California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

America Has an Employment Problem, Not an Unemployment Problem

by John Lawrence

Wherever you look from air traffic controllers to fruit pickers to caregivers to teachers to police, there are not enough workers. That is why unemployment is so low - at 3.4%. The Health Services, Professional and Business Services, Trade, and Accommodation and Food Services industries have the highest numbers of job openings. The question is why there is a shortage of workers and what to do about it.The pandemic caused a major disruption in America’s labor force—something many have referred to as The Great Resignation. In 2022, more than 50 million workers quit their jobs, many of whom were in search of an improved work-life balance and flexibility, increased compensation, and a strong company culture. But a closer look at what has happened to the labor force can be better described as ‘The Great Reshuffle’ because hiring rates have outpaced quit rates since November of 2020. So, many workers are quitting their jobs—but many are getting re-hired elsewhere. In a game of musical chairs workers are seeking and getting better jobs, leaving high stress professions like nursing and teaching and getting paid more to do other things.

So America basically has a shortage of "essential workers," workers who do necessary work for traditionally low pay. America has developed so many ways to make money doing inessential work at higher pay so why should anyone who doesn't have to work in an essential job? There are two ways. 1) Pay more for essential work and 2) increase legal immigration because increasingly immigrants are doing the work that Americans who have been Americans longer don't want to do. The worker shortage has empowered workers. They are so to speak in the catbird seat. They are demanding more pay, shorter hours, better working conditions. This is all well and good, but, as the pandemic showed, essential work is necessary for people to live while so many other forms of work, while more lucrative, could disappear tomorrow without affecting much most Americans' quality of life. For instance, Facebook had 86,482 full-time employees as of December 2022, up from just 150 people in 2006. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, nothing essential to life would be lost in my opinion. The same is true for other social media like Tik Tok. In fact considering the effects social media has had on the population, the world might be better off if all social media disappeared tomorrow. Then those workers would be available for more essential jobs.

If the advertising industry disappeared tomorrow, the world might be better off. For instance, I can find anything I might be interested in buying on Amazon. I don't need to be pounded on by TV commercials to be told what I should want or what I should need. In particualar, Facebook makes all its considerable revenues from advertising. It does not manufacture a product essential to life or any product at all. People are getting smart that there are cushier, safer jobs with better work-life balance than essential jobs. Caregivers like Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) are low paid but essential jobs. Anyone who has had a loved one in the hospital for any length of time realizes how essential they are. They do the dirty work like changing patients diapers and cleaning up when they haven't got to the patients' bedsides in time to prevent a tragedy. Nurses and teachers are overworked considering the nurse/patient ratio and the teacher/student ratio. Much essential work is done by non college graduates and, therefore, does not merit the esteem that college graduates' jobs garner. Nevertheless, they are more important jobs in an essential sense, than many jobs that require a college education. When you need a plumber, you will not usually be hiring a college graduate.

About half of Americans who lost their job during the pandemic and are still not working say they are not willing to take jobs that do not offer the opportunity for remote work. However, many essential jobs can't be done remotely. They are "hands on." It is about time that America values its essential workers and makes a distinction between what's essential and what is inessential. It's a question, to some extent, of values, of what kinds of work are valued. This is where unions come in. America cannot function without essential workers. Yet the only way they can get the pay and benefits they deserve is to unionize and withdraw their workforce if necessary to get what they deserve. For sure, they won't get a better paying job otherwise unless they quit and go to work for Facebook.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems With American Constitution/Democracy: It Spells Out Rights But Not Responsibilities

by John Lawrence

Americans like to emphasize their rights, but don't talk much about their responsibilities. As far as the Constitution is concerned, there are none. As far as corporations are concerned, their only responsibility is to maximize profits by any means necessary. So the environment is not even a concern. Global warming is not even a concern. The only concern as far as business is concerned is business. "The business of America is business," so said President Calvin Coolidge in a 1925 speech. Corporations are supposed to maximize profits presumably as their responsibility to their shareholders which excludes about 50% of Americans who don't own any shares. We've already talked about a right and responsibility to work as a balance to Article 25 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Rights should be balanced by responsibilities. Unfortunately, in the American Constitution and even in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, they're not. In the very last article of the UN charter we find the only mention of "duties":

"Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

So no responsibilities are spelled out except the obvious one of not infringing on anyone else's rights. There are no explicit duties in return for all the considerable rights and freedoms spelled out in the UN Charter. There is no obligation to work or pay, if possible, to contribute to the " food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services" that one has a right to expect. It just doesn't add up.

So where does this leave the homeless in America. Unlike the UN charter, the American Constitution does not guarantee the right to housing or anything else. Either you pay for it or work to create it or else. The City of San Diego has proposed a "data analytics program" to solve the homeless problem. Now they are going to spend perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars not on anything that would directly help the homeless such as actually giving them the money for rent, but to some firm for some technology. They've been doing the same thing for years. I remember 20 years ago they paid someone $100,000 for a plan to end homelessness. What happened to that? KPBS reported: "In a statement after the vote, Fletcher said the county will continue to tackle the crisis that exists on the streets, "but we must invest in preventative actions like this one that stops people from becoming unhoused. This new technology will do it." New technology indeed.

If the city designated certain areas where the homeless could legally set up their tents, this in and of itself would get them off the public streets. Instead, the city criminalizes the homeless for living on the streets. But where else can they go? Legal campgrounds with basic amenities like toilets and showers would immensely improve the homeless' lot at rock bottom, minimal expense. The City owns lots of land parcels where this would be possible. Buildings are expensive. Vacant land that the City already owns is not. Most homeless people don't want to be "sheltered" except in case of very bad weather. They like the individual freedom of having their own space even if that is a tent. Some have animals which are forbidden in shelters. Some like to consume substances which are forbidden in shelters. Some don't like to be snooped on which is what happens in shelters. Why doesn't the City get this?

What the City is deathly afraid of is that, if they really made the homeless comfortable like in a campground,say, the City of San Diego would become a homeless magnet attracting homeless people and other people, who just wanted to save money and not pay exorbitant rent, from all over the country. Many people, not only the down and out, would prefer minimum amenities at a campground to paying $2000 a month in rent which is about the minimum rent in San Diego. The powers that be don't want to make camping out a permanently acceptable lifestyle. But why not? Not everyone needs a structure to live in to have a reasonably normal and happy life. With a gym or YMCA membership you have access to shower and rest room facilities. Using public transportation supplemented with a bicycle you can get to a job. A cell phone expedites communications and even banking. It's just that the City fathers and mothers find it abhorrent that people could actually prosper in an unhoused environment with minimal amenities at least for a period of time. They don't want San Diego to become the homeless capital of the US.

How Corporations Crush the Working Class

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

The most dramatic change in the system over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate giants like Amazon and the shrinkage of labor unions.

The resulting power imbalance has spawned near-record inequalities of income and wealth, corruption of democracy by big money, and the abandonment of the working class.

Fifty years ago, General Motors was the largest employer in America. The typical GM worker earned $35 an hour in today’s dollars and had a major say over working conditions.

Today’s largest employers are Amazon and Walmart, each paying far less per hour and routinely exploiting their workers, who have little recourse.

The typical GM worker wasn’t “worth” so much more than today’s Amazon or Walmart worker and didn’t have more valuable insights about working conditions.

The difference is those GM workers had a strong union. They were backed by the collective bargaining power of more than a third of the entire American workforce. 

Today, most workers are on their own. Only 6.4% of America’s private-sector workers are unionized, providing little collective pressure on Amazon, Walmart, or other major employers to treat their workers any better.

Fifty years ago, the labor movement had enough political clout to ensure labor laws were enforced and that the government pushed giant firms like GM to sustain the middle class.

Today, organized labor’s political clout is minuscule by comparison. 

The biggest political players are giant corporations like Amazon. They’ve used that political muscle to back “right-to-work” laws, whittle down federal labor protections, and keep the National Labor Relations Board understaffed and overburdened, allowing them to get away with egregious union-busting tactics.

They’ve also impelled government to lower their taxes; extorted states to provide them tax breaks as a condition for locating facilities there; bullied cities where they’re headquartered; and wangled trade treaties allowing them to outsource so many jobs that blue-collar workers in America have little choice but to take low-paying, high-stress warehouse and delivery gigs. 

Oh, and they’ve neutered antitrust laws, which in an earlier era would have had companies like Amazon in their crosshairs.

This decades-long power shift – the ascent of corporate leviathans and the demise of labor unions – has resulted in a massive upward redistribution of income and wealth. The richest 0.1% of Americans now have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90% put together.

The power shift can be reversed – but only with stronger labor laws resulting in more unions, tougher trade deals, and a renewed commitment to antitrust.

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats appear willing. The House has just passed the toughest labor reforms in more than a generation. Biden’s new trade representative, promises trade deals will protect American workers rather than exporters. And Biden is putting trustbusters in critical positions at the Federal Trade Commission and in the White House.

And across the country, labor activism has surged – from the Amazon union effort, to frontline workers walking out and striking to demand better pay, benefits, and safety protections.

I’d like to think America is at a tipping point similar to where it was some 120 years ago, when the ravages and excesses of the Gilded Age precipitated what became known as the Progressive Era. Then, reformers reined in the unfettered greed and inequalities of the day and made the system work for the many rather than the few.

It’s no exaggeration to say that we’re now living in a Second Gilded Age. And today’s progressive activists may be on the verge of ushering us into a Second Progressive Era. They need all the support we can give them.

Off the Top of My Head

Robots Will Not Replace Us

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden wants to bring the country together. Here are 3 programs guaranteed to do it. 1) Guarantee that every worker who loses his job in the fossil fuel industry, as the energy industry transitions to renewables, is guaranteed a job in the renewable energy industry including free retraining if necessary. 2) Free apprenticeship programs for electricians, plumbers and other occupations for which no robot can replace them. Let's change that white supremacist chant to "Robots will not replace us." 3) A huge build-up of a Habitat for Black Humanity program (open to participants of all races) in honor of Jimmy Carter who famously wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.

Middle class Joe knows that the main way the middle class has built up wealth is through home ownership - equity in a home. This equity also facilitates the intergenerational transfer of wealth which the black community is notorious in lacking. Blacks are less likely to receive wealth transfers from parents than whites, and conversely, they’re under more pressure to transfer their own limited wealth to parents or relatives than whites. So whereas each white generation starts from somewhere above zero, each black generation is more likely to start from zero. A greater proportion of white adult children receive financial support from their parents than blacks in all three categories of parental support. The share of whites receiving financial support from their parents is 34% for higher education, 12% for home ownership, and 26% for other purposes. The comparable figures for blacks are 14%, 2%, and 19%, respectively.

Trump supporters in the Rust Belt could rest assured that their means of livelihood will not be taken away from them as the country transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. Biden has assured workers that he will not ban fracking. Then it's a logical next step to guarantee those workers a job as the country transitions away from fracking. Leave it in the ground should be our motto, but just because we do that, there is no necessity for workers to suffer. Biden has said that he will create millions of new jobs in infrastructure and green industries. Then let's guarantee that the first workers to get those jobs will be old fossil fuel workers. Let's transition the workers as well as the source of energy. This will go a long way towards placating Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and Texas and also adding supporters to the Democratic party which more represents the interests of workers than does the Republican party.

Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement should embrace the Black Home Ownership Matters movement. When we talk about creating wealth, it's not in the context of Lamborghinis or yachts or multimillion dollar houses. We're talking about wealth on the order of the price of a middle class house. Wealth distributed among a large number of people not just ridiculous amounts of wealth of the 1% and billionaire class. Reducing economic inequality starts with an ambitious program to create wealth among the 99%. Debt reduction and forgiveness is also important especially for student loan debtors. Joe Biden can redeem himself here. Formerly known as the Senator from MBNA (MBNA is now a subsidiary of Bank of America), Biden voted for a provision to take bankruptcy protection away from student loan debtors. The senator was a key supporter of a bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

Joe Biden will resuscitate America's reputation in the rest of the world as he had a wealth of experience in dealing with foreign policy for 8 years in the Obama administration. He has to be careful both in how he treats black citizens and how he treats white former Trump supporters in order to build a coalition for the Democratic party. If he does it right, the Democratic party will predominate for a generation or more. The US dodged the bullet of fascism by voting Trump out of office. The US was heading down the rabbit hole of fascism and a second 4 years of a Trump administration would have sealed the deal. By the way including a public option in Obamacare would practically be a guarantee of a transition to Medicare for All. Many of Joe Biden's positions amount to the same as Bernie Sander's positions but in a less stark and abrupt way and for more care placed in the transition process. Let's hope that Democrats take control of the Senate with the two yet to be resolved Senate races in Georgia. Working across the aisles is nice, but Republicans have never backed away from using raw power to get their way. Democrats should follow that example also.

Dying to Work

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Most of Europe and all fifty states of the US are in various stages of “reopening.” But why, exactly?

The pandemic is still with us. After the first tentative steps to ease the lockdown in Germany – the most successful large European country to halt the spread of the virus thanks to massive testing – the disease has shown signs of spreading faster.

At least Germany is opening slowly and waiting until almost no new cases are occurring there, as is the rest of the EU.  

By contrast, the United States – with the highest death rate and most haphazard response to Covid-19 of any advanced nation – is opening chaotically, each state on its own. Some states are lifting restrictions overnight, although relatively few tests for the virus have been conducted. 

Researchers expect the reopenings to cause thousands of additional deaths.

Two weeks after Texas Governor Greg Abbott began reopening the state’s economy, Texas experienced the single-highest rise in casessince the beginning of the pandemic. Since Nebraska reopened May 4, Covid-19 cases in Colfax County alone have surged 1,390 percent

Experts warn that Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama and several other places in the South that have rapidly reopened their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks.

Last week, Ford Motor reopened its large North American assembly plants. The following day Ford closed and then reopened its Chicago Assembly plant twice in less than 24 hours after two workers tested positive for Covid-19. On Then Ford temporarily shut its Dearborn, Michigan Truck plant after an employee tested positive, then promptly resumed operations.

So why “reopen” so abruptly, when Covid-19 continues to claim lives?

The main reason given is to get the economy moving again. But this begs the question of why an economy exists in the first place, other than to promote the wellbeing of people within it.

Both Ford plants are vital to its profitability, and Ford’s profitability is important to jobs in the Midwest. But surely the wellbeing of Ford workers, their families, the people of Chicago and Dearborn and others in the Midwest are more important.  

A related argument is that workers are clamoring to return to their jobs. “People want to get back to work,” Trump has asserted repeatedly since March. Fox News host Sean Hannity claims people are “dying to get back to work,” seemingly unaware of the irony of his words.

Polls suggest otherwise. Americans whose jobs require them to leave home express trepidation about doing so; 60 percent fear exposing their families to COVID-19.

Many Americans must return to work because they need the money, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Rich economies can support their people for years if necessary. During World War II, America shut down most of its economy for nearly four years.

The obstacle right now is a lack of political will to provide such support, at least until enough testing and tracing provide reasonable evidence the pandemic is contained.

Although nearly half of all U.S. households report that they’ve lost employment income since mid-March, the extra jobless benefits enacted by Congress are only now starting to trickle out. Both Trump and Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refuse to extend them beyond July 31, when they’re scheduled to end.

Meanwhile, states are denying benefits to anyone whose company has called them back.

Finally, Trump and his enablers argue that reopening is a matter of “freedom.” He has called on citizens to “liberate” their states from public-health restrictions, and Fox News personalities have decried what they call denials of “basic freedoms.”

Armed protesters have stormed the Michigan state capitol demanding the “freedom” to work. At the Kentucky statehouse, protesters shouted “We want to work!” and “We’re free citizens!”

But the supposed “freedom” to work is a cruel joke when people are forced to choose between putting food on the table or risking their lives. It’s the same perverse ideology that put workers in harm’s way in the dawn of the industrial age, when robber barons demanded that workers be “free” to work in dangerous factories twelve hours a day.

In truth, there is no good reason to reopen when the pandemic is still raging – not getting the economy moving again, or workers clamoring to return to work, or the cost of extended income support, or because workers should be “free” to endanger themselves.

Let’s be clear. The pressure to reopen the economy is coming from businesses that want to return to profitability, and from Trump, who wants to run for reelection in an economy that appears to be recovering.

Neither is reason enough.  

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Will Have Given About a Trillion Dollars a Year to Rich People Since 2008 by the End of 2020

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve prints money and gives it to rich people. According to CNBC, it will have printed about $10 trillion by the end of 2020. This policy is called quantitative easing. It represents a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for rich people, but so far, despite Andrew Yang's proposal and the Second Great Depression we find ourselves in due to the coronavirus, there is no UBI in the works for the rest of us. In addition the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero for rich people, but credit card rates for poor people still top 30%. So the rich can borrow unlimited amounts of money to buy up all the foreclosures and failing businesses caused by the Second Great Depression.

The economy is not going to bounce back to where it was which was an economy in which consumerism was 70% of GDP. There just is no way when large scale venues and bars operating at 25% capacity will be the norm for the foreseeable future. There is also the possibility of multiple waves or spikes in the number of cases as states and cities try to open too much too soon. Plus people are just not going to feel comfortable going on cruises and going to professional sports venues until there is a vaccine which is not a foregone conclusion that one can even be developed. The economy as it existed pre pandemic was one in which we were entertaining ourselvesr to death. It was an economy built on entertainment, an economy predicated on selling each other lattes. Even though we can still be entertained at home via TV and via the internet, there is still a substantial enough loss of revenues and jobs that the economy will stumble along at half or three quarters speed unless a fundamental change is made in how the economy functions.

Government investment in the economy similar to FDR's New Deal is not only necessary to get the economy working again, it is essential to change an economy of entertainment and titillation to an economy where real and essential work will once again be the norm. We have a multi trillion dollar deficit in infrastructure in the US. This can be addressed by forgetting the defunct economy consisting of selling each other lattes and putting people to work doing real and essential jobs. This will also contribute to a revitalization of the American spirit. America was built by people doing real work whether that was in agriculture or manufacturing and not by people entertaining us to death.

The book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman made the argument very cogently. According to Wikipedia,

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.

Postman was on to something. Entertainment and not religion is the opium of the masses. When people like the Kardashians can make their living by just advocating consumerism and indolence, America has lost its work ethic. A UBI which just allows the consumer economy to reinvent itself would to a certain extent be a missed opportunity for government to create meaningful jobs that the private sector can't create to build a better, more meaningful society, a society built on helping people here and around the world. FDR was on to something. His New Deal can be emulated in a Green New Deal which at one and the same time can address the global warming crisis, build  a stronger and more resilient infrastructure and create meaningful jobs for every American.

The Covid-19 Class Divide

by Robert Reich

Monday, April 27, 2020

The pandemic is putting America’s deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are emerging.

The Remotes: These are professional, managerial, and technical workers – an estimated 35 percent of the workforce – who are putting in long hours at their laptops, Zooming into conferences, scanning electronic documents, and collecting about the same pay as before the crisis.

Many are bored or anxious, but they’re well off compared to the three other classes.

The Essentials. They’re about 30 percent of workers, including nurses, homecare and childcare workers, group home workers, farm workers, food processors, truck drivers, warehouse and transit workers, drug store employees, sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, and the military.

Too many essentials lack adequate protective gear, paid sick leave, health insurance, and childcare, which is especially important now that schools are shuttered. They also deserve hazard pay.

Their vulnerability is generating a wave of worker activism at businesses such as Instacart, Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Mass-transit workers are organizing work stoppages.

Trump’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has the legal authority to require private employers provide essential workers with protective gear. Don’t hold your breath.

The Unpaid. They’re an even larger group that the unemployed – whose ranks could soon reach 25 percent, the same as in the Great Depression. Some of the unpaid are furloughed or have used up their paid leave. So far in this crisis, 43 percent of adults report they or someone in their household has lost jobs or pay, according to the Pew Research Center.

An estimated 9.2 million have lost their employer-provided health insurance.

Many of these jobs had been in personal services that can’t be done remotely, such as retail, restaurant, and hospitality work. But as consumers rein in spending, layoffs are spreading to news organizations, tech companies, consumer-goods manufacturers.  

The unpaid most need cash to feed their families and pay the rent. Fewer than half say they have enough emergency funds to cover three months of expenses, according to a survey conducted this month Pew.

So far, government has failed them, too. Checks mailed out by the Treasury last week are a pittance. Extra benefits could help, but unemployment offices are so overwhelmed with claims that they can’t get money out the door. Loans to small businesses have gone largely to big, well-connected businesses, with banks collecting fat fees.

On Wednesday, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he opposed to any further federal aid to state and local governments, suggesting states declare bankruptcy instead. Which means even less money for unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and everything else the unpaid need.

The resulting desperation is fueling demands to “reopen the economy” long before it’s safe. If it comes down to a choice between risking one’s health and putting food on the table, many will take latter.

The Forgotten. This group includes everyone for whom social distancing is nearly impossible because they’re packed tightly into places most Americans don’t see – prisons, jails for undocumented immigrants, group homes for the severely disabled, camps for migrant farmworkers, Native American reservations, homeless shelters, and nursing homes.

While much of New York City is sheltering at home, for example, more than 17,000 men and women, many already in poor health, are sleeping in roughly 100 shelters for single adults.

All such places are becoming hot spots for the virus. These people need safe spaces with proper medical care, adequate social distancing, testing for the virus and isolation of those who have contracted it. Few are getting any of this.

Not surprisingly, the Essentials, the Unpaid, and the Forgotten are disproportionately poor, black, and Latino. And they are disproportionately becoming infected.

An Associated Press breakdown of available state and local data showed close to 33 percent of coronavirus deaths so far are African-American, despite representing only 14 percent of the total population in areas surveyed. The Navajo Nation already has lost more to coronavirus than have 13 states. Four of the 10 largest-known sources of infection in the United States have been correctional facilities.

These three groups aren’t getting what they need to survive this crisis because they don’t have lobbyists and political action committees to do their bidding in Washington or state capitals.  

The Remotes among us should be concerned, and not just because of the unfairness of the Covid-19 class divide. If the Essentials aren’t sufficiently protected, the Unpaid are forced back to work earlier than is safe, and the Forgotten remain forgotten, no one can be secure. Covid-19 will continue to spread sickness and death for months, if not years to come.

Off the Top of My Head

Parents Can't Apply the Same Formula That Worked For Them to their Children

by John Lawrence, January 19, 2018

My parents were great people. They had a certain approach to life that worked very well for them. Of course they encouraged me to follow the same approach. Call it a formula for success in life. The only problem was that their formula didn't work for me. I had to find my own formula. Their formula was basically the Protestant ethic: work hard, delay gratification until later, get ahead. It is the view that a person's duty is to achieve success through hard work and thrift, such success being a sign that that one has found favor with God.  First work hard in school. Go as far as you can go in the educational system. Then get a good job after which you can start enjoying life.

In his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern capitalism.

In the mid twentieth century a counterculture developed exemplified by the hippies that rejected this view of life. Life was to be lived in the moment not put off to some distant future after working hard and delaying satisfaction for most of your youth and childhood. Work was not the most essential part of life. Life was, and work was only incidental. After all with the wealth that had already been accumulated by mid twentieth century, what was the point of working hard and delaying gratification?

In my case I'm psychologically unlike my parents in my basic make-up so I eventually found a formula that worked for me after much trial and error. It involved rejecting the Protestant Ethic and much of the capitalist system including materialistic accumulation. I needed to live my life in the moment to keep my head above water psychologically. Different strokes for different folks. Some parents find this hard to understand - that their kid could be so unlike them - but it happens. The human race is made up of a large diversity of psychological types. That's why tolerance and understanding is so important. Forcing everyone into the same mold doesn't work either for individuals or nations.

 

Going Homeless to Pay For College

by John Lawrence

My daughter was entering the freshman class at UCSD in 1992 and the plan was for me to move out of our condo where we had lived for 18 years and in with my girlfriend. Renting out the condo would bring in $1000. a month and let me pay for a good share of my daughter's college expenses. After about a year when the relationship didn't work out, I decided that rather than rent an apartment which would cost me what I needed to pay my daughter's expenses, I would go homeless instead. It wasn't that I was desperate; I could have rented an apartment. I just decided I'd rather collect rent than pay it, and not only would I be saving $1000. a month in rent, I wouldn't have a cable bill, an internet bill or an SDG&E bill either. Such a prospect appealed to the Scotsman in me.

I had a Ford E-150 work van which was set up sort of like a camper. The rear window popped out for adequate ventilation with the front windows open a crack. I had 4 inches of foam on the floor covered with indoor-outdoor carpet. It was quite comfy with my double sleeping bag and two pillows. All the comforts of home as far as I was concerned. I got a tension rod and some curtains to seal off the back compartment and added double layers of tinting for the side and rear windows for privacy.

I called my vehicle a WSUV - Work, Sleep, Utility Vehicle. It functioned well for me for all those purposes. I chose my night time sleeping spots very carefully. I scouted them out. First of all the road had to be level; second it had to be in a place that would not attract attention. I chose to be among other parked vehicles in good neighborhoods. There was nothing about my vehicle that would identify it as anything other than a work vehicle with ladders on top. I had preselected spots and wouldn't pull in till 10:30 PM when the neighbors were hopefully asleep. Then I was up and out of there by 6 AM. In a year of doing this I only got rousted out by the cops twice, and once was my own fault for getting cocky and disobeying my own rules. I parked on a cul-de-sac with no other vehicles around me and attracted the attention of a neighborhood watchman. After making me stand on the street by the hour, the cops finally let me go. I went a couple miles to a more secure parking place.

I googled homelessness and found a blog by a guy who called being homeless "distributed living." The concept was simple. Instead of doing everything under one roof, you did different things in different places under different roofs. That was exactly what I was doing. It's also called urban camping. When I pulled out of my parking place at 6 AM before my fellow citizens had gotten up (except for a few dog walkers which I always had to keep an eye out for), I headed for the YMCA where I did my morning ablutions - shaved, brushed my teeth etc. Then I swam my laps, showered and started my day with a juice from the case of Kern's juices I carried with me and some vitamins. Then I headed over to Starbucks for my morning coffee. A few years later, after I had stopped using that particular Starbucks, I went back and one of the girls remembered my name. Amazing.

After my juice, vitamins and coffee I headed over to 7-11 and picked up a bag of ice for my cooler. In it I had cold water, Pepsi and other stuff that needed refrigeration like stuff for sandwiches. I had Tiger's Milk bars for lunch and fresh fruit that didn't require refrigeration.

Then I went to my my first window cleaning job. Most of the time I did two jobs in a day or, if it was a really big job, I only did one. I was able to keep in contact with customers and schedule jobs thanks to the miracle of the cell phone which allowed me to dispense with a landline as well as a fixed residence and expedited my "distributed living." After work, if I was really sweaty I headed back to the Y for a shower. Then I settled into my evening "home" where I did what I usually did if I had a real house to live in. I read, listened to music and blogged on the internet. Sometimes I did research on my project on Social Choice. I found the best place that suited all these multifarious activities was the San Diego State library, mainly because it didn't close till 10 o'clock at night and had free Wi-Fi. The city library closed too early to accommodate my schedule. I took my back pack with my books, laptop and CD player which I listened to with ear phones and spread out on a table hopefully where it was quiet and there were not a lot of students kibitzing over their homework assignments or other less dutiful activities.

When the library closed, I headed out to one of my preselected parking spots, and, if everything was kosher pulled in unnoticed by the local denizens. I did make some special arrangements for my situation. If I couldn't make it to the Y in the morning before peeing, I had a bottle for that purpose. Before leaving the library at night, I always made sure I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. My sleeping accommodations were comfortable providing the neighborhood was quiet. Occasionally, I was awakened by a motorcycle blasting through the neighborhood at 3 o'clock in the morning. I had spent years sleeping in a sleeping bag when I was in a domiciled situation but that's another story. Sleeping in a regular bed is not all it's cracked up to be despite Jerome's commercials.

During this period I took my daughter out to eat once a week to keep up with how she was doing in college. I got together with friends. I even dated. In fact there was nothing I couldn't do that I would have done if I had been living in an apartment. I was a contradiction in terms - a homeless landlord, a worker who was also a capitalist - and I was happy about all the revenue that was coming in both from my work and from the return on my investment (ROI). I had paid my mortgage off years earlier so the rent I was collecting was almost pure profit minus taxes, insurance, maintenance and HOA fees. Some friends said that I should have rented an apartment. I guess that was what you were supposed to do, but I was used to not doing what you were supposed to do. My unconventional life suited me.

I had distributed my living situation among my WSUV which I used for sleeping and work, the YMCA which I used for showering and swimming, and the San Diego State library which I used for relaxing and edification. I was living off "the fat of the land" as was George and Lennies's dream in Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." I was using public roads not only for commerce (getting me to and from jobs) but also for sleeping, public or semi-public facilities like the YMCA and the library at San Diego State which was open to the public. I also used these same techniques when I traveled having researched libararies and YMCAs in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle where I spent a fair amount of time. In San Francisco I parked my WSUV near the Stonestown mall and bought a transit pass using public transportation for getting around. My Y card was good at the Stonestown YMCA and any other YMCAs when I was away from my home base.

Living off the fat of the land, or in other words public amenities, was something I endeavored to be good at. In Scandinavia they have a law called allemandsretten which means that you can camp out anywhere you choose even on private property so long as it's not right in someone's garden. This represents the fat of the land, public rather than private amenities. It's all good. No need for a motel. In my case allemandsretten was finding a parking place on a public street for my WSUV. It had to be level of course.

Eventually, I found a good deal on an office for $150. a month in the heart of downtown Encinitas right above Roxy's Ice Cream. It was an office which also afforded me living accommodations. I even teamed up with Joe on satellite TV. All the comforts of home. I took my dates downstairs to Vigilucci's for Italian food. With what I was saving on rent, I could well afford to.

Work and Worth

by Robert Reich

Saturday, August 2, 2014                

What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society. 

Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading?

On the other hand, what’s the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of $18.14 an hour, which translates into less than $38,000 a year.

How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of $9.67 an hour, or just over $20,000 a year.

What’s the social worth of hospital orderlies who feed, bathe, dress, and move patients, and empty their ben pans? Surely higher than their median wage of $11.63 an hour, or $24,190 a year.

Or of child care workers, who get $10.33 an hour, $21.490 a year? And preschool teachers, who earn $13.26 an hour, $27,570 a year?

Yet what would the rest of us do without these dedicated people?

Or consider kindergarten teachers, who make an average of $53,590 a year.

Before you conclude that’s generous, consider that a good kindergarten teacher is worth his or her weight in gold, almost.

One study found that children with outstanding kindergarten teachers are more likely to go to college and less likely to become single parents than a random set of children similar to them in every way other than being assigned a superb teacher.

And what of writers, actors, painters, and poets? Only a tiny fraction ever become rich and famous. Most barely make enough to live on (many don’t, and are forced to take paying jobs to pursue their art). But society is surely all the richer for their efforts.

At the other extreme are hedge-fund and private-equity managers, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, management consultants, high-frequency traders, and top Washington lobbyists.

They’re getting paid vast sums for their labors. Yet it seems doubtful that society is really that much better off because of what they do.

I don’t mean to sound unduly harsh, but I’ve never heard of a hedge-fund manager whose jobs entails attending to basic human needs (unless you consider having more money as basic human need) or enriching our culture (except through the myriad novels, exposes, and movies made about greedy hedge-fund managers and investment bankers).

They don’t even build the economy. 

Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.

They’re paid gigantic amounts because winning these games can generate far bigger sums, while losing them can be extremely costly.

It’s said that by moving money to where it can make more money, these games make the economy more efficient.

In fact, the games amount to a mammoth waste of societal resources.

They demand ever more cunning innovations but they create no social value. High-frequency traders who win by a thousandth of a second can reap a fortune, but society as a whole is no better off.

Meanwhile, the games consume the energies of loads of talented people who might otherwise be making real contributions to society — if not by tending to human needs or enriching our culture then by curing diseases or devising new technological breakthroughs, or helping solve some of our most intractable social problems.  

Graduates of Ivy League universities are more likely to enter finance and consulting than any other career. 

For example, in 2010 (the most recent date for which we have data) close to 36 percent of Princeton graduates went into finance (down from the pre-financial crisis high of 46 percent in 2006). Add in management consulting, and it was close to 60 percent.

The hefty endowments of such elite institutions are swollen with tax-subsidized donations from wealthy alumni, many of whom are seeking to guarantee their own kids’ admissions so they too can become enormously rich financiers and management consultants.

But I can think of a better way for taxpayers to subsidize occupations with more social merit: Forgive the student debts of graduates who choose social work, child care, elder care, nursing, and teaching.