Work hard, play by the rules and the American dream can be yours. That’s the social contract that’s been in force since the waning days of the Great Depression.
Unfortunately, that contract started breaking down in a serious way — being broken down is more like it — over the past 25 years. It’s now essentially a dead letter for millions.
Thanks to Bob’s Links and Rants, which we visited for the first time this week, we read an exceptionally insightful and well-written piece on an important aspect of this. Here’s a brief excerpt:
Hunger in America is no longer a matter of falling through the cracks, of happenstance and misfortune. Hunger has been institutionalized as a part of the economic fabric, including especially the business of selling food.
There is a mirror image that extends this story to the developing world. The New York Times recently reported, “Across Latin America, supermarket chains partly or wholly owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold, Wal-Mart and Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food growing too.”
Simply, small subsistence farmers are unable to sell to the chain stores because they cannot meet the stores’ conditions.
Click the link for the rest of Richard Manning’s excellent “The Economy of Hunger.” It’s a quick read and a valuable one.
I have some of Richard Manning’s other writings. He is a compelling writer, and makes some good points, but overall he overstates his case in support of his anti-corporate, anti-modern technology agenda.
I’m not sure where the hunger in Missoula Montana is coming from. Vast quantities of money flows into the help programs there. I know the State legislature honors any request from the heads of the Health and Human Services for more funding for food stamps, etc. Any dickering is for housing, rehabilitation programs, etc.
One legislator in Monatana wanted to put a surtax on the big box stores to recover some of the money social services spends on those low wage employees.
RSF, it’s good to hear at least one Montana legislator wants to do something to help the working poor. But in thinking about it, I’m not sure how his idea could be done equitably, or be made to hold up in the courts. There are nonprofits and small businesses that pay minimal wages out of necessity. How a law could rationally and legally distinguish between them and the big-box retailers escapes me.
It seems to me there’s a community interest (state and national as well) in making it possible for more of those retail employees to better their lot using their own horsepower. I think the better way would be to go against the 30-plus-year trend of tilting laws and policy against unionization.
The U.S. marketplace is at its fairest and best for all concerned, in the long run, when there is a genuine balance of power among competing interests. In such a climate, there’s an ongoing state of dynamic tension, a tug of war, with management and labor each getting the advantage at times, for a while, but with neither so overpowering the other as to (A) ruin companies or (B) impoverish or thoroughly exploit the work force.
The community interest is served when, for example, local taxpayers don’t have to subsidize food, clothing, shelter and medical costs for people who are working hard and steadily, yet for so little that they’re locked in a dependent or semi-dependent state. That, of course, while the trustees, top management and large-stake investors in outfits like Wal-Mart grow their already impressive wealth into the stratosphere.
Please honor a critically important distinction. Expressing the notion I just did is not being anti-corporate or anti-wealthy. It’s being anti-greedmonger. I’m happy as a clam to see people gain wealth or add to their wealth through their work, inventiveness, talent, even luck. I have a really serious problem, however, with people who gain or add to their wealth by knocking other people’s efforts back or knocking them down. Which is exactly what Wal-Mart does as standard operating procedure, mostly by staying nominally just within some very convenient laws. It’s what Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and others of their kind did well outside the law. Either way, it’s bad for everyone but the greedy few. Ultimately, I believe, it can turn out to be bad for the wealthy few, as a number of European royals and Russia’s Romanoffs learned the hard way.
This is something that Kerry, Edwards and Dean all talked about in the campaign. It’s not right to have people working two or even three jobs and they still can’t make ends meet. It isn’t always because of living beyond means or too many kids or bad habits either.
I know some people in this situation and they work six or seven days a week. Gas prices and car insurance are killing them. It’s not right.
There’s alot more to this issue. I’ve been reading about the increase in obesity in the US, largely among the lower income strata, blamed on a lack of education about nutrition.
I see a bunch of poor people in a McDonald’s where I eat lunch sometimes. They come in a lot for about a week after they get their checks. It’s probably not that good for them. I don’t like to judge them about it because I think it’s probably a treat for them.