tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58973611297254850562024-03-16T13:53:05.822-05:00≠ Inequality MattersExploring the causes and consequences of economic inequalityKathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-50079921956974113892015-03-17T10:20:00.003-05:002015-03-17T10:20:43.773-05:00How economic inequality intersects with racial inequalityIn this country, we talk about racial inequality, and we talk about economic inequality, but unfortunately, these are often separate conversations. Yet race and economics intersect in powerful ways. My <a href="http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/the-rigged-economics-of-race-in-america" target="_blank">latest piece</a>, for Pacific Standard magazine, looks at the social science of racial economic inequality. I examine some of the reasons for the stubborn persistence of race-based economic inequality in America, and point the way to some solutions that could alleviate it. <div>
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What would work? Here's a hint: school reform efforts are probably a bust, but policies such as early childhood education, an end to mass incarceration, and stepped up enforcement of housing discrimination laws could make serious headway.</div>
Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-9956238541793236812014-12-07T21:31:00.000-06:002014-12-14T17:25:19.914-06:00The importance of having skin in the game: thoughts on economic diversity and liberal elitismThe shakeup at the New Republic has got me thinking about elite domination of liberal institutions and politics. It is abundantly clear liberal/left media, institutions, and politics are overwhelmingly dominated by upper middle class/rich, Ivy-educated elites, this is a serious problem. This is because human beings’ economic background and experiences shape their political views and priorities in profound ways. It is a universal truth, albeit not one universally acknowledged, that the more economically privileged you are, the less likely you are to support progressive economic policies.<br />
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Obviously, there are countless exceptions to this general rule. <i>Of course</i> many economically privileged people with elite educations have great politics, and it's just as true that many less affluent folks have awful politics. But there is overwhelming evidence that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to hold conservative views about economic policy, all else held equal. See two of the leading social scientists who have studied this subject, <a href="http://sociology.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/3858/Class_Differences.pdf">Leslie McCall</a> and <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Preference%20Gaps%20and%20Inequality/Gilens%202009">Martin Gilens</a>, for more. Or check out the work of political scientist <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/07/millionaires-run-our-government-heres-why-that-matters/">Nicholas Carnes</a>, who has found that legislators from working class backgrounds are significantly more likely to vote against business interests and in favor of economic redistribution--a finding that holds true even when you control for party affiliation.<br />
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Most liberals freely acknowledge that race and gender diversity are important and that when organizations include women and people of color, they often bring unique and valuable perspectives that white men lack. Even having a lot of very well-meaning, feminist-friendly, antiracist white men around is no substitute for including actual women and actual people of color. So why are some liberals so resistant to the idea that economic diversity is also important, and for similar reasons? <br />
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Getting back to the New Republic: in the dementedly pompous <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025917099">editors’ letter</a> published last week, ex-TNR staffers proclaimed that their former magazine is “liberalism’s central journal” and “a kind of public trust.” With the shakeup at the magazine, “The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow.” Oh my.<br />
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Yet in spite of its claims to speak for all of liberalism, for at least as long as I’ve been reading it, the New Republic been a profoundly elitist and insular institution, not just in terms of race and gender, but perhaps even more centrally, in terms of class. I mean, not only was it overwhelmingly dominated by Ivy-educated white men, but Harvard-educated white men at that! That is a huge structural problem. <br />
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That TNR was exclusively run by white men from such a tiny, rarefied stratum of America helps to explain why it supported many neoliberal economic policies and did not begin taking economic inequality seriously until recently. But then again, why would you expect them to? As college-educated elites, they were part of the group that has done very well indeed in recent decades. They had no skin in the game, and like most upper middle class people, probably had few close relationships with people who did. When your social circle consists largely of other Ivy League alums, the world will look like a very different place.<br />
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Liberal elitism has never <i>not</i> been a problem in America; earlier incarnations of liberalism like Progressivism certainly suffered from it. Indeed, one of the the New Republic's founding editors, Walter Lippmann, was known for his distrust of democracy and his belief that our government should be run by elite "experts" and intellectuals. But during the Great Depression and the post-war period, liberal elites became more supportive of progressive economic policies. The Depression, which affected even many previously affluent people, was still a lingering memory, and that helped build more cross-class solidarity. So did the shared sacrifice of the war and, at least for a time, institutions like the military draft. Elites, haunted by the spectre of communism, were more amenable to economic redistribution. Economic inequality declined, labor unions were strong, and there was more social mobility. <br />
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But we now live in a world where social mobility is <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/the-great-gatsby-curve/">falling</a> and <a href="http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf">economic inequality</a> is <a href="http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-zucmanNBER14wealth.pdf">soaring</a>. Economic residential segregation is <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/08/06/economic-segregation-in-u-s-neighborhoods/">on the rise</a> and <a href="http://pareto.uab.es/nguner/ggksPandP-December2013.pdf">cross-class marriages</a> are much less common. The lessons of the Great Depression have been unlearned. Americans are increasingly less likely to socialize with those from other economic backgrounds. The New Republic reflected that growing economic divide, on steroids.</div>
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And because TNR, particularly back in the 80s and 90s, was so influential, that insularity had disastrous consequences for American liberalism. With the refreshing but rare exceptions of, say, a Tom Geoghegan or a Robert Kuttner, most writings in that magazine blithely championed the kinds of neoliberal economic policies that have brought devastation to working Americans. Trashing welfare, labor unions, and “entitlements” while cheerleading for privatization and “free” trade, the magazine that perennially policed the leftmost bounds of American political expression helped push the terms of the political debate ever rightward. It gave invaluable cover to the most economically regressive elements of the Democratic Party. <br />
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Though it’s impossible to determine to what extent elite media discourse impacts political outcomes, it’s safe to say that it has <i>some</i> independent effect. An infamous, error-ridden 1994 TNR cover story was credited with “single-handedly” <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/05/15/the-woman-who-killed-health-care.html">destroying health care reform</a>--a gross exaggeration of course, but one that contains a grain of truth. I can’t help but wonder how TNR’s treatment of economic issues would have changed if any of the men who ran the magazine had ever suffered real material want or experienced a sustained bout of serious economic insecurity.<br />
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Though the New Republic has moved to the left in recent years, traces of its antipopulist DNA are not hard to find; take, for example, this <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/96062/occupy-wall-street-zizek-lewis">snotty editorial</a> about Occupy. And of course, TNR is hardly the only media outlet dominated by elites with glaring economic blindspots. Once a working class occupation, over time journalism became <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/18759/across_the_great_divide_of_class">increasingly professionalized</a>, and its practitioners more likely to be affluent and educated, particularly at the highest levels. <br />
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With these changes came an important ideological shift. As Russell Baker <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/18759/across_the_great_divide_of_class">once wrote</a>, "Today's top-drawer Washington newspeople ... belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well . . . The capacity for outrage had been bred out of them." Until very recently, economic inequality was a seriously undercovered subject. Many journalists are deeply uncomfortable when the subject of class comes up, and when they do write about it, they are prone to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-medias-strange-approach-to-low-wage-workers/2014/03/19/a5155256-aefe-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html">depicting poor and working class people</a> as <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_03/mustread_of_the_day_tanehisi_c049587.php">pathological “others.”</a><br />
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Liberals need to seriously commit themselves to narrowing the economic divide. One way liberal media outlets and other liberal institutions can do that is to make a commitment to economic diversity. Reach beyond your comfort zone and aggressively solicit applications from outside your usual networks. Recruit from nonelite schools for a change. And pay your interns a living wage, dammit! </div>
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Not only would such policies would be more consistent with progressive values, they’d also help build more vibrant, creative organizations. More than that, less elitism and more economic diversity would make for a stronger left, one that is more in touch with real people’s economic problems and anxieties. As they say, economic populism frequently proves popular. It’s a lesson I wish liberals would learn. <br />
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<b>UPDATE:</b> For more perspectives on the legacy of The New Republic, check out <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/">Ta-Nehisi Coates on race</a> ("It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that black lives didn't matter much at all to the magazine"), <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-new-republic-an-appreciation/383561/">Jeet Heer on gender</a> ("what does it mean for liberalism’s central journal to be so indifferent to feminism?") and Corey Robin and Alex Gourevitch on <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/12/new-republic-neoliberalismchrishughesmagazinesjournalism.html">TNR's history of militarism and neoliberalism</a> (it "dug its own grave" by cheering on "the forces of capital that would undo it"). Highly recommended, all.</div>
Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-86940474351772758922014-10-17T20:54:00.000-05:002014-10-17T21:09:23.824-05:00New at The Nation: my review of a stunning book on economic inequality in AmericaThe <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/182153/should-you-go-college" target="_blank">latest edition of the Nation's The Curve</a> is up. I'm particularly proud of this one. The theme is college, and this time around the brilliant contributors include the excellent Anna Clark, who writes about student debt, as well as two of the most renowned feminist economists in America, Nancy Folbre and Susan Feiner. Feiner addresses the war on public higher education, especially the state university system where she teaches in Maine, which has been particularly hard hit. Folbre, noting that the job market no longer reliably rewards educational credentials, argues that the "golden age of human capital" is over.<br />
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My piece is a review of one of the most brilliant works I have ever read about class in America. The book, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049574" target="_blank"><i>Paying for the Party</i></a>, was published last year and it's by sociologists Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton. The authors followed about 50 incoming college women for five years, from their first year on the "party floor" of a dorm at a large, well-respected state university, to their graduation and beyond. After five years, fully half of the women were on a downward economic trajectory, and their fates sorted out almost perfectly according to their class backgrounds. The daughters of the upper class were working at glamorous jobs in the big city, while the working class strivers, who often had arrived with much stronger academic records than their wealthy counterparts, had often returned to the small towns they grew up in and were toiling away in low-wage retail jobs.<br />
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What happened? The authors indict both our government's defunding of higher education and the modern university, which has reconfigured itself to cater to the desires of the elites to turn college into a social, rather than an academic, experience. Fraternities and sororities and the party lifestyle they promote are heavily implicated. When a party culture is so prevalent, as it was at the university the authors studied, it's hard for students to resist it, because there's not much of an alternative if you want a social life.<br />
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But if you devote yourself to partying nearly 24/7, academics will suffer. The university provides a ready solution to that, in the form of bullshit majors like "fashion merchandising" and "sports communication," that don't build skills and are mostly useless on the job market. The rich women didn't suffer a whit from this; their family connections ensured that they'd land good jobs after graduation, regardless of their major or academic performance. But for the less privileged women, forsaking solid preprofessional majors in favor of the bogus ones proved disastrous. The ones that managed to graduate discovered that their degrees were virtually worthless.<br />
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There are so thick and fascinating observations in this book, from the class-tinged, frequently painful social interactions of the women on the floor (there's enough material for any number of sequels to <i>Mean Girls</i>), to the way that class intersects with sex. For example, the authors found that the working class women were significantly more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, and also more likely to be labeled as "sluts"<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 12.1333341598511px;">—</span>in spite of having fewer sexual partners. Read all about it, and more at the link<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 12.1333341598511px;">—</span>including some bonus Ross Douthat bashing!<br />
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Better yet, read Armstong and Hamilton's stunning book. It belongs on the shelf next to Piketty as one of the great works about economic inequality in our time. Armstrong and Hamilton give you a vivid, startlingly personal look at what economic inequality looks like in America today. It's an unforgettable and at times heartbreaking portrait.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-36774999018107800322014-09-11T10:20:00.001-05:002014-09-11T10:20:37.516-05:00The Baffler's conference on women and work this weekendAs some of you may know, I am co-organizer for The Baffler's <a href="http://www.thebaffler.com/events/conference/" target="_blank">conference on women and work</a> which, at long last, will be taking place this Saturday in New
York City. Why this conference, and what's it all about? I've written up
a <a href="http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/whats-ahead-feminism-conference/" target="_blank">preview</a> for the Baffler website. <br />
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Here's an excerpt from the piece:<br />
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This Saturday, September 13th, in New York City, <em>The Baffler</em> will be hosting an exciting event: an all-day conference devoted to the theme of feminism and work. We’re calling it “<a href="http://www.thebaffler.com/events/conference/">Feminism for What? Equality in the Workplace After Lean In</a>,” and as of this writing, a few tickets are still available (you can purchase them <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/feminism-for-what-equality-in-the-workplace-after-lean-in-tickets-12333476761" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
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The impetus for the conference was Susan Faludi’s attention-getting 2013 <a href="http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/facebook-feminism-like-it-or-not"><em>Baffler</em> essay</a> about the Sheryl Sandberg phenomenon. Like many feminists, Faludi was troubled by Sandberg’s message. In her best-selling book <em>Lean In</em>,
not only does Sandberg unabashedly address herself mainly to
professional class women, she focuses on women’s internal obstacles to
advancement on the job, rather than any structural barriers. Sandberg
seems to argue that what women need most are not better workplace public
policies, but to change their own attitudes and behaviors.</blockquote>
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Faludi strongly suggests otherwise, and presents an alternate vision of
feminism she presents—skeptical of capitalism, deeply class conscious,
grounded in the economic realities the overwhelming majority of workers
face. The tension between <em>Lean In </em>and Faludi’s alternative view
have served as the guiding inspiration for this conference. “Feminism
for What?” is an effort to move the conversation about gender equity in
the workplace well beyond the mainstream media’s perennial obsession
with elite women’s issues such as opting out and breaking glass
ceilings. We’ve chosen to organize the conference by focusing on several
major themes that might be said to be missing from <em>Lean In</em>.</blockquote>
Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-26723999904525052802014-08-21T12:18:00.002-05:002014-08-22T09:55:02.089-05:00This week at The Nation's The Curve: the criminalization of motherhood, and how we can stop itIn recent months, nightmarish stories about the criminalization of poor mothers have made headlines. There was, for example, the case of Debra Harrell, charged with child abuse for letting her 9-year old play in a nearby park while she worked her shift at McDonald's, and Eileen Dinino, who was thrown behind bars for being too poor to afford the legal fees from her kids' truancy cases -- and ended up dying in jail. <br />
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What is driving the assault on poor mothers, and how can we end it? Writer and activist Mariame Kaba, journalist Sarah Jaffe, economist Randy Albelda, and I explore these issues in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/181333/how-end-criminalization-americas-mothers#">the latest edition of The Curve.</a><br />
<br />Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-74007914146622176302014-08-07T01:54:00.002-05:002014-08-09T13:18:24.532-05:00Mark your calendars: exciting Sept. 13th Baffler conference on women and work!All, I am thrilled to announce an exciting project I've been working on for The Baffler magazine. On Saturday, September 13th, The Baffler will be hosting an all-day conference on women's work issues. The conference is entitled <b>Feminism for What? Equality in the Workplace after Lean In</b> and it will take place at John Jay College in New York City. The conference was organized by me and my Baffler colleague, Noah McCormack.<br />
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Susan Faludi will deliver the keynote, and the conference will include four panels on the following topics:<br />
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- the advantages and pitfalls of self-help as as strategy for women's workplace advancement;<br />
- intersectional issues (race, immigration status, and LGBT identity) at work;<br />
- class and economic inequality;<br />
- and finally, feminist visions of economic justice for women.<br />
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Other speakers include such brilliant women as E.J. Graff, Zerlina Maxwell, Imani Gandy, Sarah Leonard, Heather Boushey, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Liza Featherstone, Irin Carmon, Nancy Folbre, and Kathi Weeks.<br />
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You can find out more about the conference at its main webpage, <a href="http://www.thebaffler.com/events/conference/">here</a>. The Facebook page is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/322672664580030/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular">here</a> and the Eventbrite page, where you can buy tickets, is <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/feminism-for-what-equality-in-the-workplace-after-lean-in-tickets-12333476761">here</a>.<br />
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Admission to the conference is $20 for the general public, but it's free if you're a Baffler subscriber or a member of the press. Email me if you want to get on the press list.<br />
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The issues we'll be exploring at this conference are close to my heart and it's been an honor and a privilege to help put this together. Please spread the word about this exciting event and help us move the conversation about women's workplace issues into the twenty-first century!Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-84781726411525419262014-08-07T00:33:00.001-05:002014-08-07T00:33:20.050-05:00This week at The Nation's The Curve: feminists discuss gender and Thomas PikettyAnd now for something completely different: for this week's edition of The Nation's The Curve, feminists discuss gender and Thomas Piketty's <i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</i>.<br /><br />
If you've read everything there is to read about this watershed book and think there's not much more to say, think again! I can promise you that you will find ideas and insights here that you haven't seen anywhere else. Joining me in this exciting roundtable are the following outstanding participants: economist Heather Boushey, political scientist Zillah Eisenstein, and two younger women you may not be familiar with but from whom you will, I'm sure, be hearing much more: Kate Bahn, economics Ph.D. student and blogger for the wonderful site, <a href="http://ladyeconomist.com/" target="_blank">Lady Economist</a>, and Joelle Gamble of The Roosevelt Institute (who is, to my knowledge, the first women of color to have written about the book).<br /><br />The discussion of this book has, thus far, been shockingly male-dominated. Only a handful of women and people of color have written about this book, and only two women reviewed it in major American print publications. You already know what 27,000 white dudes have had to say about <i>Capital</i>. It's long past time you listen to what feminists have to say.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-48378720092333897752014-07-17T10:38:00.002-05:002014-07-17T10:44:59.212-05:00New edition of The Nation's The Curve: The Supreme Court's economic war on womenFor <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/180685/what-do-recent-supreme-court-decisions-mean-womens-economic-security" target="_blank">the latest edition of The Curve</a>, Sarah Jaffe, Sheila Bapat, and I look at recent Supreme Court decisions in which the Court expanded its economic war on women: <i>Hobby Lobby</i>, <i>McCullen</i>, and <i>Harris</i>. In my piece, I write about the <i>Harris v. Quinn</i> decision, which invented out of wholecloth a separate-but-unequal class of worker known as the "partial public" employee, and then granted this type of worker far weaker union protections.<br />
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I focus on an aspect of the decision that has not attracted nearly the attention it warrants: its blatant sexism. I wrote, "With its decision in <i>Harris v. Quinn</i>, not only did the Court target this largely female workforce [of home care workers], but it also undermined broader feminist goals. In granting a second-class legal status to labor that is performed in the home, the Court reinforced patriarchal norms that devalue domestic work and care work. It also attacked the larger feminist project of advancing women’s economic equality by recognizing care as work and insisting that our society compensate female workers fairly."<br />
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The other major point I make in my piece is that the Court is hardly likely to stop here. Though they have shrewdly and carefully tailored this ruling to just one group of vulnerable workers (home care workers, who are overwhelmingly low-income women of color), the Roberts Court, as the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin has noted, often decides a case in a relatively narrow way, then uses that ruling as a precedent for far more sweeping decisions. Clever bunch, these boys are. Next time, they'll be coming after public sector unions more broadly -- make no mistake. And after that, who knows?Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-79295263980249040842014-07-11T12:56:00.000-05:002014-07-11T12:56:20.237-05:00From "defining issue of our time" to flavor of the month: the Dems abandon economic inequality talk<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">As you may have heard, the Democrats have abandoned economic inequality as a campaign theme. Now the Dems' talk is all about "mobility" and "creating opportunity" and that holiest of holies, the "middle class," and oily Wall Street middle m</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">en like Chuck Schumer, as well as various Third Way wankers, are practically wetting themselves with excitement.<br /><br />In my <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/07/inequality_the_flavor_of_the_month" target="_blank">latest Baffler piece</a>, I explain that, contrary to the claims of Schumer et al., polling data on inequality actually show a solid basis on which to build an anti-inequality politics. Did you know, for example, that 65 percent of Americans believe that economic inequality continues because it benefits the rich and powerful? That 69 percent say the government should act to reduce inequality? That given a choice, a whopping <i>92 percent</i> of Americans would prefer to live in a society with a wealth distribution that resembled Sweden’s, as opposed to the one we have here? Oh, and for decades in public opinion polls, some 45 percent of Americans have consistently identified as working class -- about as many who identify as middle class.<br /><br />Sadly, however, most Democrats have no real interest in doing anything about inequality. They'll support an increase in the minimum wage and some mild welfare capitalism, but that's it. And it's hardly enough.</span>Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-90498048364968810982014-07-03T10:40:00.000-05:002014-07-03T10:43:34.124-05:00My new Daily Beast piece on Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis's possible mayoral run against Rahm EmanuelHere's <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/03/could-rahm-lose-to-this-infamous-union-leader.html" target="_blank">my piece</a> on why Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, should go right ahead and do what she recently said she's "seriously thinking" about doing -- jump into the race against Mayor One Percent, aka Rahm Emanuel. Lewis said she's "a little sick of" Rahm -- aren't we all? As I argue, there are solid reasons why a Lewis run would be good for the city, even if she doesn't win.<br />
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This is my first piece for the Beast, and they definitely Beasted it up with the tabloid-style headline and teaser. Also, they gave me the tiniest byline I have yet received as a professional writer! But they pay better than most other places, and it's a high-traffic site, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.<br />
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Here's a paragraph that was cut for space, but I think it makes an important point. Read it, and then read the rest of the piece. And if Karen Lewis does indeed run for mayor and you live here in Chicago, please consider volunteering for her. She's pretty great.</div>
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Governing as an elected official is, of course, different from leading a big labor organization like CTU. It demands weighing the interests of all voters rather than advocating for the interests of just one group. But both roles require many of the same skills, such as negotiating and coalition building, and numerous labor leaders have gone on to successful political careers. Two of the most effective progressive political leaders of our time, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Brazil's Lula, got their start as trade union leaders. Closer to home, the current mayor of Fayetteville, Arizona, Lioneld Jordan, had been president of his AFSCME local. Other labor leaders-turned-politicians include Coleman Young, former mayor of Detroit (who had been active in the UAW) and, um, Ronald Reagan (who served as president of the Screen Actors Guild).</blockquote>
Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-71392422581934769492014-06-25T13:20:00.001-05:002014-07-07T15:40:15.429-05:00The Democrats' policies on work and family: less than meets the eyeToday at The Baffler, I <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/less_than_meets_the_eye">have more</a> on the Democrats' economic agenda for women and the big White House Summit on Working Families that was held on Monday. The bottom line is that while Democrats are talking the talk, they're not walking the walk. The ratio of CEOs to labor-affiliated types who spoke at the summit was approximately 5 to 1. And leading Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are <i>not</i> supporting vital policies such as a national paid family leave law, comprehensive child care, pay equity (it used to be known as comparable worth), or even an executive order that would improve the pay of low-wage employees who work for federal contractors.<br />
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It's encouraging that Democrats are <i>finally</i> starting to talk about these issues again, after more than 20 years of putting them in the deep freeze. But sadly, the Democrats' economic agenda for women is more about paying lip service than about getting real.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-46460429948805625292014-06-25T02:59:00.003-05:002014-06-25T07:06:26.584-05:00Orange Is the New Black and the women's prison filmHere's my <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/orange_is_the_new_black_a_prison_dramedy">latest Baffler piece</a>, in which I review the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black in the context of some classic Hollywood-era women's prison movies. My take, basically, is that while the show is enjoyable and has moments of real power, ultimately it falls short by indulging in too much audience-pleasing sentimentality and comedy shtick. For a far tougher look at a women's prison that does a much better job at looking at prison as a system, I strongly recommend the classic 1950 film noir Caged. The critic Jonathan Rosenbaum <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/caged/Film?oid=1058458">called</a> Caged “probably the most ferociously effective and politically potent women’s film ever made.” He was right. <br />
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<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-ocH-ibi0t0NWesmp_-3Uaar0TGAHShTTz6JqXX5CeeO7L9U2fN6gVkoOhC1jZ5A33lFCKYVmcF8FGggttwXB3yejfjC19MNLYAjLHxZyP5Mo-UKcwmFEY9pkWKb3vhAawhOSf9cLVC1B3_8ZkiedvWZic-FS2suFSjBRk3TIBxbNDHlRNIC9QgTCsjXZpd-MNJElovJccHKTLEIX2kI3XBUhnZoi-DTIajJ" /> <br />
Eleanor Parker in <i>Caged</i> (1951)
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcps-static.rovicorp.com%2F2%2FOpen%2FWarner%2520Brothers%2520Distribution%2FMovies%2FCaged%2F_derived_jpg_q90_600x800_m0%2FCaged%25205_CR.jpg%3Fpartner%3Dallmovie_soap&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/-ocH-ibi0t0NWesmp_-3Uaar0TGAHShTTz6JqXX5CeeO7L9U2fN6gVkoOhC1jZ5A33lFCKYVmcF8FGggttwXB3yejfjC19MNLYAjLHxZyP5Mo-UKcwmFEY9pkWKb3vhAawhOSf9cLVC1B3_8ZkiedvWZic-FS2suFSjBRk3TIBxbNDHlRNIC9QgTCsjXZpd-MNJElovJccHKTLEIX2kI3XBUhnZoi-DTIajJ" -->Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-66922844314728680442014-06-24T23:17:00.002-05:002014-06-25T07:03:20.925-05:00New discussion at The Nation's The Curve: Will the Democratic Party Deliver for Working Women?Here's our <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/180400/will-democratic-party-deliver-working-women#">latest feminist economic roundtable</a> at The Nation's The Curve. This one is on the Democrats' economic agenda for women. Joining me this week is a motley crew of extremely smart and interesting women: journalists Bryce Covert, Liza Featherstone, and Zerlina Maxwell and economist Deirdre McCloskey. I'll have even more to say about the Dems and economic feminism in a piece for The Baffler this week -- it will probably go up tomorrow or Thursday. <br /><br />Suffice it to say I'm skeptical. One data point: at yesterday's much-ballyhooed <a href="http://workingfamiliessummit.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/wfs-agenda.pdf">White House Summit on Working Families</a>, speakers and panelists who were CEOs outnumbered workers and labor movement types by a ratio of approximately 5 to 1.<br /><br />Our online conversation took place last week, before the summit. Enjoy!Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-33369934169708356212014-06-18T10:58:00.000-05:002014-06-18T10:58:09.299-05:00Debtors' prisons and other catastrophes<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 15.455999374389648px;">Last week, a 55-year old mother of seven was found dead in her Pennsylvania jail cell. She was thrown in the slammer because she was too poor to pay legal fines stemming from her kids' truancy cases. In my latest <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/debtors_prisons_and_other_catastrophes" target="_blank">Baffler post</a>, I explore this ghastly case in more detail. In particular, I look at three insidious trends it exemplifies: sticking poor people with exorbitant legal fees and fines and depriving them of their freedom if they can't pony up, jacking up those costs further even through private probation debt collection firms, and finally, dealing with truancy cases via the criminal justice system. In short, a perfect twenty-first century horror show, American-style.</span>Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-37553934984176299802014-06-14T20:09:00.000-05:002014-06-16T09:31:48.385-05:00New Baffler post: our deadly culture of overwork<br />
The terrible auto accident last week that nearly killed comedian Tracy Morgan was caused by a Walmart truck driver who hadn't slept in over 24 hours. In my latest Baffler <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/our_deadly_culture_of_overwork" target="_blank">post</a>, I cite that accident as an example of America's deadly culture of overwork and the lax labor laws that enable it. Research strongly suggests that working long hours is associated with a host of poor health outcomes that include higher rates of injuries, depression, anxiety, coronary heart disease, and -- yes -- death. Yet there's little evidence that long working hours increases productivity -- in fact, the truth appears to be the opposite. In many countries in Europe, the maximum legal work week is 48 hours. It's long past time the U.S. institute a similar cap.<br />
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<b>UPDATE:</b> To be clear, it's professional class workers who are working longer hours these days -- lower-income workers are actually working less, on average. As a recent Economist piece <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600989-why-rich-now-have-less-leisure-poor-nice-work-if-you-can-get-out?fsrc=nlw|hig|4-16-2014|8329786|39493970|AP" target="_blank">noted</a>, "Americans with a bachelor’s degree or above work two hours more each day than those without a high-school diploma," and the share of college-educated men working over 50 hours a week has risen significantly in recent decades. But the decline in the average number of working hours for low-income workers isn't exactly voluntary -- to a large extent, it "reflects a deterioration in their employment prospects as low-skill and manual jobs have withered," says the Economist.<br />
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<b>SECOND UPATE: </b>The New Republic's excellent David Dayen <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118154/tracy-morgan-crash-how-trucking-laws-are-making-our-roadways-deadly" target="_blank">has more</a> on the economics of the trucking industry and the regulatory failures which are contributing to many deadly trucking accidents.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-85553130798817942412014-06-11T10:38:00.001-05:002014-06-11T11:59:52.443-05:00Check out my exciting new project with The Nation: The Curve, a feminism and economics group blogI'm pleased and proud to announce a new project I am hosting at The Nation. We're calling it <a href="http://web2.thenation.fayze2.com/blogs/curve">The Curve</a>; our tagline is, "Where Feminism and Economics Intersect." The Curve is a group blog that takes on a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate">New York Times Room for Debate</a>-style format. Twice each month, we will gather a roundtable of feminist voices to comment on economic issues that are of vital interest to women. I will be one of the regular commenters but the other voices will vary.<br />
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Here's how the editors and I describe the rationale for the project:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Curve’s editors—Betsy Reed, Sarah Leonard, and Emily Douglas—began this project with Kathy because we have long been frustrated by two phenomena. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One is the way in which women’s voices are so frequently sidelined in economic debates. Our voices are few and far between in the economics blogosphere. It’s striking that almost none of the reviewers of Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking <i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</i> were women. And as Media Matters recently <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/08/cable-news-economic-guests-are-almost-all-men/198798">showed</a>, women are rarely invited to discuss the economy on cable news. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The flipside of this problem is that, even amongst ourselves, feminists don’t talk enough about economics. Too often, discussions about so-called culture problems like abortion access and domestic violence lack the economic context necessary to appreciate their true causes and repercussions. When topics such as the pay gap or workplace discrimination come up, coverage is often superficial and focused on the experiences of a tiny elite. Meanwhile, the economic pressures on women are mounting: as inequality soars, women make up a growing proportion of the long-term unemployed, low-income women lead a growing majority of single-mother households, middle-income women struggle with few social supports, and even the progress being made by high-income women into the executive suites remains glacially slow.</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hence The Curve—where feminists will hash out economic issues and intervene in feminist debates from an economic perspective. We will draw on the many fine economists, labor journalists, bloggers and academics already producing tremendous work.</blockquote>
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For our first forum, we take on a provocative topic: <a href="http://web2.thenation.fayze2.com/blog/180031/does-feminism-have-class-problem" target="_blank">"Does Feminism Have a Class Problem?"</a>. In more detail, here's the question we're exploring:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Later, we will get more granular, but for the first round of discussion we are asking our contributors to think big. Given arguments among feminists over Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and debate about the firing of Jill Abramson at The New York Times, and in the context of ongoing movements to gain rights for low-wage care workers, we’d like to begin by exploring the very nature of feminist success. How much does it matter for women that gender discrimination persists at the top? Does feminist success mean an equal number of corner office suites and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/business/leaninorg-and-getty-aim-to-change-womens-portrayal-in-stock-photos.html?_r=0">stock photos</a>, or something more? Is there an inherent class conflict within feminism—indeed, has feminism lost sight of class? Is there the potential for a cross-class feminist movement that transforms the economy for the benefit of all women?</blockquote>
You can read my contribution to the forum <a href="http://web2.thenation.fayze2.com/blog/180031/does-feminism-have-class-problem">here</a>. My fantastic co-contributors are Demos president <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/180031/does-feminism-have-class-problem#mcghee">Heather McGhee</a>, Center for American Progress senior fellow <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/180031/does-feminism-have-class-problem#warner">Judith Warner</a>, and the eminent feminist economist <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/180031/does-feminism-have-class-problem#folbre">Nancy Folbre</a> (whose book on the economics of care, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781565847477-0">The Invisible Heart</a>, is a feminist classic).<br />
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I am thrilled to pieces to be part of this project. The economic side of feminism is so important and it is one that is perennially undercovered in the media -- even feminist media. As recent debates on everything from sex work to <i>Lean In</i> to feminist twitter wars have shown, feminists disagree with each other -- a lot. But the 140 characters that twitter provides is hardly the ideal format to discuss complex ideas and productively air our differences. Hopefully, this format will provide a better way.<br />
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I hope you enjoy this week's forum. In future weeks, we'll be exploring issues ranging from the Democrats' economic policy agenda for women to what feminists have to say about Thomas Piketty. Stay tuned!Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-19185912047062349782014-06-09T13:08:00.000-05:002014-06-09T13:08:21.235-05:00Why we need reparations: because without them, deep, race-based economic inequality will persist<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 15.455999374389648px;">Recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a powerful <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">cover essay</a> for The Atlantic making the case for reparations for black people. My response to his essay can be found <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/racial_inequality_and_the_economics_of_reparations">here</a>. I concur that reparations are a moral and political necessary. Deep, race-based economic inequality is not going away, and in many troubling ways it is getting worse, not better. I agree with Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree's prescription for reparations in the form of a broadly based social democratic agenda that, in Coates' words, “takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races.” We won't come close to achieving racial equality in this country until structural economic issues are addressed as well.</span>Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-91851314644975705282014-06-05T11:28:00.001-05:002014-06-05T13:25:11.757-05:00How the American higher education system creates more economic inequality, instead of alleviating itThe Obama administration thinks the answer to soaring levels of student debt and predatory, increasingly powerful for-profit colleges is a new, government-sponsored college ratings system. The administration believes rating colleges would be simple enough: "It's like rating a blender," said an Education Department official recently. In my <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/polarizing_plutocracy_our_broken_higher_education_system">new Baffler post</a>, I explain why this system is hopelessly inadequate to dealing with the problem.<br />
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I also look at a disturbing new book, Suzanne Mettler's <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780465044962-1">Degrees of Inequality</a>, which makes the case that the American system of higher education, which once provided a pathway of upward mobility for millions of Americans, is “evolving into a caste system with separate and unequal tiers” that leaves students “more unequal than when they first enrolled.”Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-43463270090753270332014-05-27T15:10:00.000-05:002014-05-27T15:10:08.150-05:00How to get real about closing the gender pay gap<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">In recent years, earnings for the median woman worker have <a href="http://www.epi.org/blog/lost-decade-wage-growth-women/">stagnated</a> (economists are calling the last ten years the "lost decade" for women's wages) and progress in closing the gender pay gap has <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/28/3420262/gender-wage-gap-progress-stall/">screeched to a halt</a>. What is to be done? In <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/getting_real_about_closing">my latest Baffler post</a>, I d</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">iscuss three policies that have been shown to significantly improve women's pay and narrow the gap. One is unions, which boost wages for women workers at every educational level, from female high school drop-outs to women with graduate degrees. The other two are pay equity (a policy which involves paying women the same for doing work that is comparable to men's) and workplace flexibility (giving workers more freedom to schedule their hours and in some cases, to work from home).<br /><br />Democrats are running on narrowing the gender gap this year, and while it's heartening to see them finally pay attention to this issue, the policies they are offering fall far short of what is needed. Let's push them to do better.</span><br />Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-78224840740135914072014-05-24T07:09:00.001-05:002014-05-24T07:49:29.386-05:00Trigger warnings: bad for feminism, bad for intellectual culture<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">I am not a fan of trigger warnings, and in <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/the_trigger_happy_university">my latest Baffler piece</a>, I explain why. I make two basic points. One is that trigger warnings are anti-intellectual and but the latest manifestation of the pernicious trend of the corporatization of the university and its attendant stude</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">nt-as-customer model. The other is that trigger warnings reinforce the worst Victorian-era stereotypes of women—that we’re fragile flowers who can’t deal with the world’s harsh truths and need to be protected from them. </span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Trigger warnings are actually counter-indicated for survivors of trauma -- research I cite suggests that confronting triggers, not avoiding them, is the best way to avoid PTSD.</span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span>
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">Trigger warnings are seemingly innocuous but the little buggers are actually quite insidious in the habits of mind they instill, and their use should be firmly resisted.</span>Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-74266485212546250242014-05-19T10:45:00.003-05:002014-05-19T10:46:36.098-05:00Protests against commencement speakers and the politics of symbolism<div class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'minion pro', georgia, times, serif; font-size: 16.799999237060547px; line-height: 27.200000762939453px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">My latest <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/protests_against_commencement_speakers">Baffler piece</a> concerns campus protests against commencement speakers, which we're seeing a lot of these days. I certainly support some of these protests, like the one at Rutgers against Condi Rice. But overall, I tend to think that the protests are largely symbolic gestures that may feel briefly exhilarating, but</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> don't change anything structurally. Activist energies would be better targeted elsewhere. Here's an excerpt from my piece:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Let’s start with the institution of the university itself. The vast majority of colleges in the U.S. receive lavish taxpayer subsidies, because they are not-for-profit. Nonetheless, there is startling economic injustice on campus. Many of the nation’s top private colleges have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment">endowments</a> in the billions, and college <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/143541/#id=table">presidents</a> and <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/salaries/ncaab/coach/">coaches</a> earn eye-popping salaries, with total annual compensation frequently reaching in the millions. Yet over 700,000 employees across American campuses <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/A-Living-Wage-for-Campus/134232/">do not earn a living wage</a>, and pay and working conditions for adjunct faculty are often wretched. (See, for example, this recent <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/03/17/professors_in_homeless_shelters_it_is_time_to_talk_seriously_about_adjuncts/">Salon article</a> about professors living in homeless shelters and subsisting on food stamps.) The American taxpayer is underwriting that system of economic apartheid. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Taxpayers also bankroll our oppressive student loan system, which impose an onerous debt burden on millions of Americans. (The un-dischargeable “loans” are more akin to contracts for <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/06/05/let_college_students_go_bankrupt/">indentured servitude</a>). There are many other bizarre features of the modern university, such as the fact that elite private colleges tend to <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-03-18/princeton-reaps-tax-breaks-as-state-colleges-beg">receive more in tax subsidies</a> than public universities. Even for the Rutgers students protesting Condi Rice, a more promising target for long-term reform is the system that enabled outrageously high speaking fee (<a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/condoleezza-rice-decides-against-rutgers-address">$35,000!</a>) the school was prepared to pay her. That fee was offered in spite of the painful and well-publicized <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/rutgers_professors_learn_to_do.html">budget cuts</a> that the school has recently suffered—and also the fact that a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/4/29/5664570/chris-christies-war-with-new-jerseys-top-budget-wonk-david-rosen">massive shortfall</a> in the New Jersey state budget was recently announced.</span></blockquote>
Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-88341886767850925112014-05-15T14:25:00.003-05:002014-05-15T14:25:43.133-05:00Neoliberal Democrats, Piketty, and inequalityYeah, you knew they weren't going to like this book very much, either. My latest <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/what_pikettys_neoliberal_critics">piece</a> for The Baffler.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-31387895805940299682014-05-09T12:25:00.000-05:002014-05-09T12:25:09.507-05:00What the Mad Men economy reveals about our own<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 15.455999374389648px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
My latest <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/what_the_mad_men_economy">Baffler piece</a> is up. If you watched <i>Mad Men</i> this past Sunday, you will no doubt remember that Peggy Olson earned herself a big fat raise, one that equivalent to 25 percent of her previous salary. On Twitter and fan sites, viewers expressed emotions ranging from envy to longing to disbelief at this development.</div>
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I did some digging into the economic statistics and discovered this amazing fact: between 2003 and 2012 median earnings for full-time, year-round workers declined by 2.7 percent for men an<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">d 1.5 percent for women. But between 1960 and 1969, the years during which <i>Mad Men</i> is set, real median earnings—again, for full-time, year-round workers—increased by a staggering 29 percent for men and 25 percent for women.</span></div>
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What the hell happened?, you may well ask. I explain (hint: it has to do with economic inequality -- big surprise, right?) The bottom line, as I say in my piece, is that "Rising wages for the average worker shouldn’t be viewed as a quaint relic from a time when men wore hats."</div>
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Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-52166228847246630352014-05-08T12:04:00.003-05:002014-05-08T12:04:49.711-05:00My latest Baffler post: the fake populism of rich conservatives<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 15.455999374389648px;">You know what's funny? When wingnuts and the rich want to prove they're the salt of the earth, only they're so privileged they have to reach back several generations into the family tree to find any personal connection to hardship. My <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/conservative_family_trees">latest</a> for The Baffler.</span>Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5897361129725485056.post-40602308554175168202014-05-02T13:07:00.003-05:002014-05-02T13:07:44.165-05:00New Baffler post: the Apple-Samsung patent wars and our broken intellectual property systemHere's my <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/the_apple_samsung_patent_wars">latest Baffler piece</a>, which concerns the Apple-Samsung court case. The ongoing litigation between the two tech giants over various software patents threatens to become the longest, and most pointless, legal case since <i>Jarndyce v. Jarndyce</i>. Read my piece to find out how our dysfunctional intellectual property regime, which this case exemplifies, stifles innovation, rips off taxpayers and consumers, and generates economic inequality.Kathleen Geierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04440803370470371557noreply@blogger.com0