Barbara Ehrenreich is at it again, this time in The New York Times op-ed section, reminding us that the “Nouveau Poor” aren’t the only story out there. The author of “Nickel and Dimed” has revisited some of the people she met while working on that 2001 book, reconnecting with “the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times.” Writes Ehrenreich:
Larry Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, offers data showing that blue-collar unemployment is increasing three times as fast as white-collar unemployment. The last two recessions — in the early ’90s and in 2001 — produced mass white-collar layoffs, and while the current one has seen plenty of downsized real-estate agents and financial analysts, the brunt is being borne by the blue-collar working class, which has been sliding downward since deindustrialization began in the ’80s.
What are they doing? Moving in with already-overcrowded relatives, stripping, hunting urban game like squirrels, and plummeting “from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all.”
“In good times and grim ones,” Ehrenreich writes, “the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due.” It’s the first in a series of such articles; stay tuned.
Mad Blog Media 
I’ve been watching this since the ’80s. My brothers and I grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. where my old man worked a good blue-collar, UAW job as a machinist in a Chevy plant. I watched plant after plant (auto, oil refineries, milling factories) close, and the former industrial districts become so-called green space, i.e., the weeds that grow in massive fields after the plant is D&D’d. I told my parents I was going to stop coming home in the mid eighties, because every time I went home another plant shuttered.
Meena and I drove through Buffalo’s East Side near the site of the old War Memorial Stadium, where I lived as a small kid, in 1993 after my mom’s wake, and it looked like something out of Soweto. Complete with burning tires in 55 gal drums in the streets that people used for warmth. Its gotten worse since then. The “economy” is all smoke and mirrors.
I think we eventually face civil war in this nation if we don’t pull our heads out of our asses and restore some level of social hope to poor people. Its not about “leveling the economic playing field” which terrifies the Republican economic bigots but about knocking the extremes back to the center. That means we invest in the USA, not in China. FDR saved our asses once by rescuing us from our last laissez-faire collapse. We need to do that again.
Cannondale, according bo Bicycling Magazine, is going to stop building bikes in the U.S. in 2010 and start building them in Taiwan. As a kid of the Rust Belt, all I can say is Up Yours, Cannondale. Those two hundred workers in Pennsylvania to be laid off are my kin. Been riding Cannonballs since I bought one of their first boneshakers in 1985. Guess its time to change brands.
Sorry to hear that, Khal. Since I can’t think of any bike that is wholly “Made in the USA” anymore I wish you the best of luck. Most that are stickered that, are “produced” overseas – that includes Canada and Mexico. But again, best of luck in your search.
As for the bike industry as a whole, the entire economy of it is so far behind that they can’t see an easy way out of near 100% reliance on Chinese/Taiwanese production. With lead times of nearly 12 months, I don’t see them doing much too change as most companies have way too much $$$ spent in tooling overseas factories to make the switch to domestic production anytime in the next five to ten years.
There are, of course, American made bikes (like Serrotta and Lynsky and Litespeed) but they are either too expensive or require a long waiting list. If American bike companies wanted to eliminate those barriers than they need to get in the shops. But sadly most shops buy/sell/whore themselves out to Trek, Specialized or Giant.
More independent bike shops are needed, not more branded stores.
As a former stockholder in Cannondale, I am sorry to hear that they are shutting down shop in the US. But that was a different comapny, one that was obviously not as beholden to their desire to make money by entering the motorcycle market?!?!?! Better management and allocation of resources would have saved that fiasco from happening, but alas that was years ago. They should have know that there was no money to be made in a bike company who wanted to be Suzuki. Just look at Kawasaki’s foray into BMX in the 70’s.
Yeah, James, I suspect my fuss and bluster last night will not result in me actually finding too many bikes other than those designer, high zoot ones. But if one buys a bike once every five years or so, maybe that is an expense worthy of making.
Actually, we just plunked down some dead presidents for a Co-Motion tandem (Oregon) as our Trek frame (1994 vintage) is not only too short for my stoker but getting serious rust around the bottom brackets; Trek got out of the tandem market entirely so a frame swap is out of the question. As far as road bikes? Figure my Six-Thirteen will last me another half decade or more as long as I don’t crash it, so that Made in USA decal (along with the one on my older but still quite rideable CAAD-5) will be in the garage for a while.
At work today a fellow carpenter with no health insurance had a troubling sore on his nose. I asked him to see a dermatologist to rule out melanoma but he said he must wait first to get insurance. I am afraid his face will rot off before then and a life threatening cancer could go untreated because he is already in debt. The health insurance companies are so profoundly corrupt. I doubt he could get insurance if he has a pre existing condition. See Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” for the details. I may have to move to Canada when I get old if things don’t change.
Mike, I hear you loud and clear. As an avowed capitalist swine, I can attest that the health industry (care, insurance, medicine, what have you) is a major racket. I thought the whole appeal of becoming a doctor was to help others live…not suck their life savings away? I can see a new graduate trying to make a few bucks to cover the costs of their education, but to become so enamored with cash to forgo saving people makes me rethink that the whole industry seriously needs to be reformed. Maybe make the CEOs and mucky-mucks live a few days, weeks, months in the inner city, on the streets, in a shelter with the rest of society. At least then they might be able to justify their profits and country club dues.
Everything has to be sold, including political agendas. And it cracks me up that when someone with a particular ideology sees the good and bad of a particular issue, he’s usually blind to the good and bad interpretations of this issue from other perspectives. In other words, we preach to our own choirs without ever thinking about how to sell it to the church across the street.
So knee jerk liberals who want to save the world see goodness is taking care of the poor, and immovable conservatives see that as a waste of time, and ne’er the twain shall meet. And neither side every tries to talk to the other folks, unless you count “screaming” as “talking.”
It’s mostly because we as a species suck at identifying probability and are bad decision makers in general. I can’t find the link but there’s a famous study where they give someone $100 and tell him to divide it between himself and another, however he wants. The other person then gets to decide if the money was divided fairly. He can reject the offer and both get nothing, or he can accept his slice and both get something. In most cases, if the first person doesn’t divide the money right down the middle, the second person will reject the offer and they both get bumpkiss. Even if it was split 99-1, that’s one dollar you didn’t have before, and to reject it because the other person is getting more is voting against your own self-interests.
We do it all the time. Program X benefits everyone, but it benefits those folks over there more, and they don’t deserve it, so we’ll scuttle the whole thing. And nothing riles up the GOP more than letting poor people get something they don’t deserve, even if the middle and upper classes also benefit in another way.
We can spend $20 on some penicillin and stop a disease before it turns into a $50,000 emergency room visit that all of us eat through higher insurance premiums, but no, that poor schlupp doesn’t deserve a hand-out. We can spend $1000 per year on a education program that will help turn around an at-risk kid that will then save the taxpayers $35,000 per year to keep him incarcerated, but no, that’s not fair to the well-off schools that don’t have as many disadvantaged kids.
Counter-intuitively, it seems impossible for most folks to identify the “what’s in it for me?” aspect, not because we’re not all a bunch of self-centered hairless apes, but because we’re too busy worrying about “what’s in for the other guy?” As a middle class slob, there’s a lot in it for me when we reach out to the poor. That’s one less guy getting routine treatment at the ER when I have a real emergency. That’s one less guy getting expensive reactive treatment instead of cheap preventative treatment, whose bill I’m absorbing in my costs. That’s one less fire truck run I have to pay for when his crystal meth lab blows because that’s the only way he can pay his bills. I might only get $1 and he’s getting $10, but I’m still getting a buck, and I should look at my benefits in terms of my own life and not in terms of whether someone else is getting a better deal.
One more thing on the health insurance thing. If I hear the argument that we don’t want universal coverage because the government doesn’t do anything well, I’m going to throw up. Next time you hear that, remind the speaker that there are about 1.4 million service members who, last time I checked, were all government employees, and then ask him why he hates the troops. That usually shuts them up for about three seconds, which is three more seconds that you’d otherwise get.
No comment Steve. That is the best piece of writing I’ve read in a long while about life. Bravo!
Roger that. Well said. Say, who’s the professional writer around here, anyway? Sheesh.