I was reading this piece by Robert Reich in Salon and let me just say that reading lines like "But structuralists like myself don't believe that the economy can fully recover unless these underlying problems are addressed." makes me giddy. Hang on with me peeps. It's time for another round of Red Queen gets all deep and philosophical on ya.
I am a structuralist. Structuralism is a not currently popular philosophy that posits that everything has a structure including human relationships, language, politics, etc. and that by changing the basic structure, you change society. It's pretty basic really. Politically it went out of favor with the rise of the neocons and the neolibs (though that fact that those two belief systems exist is proof that we need changes to the structure now just as much as we needed them during the 60s and 70s). We don't get to be the post modern society (post racist, post feminist) until we deal with the fundamental flaws of how we distribute power and resources. And that means changing the structure. (Dear favorite anthropology proff who looked at me in horror when I told you I was a structuralist- I"m STILL RIGHT!)
In the early 70s, with the Cold War raging and two super powers holding proxy wars on nearly every continent, Immanuel Wallerstein developed World Systems Theory as a way of explaining power and dominance on a global scale. It was a way to explain and prove the flawed structure we use for distributing power (political) and resources (economics). But Wallerstein's theory of core, periphery and semi-periphery actors doesn't just apply to nations on a world stage. It also applies to domestic systems. Look at domestic economics and you have the core (the rich) the periphery (the poor) and the semi-periphery (the middle class). Look at the nuclear family structure and you have the core (the father) the periphery (the children) and the semi-periphery (the mother). Same thing is true of corporate structures, you have the core (the board, the CEO, etc) the periphery (average workers) and the semi-periphery (management). What this kind of system does is insulates the core by making the semi-periphery responsible for keeping the periphery in line. The semi-periphery does so in the hopes of one day making it to the core (see Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony which explains that people do things in the best interest of the power class because they believe it is "common sense". This explains all the blue collar workers who vote Republican because they think taxes are a bad thing, when higher taxes will give them greater benefits).
But back to Robert Reich and the structure that is our current economic system.
As late as 1976, the richest 1 percent of the country took home about 9 percent of the total national income. By 2006, they were pocketing more than 20 percent. But the rich don't spend as much of their income as the middle class and the poor do -- after all, being rich means that you already have most of what you need. (Emphasis mine)
I call this the gallon of milk theory. Say you 10 families with $10 in their budget for milk and one family with $100 in their budget for milk and everybody buys exactly as much milk as they are going to need. The family with $100 to spend is still only going to spend $10 on milk, otherwise they'd have a fridge full of yogurt in no time flat. The middle class and the poor spend more money on more goods than the rich ever can or will. So making sure that the middle class and the poor have enough money to spend on those things is better for the economy overall and in the end better for the wealthy too, as they make more money off more sales and are less likely to have their heads chopped off in French Revolution style uprising.
But that is not how we've been running the economy for the last 35ish years. We've been running on the trickle down theory, that if you give to the rich it will eventually trickle down to the poor. But a better structure would be to give to the poor and middle class, through higher wages and universal benefits for healthcare and education so that money can bubble up to the rich. The more people that can afford a safe and comfortable life, the more stable our entire economic system is and the less cyclical it becomes (that's also basic Keyenesian economics- the it's government's job to temper economic cycles by taxing during booms and spending during busts).
So how's Obama doing on changing the structure? So far, I am not impressed. The bank bailout was money to the rich without a single dime going to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Healthcare has been backburnered (and was never really health care but a more convoluted version of the private system we have now), and half the workforce was basically overlooked in the stimulus bill. For every 10 to 20 construction jobs created there may be one or two new secretarial positions.
The structure is broken. We will never recover economically if we don't attend to that first. It is the individual American workers and families who must come first, not business or banks. When American families can afford both cereal and milk for their kids, and don't have to worry about an emergency room visit being cause for bankruptcy, then things will be on their way to improving. But anything that doesn't take care of people first will do no more good than the Bush tax rebate checks did.
The new structure must be built on people first, business second.
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