Readers of this blog know that I haven’t spared common, everyday greed for its role in the inevitable deterioration of our standard of living coming our way. .
Still, I thought this column by Frank Rich of the New York Times adminishing average Americans for their role in the crisis, was, well, pretty rich (sorry- couldn’t help it).
Now that it seems to be fashionable to talk sacrifice and go green and scorn the mighty Starbucks, columnists are tripping over themselves looking for scapegoats and it seems, just as Time magazine infamously crowned YOU, the American Consumer, with your indomitable willingness to spend and thus make the economies of the world go round, they are now ready to bestow on YOU, now that the other shoe has dropped, a hefty chunk of blame for this mess.
That’s right - YOU. You, with your Viking ranges, your Hummers, your Victoria Secret secrets, your $40 Yankee Candles and your addiction to $5 polysyllabic coffee concoctions.
The fact that a Merrill Lynch ex-exec, John Thain, decided to expense $1.22 million of company money (right before his company qualified for bailout funds out of, ahem, your tax money) is directly correlated to YOUR greed. (Poor guy… hes was a victim of your culture of consumption. Shame on you for getting mad at him and not at yourselves).
You were hoping to make $50,000 in profits on your house when you hadn’t seen a raise in decades, when your health care costs have gone through the roof, when inflation had quintupled the cost of buying a starter home in the kind of neighborhood where you don’t have to worry about drive-by shootings and crack whores coming on to your teenage son - that’s the very same brand of ostentation that inspired John Thain to think he simply had to have a $87,000 rug for his office, or got Steven Schwarman to blow a million smacks on his 60th birthday bash (on Rod Stewart for crying out loud. Why not the New Kids while you’re at, Stevie?).
Potatoes, pot-aahtoes.
It’s not, say, because the media - who play a pivotal role in maintaining a healthy democracy as the moderators of bullshit - failed the American people by catering 1) to poltical spin, and 2) to the lowest common denominator of intelligence.
It’s easy to use “Americans” as punching bags (God knows I have), but who are “Americans”? The guys on Cops, Jerry Springer’s audience, or are they regular people with regular faults and regular strengths, people who tend to be lazy (because let’s face it - we’re wired that way) and who are not prone to heroics unless absolutely necessary. On the other hand, they are also fairly reasonable people, who, in times of relative plenty, can be made to think and plan long-term if the people watching out for them cared to make that case.
Instead of fostering critical thinking, the term “conspiracy theory” was brought into the common vernacular as a way to demean anyone - and I mean anyone - with a question, be it a legitimate question, or one that could be easily refuted. In classrooms kids are brought up to think that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but as soon as they enter the adult world they’re expected to figure out which questions are “safe” and which aren’t. Like for example debating the pros and cons of controlled protectionism (so jobs at home can be protected), or the economics of growth altogether (as in, we should not be banking on relocating to Mars in case our “growth” outpaces the planet’s resources). These are all baaaaaad questions, so shame on you for even thinking them.
Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say to Mr. Rich that the people’s “greed” was planned, enabled and magnified by design, not by accident. After 9/11 we were told it was our patriotic duty to shop. Bush wasn’t lying when he said so - in an economy where 70% of the GDP is accounted for by consumer spending, of course we need to shop to keep it going.
When free market theory was invoked to justify manufacturing jobs being shipped off to China, India and others, the American people roared. I remember - I was a teenager in the 1990s and I remember the campaigns to “buy American”. I especially remember that one of my favorite shops - BCBG - was proud of its “Made in America” label (and used it to justify its crazy prices). I also remember than in 2004, scarcely 10 years after the “Made in America” campaign, I ordered a Marc Jacobs dress through ebay and was convinced I’d gotten a fake when it arrived in the mail - the label said “Made in China”. How could that be? It absolutely could be, it turns out. Most American - and many European - designers have moved production to China. Nobody cares where it’s made anymore, and that, boys and girls, is how North America lost its status as the manufacturer of “quality” goods, after ceding the manufacturing of cheap crap to the Far East.
And now we’re set to lose our white collar jobs as well. Just last week, a bank which operates mostly in the Cayman Islands - not part of the US but culturally and economically intertwined with it - has shipped off a sizeable chunk of its operations to India, where accountants are just as nimble with numbers and cost half as much as accountants with American, Canadian, or British qualifications.
So what are people supposed to do? Go back to school? And do what, exactly? The NYT also reported, in its business section, that enrollment in trucking and welding school is up, as people seek “recession-resistant” careers.
What next? A resurgence in horse-and-buggy renting? A demand for scribes as we inch towards illiteracy? Why do our economies seem to be going backwards, and why are we so unprepared? Can that be blamed on the common greed of the American consumer too?
I’ll leave you with this thought, one I’ve blogged about before and have never managed to get over: the median HOUSEHOLD income in the US is around$25,000.
That means there are around 150,000,000 souls living in America today whose household income is $25,000 or less.
Or less!
When the median purchase price of a home in the US tops $200,000 and the median income is $25,000, and 50,000,000 Americans don’t have health insurance, can we really place the blame for the reckless defrauding of American prosperity at the doorstep of the “average” American consumer?
Frank Rich - what the hell are you talking about???
