Comments on: “He got his Visionz from our visions.”

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:59:47 +0000

You miss the point kid. Cultural capital doesn’t pay my health insurance, and neither does my ex. And there’s a diference between gentrification per se, and gentrification by those who assuage their guilt by thinking good abstract thoughts. The neighborhood I live in is being transformed as well by new and aggressively upwardly moblie immigrants. They crush and remake everything in their path. They’re greedy, and impressive. They’re interesting people. Read more carefully son, or shut up.

By: cw

cw — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 05:13:02 +0000

Seth, You sound like middle class kids I used to know that moved to Oakland. They were all “socialists” or whatever and wanted to live in a certain kind od environment, one that matched their romantic notions of themselves. Gentrification is a difficult problem but I don’t have much sympathy for posers upset over losing their backdrops.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 19:13:45 +0000

A willingness to offer technical solutions to problems of behavior does not absolve one from more personal and immediate social obligations. Is that a call for perfection, or merely a statement of fact? I admit it: I’m a bourgeois socialist (as were Marx and Engels) but that’s a far cry from being able on the one hand to talk sympathetically about policy and other people’s behavior, and on the other to then turn and mock them for their anger. (I don’t remember either of them doing that). I’m not a moralist, but I am more interested in sensibility than policy. I made a few practical observations about human behavior and explained how Kang could have avoided trouble. I did so precisely because I DO NOT expect perfection from anybody, and therefore I have little right to sound superior. Others imagine they do and I have fun proving them wrong

By: joe

joe — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:55:07 +0000

“And as far as college punks and yuppies go, a certain awareness- an awareness that D2 seems to lack, whatever his decent intentions- would go a long way.” I don’t want to put words in Seth’s mouth but I’m more sympathetic to him as the thread has continued. For most of the commenters here their lifestyle is fungible, they could live here or there and participate in this or that community or follow this or that career path. But members of communities comprised mostly of members of the “lowest economic quintile”, including even the $100/shirt entrepreneurs themselves, do not have anything like that sense of options. If their community or neighborhood changes in any significant way it’s not like they can say “oh well I guess I’ll just go to law school” or “I’ll take that job/go to school in the Detroit area”. Any force for change in the community is therefore a legitimately serious issue threatening quality of life in a very profound way, and seeming overreactions must be understood in this context. Not to mention the obvious fact that the material costs of change are invariably forced onto the most marginalized members of the community. For someone who has experienced and understands poverty not as low income (which most people here have experienced as students) but rather as this lack of fungibility, it is unbelievably infuriating to listen to well-meaning and highly educated people try to discuss policies and principles when it seems clear they can’t identify with this fundamental aspect of the situation. (That said, I pretty much agree with all D2’s substantive remarks in the thread!)

By: brian

brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:43:23 +0000

Scott, the increase in hours worked per household is due to more second and third incomes, which often are part-time and often in the higher quintiles. Economists say that part-time jobs became a bigger part of the supply and demand of jobs. This forms demand for luxuries like Washington’s $100 t-shirts sold next to Kang’s $30 version. In this context, the increase in work hours per household is not worrisome. As for Jacob Hacker’s article I am troubled that a professor of political science is offering economic advice. Secondly, your and Hacker’s point is well taken that there is more to well-being than income when it comes to Fox’s “best era for lower working-class people”. The insecurity, if it is indeed rising, is something people “want” in that people want to shop at Wal-Mart even if it means jobs will shift to China. We want science and technology to make some jobs and industries obsolete. People want rapid change because those able to cope with it through education will be better off. I don’t have anything against insurance in principle. Unfortunately, countries that insure heavily through government programs are also poorer than the US, measured at the mean and median. Of course we can ignore the mean and median and use the lowest quintile in all our thinking, but you know we will not being doing that.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:07:53 +0000

Brian, compare those household income statistics to household hours worked and to average hourly wages and a very different picture emerges. Or, you might take a look at Jacob Hacker’s latest (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040816&s=hacker081604) at The New Republic. Household income has grown – slowly and irregularly – but hours worked have risen far more quickly. Fifty years ago, single income families where the breadwinner was only semi-skilled owned homes and cars. Nowadays, single income families in America are poor. Manufacturing jobs in unionised firms were once the norm for a large segment of American society. Now they are rare. Income security has nearly vanished. Compare that $700 difference household income in 1978 to the price of housing – which is a more important cost at the low end of the income distribution than at the middle and is therefore not adequately accounted for in inflation correction statistics. A very different picture emerges, one that correlates a great deal better to what you actually see in poor neighbourhoods in the US. The combination of increased risk and higher costs makes saving much, much harder. Increased income risks make it harder to get a home or business loan. And the very small income gains over that period are not nearly enough to make up for it. People really ought to learn to look at statistics more critically. I might suspect, Brian, that you should examine your own prejudices by looking beyond a single set of numbers.

By: brian

brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 04:42:11 +0000

I guess it makes you uncomfortable to have your prejudices shattered. You’re free to search for data going as far back as 1940 but I’m pretty sure the numbers will be lower than 2001 and even lower than 1967.

By: brian

brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 04:28:10 +0000

That’s gall dsquared. I showed that Fox was wrong. That should be enough to make my point.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 03:49:22 +0000

yep, lower quintile income increased on average $31 (2001) per year between 1978 and 2001. That’s almost a latte a month, you ungrateful bastards.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 03:22:00 +0000

Also note the $726 increase since 1978. It has been getting easier yet, to bury the myth.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 02:46:57 +0000

Also note that, of the $2833 increase in income per head between 1967 and 2001 that Brian is talking about, three quarters of it ($2107) was in place by 1978.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 02:37:13 +0000

Care to have a look at hours worked, Brian?

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 02:31:29 +0000

R.A.Fox wrote: While some years were obviously a lot better than others for the working class, I would say, on the whole, pretty much anytime in between 1940 and 1975. A bad era for a lot of people, but probably the best era the average lower-class worker (black or white) in America has yet ever seen. Actually that “golden era” perception is a myth. http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie1.html Using 2001 dollars we see that the mean household of the lowest quintile improved it’s lot from $7303 in 1967 to $10136 by 2001. Growing inequality in America means that people in the higher quintiles did even better. Hurray for inequality, I guess. Over the years households have decreased in size so each person within the household is probably better off than these numbers would indicate.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:40:06 +0000

If people won’t pay up for “identity and neighbourhood” frankly they don’t want it badly enough. And who can blame them when there are so many other pressing demands on our income? If the black store owners find it hard to remain profitable given Kang’s activities they can raise the price of black authenticity to sustain their businesses. And sustain they will if there is any semblance between sensibilities as they are and the indiscriminate projection of bourgeois (“identity and neighbourhood”) sensibilities onto blacks. As for pining for an era when semi-skilled work is available, that age is now! I’m not saying that the jobs are easy to find, but those jobs have never left us, existentially speaking. Geographically, there is a difference as those jobs are in Asia. Millions are being lifted from real poverty – not the pretentious poverty that plagues America. There is also real poverty in America, obviously, but you realize most of it is the pretentious variety when you look around the world. Establishing more semi-skilled work in America might be good for social harmony but most of us are too cheap to care. Until disharmony leads to instability, people will be too cheap to care.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:34:30 +0000

“I’m a Jewish Carpenter” I’ve always wanted an excuse to use that line. And I’m not playing ‘divide and rule’ I’m being a bitter smart ass. But perhaps you missed my last comment. When responding to complexity you have a choice: you can either contradict yourself or contradict yourself and lie about it. Your question was silly and I responded to it as such.