Culture: January 2015 Archives
When Bread Bags Weren't Funny - Bloomberg View
Megan McArdle ponders the bread-bags that Sen. Joni Ernst (and I!) wore over our shoes when the weather was wet and what that tells us about the rise in American living standards.
"I am a few years younger than Noonan, but I grew up in a very different world -- one where a number of my grammar school classmates were living in public housing or on food stamps, but everyone had more than one pair of shoes. In rural areas, like the one where Joni Ernst grew up, this lingered longer. But all along, Americans got richer and things got cheaper -- especially when global markets opened up. Payless will sell you a pair of child's shoes for $15, which is two hours of work even at minimum wage.
"Perhaps that sounds like a lot to you -- two whole hours! But I've been researching historical American living standards for a project I'm working on, and if you're familiar with what Americans used to spend on things, this sounds like a very good deal....
"...The Ingalls family [of the Little House series] were in many ways bourgeoisie: educated by the standards of the day, active in community leadership, landowners. And they had nothing.
"There's a scene in one of the books where Laura is excited to get her own tin cup for Christmas, because she previously had to share with her sister. Think about that....
"Imagine if your kids had to spend six months out of the year barefoot because you couldn't afford for them to wear their shoes year-round.... I'm not talking about making sure your kids have a decent pair of shoes to wear to school; I'm talking about not being able to afford to put anything at all on their feet....
"In 1901, the average "urban wage earner" spent about 46 percent of their household budget on food and another 15 percent on apparel -- that's 61 percent of their annual income just to feed and clothe the family. That does not include shelter, or fuel to heat your home and cook your food. By 1987, that same household spent less than 20 percent on food and a little over 5 percent of their budget on apparel. Since then, these numbers have fallen even further: Today, families with incomes of less than $5,000 a year still spend only 16 percent of the family budget on food and 3.5 percent on apparel. And that's not because we're eating less and wearing fewer clothes; in fact, it's the reverse."
KA-CHING! • If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence,...
"If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker (or a professor) who doing some small, routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine (or the lectern of a classroom), does not choose to know how the machine (or the classroom) got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary. Managerial work--the organization and integration of human effort into purposeful, large-scale, long-range activities--is, in the realm of action, what man's conceptual faculty is in the realm of cognition. It is beyond the grasp and, therefore, is the first target of the self-arrested, sensory-perceptual mentality."
-- Ayn Rand, "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(For an approach to organization and management grounded in similar insights, look into "Requisite Organization," as developed by Elliot Jaques (the man who coined "mid-life crisis" and the first to use the term "culture" in a management context) and Wilfred Brown, among others.
Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say -- Jonathan Chait -- NYMag
"The p.c. style of politics has one serious, possibly fatal drawback: It is exhausting. Claims of victimhood that are useful within the left-wing subculture may alienate much of America. The movement's dour puritanism can move people to outrage, but it may prove ill suited to the hopeful mood required of mass politics. Nor does it bode well for the movement's longevity that many of its allies are worn out. 'It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing,' confessed the progressive writer Freddie deBoer. 'There are so many ways to step on a land mine now, so many terms that have become forbidden, so many attitudes that will get you cast out if you even appear to hold them. I'm far from alone in feeling that it's typically not worth it to engage, given the risks.' Goldberg wrote recently about people 'who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in [online feminism] -- not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.' Former Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay told her, 'Everyone is so scared to speak right now.'
"That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree."
REACTIONS:
Conservative blogger John Sexton writes that political correctness has its roots in the primitive instincts of altruistic punishment, referring to Douglas Preston's book, Trial by Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case:
"Altruistic punishment, simply put, is the expression of negative emotions toward those who fail to cooperate with the group. It is a pressure tactic designed to whip people into line with the tribe and its goals.
"...Altruistic punishment may have developed as a way to discourage... freeloading. But with the advent of social media, it seems to apply to everything and everyone who fails to get in line with the group's priorities.
"The scary thing about altruistic punishment is that human beings seem wired to take pleasure in it. If you've ever wanted the simple answer to why there are so many unpleasant jerks online, it's because they get a genuine rush out of being unpleasant jerks online. They are convinced they are doing something important, even noble, by punishing the tribe's detractors...."
Leftist Fredrik DeBoer is bothered that well-meaning college students are driven away from the Left because they aren't perfectly politically correct yet:
"I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 20 year old black man, a track athlete who tried to fit organizing meetings around classes and his ridiculous practice schedule (for which he received a scholarship worth a quarter of tuition), be told not to return to those meetings because he said he thought there were such a thing as innate gender differences. He wasn't a homophobe, or transphobic, or a misogynist. It turns out that 20 year olds from rural South Carolina aren't born with an innate understanding of the intersectionality playbook. But those were the terms deployed against him, those and worse. So that was it; he was gone....
"I want a left that can win, and there's no way I can have that when the actually-existing left sheds potential allies at an impossible rate. But the prohibition against ever telling anyone to be friendlier and more forgiving is so powerful and calcified it's a permanent feature of today's progressivism."
