Goya, The Hidden Dog

I represent workers in what used to be called “theater” and now more broadly should be called the “live entertainment industry”.

I sit at the bargaining table and often recognize that the employees I represent and the companies that employ them find themselves in the same structural position. My folks live from paycheck to paycheck. Our (mostly) non-profit employers live from season to season. A near miss in fund raising and/or a near miss in ticket sales sets off organizational alarm bells. For everybody at the table, margins are thin. Our economic positions are precarious and anxiety is high. Fiduciary responsiblity feels itself confronted by self-interest. Self-esteem is at stake; as is collegiality and hope for the future. These are the real stakes not the 2% raise that will purportedly keep up with the “cost of living”.

Typically everyone at the table (except me) is a co-worker.The employees rationally recognize that Management has more “power” and “control”. Those with “power” can bestow or deny the things we want. This distribution of power, at a root emotional level, is humiliating. It is easy to imagine (at this root emotional level) that Management has more to give and refuses to do so out of the sheer pleasure of withholding because it can. Management for its part has difficulty not begrudging the loss of its ability to roll out unilateral decisions. Furthermore, managers tend to view the stewardship of their enterprise as the anxious juggling of constraints that are insufficiently appreciated by their employees. For their part, the employees experience the net effects of contraints every time they look at their paychecks. They come to the table not so much interested in constraints as primarily focused on their needs.

The more similar the structural position the more relational the negotiations can become. If I can promote the mutual recognition that everyone at the table is a stakeholder in the same enterprise then Management’s anxieties and employee desires can be articulated, considered and refashioned in light of each other. Managers can be reminded that empathy for their employees is a virtuous constraint and employees can recalibrate their expectations. Our full, human struggle to reach agreement by recognizing the other’s position is morality in action.

Unsurprisingly, the larger the corporate entity, the less relational the negotiations. At the other end of the relational spectrum, I have been dealing with two, multibillion dollar corporations wholly owned by two multibillionaires. These entities are “too big to fail”; they are too wealthy to care. For the functionaries who negotiate on behalf of these behemoths, negotiations are not about people but about “units” of labor and time; resources to be costed out. There are no moral, qualitative variables in their corporations’ algorithms of “success”. Discourse about the employees as ends in themselves is irrelevant and unwelcome. The immiseration of workers is an externality to the bottom line. The people I represent are ciphers in a formula. If the numbers crunch, my people work and eat. If the numbers don’t crunch for us, then we are the “losers”. The “winners” are people who have no choice but to sell themselves more cheaply.

The functionaries across the table from me are themselves merely means to a corporate end. They are not allowed (and/or do not permit themselves) to engage in the essentially moral activity of recognizing the other. They are complicit and they are victims.

Daumier, The Burden

John Rawls thought that political society was a cooperative venture that we all enter into for mutual advantage. He posited that although we can imagine a society in which each individual has equal access to all resources, we are willing to accept some inequality of wealth distribution if it means that everybody is more prosperous. Hence, we accept capitalism. We accept without much reflection that “there will be winners and losers”. We subscribe to the notion that some wealth inequality – that which can be generated by the innovative or the entrepreneurial – is good at a macro level. The success of a Bill Gates floats a lot of boats. This is why the Republican’s mantra “the job creators” has so much resonance for many people. Previous posts here {“The Planet Klepton” & “Americans on Drugs”} have touched on the topic of wealth inequality.
But extreme wealth inequality is not a philosophical problem any longer, there are real life consequences for the haves and the have-nots.
The consequences for the have-nots:

-Children born to low-income parents are twice as likely to end up in special education classes and three times as likely to suffer mental health problems than those in the highest income group.
-Canadians with an income of $15,000 or less have three times the risk of developing diabetes than those who earn more than $80,000.
-More than one in five American children live below the federal poverty level, making them more likely to suffer from asthma and obesity and have poorer nutrition…(and have) less access to health care and lower vaccination rates.
-Children in chronically im­poverished families have lower cognitive and academic performance and more behavior problems than chil­dren who are not exposed to poverty.
-The poor are more likely to be incarcerated and the more people we incarcerate the more poverty we create. This effect is horrifically visible to African Americans.
-The Great American Vicious circle; born poor your chances of completing high school plummet. No diploma, no job. Black American males in their 30’s without a high school diploma are more likely to be in jail than to have a job.

What do the “haves” get out this skewed distribution of wealth? One doesn’t have to be a social scientist to figure what powers are conferred by virtue of great concentrations of wealth. Great wealth can control the media, flood the Intertoobz with disinformation and control what messages the peons will see and hear. Rupert Murdoch has used his wealth to construct an apparatus of propaganda that would put Soviet-era Tass to shame. Oil billionaire brothers can fund climate disinformation and lobby against environmental regulation.Those who inherit billions can afford to give millions to support politicians who oppose estate taxes.

Let us remind ourselves of the founding purpose of this country:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

More that 16 million U.S. children are growing up in poverty. Is this how we promote the general welfare? Five members of the Walton family are have more wealth than the bottom 42% of all Americans combined. Does this state of affairs reflect a “more perfect union? One in three African American males will go to prison in their lifetime. How can this be construed as justice? How are we securing the blessing of liberty for all of our fellow citizens by having the highest incarceration rate in the world?

One last question: how are we setting the stage today for future domestic tranquility?

Ferguson, Missouri.

What the fk is wrong with the Russian people?

Corruption is rampant. Upwards of $400 billion dollars circulates in bribery and other sub-rosa transactions. $15 billion dollars worth of construction work on the Sochi Olympics went to three of Putin’s pals. The average Russian’s wealth is less than $10,000 yet 110 Russians are billionaires. These few Russians lead extravagant lives. They don’t spend money at home, they like to live close to their money* in London, New York and Switzerland. Their humble pieds-a-terre in Hyde Park and Manhattan are celebrated by Architectural Digest and accented with the purchase of neighborhood sports franchises. Their children buy Greek islands. But the king of Russian kleptocrats may be Vladimir Putin himself:

So what evidence is there of Putin’s secret obscene fortune? Let’s start with the small stuff. Putin is known to sport a $150,000 Patek Philippe watch on most occasions and his total collection has been valued at $700,000. He also has full access to a $40 million ultra-luxury yacht that features a wine cellar, Jacuzzi, helipad and outdoor barbecue area. In terms of living accommodations, Putin has access to 20 mansions throughout the world including a lavish ski lodge and Medieval castle. The crown jewel of his property portfolio is a $1 billion palace overlooking the Black Sea that he allegedly owns through an anonymous trust… If Vladimir Putin’s net worth truly sits at $70 billion, that would be enough to make him the third richest person on the planet right behind Bill Gates and Carlos Slim Helu.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the average Russian is living the Third World Dream.

What other “developed” country would put up with having  the 400 richest people owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million put together? What  other developed country would have that kind of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few when 70% of working age adults have jobs that pay less than $30,000?

The most unequal of the developed countries is the USA. According to OECD data, its Gini coefficient is 0.38, well above the values in the UK (0.34), Japan (0.33), Germany (0.30) France (0.29) and Denmark (0.26). What is more, inequality in the USA has been increasing by an average of 0.5% per annum since the mid 1980s.

According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report 2010, the USA’s Gini coefficient is even higher, at 0.41 (see Table 3 of the report). But this is still below that of Russia, with a figure of 0.44, a figure that has markedly worsened over time, along with those of other former Soviet countries.

Five members of the Walton family are have more wealth than the bottom 42% of all Americans combined.

What the fk is wrong with the American people?

*Nod to my money guru, JG