Another one to watch

 Universal Basic Income is an idea that's been around for a while, arguably for centuries, but it's started gaining more traction in the wake of COVID. It tends to be popular in progressive circles, although it has some surprising support from libertarian and conservative circles where it's non-paternalistic and unbureaucratic approach resonates.

The idea is pretty much what it sounds like: guarantee every citizen a certain amount of money on a regular basis. It's been touted as a solution to poverty, a degree of protection from automation, and a safety net for the growing "gig economy" (a phrase that makes me think of unfortunate frogs hunted for their legs).

It's been tried to a limited degree in some places and the results seem promising. The latest city to announce an experiment with it is Compton, CA, a city with a poverty rate about twice the national average (sounds like a place I know). According to Mayor Aja Brown, the idea is to "challenge the racial and economic injustice plaguing both welfare programs and economic systems." According to CNN, 800 low income residents will pilot the program, as described in this fact sheet.

It will be interesting to watch the results. One thing I'm pretty sure about, in a climate of growing inequality, we're going to need something like a universal basic income or guaranteed employment program. Pope Francis issued a similar call earlier this spring.

May Day: Born in the USA

Happy Beltane, May Day and International Workers' Day! The first was a Celtic holy day. The second was a traditional European spring festival with pagan overtones. You could even say it was kind of Freudian...can you say May poles and fertility?

As for International Workers' Day, folks, especially in the Cold War era, associated it with Soviet communism and the militaristic parades that used to fill Red Square in Moscow. It might be good to recall that the May Day labor celebration grew out of efforts to establish the eight hour workday right here in the USA. It was only later that the day was adopted by the international labor and socialist movement.

A major struggle in much of the 19th and 20th century has been to reduce the hours of the working day, which could run as long as 14 hours or more in the early days of the industrial revolution.
A slogan of the movement was "eight hours for work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours for what we will."

Trade unionists in Chicago declared a strike for the eight hour day on May 1, 1886. One May 4, as police attempted to disperse a protesting crowd of workers at Haymarket Square, an unknown person threw a bomb which killed several police officers. The remaining police in turn fired at the crowd, killing four.

The bomber was never brought to justice. The only thing most historians agree on is that the eight people arrested and sentenced for the bombing weren't the guilty parties, several of whom weren't even there at the time. Of these, four were eventually executed. They are known as the "Haymarket martyrs."

The struggle to limit the working day didn't end there and was eventually won for many US workers by trade union organization and by the political reforms in the New Deal era and beyond, although some laws exempted protections for some of the most exploited workers, such as farm and domestic laborers.

Like everything else in the history of the struggle of working people for basic human justice, the fight goes on. The fight has always been about more than wages, hours and working conditions, as important as these are. It's also been about the need for culture, rest, leisure, education and dignity.

Lately, this hasn't been going so well, as you may have noticed. But it's not over yet.

Finally, here's a shout out to the frontline workers who have walked off the job today to call for safe working conditions, a living wage and respect.

(Note: some of this was cobbled together from older May Day posts.)

On this day in history

On this day in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. At the time, he said,

"This law represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means completed--a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future administrations of the Government against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy--a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation--in other words, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."

It worked. And it needs to be protected.

Two from the road

It's been a long afternoon/evening driving through bitter cold so this will be short. I'm pleased to say that my car didn't try to kill me this time. I did manage to find two items worth a look.

FIRST, HOW BOUT THAT FRANCIS? According to this article, he's popular on both sides of the aisle (although I kind of wonder about one of them). At the very least, he is bringing certain topics to public attention. In a good way.

SECOND, WE'RE NOT THAT POLARIZED ABOUT EVERYTHING.  As E.J. Dionne argues here, most Americans agree on basic economic justice issues.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One thing I'm thankful for this year...

...is Pope Francis I! Here's a good look at his latest statement on the "new tyranny" of unfettered capitalism.

Sample quotes:

"Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills."

and

 "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?"

and

 "I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."

and

 "As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."

TWO FOR THE ROAD ON THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. Here's Dean Baker stating the obvious, an important thing to do in these times! And here's a reminder that some states show it can work.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Taking on the "cult of money"

It's a little early in the game, but so far Francis I is shaping up to be my kind of pope, with his denunciations of unbridled capitalism and his concern for the poor. You can find some good NPR coverage of his priorities  here and here.

(As a friend of mine who is a member of a religious order pointed out, and I paraphrase, that Paul Ryan must be having a cow.)

By chance, I spent part of Monday at a conference on poverty sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. I am not a member of that church but I have the deepest respect for Catholic teachings on social and economic justice. It's not something that somebody made up yesterday. Or 500 years ago. And it's not negotiable.

It's not just or even primarily about charity or acts of compassion, although the diocese is the second largest provider of aid in the state (only the state Department of Health and Human Resources does more). It's also about justice and the demand for laws and policies that promote the common good.

One of the speakers today was Rev. Larry Snyder, head of Catholic Charities USA, who spoke of a better metaphor than the one we usually use regarding services and programs for low income people. The usual image is of a safety net. But if you think about it, nets have holes and things slip through. Fr. Snyder argued that we really need is not a net but a trampoline that helps people bounce back higher.

Works for me.

Stoned and unequal

Yesterday I happened to attend a meeting of WV county officials and had a great conversation with a prosecutor from the southern coalfields who spoke of the awful epidemic of prescription drug abuse in that part of the state. Low income people and low income communities are the hardest hit.

Those familiar with WV will recall that these southern counties are both the ones from which huge amounts of coal have been taken and are also those with high rates of poverty and unemployment, big inequalities in terms of power, and not a whole lot in the way of empowerment for most people.

By chance, this morning I read the following passage about an experiment with monkeys in the book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett:

In a clever experiment, researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina took twenty macaque monkeys and housed them for a while in individual cages They next housed the animals in groups of four and observed the social hierarchies which developed in each group, noting which animals were dominant and which were subordinate. They scanned the monkey's brains before and after they were put into groups. Next, they taught the monkeys that they could administer cocaine to themselves by pressing a lever-they could take as much or as little as they liked.

The results of this experiment were remarkable. Monkeys that had become dominant had more dopamine activity in their brains than they had exhibited before becoming dominant, while monkeys that became subordinate when housed in groups showed no changes in their brain chemistry. The dominant monkeys took much less cocaine than the subordinate monkeys. In effect, the subordinate monkeys were medicating themselves against the impact of their low social status. 

Golly, it's a good that that never happens with people, huh?

ECONOMIC JUSTICE 101. Here's a take on the subject by yours truly.

ZOMBIE BEES? A friend of mine from upstate New York just sent me this link. Thanks, CR! The good news is that at least zombie bees don't eat other bees and turn the ones they bite into other zombies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Knocking holes in the darkness

I can't think of anything better to say on Martin Luther King Jr. Day than to recommend that the Gentle Reader check out this interview with civil rights leader Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles about the life, work and death of Dr. King.

Kyles draws on a figure of speech attributed to the young Robert Louis Stevenson. The story goes that one night the boy looked out his window at a lamp lighter who went from pole to pole lighting old fashioned gas street lamps and called out "There's a man coming down the street punching holes in the darkness!"

Kyles suggests that this is a good image for the work of Dr. King and a challenge for the rest of us.

(Given the general state of the world, it should be steady work anyhow...)

ON THAT NOTE, this item argues that if Dr. King was around today he'd be talking about poverty and economic justice.

HAITI. Here's more about the American Friends Service Committee's response to the earthquake in Haiti.

A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE was honored by El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia for her contributions to the causes of civil rights and social justice.

OTHER TOOL USING ANIMALS. Add crows to the list.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"...even more than in the past"

WV workers rally at state capitol for the Employee Free Choice Act. I think this picture is about three years old.

It is one of my rituals after returning from a trip to comb through newspapers and other sources to catch up and see what I might have missed.

One story that I found to be particularly interesting was the release of Pope Benedict's encyclical, CARITAS IN VERITATE.

The encyclical is a very strong statement in support of economic justice and a strong critique of "unleashed" capitalism. Among other things, it contains a strong endorsement of labor unions and strongly supports the rights of workers to organize:

Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.

And that's not all. In the words of Thomas Reese, S.J., writing for the Washington Post,

Although Benedict's emphasis in the encyclical is on the theological foundations of Catholic social teaching, amid the dense prose there are indications, as shown above, that he is to the left of almost every politician in America. What politician would casually refer to "redistribution of wealth" or talk of international governing bodies to regulate the economy? Who would call for increasing the percentage of GDP devoted to foreign aid? Who would call for the adoption of "new life-styles 'in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments'"?

What would Joe the Plumber say?

Some other items that struck my eye included:

*this overview of health care systems in different countries;

*this piece that reminds us that even people with health insurance can go broke in a medical crisis; and

*this news story that reports lower rates of bankruptcies in states that don't seize wages.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: CELESTIAL

CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

Caption: The western wall of the Jerusalem Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is early Christian history. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

One of the most tragic features of Christian history is its role in the rise of anti-Semitism, which has had horrible consequences over the centuries.

It's important to remember that Jesus was a Jew who spent virtually his entire ministry among Jews, with perhaps a few exceptional encounters such as those related in the gospels. All of his earliest followers were Jewish. The whole New Testament, with the exception of Luke, Acts and possibly some minor epistles, was written by Jewish believers in Jesus. Likewise, many early converts were either Jewish or were Gentile "God fearers" sympathetic to Judaism.

However, controversies soon arose between the new religion and the old, reflecting Christian anger over the failure of more Jews to convert. While many Jews of the time expected some kind of Messiah, for the overwhelming majority, Jesus did not fit the bill. He was, after all, a peasant who was executed in the most degrading way and many recalled a passage in Deuteronomy that said that anyone hanged on a tree was accursed by God (21:23).

Early Christians engaged in a series of polemics in which they attempted to present themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Hebrew Bible and Jews as those who rejected their redeemer and ultimately God. The Jewish connections were further frayed as more and more Gentiles joined the movement.

Also, as early Christians attempted to survive in a Roman world, they began to shift the blame for his crucifixion from Rome to the Jewish leaders and even to the entire Jewish people. At the same time, Roman anti-Judaism increased after the Jewish revolts of the first and second centuries which resulted in the destruction of the Temple and the disperal of Jews throughout the empire.

Finally, when the church became the official religion of the empire, the state was fully set for centuries of bloody persecution.

IRAQ. Despite the Bush administration's efforts to put a triumphal spin on events in Iraq, the Washington Post reported the following:

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month.

A GOOD RESOURCE for current information about the need for "An Economy that Works for All" is here.

MORE ON THE JUDICIAL HELLHOLE CLAPTRAP can be found here and here.

NEW DRUGS could change the nature of death, according to this Wired Science item. The post speculates that with new anti-aging drugs, people would still die, but without a lot of the distasteful preliminaries.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE PLAGUE YEARS

Caption: The Tower Hill Sundial in London. Photo by wallyg via everystockphoto.

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

My favorite work by Camus is kind of a downer, unless you really like reading about massive lethal epidemics. It's his novel The Plague and I've gone back to it over and over again through the years.

Set in the still French Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s, it chronicles the outbreak of plague that begins with dying rats and spreads through the quarantined population. It's at least in part about how people bear up in an unbearable situation, some with quiet heroism and some without.

Obviously, there was a strong metaphorical factor involved given other world events in the 1940s. We seem to be living through a metaphorical plague of our own the last few years.

The part I go back to the most involves that character Tarrou, a stranger in town. His father was a magistrate who prosecuted criminal offenses. Tarrou once attended the execution by guillotine of someone his father had convicted and was repelled by what he saw.

He rebelled and joined a radical movement (obviously the Communist Party) and worked with it for years until he realized that there too he was complicit with murder:

And thus I came to understand that I, anyhow had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people; that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles that could only end that way...

...I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone or justifies others' putting him to death.

Here's the take home message:

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, as far as possible not to join forces with the pestilences.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE UPDATE. Residents of Logan County, WV are calling for a positive public event in response to the kidnapping and torture of Megan Williams, an African American woman. The event, likely to be a candlelight vigil and prayer service, is planned for next week. Look for details here Monday.

HAVE NOT NATION. Here's a good column by Harold Meyerson from the Washington Post about why more Americans are identifying themselves as have-nots.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's the latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute highlighting unequal--and sometimes negative--wage growth between 1979 and 2004.

FOOTPRINT MALFUNCTIONS. Our good friends at the conservative WV State Journal appear to be taking the heroic stand that global warming is a hoax or at least a totally natural thing. Somehow they managed to fit that in between paens to Unleashing Capitalism. To clear the palate, here's an op-ed by Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic.

ROLLING OUT THE PROGRAM. It looks like Unleashing Capitalism is the new holy writ of WV Republicans.

CHIP PASSES THE SENATE by a 67-29 margin.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. There has been positive action in Congress lately dealing with the high cost of higher education.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THINKING ABOUT MATH

Caption: Seamus McGoogle contemplates the square root of -1.

El Cabrero has been brooding this week about the nature of science and knowledge. Must be the weather.

One aspect of human knowledge that I find fascinating is math. I like thinking about math--much more than actually doing it, anyway.

For several years I taught GED classes in Head Start centers in southern WV. Ordinarily, one might think people do a better job of teaching things they're better at (pardon the ending of a phrase with a preposition), but that wasn't the case with me.

I've done a lot of writing over the years, a good bit of it for publication, but I was a total flop at trying to teach it. It always seemed like there were an infinite number of ways to write just about anything.

Math was different. I was horrible at it but at least there were rules.

Sometimes, just to mess with (my own and) the students' minds, I'd ask them why math seemed to work--was it just the way our minds were wired or was it something "out there"? Was it discovered or made up?

As a pragmatist, I'm not sure it matters, but the question is an interesting and old one. For the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (of eponymous theorem fame), math was the key to the secrets of the universe. He was a pioneer in geometry who claimed to be able to hear the music of the heavenly spheres. He also discovered the mathematical relationship between notes on a musical scale.

Plato was an admirer both of Pythagoras and math. He believed our mathematical ideas were an innate knowledge of the eternal forms. The following words were said to have been written above the doors to his Academy: "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter."

That would be one more club I'd never be able to join.

A DAY LATE AND... This really should have been in yesterday's post, but July 24 was the day when the federal minimum wage went up for the first time in over 10 years. That was a good fight. The next one will be to make sure we don't wait 10 more years before it happens again. Here's a good op-ed on the subject by Holly Sklar.

IS THAT A PYTHON IN YOUR EVERGLADE OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY... From the NY Times, it looks like released Burmese pythons are having a good time in Florida these days.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. The title of this op-ed says it all: If This Is Such a Rich Country, Why Are We Getting Squeezed?. It's a good analysis of growing inequality and what we can do about it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHAT THEY SAID...

Caption: Backward priorities aren't going to get us where we want to go.

More than a year ago, writer Holly Sklar wrote a strong op-ed with the title "Wanted: A High Road Economy." The immediate context of the piece was the now successful campaign to raise the long stagnant minimum wage.

But she also raises some serious issues about the choices that continue to confront us as we try to meet the economic challenges of the 21st century, both in the U.S. as a whole and in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

Again, it comes down to the low road or the high road:

Waving the banner of "global competitiveness," corporate and government policymakers are running the U.S. economy into the ground. We are becoming a nation of Scrooge-Marts and outsourcers—with an increasingly low-wage workforce instead of a growing middle class.

She cites an all too familiar list of current trends: record numbers of Americans without health care; stunning trade deficits and debt to other countries; declining public investments in infrastructure and R&D; growing inequality and personal debt; etc.

She notes:

We will not prosper in the 21st century global economy by relying on 1920s corporate greed, 1950s tax revenues, downwardly mobile wages and global-warming energy policies. We will not prosper relying on disinvestment in place of reinvestment. We can't succeed that way any more than farmers can "compete" by eating their seed corn.

The low road doesn't even make good business sense. One of the sources cited by Sklar is the book How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing To Make It In Today's Global Economy by Suzanne Berger. In discussing the results of a study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center of more than 500 international companies, Berger says:

Contrary to the widely held belief of many managers, we conclude that solutions that depend on driving down costs by reducing wages and social benefits—in advanced countries or in emerging economies—are always dead ends. . .

Strategies based on exploiting low-wage labor end up in competitive jungles, where victories are vanishingly thin and each day brings a new competitor. . . As low-end firms that compete on price move from one overcrowded segment of the market to the next, there is virtually no chance of gaining any durable advantage. The activities that succeed over time are, in contrast, those that build on continuous learning and innovation.

In an interview from MIT's openDOOR in 2006, Berger makes it plain:

Globalization can continue to produce great benefits for our society--on the condition that we strengthen the infrastructure of education and research. We also need to recognize that openness has costs, and that the costs and benefits are not evenly distributed. Many who lose jobs because of the relocation of production or trade will not get new ones that pay as well. So if we are going to maintain broad public support for an economy open to international flows of goods and services and capital, we need to be sure that losing a job does not mean losing a family's access to basic necessities, like health care, provision in old age, and education.

That is talking sense.

EFCA HELD HOSTAGE IN SENATE. The U.S. Senate voted 51-48 for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) yesterday. Sixty votes were needed to move the measure to a floor vote. Supporters are planning on keeping up the campaign as long as it takes. Even yesterday's vote represents a victory of sorts--it's the first time in ages that a majority of senators voted to reform labor laws.

YOUNG AMERICANS in a new New York Times/CBS/MTV poll seem to be moving to the left of their elders on some issues. Details here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE BIG SQUEEZE AND OTHER STUFF

Caption: These chickens had to scratch for a living.

(First, a correction to yesterday's post on "The Two Bums." A closer inspection of the photo reveals that there were in fact three bums in that picture. Second, a reminder that all the posts this week are loosely connected. Please click on the last few days if this is your first visit.)

Something good happened to this country between the end of World War II and the early 1970s. In that period, the US economy grew dramatically.

And, while there has always been great inequality in this country, the benefits of growth were shared among all sectors of the population.

But that positive trend came to an end in the 1970s. Contributing factors were the costs of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and economic stagflation that baffled many economists.

Stagflation refers to a slow economy with high unemployment accompanied by high inflation. This puzzled many economists at the time as the conventional wisdom was that you either had unemployment or inflation but not both at the same time.

Real wages for American workers began to stagnate and fall, a tendency that continued for more than a decade.

This crisis created the political opening for right wing, which had been building its political and ideological base since the mid 1960s , to gain power. They were aided in part by growing resentment among middle income Americans against “welfare queens,” unions, minorities, a backlash against the civil rights movement, etc.

The growth of the religious right enabled this movement to exploit divisive issues and “culture wars" and thus gain support from middle and lower income Americans for an agenda which would ultimately betray them.

Let them eat jihad…

Once in power, the right pursued policies that made the income gap between the very wealthy and everyone else begin to grow. As a result, when the economy grew, the benefits weren’t shared across the population as they had been in the post war period.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (get link) after tax income for the wealthiest one percent of the population grew by 111 percent between 1979 and 2002. It grew by 48 percent for the top fifth.

If the post-war pattern had continued, there would have been similar gains across the board. Instead, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the middle fifth gained on 15 percent, while the bottom fifth gained five percent. By other measures, lower income Americans actually lost ground.

As previously noted in this blog, Census data for every year since 2000 has reported increasing poverty, stagnant wages, and a growth in the number of the uninsured for every year since 2000.

It can’t be stressed enough that this growing inequality was not the result of “market” forces acting alone but through the use of political policies to shift budget priorities, promote trade deals benefiting multinational investors at the expense of ordinary people, attacks on unions, and cuts to the safety net.

As Dean Baker, economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has repeatedly pointed out, there has been a conscious and deliberate use of the powers of government for the last 25 years to redistribute wealth upward. He calls it “a right turn leading to a dead end.”

The country can no longer afford the politics of resentment and the circular firing squad it creates.

But there is some good news, about which more tomorrow…

NO COMMENT. This item appeared in the UK Guardian.

WEST VIRGINIANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE WAR. A number of groups, including WV Patriots for Peace, WV Citizen Action Group, the AFL-CIO, and AFSC held a press conference yesterday on the occasion of President Bush's veto of the Iraq supplemental.

FIG TREE NOTES. Here's the latest edition of Jim Lewis's Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HAPPY OR LUCKY?

Caption: It's hard to say if this couple is happy, but they're probably going to get lucky pretty soon.


You can find lots of topics in this week's Goat Rope but the guiding thread is a story about happiness from the Histories of Herodotus. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier posts.

The story goes that when the very wealthy King Croesus of Lydia (in modern Turkey) entertained the Athenian sage Solon as guest, he had his servants display his vast wealth and then asked Solon who was the happiest of men.

He was fishing for a compliment, as La Cabra sometimes says (although she's not above doing that herself).

And, like many fishermen, he was disappointed. As discussed in the last two posts, Croesus wasn't a winner or even a runner up on Solon's list. Finally in anger, he said

That's all very well, my Athenian fried; but what of my own happiness? Is it so utterly contemptible that you won't even compare me with mere common folk like those you have mentioned?

Solon replied

My lord, I know God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; and you question me about the lot of man. Listen then: as the years lengthen out, there is much both to see and to suffer which one would wish otherwise...You can see from that, Croesus, what a chancy thing life is. You are very rich, and you rule a numerous people; but the question you asked me I will not answer, until I know that you have died happily. Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in prosperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with a modest competence have had good luck...mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy but lucky...

Look to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him.

Croesus sent Solon on his way, convinced that he was a fool. But that wasn't the end of the story, as we'll see tomorrow.

GRATUITOUS ANIMAL FEATURE FILM: Fresh from Goat Rope Studios, here is a brief feature film called Dueling Peacocks. (Fear not, the duel involves voices rather than pistols or sabres.) By the way, this is a talking picture. Just don't turn it up too loud.

TAX PROPAGANDA. Don't tell him I said anything nice about him, but Antipode had a good post about "Tax Freedom Day" in his Mountain State Review blog.

EXPANDING THE MIDDLE CLASS is an idea that resonates with many Americans. According to Shawn Fremstad and Margy Waller of the virtual think tank Inclusion, the best way to do that is to improve low wage jobs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WEDGES OR BRIDGES? but first some cool stuff from WV

Caption: Workers rally at WV state capitol in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

BREAKING WV NEWS. It was a hot time in the old town yesterday when workers and citizens held a feisty rally in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the capitol building of El Cabrero's Beloved State of West Virginia (ECBSWV).

(Briefly, EFCA would make it easier for workers to join unions, raise penalties for companies that threaten, fire or otherwise illegally intimidate workers trying to organize, and provide mediation and arbitration for first contracts. For more on EFCA, check the link on Monday's post.)

That bill has just been reported out of committee in the U.S. House of Representatives where it will soon face a floor vote.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE LEGISLATURE, the WV House of Delegates yesterday passed a resolution in support of EFCA. I regret to say that I missed the debate, but I'm told the rhetoric was flying like minnie balls in a Civil War battle.

In another interesting WV note, reportedly 25 delegates have signed on to a resolution opposing the "surge" of troops in Iraq. This may come for a vote as soon as Monday.

The resolution is pretty Spartan. It simply states

That the West Virginia House of Delegates and the citizens of West Virginia will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

Further resolved:

That the West Virginia House of Delegates disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Be it further resolved, That a suitable copy of this resolution shall be sent to George W. Bush, President of the United States, to the Congressional delegation of our state, and to the United States Congress.

OK, BACK TO A MAJOR NATIONAL ISSUE. One of the nastier aspects of political life for the last few decades has been the use of wedge issues which have been cynically exploited by clever operators.

Often, these have pitted the middle class against the poor and both against themselves for the benefit of the very wealthy.

It's the old divide and rule thing which I believe was first articulated by Julius Caesar, although the practice is older than him.

In the Feb. 2007 issue of Sojourners, Tamara Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, calls for the building of a "grand alliance" between the poor and the middle class.

The challenge to end poverty and improve economic opportunities for low-income households must be linked to the broad economic insecurity plaguing America’s middle class. As the concentration of income and wealth has reached historic proportions, Americans at the bottom and the middle of our income distribution have suffered the consequences. Rising costs of essentials—health care, housing, energy, college—are a shared anxiety. A reliance on high-cost debt, risky home finance (and refinance) deals, and the proliferation of predatory lending threaten to strip the working poor and the middle class of the few assets they can claim.

Some advocates for the poor may see this as a step back, but the fate of the two groups is linked.

And besides, purity is generally politically useless.

(El Cabrero, a modern day student of Aristotle, would argue that the main problem with the middle class is that it isn't big enough. I say let's get the poor folks in there too.)

Draut argues persuasively that

Unless we build a broad coalition around a shared agenda for the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution chart, it's very likely that the next generation will indeed be worse off than their parents.

As they say, do the math.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BUSH BUDGET BAD NEWS FOR MOST AMERICANS

Caption: The Bush administration has its priorities backwards once again.

Here we go again! President Bush recently submitted his proposed federal budget to Congress.

Here's the non-surprise of the year...it contains more tax breaks for the wealthy and program cuts for just about everyone else.

Oh yeah, and lots of money for the unnecessary war in Iraq.

Here's a preliminary analysis from Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. A sample:

In a sign of the President’s misguided priorities, his budget puts extremely large tax cuts for the most affluent Americans ahead of the needs of low- and middle-income families as well as future generations. Low- and middle-income Americans would be hit by budget cuts in areas from education to protection of the environment and assistance to the poor. Future generations would foot the bill for the much larger long-term deficits that the President’s extravagant tax cuts would produce. The tax cuts in the budget far exceed proposed reductions in domestic programs.

Among programs targeted for cuts are the Children's Health Insurance Program, low income home energy assistance, child care assistance for low income working families, Head Start, food programs for low income elderly Americans. Cuts are also proposed for mandatory programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax cuts for the wealthy would be made permanent, adding between $2.3 to $3.5 trillion in costs over the next ten years. Needless to say, all this would increase the nation's growing inequality and the national debt.

As the Charleston Gazette noted about the war budget:

The White House plan would pump another $100 billion into the Iraq and Afghan wars this year, plus $145 billion more next year. The Pentagon budget would leap to $625 billion a year — perhaps exceeding the warmaking expenditures of all other nations on Earth, combined.

CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE. The Bush budget won't be received with many cartwheels in Congress, where the new majority will face some difficult decisions. As the New York Times

put it yesterday,

...Democrats know that the only way they can find the revenue to restore the administration’s proposed spending cuts would be to cut back on military spending, delay their stated intentions to balance the budget or rescind the Bush tax cuts in future years. They are not especially eager to do any of these.

The most likely result, even some Democrats acknowledge, will be a limited reshaping of the budget by restoring some proposed cuts in a variety of domestic programs, including children’s health care, Head Start and home heating assistance for the poor and the elderly.

I hope they'll do better than that. In any case, advocates of working people, the elderly, and children will have another budget battle in the days ahead.

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If you ever get really bored, try this. Watch infomercials on TV. It doesn't matter what they're for--exercise gear, cleaning materials, cookware, health gimmicks. Then call the toll-free number and ask whoever answers stupid questions about the product, such as a. Can this be used for time travel? b. Will it remove the taint of Original Sin? Does it convey the power of invisibility? El Cabrero and his cabritos used to pass many a dull afternoon in this manner.

Goat Rope...your source for better living.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS, AGAIN

Caption: At least these chickens don't think they're hawks.

The Bush administration has a pretty consistent record of disregarding the warning voices of experienced military and intelligence experts.

Here's hoping they don't do the same thing again.

According to the Associated Press, former high-ranking U.S. officials are urging for a diplomatic rather than military approach to U.S. tensions with Iran:

LONDON - Three former high-ranking U.S. military officers have called for Britain to help defuse the crisis over Iran's nuclear program, saying military action against Tehran would be a disaster for the region.

In a letter to the Sunday Times newspaper, the three former officers urged President Bush to open talks, "without preconditions," with the Iranian government in a bid to find a diplomatic solution.

The signatories were retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C.; retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, former head of U.S. Central Command; and Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan, former director of the Center for Defense Information.

So far, in the two way contest between sanity and administration policy, sanity comes in a distant third.

BONUS FEATURE. There is a great deal of evidence that social inequalities are hardening in the U.S. and that that social mobility now is actually greater in some European countries. For a breakdown, here's an op-ed by your humble goat herder in yesterday's Gazette-Mail.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MINIMUM WAGE TO MOVE IN U.S. SENATE: PLEASE CALL TOLL-FREE, and a brief mention of trains and locomotives

Caption: Once more unto the breech...Seamus McGoogle prepares himself for a final push to raise the federal minimum wage.

The word on the proverbial streets (not that there is much in the way of streets at Goat Rope Farm) is that the U.S. Senate is set to take up a bill to raise the minimum wage as soon as Monday.

The American Friends Service Committee and the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign are urging people to call their Senators today and Monday to urge them to raise the minimum wage and reject amendments that undermine workers rights or are fiscally irresponsible.

The AFSC is providing a toll-free number to call: 1-800-459-1887.

Here's a suggested script from Let Justice Roll:

Step 1: Call 1-800-459-1887 to be connected to the U.S. Capitol Switchboard.

Step 2: Ask for the office of one of your senators. (To find out your senators' names, click here.)

Step 3: Tell the person who answers the phone:

"Hi, my name is _______________ and I'm a constituent. Please tell Senator _______ to vote for S. 2, the minimum-wage bill. Please oppose ALL amendments, including “poison pill” tax breaks and assaults on worker rights. Will Senator ___ vote in favor of S. 2 and oppose amendments to it?"

Step. 4: Repeat Steps 1, 2, and 3 for your second senator.

BACKGROUND. On Jan. 10, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 315 to 116 to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by 2009. The bill faces a tougher fight in the Senate.

Currently, a full time minimum wage worker earns $10,712 per year--nearly $6,000 below the federal poverty level for a family of three. In the 10 years since the federal minimum wage was last raised--the longest period since we had a minimum wage--Congress has raised its own pay by $31,000. That's three years full time work at the current minimum. It's past time for a change.

The Let Justice Roll soundbite says it all: a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

You can find all kinds of facts and figures about the need to raise the minimum at the LJR website above and copious coverage of the topic, with pictures of Seamus, in the Goat Rope archives.

It's been a long, hard fight, but we're almost there. Please do your part--Seamus needs a rest.

NOW A WORD ON TRAINS. El Cabrero recently "heard" from another blogger that merely mentioning the word "trains" will drive up hits to blogs. This is a test. (Note: there is method to my madness. Anyone cool enough to like trains is likely to be cool enough to call their senators in support of raising the minimum wage.)

In addition, it is the official position of Goat Rope that trains, locomotives and related things are cool.

In fact, sometimes El Cabrero dreams of trains. And like tunnels and stuff.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DOGS, CATS...WHY NOT PEOPLE?

Caption: These guys are protected. Why not workers?

William Greider, writing in the Jan. 29th Nation, asks an interesting question. Here's the background.

Several years ago, American consumers were mortified to discover that some of the collars on their imported coats were made with the fur of cats and dogs. Congress responded by passing the Dog and Cat Protection Act of 2000, which banned imported garments made with cat or dog fur and "included fines of up to $10,000 for each illegal item and barred repeat violators from importing fur products."

(El Cabrero devoutly hopes that the bill does not apply to those who wear or are worn by live domestic animals or clothing made from other materials and incidentally decorated with cat or dog hair. But I digress...)

Here's the question:

If Congress can protect the rights of dogs and cats in foreign trade, will it do the same for the young girls--some as young as 11--who work in sweatshops? They stitch garments for as little as 6 cents an hour and typically work twelve- to sixteen-hour days, sometimes longer and often in brutal conditions?

Greider reports that anti-sweatshop legislation is in the works. One is modelled on a bill introduced last year by Senator Byron Dorgan and Representative (now Senator) Sherrod Brown.

It bars imports produced under internationally defined "sweatshop" conditions and holds companies accountable for using forced labor or denying basic human rights to workers, including the right to organize.

Even if the proposed legislation doesn't go anywhere soon, this could raise public awareness and force politicians to take a stand on the issues.

ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT NOTE, this is encouraging.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED