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Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
[S10 E01] US Capitalism and the Family: Myth vs Reality
00:28:59
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- [00:10]
A
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our jobs, incomes, debts, our own and those facing our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolf. Before jumping into today's program, I wanted to remind you that every other month, on the second Wednesday of the month, and therefore this coming January 8th, I do a public lecture at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square in downtown Manhattan. I'd like to remind you all of this and invite you. It's a chance for me to meet you and you to meet me as we gather in one of the most historic churches of New York City at the invitation of the minister to do a bimonthly presentation of we call it Global Capitalism Monthly Economic Update, Live Economic Update. So if you're in town, if you're visiting, or if you're a resident of the greater New York area, think about joining us January 8, 7:30, Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square, Manhattan. I want to begin today's updates with one that responds to President Trump's repeated insistence on with unfortunately, way too many people, Republicans and Democrats, agreeing that somehow the US Economy is A, great and B, the greatest in the world. Neither of these statements is true, and it's important to understand it. The only statistic that Mr. Trump repeats to support his claim is a historically low unemployment rate, and quite correctly, that is a good number. It's only in the 3 to 4% range, and that's unusual. He has every right to say that's a good statistic. But if he says the economy is great based on that one statistic, then I'm gonna be polite. He is misleading you. And here's the metaphor to grasp this. If you went to a doctor and you asked the doctor, tell me about my health, and the doctor put a thermometer in your mouth, told you you had 98.6 and therefore were healthy, you'd know you need another doctor. Why? Because using one measure of your health is ridiculous. A good doctor will give you blood tests to see that you don't have all the various illnesses that might be revealed through a blood test. Perhaps give you an X ray, perhaps, if more is involved, an MRI and so on. There are many tests that have been developed by the medical profession to answer the question, am I okay? Is my health good? And exactly the same applies to an economy. You can't look at any one statistic as a substitute for doing your job. So let's look at the American economy. Yes, unemployment is low, but the quality of the jobs, which is what matters for most people, has been deteriorating for years. What do I mean? They pay lower wages, these jobs that we now have, than they used to. They have fewer benefits with them than they used to. They are less secure than they used to be. They are more part time and temp jobs relative to secure long term full time jobs. Now we even have a measure of that which the President carefully avoids ever mentioning. It's been a measure developed at Cornell University, one of the leading higher institutions of learning in this country. It's called the Job Quality Index, JQI and it looks at jobs to get a sense of their quality. And if I had a graph behind me, I'd show you a line that goes straight down indicating that the quality of jobs in the United States has been going down for the mass, the millions of people that depend on those jobs for their livelihood. If quality of job is as important a measure as unemployment, then the American economy is nowhere near great and should not be dealt with as if it were. Jobs with lower wages, jobs with fewer benefits, jobs with less security, put enormous burdens not just on the worker, but on his or her spouse, on his or her children, his or her household. Let me give you a very immediate example. The November 2019 jobs report was glowingly received on the grounds that it showed an increase in the number of jobs, but it showed no increase in the level of wages, which is very unusual because when you have low unemployment, when most people are working, employers, if they want to find someone, can't go to a ready pool of unemployed people and hire someone because there aren't very many of them around. So in order to get a worker, normally they have to bid. They have to induce a worker to leave the job he or she already has and come over to the one who needs workers. And the way you do that is offer higher wages. So wages go up. In, in the November report, even though the jobs went up, the wages went nowhere. And the reason is that we are replacing the good jobs that we used to have with the lousy ones that we have now. Think of the difference between an auto worker, a chemical worker, a steel worker on the one hand, and the greeter at Walmart or the worker at Target or you can get the picture. My next update has to do with the difference between France and the United States in terms of responding to assaults on the well being of working people. In France you have a government that already provides people with much better services, much more of them than they do here in the United States. Medical coverage is free for everybody in France from birth till death. They don't allow it otherwise. Universities are subsidized at very, very low cost, et cetera, et cetera. Currently, the president there, Mr. Macron, is trying to reduce the pensions, change the pension system, make people be older to get pensions than they used to be. And what did the working class in France do? It said, no way are we going to sit here and let you do that. So starting In December of 2019, they began a series of general strikes across the country. The opening day, early in December, a million people went into the streets, not just of Paris, but of cities across the country, saying, this will not stand. The yellow vest movement backing the unions. Who took the lead? Students? Everybody. And I want to stress two things about this massive saying no to a government assaulting the standard of living of working people. Yes, the French are used to doing that. That's remarkable. Compare their activity with the passivity of the American working class, subject to at least as much of an attack over the last 30 years as what is going on in France now. And what do these massive outpourings of people into the street accomplish? Number one, they show politicians, you better pay attention, because those of us in the street are married, our parents are relatives of millions and millions of voters, and we will vote you out, depending on where you stand here. Very powerful. Here's what else it does. It mobilizes people. All the people who don't protest but feel badly about what the government is doing now see that their friends, their neighbors, and their co workers feel like they do. You're not alone, you're not isolated. You're not one of the few, you're one of the many. And you learn that when others who have a bit more courage than you do are out there in the street. To get a million people to go out in 300 cities also shows everybody that the people who are opposed to the government are well organized. They can coordinate, they can mobilize people. That takes an enormous amount of work. And you begin to see that not only are there a lot of people who think like me, but they're organized. They have institutions that enlabel them to make their feelings felt. And you know what else it does? It kind of mobilizes for the future, because everybody who goes out into the street now has a personal stake in this issue. It's one thing to read about it in the paper, watch it on tv, have a thought, tell it to your wife or husband over the dinner table. It's another thing to go out into the street with others now. It's an issue that you've invested in and you're going to pay attention. And the demonstrations get people to be committed in a way that will last into the future. Mr. Macron, I have advice for you. You're in a losing proposition. The mass of people care about that pension. They're not going to let you do that. And if you persist, you will pay the political price. My third update has to do with something you may not have heard of, Dennis Gartman. He's famous because he produced for the last 30 years the Gartman Letter, a financial newsletter used by all kinds of investment companies and investors to guide whether they should buy stocks or not, what kind of stocks, and so forth. Very famous. He ended a 30 year career in December of 2019, but he did it in a way that I want to bring to your attention. Now that he was no longer cultivating his customers among the investors, he could afford to tell the unvarnished truth. And here's what his last letter get out of stocks. Sell your stocks. This economy is in deep trouble. And the reasons are the turn to protectionism by Mr. Trump, the cutting of our international interactions as economies. And it is very bad, not just for the rest of the world, but for the future of the American economy. You are turning a corner for the immediate political interests of a politician. And it's going to cost us all. Don't get caught in the collapse. Wow. And I wanted you all to hear it, even though you don't have to pay the expensive price to get Mr. Gartner's law. The next one is a kind of sad update. If you missed it, I wanted to report to you that In December of 2019, it was reported that an $11.5 million waterfront estate on the very posh Martha's Vineyard, an island off of Massachusetts, was purchased by Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. It's sad for me because what is it? Another person for whom the presidency has meant an enormous increase in wealth and income, a president, our first African American, who gained in wealth as the African American community as a whole lost its wealth across the eight years of his presidency. He ends up in a mansion. They end up in debt. There is something in this story, and Mr. Obama is in no way unique. That has been the trajectory of many presidents before him. It tells you something, something you may not want to hear. Last update that we'll have time for. On December 6th of 2019, Kansas City voted the board of directors, the City Council of Kansas City voted to reduce fares on all public transportation to zero. That's Right. You can now use a bus in Kansas City and the fee will be nothing. Why am I bringing this to your attention? Well, here are some of the benefits of reducing the cost to zero, which will cost the city about $8 million to to make up for what it's not charging people. Less car traffic to snarl the streets of Kansas City, therefore less air pollution, since buses pollute a lot less than the cars that replace them. Fewer accidents because there are fewer cars, fewer injuries, fewer deaths, fewer loss of property. Major help to low income people. It does something about inequality. Cause of course, for the low income people, this is the best service they could imagine. And I could go on and compare Kansas City, which therefore doesn't have to spend money like New York and San Francisco hiring extra cops to police the fare busters who need to get their free transportation that other way. We've come to the end of the first half of today's Economic Update. We have an interesting interview for you in the second half, but let me remind you again, make use of our websites to communicate with us, to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And as always, our special thanks and gratitude to the Patreon community that supports democracy at work and this program and for which we are grateful. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. Once again, I am very pleased to welcome to the microphones and to the cameras Dr. Harriet Fraad, who's on this program from time to time. And we look on these programs at the intersection between the economy and our personal lives, our home lives, our intimate and close relationships. And we're going to be doing that again today to remind those of you who may not have seen this program before with Dr. Fraad. She is a mental health counselor and hypnotherapist in private practice here in New York City. She writes and speaks publicly, does media interviews where she explores the intersections between American public life and the American economy on the one hand, and our intimate personal lives on the other. You can see her work at her website, harrietfraud.com that's spelled H A R R I E T F R double A D. Her latest project, which we're very proud of here at Democracy at Work, is called Capitalism Hits Home. It's a podcast that compares and shows what is happening in our economic lives with what's happening in our personal lives. She answers questions like how does capitalism affect our personal lives? How does the economy affect the lives we live at home, our relationships, romance, dating, things like that you can find the podcast Capitalism Hits Home on itunes, on Google Play, and at our website democracyatwork, and of course on the very supportive patreon.com capitalismhitshome.
- [16:31]
B
Thank you very much.
- [16:32]
A
And on my website and on your website as well. Okay, here's our topic for today. Most of us live our lives partly in the workplace where we have our jobs, and partly at home where we have our personal lives. And the question is, how do these two parts of our lives, these two places, these two institutions where we split our existence, how do they impact each other? And I wanted to explore just that particular question with Harriet Fraad because her practice, her interaction with her clients has taught her a lot about it. So let's start with asking what is the role of the family in modern American capitalism? And I mean here, both the idealized version, what we hope or imagine, or maybe what the TV shows us on the one hand, and the reality of the role of the family and the condition of the family today.
- [17:27]
B
Well, the idealized version is seldom realized. Excuse me. And that's the happy family, where everyone is supportive, everyone is emotionally available, everyone is honest, and everyone deeply connects. That's a rarity indeed. And it's a rarity because even though now still the family is the basic expected emotional support for most people, for all people. And it's the only really socially subsidized, although it's not subsidized, socially agreed upon support for children. So it's a very important institution, the family. Even though families are falling apart rapidly. For example, 1 in 10 children lives with grandparents or relatives because their parents are opioid addicts and can't take care of them. That's 1 in 10. That's a lot of children and more and more couples. The biggest trend among married couples is not having any children because it's too much money and too much work. And so the family is failing. The majority of 18 to 35 year olds don't get married. There are more people that live together than marry because they don't really feel they have enough security and stability to be married, no less start a family. So families are in big trouble.
- [19:07]
A
Let me ask you a question, because immediately, since I'm an economist, it occurs to me the things you've said immediately show the impact of the economy. If it's too much money to raise a child, it's because you're not earning enough money to solve that problem. If you are so busy that you can't even imagine it, it's because the demands of the workplace are such that you literally don't have the energy or even the time to think about a family, children and all that they involve. And certainly I've learned from my friends and associates that if you do have children, the difficulties of figuring out how to allocate your time are overwhelming. So let me ask you the question. How does the reality of capitalism, of the jobs that we all have, shape this situation in the family?
- [20:00]
B
Well, the majority of people have bad jobs. They don't have much control, if any, over their work, and their work is unsatisfying and unstable. The two biggest employers in the United States are Walmart, owned by the richest family in the world, and Amazon, owned by the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos. Now, at these jobs, which are often minimum wage, the conditions are terrible. You can learn one day in advance what your schedule will be, which means that you can't provide reliable childcare unless you have somebody there all the time, and people don't. And so there's an enormous scramble. In addition, the working conditions are so terrible that Amazon workers have had two recent strikes where they walked off the job, one in Michigan and one in New York. And the biggest job increases that they tout, showing that Trump's great unemployment figures are wonderful, are in warehouse jobs where people routinely hurt themselves because the pace of the work, getting packages, putting them in places. They're called water spiders on the job because they have to move so fast, like water spiders, skittering over the work. They have safety precautions and procedures they're supposed to follow, but the work pace is so fast to fill these orders with the amount of people that they have, that they routinely hurt themselves. They hurt their backs, they hurt their shoulders, they hurt their necks. So these are dangerous jobs as well as low pay jobs. Amazon says it's going to hire 100,000 new workers, but the workers already there are wondering if their hours will be cut and their benefits, if any, because they're hiring more workers. And Walmart has in its stores a desk where you can apply for food stamps because they pay so poorly that they want us and the government to compensate for their poor salaries by having food stamps because they create poverty. So we have more jobs, but they're really bad jobs. For example, the median wage, the median income of a family in the United States is $66,000 a year for everybody working. Now, that doesn't really buy you much child care. The average decent, not excellent childcare is as much as about a community college tuition a year. So it's at least $10,000 a year plus people to get to their jobs, need transportation. We don't have great public transportation. And so that cars are involved or car fare is involved, and so that people struggle. What the United States deems is a decent middle class income is $150,000 a year. Well, if the median income is 66,000, that explains why most people struggle. And they don't have $400 in case of a terrible emergency. So that, you know, this totally affects the family. People come home from backbreaking work in a bad mood and hurting and not really wanting to take care of children, take care of homes, listen to one another's problems. They just want to zone out and try to recoup themselves after a brutal day.
- [24:01]
A
Well, you know, it jumps into me, all this talk, particularly on the side of conservatives who celebrate capitalism and praise it and talk endlessly about family values. They are literally celebrating the opposite of the reality.
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B
That's right.
- [24:22]
A
How do you have a family value if your economic system in what it doesn't pay people in the work, jobs, the very stories you've just told us. How can you advocate family values when you're literally celebrating a system that's wrecking the family?
- [24:38]
B
That's right. Every other wealthy European country has subsidized childcare. If you look at France, which has as much of a racial divide as we do, as much racial mix, you can start your child on childcare at 0 years old after you've had your free labor and delivery because medical care is free and that goes on and on. The child can be in childcare which is well equipped and has one master's degree and one associate's degree teacher and a nurse on hand in case kids get sick so that you can every single facility so that you have assurance that you're while you're at work, that your kids are all right. What happens now in our big employers like Walmart or Amazon or all the others or the fast food chains is you're so worried about losing your job that your kid stays alone and you have a cell phone and you hope you're not going to be docked for listening to it because your kids call you when they're frightened or need something that's very destructive to the family. You contrast that with the facilities that they have in all these other countries, like in Scandinavian daycares all throughout. They have not only infant care, toddler care, and then after school programs and summer care. They have buses that take school age children to programs so you don't have to have a Lot of money to get your kid dance lessons or piano lessons or extra athletic practice. You can get that and the government will pay for it.
- [26:39]
A
In other words, how would you then react when you hear President Trump or people like that making fun of Scandinavia? They have nothing to teach us. We're the greatest economy. What would be your answer? Because you're basically telling us not only what the problems are here, but you're pointing to what could be done not as a hypothetical, but what is already happening in other countries.
- [27:02]
B
Yeah. Well, I would point to the free child care. You know, recently he's ridiculed Denmark because they didn't want to sell Greenland. And if you work at McDonald's in Denmark, you get their minimum wage, $24 an hour. And you also have free medical care, free childcare, free after school and summer care. And you have a much easier and more comfortable life. And so that the family also, you have paid vacation time. The United States is the only one of the wealthy western countries that has no mandated one.
- [27:41]
A
Yeah.
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B
By law, vacation time. The French have five weeks, the Brazilians have six weeks, the Germans have four weeks, whatever. They all have paid vacation time because families need time. They also have much more militant unions demanding this so that one of the things that astounds us is that the hundreds of thousands of German metal workers won a 22 hour work week at well paid full pay so that they could have personal life balance. We don't. So we do everything we can to deprive families.
- [28:23]
A
Yeah. The gap between the rhetoric of the family values and the reality could not be starker. I wish we had more time. Thank you again for coming.
- [28:33]
B
Thank you.
- [28:33]
A
You will come again and thank you all. I hope you have found this discussion of the family, the realities, rather than the idealized version, interesting and valuable. I want to thank Dr. Frad for joining us and I look forward to speaking with you again next.