs to include an awareness of stakeholders who will likely mobilize against it. Second, there was a lengthy piece about Lindsay Lohan admitting herself to a rehabilitation center. Although I’ve written elsewhere about how non-newsworthy I find this type of celebrity sensationalism, the one part of the piece I found very interesting was who exactly the reporter blamed for Lohan’s problem. Unlike poverty and crime for all of us mundane people out here, which is considered a personal deficiency, Lohan’s drug problem was blamed on all of us that allegedly allow her to drink excessively and consume narcotics at night clubs. Somehow, we are apparently responsible for monitoring the social activities of celebrities in order to ensure that they do not wind up slipping off the straight and narrow, but at the same time we can suggest that poor people and minorities have the responsibility to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in order to succeed. If I understand these pundits correctly than celebrity drug abuse is a collective problem, but poverty and racism is an individual pathology. While I would generally agree that we have collectively created an environment where one’s legal accountability is in inverse proportion to one’s celebrity, the fact that this is acknowledged while the rhetoric of individual responsibility remains for the rest of us is simply a farce. If I did not witness it in real life, I would never believe it.

Obama and health care

Barack Obama recently laid out the plans for his universal health care coverage. It seems like in many ways he is going the right direction with it. The trouble is not in his plan, but the opposition he is likely to face. Even if he is elected, history has time and time again shown how difficult this type of legislation is to enact. Even in favorable political climates, politicians must contend with the non-trivial issue of lobbyists who represents the interests of those who have something at stake in health care. This represents a huge proportion of the U.S. economy, and one that has historically carried a lot of weight as well.

Obama is right that the U.S. spends more money per person than any other developed nation and that should translate into good coverage, but the challenge he faces is the cost of medical care. While many proponents of federal cost containment strategies advocate the reduction of eligible recipients or suggest lowering the benefits for those who already receive government health care benefits, the real mechanism of cost containment would be to control the skyrocketing cost of health care.

Part of the reason the U.S. is in the health care debacle that it is today is that in the past when coverages have been increased there have not been simultaneously occurring limits to the increases of health care costs. While beneficiaries are often fingered as the abusers of the national health care system, it really seems like the finger should be pointed at the providers and companies that systematically exploit state and national insurance programs. This is something that needs to be aggressively addressed in any national health care plan, but also something that has opponents with very deep pockets waiting in the wings.

Memorial Day and Politics

Yesterday I read an opinion piece written in Friday’s Christian Science Monitor called “Keep politics out of Memorial Day,” written by the “national commander” of the American Legion Paul Morin. The gist of this piece is that this day should be about honoring dead soldiers and not about picnics, parades, or political statements, it should be about “honor, duty, and the ultimate sacrifice… and people who have decided that the United States is worth dying for.” To a certain extent, I would agree with Mr. Morin. Just as anyone who dies tragically, those killed in war should be remembered and memorialized. Their deaths are tragic and they reorient the lives of their loved ones, friends, and communities. However, I question the veracity of the statement that these are always “people who have decided that the United States is worth dying for.” For those people who died during the draft era, a proportion of these folks may simply be those that thought that risking the probability of death by joining the military was a better option than imprisonment or fleeing the country. In the post draft era, some of these people may be those who thought that serving in the military was a good way to pay for college, get out of debt, or escape imminent poverty.

My point is simply that it is an awful reality that war has been the cause of death for more than a million people U.S. and that these people should not be treated as a homogenous population of people who decided that their country was worth dying for. Some of these people died because their country thought that the maintenance of its interest was worth their death, and they felt they had little choice but to serve in its military. Some of these people were born poor and thought the military would be a good way to escape the poverty of their lives. And just as there is variation in the reasons people decided to put their lives on the line by joining the military, it seems reasonable to assume there would be variation in the way they would want to be remembered and memorialized. Would they want to be remembered as brave, heroic, noble, and a cut above the rest of us civilians – probably, I image that most of us want to be remember in the most favorable light. Would they want the wars that took their lives to be valorized and above contempt on the day they are to be honored and remember. Maybe not – maybe some of them would be pretty pissed off that they died, and some of them might have even preferred that their comrades and colleges not continue to die. Of the 100 soldiers that have died in the past three weeks, I imagine at least one of them would want their death to be mourned, the grief of their family the be shared, AND a voice of dissent to question whether or not they should have been in this situation that caused them to die.

A Service Class Hero

I just picked up the Green Day version of John Lennon’s tune “Working Class Hero,” and it got me thinking about the working class. Class composition in the U.S. has always been a tricky and underspecified matter. But without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, to me the working class has always been associated with those who in manufacturing – or at the very least engage in the production of goods. However, the total percentage of nonagricultural workers employed in manufacturing jobs within the U.S. has declined from roughly 30% to only 10% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This really seems to point that the traditional notion of the working class (at least as I conceive of it) is referring to an increasingly narrow segment of the U.S. population.

It seems as though the working class has been replaced by the service class, the large group of low-wage non-good producing workers. Now while most of the lyrics to Lennon’s tune seem applicable to this group of people, maybe they need their own heroes and their own songs. Maybe the oppression they face as a class is different than that which the manufacturing class has historically face; in fact I would venture to say that it certainly is. Typically, this group has had to bear the lower pay, fewer and more unstable hours, and fewer and lower benefits associated with jobs.

So while I wouldn’t dare say that the small remaining manufacturing class is in a position of privilege – the sense of the eminent and impeding doom of job evaporation is certainly an overwhelming form of oppression in its own right – what I am suggesting is that the service class needs it champions. They need a united flag around which to rally and a union under which to organize; they need a mouthpiece for a movement. This is an oft ignored segment of the population, in part because it has historically been so gendered and raced that the issues these workers face were rendered synonymous with the problems facing minorities and women. This group really needs to be at the center of any class based movement and a Service Class Hero is Something of Need.

Clinton and Obama on Education

So the Clinton plan for education reform essentially is to provide pre-kindergarteners with an infusion of education when they are young and suggests that ought to set them on a path to successful education. In theory I think this is a great idea, it pass a logic test that providing children with early education will provide them with long term learning gains. However, there are several studies which show that programs like Head Start have diminished effects overtime, and they offer a wide range of explanations as to why this is.

So it seems from the get go, that if Clinton were elected, and able to get her education plan enacted, it would be bound to fail – if only because these types of solutions are shown to have little effect.

When I saw her speak about this on Today a couple of days ago, Matt Lauer asked her:

“But isn't there another study or a group of studies that says, hey, if you spend this money on high-quality pre-K but you don't then invest more money on high-quality education down the road -- fourth grade, fifth grade, eighth grade -- that some of the results of that pre-K are lost?”

To this she responded:

“No, because if you don't invest early, you don't get the results that you need in those later grades… The evidence has been consistent that the early investment pays off.”

Lauer was right and it appears that Clinton was misinformed. If she is elected, I really hope she can come up with a better education plan, one that is shown to work; not one that is destined to fail.

On the other hand, Obama has some interesting and potentially viable suggestions as to how to increase academic achievement. First, he suggests increasing the pay of high performing teachers by 10%-20%. I’m not sure what the research says on this one, but I have long been an advocate of raising teachers’ salaries. It seems likely this would produce a general increase in the quality of teachers. Since at least some people base their career path on potential earnings, if teaching were a more economically rewarding career, an increased number of high quality people would likely be drawn to the profession if the pay were higher. This seems like basic rational choice economics to me. Second, Obama suggests more summer learning opportunities. While I’m sure millions of children would groan at the idea of more school, Obama and his camp are right that studies have show this is a place where disparities in educational achievement are exacerbated. Finally, Obama suggests increasing financial aid to college students. Since a college degree is more and more often required for even entry level positions in non-skilled jobs, it seems important to get more U.S. children through college. Providing them with more funding opportunities without causing them to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt certainly seems like it would increase the number of folks who could afford to attend college, particularly in the face of ever raising cost of attendance.

I like that this is an issue both of these candidates are discussing. Education is critically important to individuals as well as to the direction of our country. I hope that this comes more into the forefront of the presidential debate and leads to some real changes.