A Solution to "Sh*t-Life Syndrome" in America

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

I shared on Facebook a recent article at the CounterPunch Website by Bruce E. Levine titled, “Sh*t-Life Syndrome,” Trump Voters, and Clueless Dems. I got back a surprising question from a conservative friend and Trump supporter. He asked, “What is your solution to this problem?

I will offer one solution below, but first, let’s define the problem. You can read the above article for yourself, but the premise of it is stated in the first sentence:

“Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “sh*t-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.”

The author goes on to say,

“The Brookings Institution, in November 2019, reported: “53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64—accounting for 44% of all workers—qualify as ‘low-wage.’ Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual earnings are about $18,000… For most of these low-wage workers… “Finding meaning in life is close to impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources.” 

That last statement also explains part of the reason 91.7 million eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 election. So many of them are barely hanging on day-to-day. I have written elsewhere that for decades neither political party has addressed the needs of the 45% of all Americans who live below the middle-class. These are the people who stopped voting. Referring to non-voters, I have written elsewhere:

“For too long politics has failed to make any difference in their lives. It doesn't matter which party is in power. Nobody cares about them. For the past 30 years, politicians have only cared about the middle-class or special interest groups. Even after 10% of the voters voted for the first time in the 2016 election, 40% of all eligible voters still didn't vote. We can do better because much of this 40% were once a big part of the Democratic base. We stopped attending to the needs of the poor and working class.”

What is the solution?
No one has all of the solutions figured out, but we can start by valuing everyone who works for a living. We can start by paying the lowest wage workers a living wage for a week’s work. Hear me out.

A living wage is a market-based minimum wage index. It isn’t an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all government number. A living wage respects all regional economic conditions. A living wage in Biloxi would be lower than a living wage in the Bronx because of their different cost of living conditions. A living wage law would require business owners to provide their lowest-paid employees a sufficient wage package for full-time work so that a low wage employee is not dependent on taxpayer assistance for housing, food, essential transportation or medicine. It wouldn’t pay a mortgage, or for vacations or luxury items. It doesn’t replace competitive, merit-based wage compensation for the rest of the experienced or more skilled workforce. It sets a wage floor below which workers financially qualify for public assistance (aid to the working poor). It set the wage minimum at a level that makes an employee marginally self-sufficient and therefore it maintains the dignity of work.

Most people already agree that we must end wasteful taxpayer subsidies to wealthy corporations for all sorts of tax breaks they receive. We should start by ending labor subsidies for low pay workers in America. Let’s end government assistance to the working poor by making Corporations pay their low-wage workers enough so taxpayers don’t have to supplement workers’ income to pay the rent, put food on the table, care for their children while they work, or pay for a doctor and medicine every time their kid gets sick. When we pay a living wage to low wage parents, it frees them up to be better parents and good role models to their children.

Every time the government steps in to pay for necessities it is degrading for the workers who must request this assistance. It says to them that their employer doesn’t recognize their true worth. Their employers won’t even pay them the bare minimum it takes to live a life. This takes a toll on a worker’s self-esteem. It often forces them to work overtime or take a second job to make ends meet.
When the working poor and working-class families try and get off government assistance they are often forced to work more hours. They become absentee parents by degree. Without parental supervision, their children are less disciplined and more peer-influenced. Their children might stop doing their homework, for instance, or lose their focus on school making them less successful in school and in life. When parents aren’t home to structure their time children may start hanging out with the wrong crowd. They face greater temptations and risky behaviors that lead them into a vicious cycle of declining prospects, and the “sh*t-life syndrome” is passed along to another generation.

It traces back to the degradation and loss of dignity that so many Americans experience when they are unable to make a viable living in the world’s richest nation. The enormous wealth-gap and the huge compensation paid to CEOs in this country are all evidence that the money is there for the working poor. Paying the lowest wage worker, a living wage wouldn’t even leave a dent on the highest-paid corporate leaders or wealthiest Americans.

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And for the 40% who can't imagine attaining a middle-class life or a politician really caring about them or their community, I offer this poem read on video by its author, the late, great Maya Angelou: 

 https://www.facebook.com/brooklynphenix/videos/3484505501622790/

Bernie/Biden Clash On Social Security Masks Real Differences

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

In an opinion piece by Paul Krugman, published by the New York Times on January 21, 2020, Krugman writes, “The Sanders campaign has flat-out lied about things Biden said in 2018 about Social Security… The last thing we need is another president who demonizes and lies about anyone who disagrees with him, and can’t admit ever being wrong.”

That is pretty damning. What did Sanders or his team actually do?

Krugman writes that the Sanders campaign promoted a doctored video clip that distorted Biden’s record on Social Security. He repeated a quote from another N.Y Times article from January 18th (and updated Jan. 21st) by Katie Glueck’s that said:

“There is a little doctored video going around,” Mr. Biden said, adding that it was “put out by one of Bernie’s people.”

But Glueck also wrote:

“Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Saturday accused Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign of distorting his record on Social Security, claiming without evidence that Mr. Sanders’ team was promoting a “doctored” video…” [emphasis mine].

In fact, the video clip linked to Krugman’s article is an unedited segment of an interview from January 7th between Senator Sanders and Anderson Cooper. While listing differences between Biden and himself, Sanders said:

“You know, Biden has been on the floor of the Senate talking about the need to cut Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid.”

That’s it! Sanders didn’t say exactly what Biden said or when he said it. Krugman’s comments about a doctored video, therefore, appear to convict him of the same false accusation that he accuses Senator Sanders of committing.

But in fairness to the truth, the released Sanders’ campaign materials Krugman refers to did make some misleading claims. As pointed out in the PolitiFact article linked to the Krugman article, item #1 on the Sanders campaign document said:

“BIDEN’S BRAGGED OF TRYING TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE”

So, from where did this accusation come? It came from the Congressional Record of the U.S. Senate, as did another article on the subject in the Intercept written by Ryan Grim on January 13, 2020. The lead sentence of Grim’s article reads:

“AS EARLY AS 1984 and as recently as 2018, former Vice President Joe Biden called for cuts to Social Security in the name of saving the program and balancing the federal budget.”

Grim then cites this excerpt is from the Senate Congressional Record just fifteen-years ago:

“When I argued that we should freeze Federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the Government.”

In this case, it is Ryan Grim who distorted Biden’s record by taking it out of context. Biden was arguing that the budget sequestration under discussion should include all areas of the federal budget and not exclude the very popular and vital entitlement programs. In this same Congressional Record transcript, then-Senator Biden went on to say Social Security, “…is arguably the most important and most depended-upon program in the Federal Government.”

Joe Biden suggested taking Social Security off of the Federal Budget. He wanted to protect the billions of dollars in surpluses it generated each year back then, surpluses that Congress spent every year to cover deficits in other areas of the budget.

What this manufactured controversy misses, however, it the very significant point that the thrust of this and so many of Biden’s speeches always center on the middle-class. Biden has rarely ever focused on 45% of all Americans who live below middle-class economic standards. 

This is the real distinction.  Joe Biden is interested in maintaining stability in America by growing and sustaining the middle-class. Bernie Sanders, for his entire career, wants to bring hope and relieve the structural economic burdens of every American family living in or below the middle-class. It is this focus and message that is beginning to resonate in places around America where Biden's message just doesn't carry. It is this focus on economic inclusion for all segments of society that scares the heck out of the wealthy elites.

Here is one example of Biden's middle-class messaging. In his 2018 speech at the Brookings Institute, also cited in the same PolitiFact article to which Krugman linked his opinion, Biden said, “Folks, we’re here today for a simple reason: to talk about the middle class.” 

 He later goes on to describe the plight of a factory worker to make his point:

“Folks in the middle class are in trouble. It’s not just their perception. They are in trouble. Now it’s all about taking care of the folks at the top… take that guy working on the assembly line making 51 grand. We don’t talk about him anymore, by the way, if you notice politically. Not you, we in politics don’t. And his wife is a hostess at a nice restaurant, she’s making 28 [grand]. So they’re making almost 80 grand and they’ve got 2 or 3 kids, and they can’t make it if they live in Washington or New York or San Francisco.”

No one can seriously argue that the middle-class is in trouble in "high living" places like San Francisco and New York City, but how does this limited message resonate with half of all Americans in far-flung places who make way less than $80,000 per year. Wouldn't they love to have the financial problems of these middle-class families? What they get instead is a conspiracy of silence from politicians in both parties who are beholden to the donor class. These are many of the same families that responded to Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign. He spoke directly to them and they love him for that.

The real question before us now is which Democratic candidate for President has the message and credibility to take back that momentum?  Who has the spark to inspire the working poor to turn out and vote for the Democrat? It isn't the loyal base who needs to be motivated. They will "vote blue no matter who"(if we can believe that). It is the great mass of inactive voters we have been ignored for decades who will sweep Donald Trump and his Republican sycophants out of office if we offer them real change. 

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This reads as a companion article to one I wrote on the differences between Senator Elizabeth Warren, who I admire, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who I support at this time. In the Studebaker article I linked to that post the differences between Biden, Warren, and Sanders are discussed. That post and two important articles can be accessed here: 

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2019/08/differences-between-warren-and-sanders.html

The Economy and Society Benefit When Poor Families Have More to Spend

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Enhancing the human dignity of employment is an obvious, self-evident social benefit of raising minimum wages. It is both empowering and ennobling when breadwinners are able to provide for the needs of their family on their own, without government or extended family supports. This is reason enough to enact a living wage law. The minimum fair exchange for a full-weeks work ought to be a self-sufficient minimum wage. The burden for this minimum standard of living should rightly be on employers and not on the taxpayers who currently help support full-time low wage earners.

Corporations and business owners enjoy the benefits of government-subsidized labor and don’t want to give it up. Most of their arguments opposing higher wage standards rely on business-friendly economists whose academic theories and scholarly studies plum the detrimental impacts on businesses from higher labor costs. It is current practice to treat workers as a labor commodity separate from workers and their families as consumers and social beings with basic human needs. It is also current practice to take a business view of the economy without consideration of the broader context of the overall social economy within which commerce operates. All this results in flawed and biased arguments against self-sufficient minimum wages.

The overall beneficial impacts of increasing the purchasing power among poor families are rarely studied. Now a major new study has found that the ripple effects when direct, substantial cash assistance is given to poor families have, “… large positive spillovers on non-recipient households and firms, and minimal price inflation. The researchers in this large-scale experiment in Kenya estimated that a direct cash payment of $1,000 US dollars to poor families within randomly selected communities resulted in a local fiscal multiplier of 2.6 times within the local communities.

In addition to measured improvements in the welfare of the children and families who received an infusion of cash, the experiment reinforced the relationship between income and increased consumption to the benefits of both businesses and the families who did not receive cash payments. Here is an excerpt from the study:

“A large-scale cash transfer program in rural Kenya led to sharp increases in the consumption expenditures of treated households, and extensive broader effects on the local economy, including large revenue gains for local firms (that line up in magnitude with household consumption gains), as well as similar increases in consumption expenditures for untreated and treated households approximately a year and a half after the initial transfers. Local firms do not show meaningful increases in investment, and there is minimal local price inflation, with quite precisely estimated effects of far less than 1% on average across a wide range of goods.” [snip]... The consumption expenditures of untreated households and firms rise substantially in areas receiving large cash transfers…”

The infusion of cash payments to poor families in the study did not come from employers, and the economy of Kenya is very different than the economy here in the US. Directly extrapolating the results isn’t possible. Nevertheless, these findings are hopeful. The high fiscal multiplier stimulus effect on local businesses from increased consumption by poor families appear to mirrored results found here within states and municipalities that have raised minimum wage standards. While the burden of cash transfers from higher minimum wages is on businesses, the literature I’ve seen so far suggests there is still a positive fiscal multiplier within the business community coupled with little increase in unemployment and negligible increases in inflation.

A broader look at the spillover effects of increased base wages might show similarly positive results for the business economy and those workers who are already self-sufficient wage earners. Future studies of communities where the wage base is improved should also look at the wellbeing and overall welfare of children living in low wage households as well as the social wellbeing of the wage earners themselves.

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Further Reading

Debunking the Myth That It's Your Fault You're Poorhttps://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2015/09/debunking-myth-that-its-your-fault.html

Myth Busting Data RE: Minimum Wage Increaseshttps://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/09/myth-busting-data-re-minimum-wage.html

Making the Case for a Living Wage  https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/making-case-for-living-wage.html

NPR -

Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/02/781152563/researchers-find-a-remarkable-ripple-effect-when-you-give-cash-to-poor-families

Warren vs. Sanders is at the Core of Who Democrats Are

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

In an excellent article written by Benjamin Studebaker, he clarifies the significant distinctions between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders. To do this, he also traces the ways that the Democratic Party has evolved over the past several decades. His description of that evolution is perfectly aligned with the recent findings of Thomas Picketty’s scientific study of voting data over the last fifty years. In essence, both Studebaker and Picketty find that the Democratic Party increasingly ignores the poor and working-class in service to the growing influence of the wealthy elite, who left-leaning on social issues but pro-corporate and conservative on fiscal issues.









                 Above: Graphic depictions from Studebaker's article. A similar graph shows Biden supporting both the professional class and the 1%. 

I will not attempt to summarize the Studebaker or Picketty articles further here. Instead, I have provided links to them below and encourage you to read them. I only offer here a few personal reaction from what they have to say.

For me, Studebaker’s article raised profound personal questions I hadn’t thought about, beginning with the question, whose interests do I want the Democratic Party to address? How inclusive am I really when it comes to getting the attention I want? When times are good, and I am comfortable with my prospects, it is easy to promote the welfare of those less fortunate. But when even those with considerably more resources than me are feeling squeezed by the economy, egalitarian notions start to fade.

All this raises the idea that if we don’t limit the attention directed at the poor and working-class, will we get less attention then we deserve? But then, isn’t this the very question that the wealthiest 1% of voters are asking? Is the self-interests of middle-class voters just as toxic to the poor and less fortunate?

These are questions everyone should be asking themselves. We should be searching our soul and asking who should the Democratic Party stand for if not for everyone? Listen carefully to what the Democratic Presidential candidates propose and who they are proposing it for. Are they speaking for everyone, or only for those in the professional class who are feeling the pinch?

For me, the answer always come back to my belief that we are all deserving. The Democratic Party, indeed the whole of all governments, should fairly represent everyone’s needs. No one should be excluded or ignored.

The Main Difference Between Warren and Sanders

by Benjamin Studebaker

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/08/07/the-main-difference-between-warren-and-sanders/?fbclid=IwAR1wXTx3m7RXworl6dg7wjjSBu-g77ARFKwq5ElXTm3R5oh2pQhEGkVHc-Y

Data Analysis Shows a Dem Centrist Candidate Loses

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2019/06/americans-new-political-landscape-as.html

And this can be contrasted with an article posted here in February of 2016 about Bernie vs. Hillary in which the battle to define the heart of the Democratic Party was getting underway.

https://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2016/02/bernie-vs-hillary-clearest-distinction.html 

Image credit: https://dnyuz.com/2019/07/30/bernie-sanders-and-elizabeth-warren-take-on-all-comers/

Jane Addams, A Great American Hero

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

(NOTE: Please also read below an update on another great hero of mine from Hull House, Alice Hamilton)

On our trip to Chicago, my wife and I visited Hull House, one of the first Settlement Houses in the United States and home to Jane Addams. It is now a museum located in the middle of the University of Illinois, but 130 years ago it stood in the middle of the worst immigrant slums in Chicago.

Addams was born into privilege, yet in 1889 she and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr, decided to moved into a house in the heart of the immigrant slums of Chicago. Their initial idea was to providing daycare for children living in poverty. In the process they came face to face with the great hardships and disadvantages or poor immigrants all around them. The focus or their mission kept growing to meet the endless needs. Daycare was supplemented with preschool and educational services. They opened the first playground in Chicago. She saw that child labor practices prevented theses children from having a full childhood, so she advocated for laws against child labor. Her mission grew to serve the parents and others adults.

Addams recognized that there were community and systemic issues that prevented the poor from improving their lives, things beyond their control. For example, the stench of garbage filled the streets and created unsanitary conditions. People were getting sick because the city wouldn't regularly pick up the garbage in their neighborhood. She fought the city and won regular trash pick-up. When she learned that there were only 5 bathtubs in the whole community, she built a pubic bath beside the Hull House where hundreds of people came every week.

Intervening to help the poor and to lift their burdens on multiple social levels became her pattern. She took in homeless families, listened to their stories, helped them find housing and then advocated for better housing. She sheltered woman who were abuse by their spouse, listened to their stories, helped them get on their feet and used what she was learning to advocate for social change. Moreover, the work of Addams and Starr at Hull House attracted some of the best and brightest woman of the day to study the conditions of the poor and and disenfranchised, and to organize social movements for social change.

Addams became a prolific writer and prominent national spokesperson for social change in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The data she and other collected on the social issues of the poor, and social research at Hull House, helped inform her writings. Her advocacy and social ideas got her labeled as the most dangerous woman in America by none other than the Daughters of the American Revolution. Herbert Hoover’s FBI compiled lengthy files on her anti-war activities during WW I. Still she persisted.

Jane Addams was among the early pioneers of an effective method for improving peoples lives. It includes:

-Meeting the immediate needs of a person in need

- Listening to their stories face to face

-Empowering them to get back on their feet through their own efforts whenever possible

- Collecting data on the problems and issues they presented

-Making observations about the local circumstances and social barriers that contributed to their problems, and

- Using that information to advocate for broader changes in laws, policies, funding and greater  social awareness 

This intervention methodology is the foundation for the profession of Social Work. This is the mission of social work and what sets it apart from psychology and other helping professions.

In 1931 Jane Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her work at Hull House.

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UPDATE August 29, 2019

Another towering hero and scholar who worked beside Jane Addams out of Hull House in Chicago is Alice Hamilton. The New York Times published an excellent opinion piece on Hamilton and her achievements. This is worth reading:

Opinion

The Remarkable Life of the First Woman on the Harvard Faculty

Alice Hamilton, an expert on public health, foresaw the rise of fascism in Germany.

By Karenna Gore

Ms. Gore is the director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary.

• Aug. 29, 2019

Image

Alice Hamilton, circa 1935, at Hull House in Chicago, where she began her research into industrial diseases.CreditCreditFPG/Archive Photos, via Getty Images

In late August 1919, 50-year-old Alice Hamilton was sitting onboard a steamship typing quickly on a borrowed Corona typewriter, oblivious to the approaching New York skyline as she finished her return trip from Europe. She wanted to record the searing images she had just seen during an extended tour behind former enemy lines with her friend Jane Addams. In town after town across Germany, she had encountered starvation and disease, in a country reeling from the peace as well as the war, thanks to a continued British blockade designed to force the Germans to accept the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty. Germany had become, in her words, a “shipwreck of a nation.”

Hamilton knew that the report would not be welcome by most Americans, eager to put the war behind them. Her gender would make it that much easier to dismiss. But she was determined to call Americans to conscience.  continue reading here: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/opinion/alice-hamilton-harvard.html?searchResultPosition=1