Remember when everyone agreed that what the American people wanted from Washington was, in John Boehner’s words, a “relentless focus on creating jobs”? In the past few months the unemployment rate has barely budged, and yet lawmakers of both parties have jettisoned the jobs agenda in favor of an austerity program that will barely reduce the deficit but will almost certainly hurt employment. If the Republican proposal to trim $60 billion from the fiscal budget puts thousands out of work, well then, says Boehner, “so be it.”
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This disconnect between the jobs crisis in the country and the blithe dismissal thereof in Washington is the most incomprehensible aspect of the political moment. But I think there are two numbers that go a long way toward explaining it.
The first is 4.2. That’s the percentage of Americans with a four-year college degree who are unemployed. It’s less than half the official unemployment rate of 9 percent for the labor force as a whole and one-fourth the underemployment rate (which counts those who have given up looking for work or are working part time but want full-time work) of 16.1 percent. So while the overall economy continues to suffer through the worst labor market since the Great Depression, the elite centers of power have recovered. For those of us fortunate enough to have graduated from college—and to have escaped foreclosure or an underwater mortgage—normalcy has returned.
The other number is 5.7 percent. That’s the unemployment rate for the Washington/Arlington/Alexandria metro area and just so happens to be lowest among large metropolitan areas in the entire country. In 2010 the DC metro area added 57,000 jobs, more than any in the nation, and now boasts the hottest market for commercial office space. In other words: DC is booming. You can see it in the restaurants opening all over North West, the high prices that condos fetch in the real estate market and the general placid sense of bourgeois comfort that suffuses the affluent upper- and upper-middle-class pockets of the region.
What these two numbers add up to is a governing elite that is profoundly alienated from the lived experiences of the millions of Americans who are barely surviving the ravages of the Great Recession. As much as the pernicious influence of big money and the plutocrats’ pseudo-obsession with budget deficits, it is this social distance between decision-makers and citizens that explains the almost surreal detachment of the current Washington political conversation from the economic realities working-class, middle-class and poor people face.
Social distance of this sort isn’t new, of course. The “out of touchness” of the Beltway is such a cliché that Beltway denizens themselves love to invoke it to demonstrate their self-awareness. But I’d wager the social distance that characterizes this moment is probably as bad as it’s been in at least a generation. We’ve had more than three decades of accelerating inequality that has placed the top 10 percent further and further away from the bottom 90 percent, followed by a financial crisis and “recovery” that has only exacerbated these distributional trends. There were already Two Americas before the Great Recession, but in the wake of that seismic disruption, those two continents have only moved further apart.
This manifests itself in our politics in two ways. For one, it just so happens that policy-makers, pundits and politicians are drawn from the classes that are in recovery, and they live in an area where new sushi restaurants are opening all the time. For even the best-intentioned and most conscientious staffers and aides this has, I think, a subconscious effect. Think of it this way: two office buildings are operating side by side in Chicago’s Loop in the middle of a brutally cold January day, when the heat in both buildings gives out. The manager of one building has an on-site office, so he finds himself plunged into cold; the other building is managed remotely, from a warm office whose heat is functioning. If you had to bet, you’d guess that the manager experiencing the cold himself would have a bit more urgency in restoring the heat. The same holds for the economy. The people running the country are not viscerally experiencing the depredations of this ghastly economic winter, and they lack what might be called the “fierce urgency of now” in getting the heat turned back on.
The other problem is that our system is responsive only to voices at the top of the social pyramid—the bankers and businessmen who are raking in record bonuses and the professional upper middle class, which is recovering much faster than the nation as a whole. In a 2007 paper titled “Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness in the United States,” Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens analyzed 2,000 survey questions from 1981 to 2002, looking for the relationship between public opinion and policy outcomes. He found that “when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear little relationship to the preferences of poor or middle income Americans.”
There is only so much social distance a society can take. The social science literature shows that as social distance increases, trust declines and aberrant and predatory behavior increases. The basic mechanisms of representation erode, and the social fabric tears. “An imbalance between rich and poor,” Plutarch warned, “is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
It’s against this backdrop of creeping dissolution that the word “union” takes on a renewed power. That’s why the struggles of the protesters in Wisconsin have resonated so profoundly. In banding together to oppose Republican Governor Scott Walker’s power grab, the students, teachers, cops, firefighters and neighbors have willed themselves to shrink the social distance those in power are cynically using to pit constituencies against one another. Walker exempted cops and firefighters from his bill’s radical limits on collective bargaining, but they joined the protests anyway. “An assault on one is an assault on all,” proclaimed Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association president Mahlon Mitchell.
It’s in Wisconsin and across the Midwest that union members like Mitchell and his allies are showing us the antidote to the social distance that threatens the core of American democracy.
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Great insights. I have had enough experience with this type of person to understnad what you are saying. I'm not sure how many will really get your message. Here is how I see this issue, there is an entitlement class layer that exists only on the possession of a college degree. Actual ability is less valuable than the status. They will protect their status with a common and often spoken hubris and indifference towards people without "education". The problem is, what they are now calling education is almost laughable, even in Ivy League schools. This is the ultimate who-you-know from college layer, and they are quite comfortable, and that comfort is far from earned. It's like an encapsulated welfare state for underachieving frat boys.
Excellent blog. Very true about the DC Metro area wealth pockets. I wonder if the college/non-college gap is narrowing, though, with technology and globalization destroying all the old knowledge and service jobs.
"Jobs," as a political word, is just newfangled culture war crytpo-corporate code. It's sort of like what "hard working Americans" and "those who play by the rules" used to mean before the Dems co-opted the language from the right. It roughly translates as "Cool stuff for you, but not for those lazy no-good welfare- chiseling Others."
Of course, the GOP has no intention of helping anybody who is poor, whether or not they are "hard working" or "deserving" or have "middle class values". So it's a bait and switch: Vote for us and we'll help your kind (wink wink) and screw those other people, and then (after you give the GOP a majority or a governorship), Poof! "Jobs" aren't a priority after all -- we (the GOP) really just want to give tax breaks to corporatons and bust unions and hand all he money in Social Security to Wall Street. What else did you think we meant by "jobs"?
Chris, DC is nothing but a whore house dressed up as a capital. With the Chamber of Commerce across the street from the White House and all of the K street projects going on (See Newt Gingrich) and the revolving door from Congress to K street and back for favors done (Can anyone say GRAFT) and you pretty much have how our country is run.
Any mafia organization has more accountability and rules to follow than the jackasses running this country. To get into the old boys club you have to prove your worth. This is done by promising something to your constituents and then doing the opposite of what you said you would do in "taking one for the team".
There are some of us out here who see what the hell is going on and it ain't pretty and it sure as hell isn't a representative government....tray an oligarchy or plutocracy.
Seems as though you're trying to see
A thriving meritocracy...
Safely through the storm unscathed...
A cut above and barely fazed...
And while these hopes I do applaud
'Exceptional' comes off as odd
When mindsets made of 'class warfares'
Blow these bubbled laissez faires
Putting a little of the news and this commentary together, certainly part of the boom around DC is a direct result of military/security/surveillance spending. Many defense firms have moved their offices to or opened offices in the DC area, in order to be as close as possible to the fountain of money which is the Pentagon. As well, if one recalls the series last summer in The Washington Post (oh, yes, I know--a long time ago, and boooring) on the proliferation of intelligence, security and surveillance operations (too many to count accurately, in fact), the upshot was that there's a huge amount of construction being done and many personnel moving into the metro DC area.
That, too, can change the character of a place and mask the underlying desperation of workers who are not able to take advantage of the boom. I doubt that there's a big demand in the privatized intelligence business for inner-city DC black youth, for example, probably to the point that someone in Congress doesn't see them at all.
And, Congress critters are going to note where they are sending the taxpayers' money in metro DC, because the big winners in that lottery are going to be able to afford hiring said critters when they retire from public service.
Not only does it help create the social distance described, there's also a built-in disincentive to turn off the money spigot on the so-called "war on terror."
Nice article Chris. You know, there are many things wrong with our country. The way we track workers and determine thier status of being employed, un-employed, looking for work or what ever but the main thing is, the numbers reported by our government are not even close to being accurate. The rules governing collecting un-employment are also entirely screwed up all in the name of protecting us from those who would "game the system". Look, these jerk offs in washington and every capital of every state are all suffering from a severe case of denial. They have been steered down this road, all to protect us from those that would "game the system" but in reality, it is those that we elect to represent us that are "gaming the system". Both parties are guilty of this. Both are insulated from the fact that we taxpayers are getting screwed by those that we elect. The un-employment in the U.S. is clearly OVER 20%. Yet, this is not an "urgent" situation. The 9BILLION in cash that was lost in Iraq is "not an urgent situation" but the two women that were sent to prison for stealing 11 dollars apparently was. It is time for a change. ANYONE who has lost thier job in the past 3 years that votes for republiCONs is an idiot. But by the same token, what have the Dems done? Nothing. They allowed us to get into 2 wars and then once they discover that the multi TRILLION DOLLAR war investment pays off for no one but those in the smallest income tax bracket, they want WE... 7. posted by: Liberal in Kansas at 03/03/2011 @ 3:14pm
How about creating a lot of jobs in an organization the RePOOPlicans could call The War Corps?
It would employ millions of Americans in perpetual wars for unrestricted capitalism all over the globe. It would also get rid of lots of people at the same time so you would not have to give them any benefits such as Medicare and Social Security.
The Democrats had the Peace Corps, so why not The War Corps for the F***ing Republicans?
Hear! Hear! Chris. When half of our Congressional representatives are millionaires, there is just no way they can understand how bad it is for people "down" here. I have two friends, both women in their 50's with a high school education who were laid off nearly a year ago. Neither has found a job and the prospects look bleak. The only offerings are part-time jobs with no benefits and low pay. So, they are both still looking, getting discouraged, and will probably soon join the legion of people who lose their unemployment and just stop looking. It is a tragedy that no one cares about.
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