I Cogitate
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Disposible Americans
Here's a book that got short shrift when it was first published and deserves a second look because Democrats, but more importantly, ourselves, our towns, our cities, our communities and our country can only benefit from broaching this subject matter:
Angry book argues that job layoffs harm societyUchitelle asks this provocative question:
By Steve Weinberg
Special to the Mercury News
March 26, 2006
Until the 1980s, employers tended to suffer negative publicity and other ill will from the mass of consumers when laying off employees.
Today, mass layoffs of wage earners by highly paid corporate executives have become ``acceptable business behavior,'' according to New York Times business reporter Louis Uchitelle.
That upsets Uchitelle; his controlled outrage drives the narrative of his important, compelling book, "The Disposable American.'' His impressively researched, clearly written exposé explains how and why wage earners stopped fighting layoffs, why the capitulation is counterproductive not only for the former employees but also for society at large, and what could occur to alter the situation.
Although some of Uchitelle's research is historical, with a bit of it spilling over into economic theory, the guts of the book consists of skillful narrative storytelling. Uchitelle focuses on several corporations, primarily in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and New Britain, Conn.; the executives who opted for layoffs while continuing to live extravagantly; and the laid-off workers who suffered incapacitating consequences.
As Uchitelle returns to those individuals again and again throughout the text, readers are able to grasp that the negative consequences of layoffs last a lifetime, not just a week, a month or a year. Even when laid-off workers are able to find new jobs that pay above the poverty level, the psychological harm rarely abates...
...``Are we going to once again be a community of people who feel obligated to take care of one another, or are we going to continue as a collection of individuals, each one increasingly concerned only with his or her well-being? If we can band together again, as we did during a 40-year stretch that started in the Depression and ended with the Vietnam War, then job security will gradually return to the United States -- not to the degree that once existed, but more than we have today..."So what's it to be in the forefront of America, community or individualism? We or I? That is the crux of the question.
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Obviously, its not a black/white question or equation. But the choice of what the current Republican powers are instituting and further seeking versus that of the Democrats is.
The GOP is front and center for reducing and eliminating personal bankruptcy, Social Security, any semblance of affordable health care coverage, college educational assistance, negotiating Medicare drug costs--you name it.
The recent linking in Congress of a boost in the mimimum wage to the elimination of the estate tax is the perfect example--that's all one needs to know about Republican priorities.
Employing threats and bullying tactics instead of seeking common consensus--that's all one needs to know about bedrock Republican values.
Of course, the term disposible Americans also applies to those Americans in New Orleans and those sent to their death and dismemberment in Iraq by the unforgiveably callous and care-less uber-patriots who send others to do their bidding while they stay home, safe and enriched, playing a real life geo-political game of "Risk." But that's another post another time.
To read the rest of the review, go here.
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