Anarchist economics and political economy

Posted in the now-defunct Left Eye on Books, November 2012.  Slight editorial changes to bring up-to-date--GF

 

Political economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy) is the name originally given to economics during its early days of development under the classical economists such as Adam Smith, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith) David Ricardo, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo) John Stuart Mill, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill) and its enfant terrible, Karl Marx. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx) But I want to use it in a different, a “new,” sense here, as the intersection of politics and economics; because, while economics itself has become a highly technical field, it is more often politics that informs economic policy and practice—that is, just what is done to create jobs, promote equality, produce goods and services that benefit all, and basically provide for the material benefit of society.  Further, while much of economics, or classical political economy for that matter, is implicitly or explicitly pro-capitalist, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism), significant objections to capitalism have been raised through the economic analysis of capitalism itself, as well as through the positing of an alternative political order to capitalism—chiefly, of course, by the left.  Both historically, and in the present, the left divides broadly on the alternative polity to capitalism into two main camps: socialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) and anarchism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism)

 “The Accumulation of Freedom” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) develops both the anarchist critique of capitalism and the project of an anarchist society and its achievement through 19 essays written by anarchist scholar/activists, not all of them professional academics.  This scholarly activism is exemplified in the biographies of the three editors themselves, Deric Shannon, (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) Anthony J. Nocella II (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) and John Asimakopoulos (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0).  Appropriately for the discussion of “new” political economy and economic analysis as seen through anarchist eyes, “The Accumulation of Freedom” is subtitled “Writings on Anarchist Economics.”

 

Anarchist critiques of both capitalism and socialism have taken on an active new life in recent years on the left, and anarchist movements are now an integral part of it.  The anarchist notion of direct participation in the restructuring of society, the notion of non-hierarchical social arrangements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_organization), and full democratic participation in all decision-processes have become integrally part of the world left theory and practice, often displacing previous left attraction to socialism and Marxism-Leninism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_Leninism) Anarchism and anarchist movements have come prominently into play since the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization) in 1999, (http://socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19622) and are integrally involved in both the activism and the political theory of Occupy movements. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement) The “Postscript” in “The Accumulation of Freedom” written by the three editors in November 2011, at the height of Occupy Wall Street, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street) expresses both the indebtedness of anarchism to the Occupy notion, its cross-fertilization by Occupy, and posits directions within an anarchist perspective that build on and extend Occupy notions.

An important development concomitant with the rise of contemporary anarchism is the notion of effective socialist-anarchist alliances around issues of common concern, and friendly, if critical, dialogue between socialists and anarchists.  Three contributions to this notion of positive socialist-anarchist alliance have been articulated by socialists who see commonality despite differences with anarchist activists.  The first of these was Ursula McTaggart’s “Can We Build Socialist-Anarchist Alliances?” in the socialist bimonthly Against the Current 141 (July/August 2009). (http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/2263) A more restrained, but equally positive, assessment of socialist-anarchist alliances was given by Marvin Mandell in his review article in New Politics 47 (Summer 2009), “Anarchism and Socialism.” (http://newpol.org/node/75) Mandell ends his review by writing, “I think Marxists and Anarchists can learn from each other and, in fact, need each other.”  George Fish also contributed to the positive discussion of socialist-anarchist alliances from a socialist perspective in his review of Noam Chomsky’s “Chomsky on Anarchism,” in New Politics 49 (Summer 2010), “Chomsky, Anarchism, and Socialism,” (http://newpol.org/node/423) and reviewed “The Accumulation of Freedom” in New Politics 54 (Winter 2013), http://newpol.org/content/anarchist-economics-and-socialist-anarchist-dialogue.

“The Accumulation of Freedom” reciprocates this socialist appreciation by several contributors borrowing much of their analyses and critiques of capitalism from socialist and Marxist sources and, in some cases, openly expressing appreciation for Marx and Marxist ideas themselves.  This is sometimes quite hard to do for anarchists, as Marx was a foremost critic of anarchism and engaged in vigorous polemics with two of its leading proponents, Mikhail Bakunin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin) and Pierre-Joseph Prudhon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon) Yet in many ways the socialist and anarchist critiques of capitalism dovetail, and few socialists would have quarrel with the extensive critiques of contemporary capitalism and its destructiveness laid out here.  Further, these analytical essays, contained in Parts 2 and 3 of the book, are extensive, well documented, and well done, giving great elucidation and development to the topic.  The only analytical essay in these sections I was disappointed with was Abbey Volcano and Deric Shannon’s “Capitalism ion the 200s: Broad Strokes for Beginners,” which I found more descriptive than analytical, but perhaps that is why it is subtitled as it is—it is aimed at beginners to economic analysis of capitalism, not so much at veterans like me.

There are many essays that discuss the how-to-do-it aspect of anarchist social transformation, but they all share in common the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and cooperative, mutual aid and support approach that is an integral part of contemporary anarchism.  Unlike many socialists, anarchists rely more on direct action and determined groups of people just doing it, from Occupy movements to workers taking over factories and running them themselves, as detailed in Marie Trigona’s (http://www.blogger.com/profile/14345188450610946384) “Occupy, Resist, Produce! Lessons from Latin America’s Occupied Factories.”  Here anarchists differ in emphasis and tactics generally from socialists in that they are impatient with socialist efforts to gain control of state power and use the power of the state to transform capitalism and create the new socialist state order because, of course, anarchists oppose the very existence of the state itself.  But they also believe that the people themselves can organize to provide for their needs and wants independently of, and without reliance on, the state and state power.

“The Accumulation of Freedom” also contains useful guides on tactics of resistance, protest and effective opposition.  Chief among these is Robin Hahnel’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hahnel) “The Economic Crisis and Libertarian Socialists,” based on a speech Hahnel gave in Greece to anti-austerity activists.  Hahnel lays out a multi-point guide for political action to restructure the European economies such as Greece’s that have been devastated by neoliberalism, and articulates in this a program many a supposedly “tamer” socialist would heartily agree with.  D.T. Cochrane (http://yorku.academia.edu/DTCochrane) and Jeff Monaghan’s “Fight to Win! Tools for Confronting Capital” draws lessons on tactics and strategy from anti-corporate struggles that have been found useful and effective in a number of cases, from opposing sweatshops to getting divestment from arms manufacturing to stopping destructive research on animals.

The “Introduction” by the editors, “Anarchist Economics: A Holistic View,” the “Preface” by Ruth Kinna, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Kinna) and the “Afterword” by Michael Albert, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Albert) “Porous Borders of Anarchist Vision and Strategy” articulate points of convergence and divergence among anarchists themselves, and elucidate in detail that there is no more only one sole variety of anarchism than there is only one sole variety of socialism.  These three essays are especially useful for beginners in anarchist thought, though they have much also to teach the veterans, and they teach positively to all across the board—anarchists, socialists, as well as to interested political science and economic specialists and students who are neither.

Nor are people of color, both in the US “internal colony” and the Third World, slighted; Ernesto Aguilar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Aguilar) takes note of their struggles in “Call It an Uprising: People of Color and the Third World Organize against Capitalism,” emphasizing a positive intersection of race, class and resistance in sparking rebellion of the darker-skinned vast majority of the world’s oppressed against global capitalism.  While insightful in many ways, I did find this essay burdened too much with rhetorical flourish when it seemed to need more in-depth analysis. Aguilar raises many an intriguing thought, but then drops it without further discussion.  

But all this only demonstrates an extensiveness and diversity to anarchist thought and proposals that is rich and intriguing in itself, and certainly belies any notion of an anarchist “party line” or generic “one-size-fits-all” variety of anarchism.  The essays are well chosen, expressive of a wide diversity of approaches, and interesting and exciting to read.  I read ‘The Accumulation of Freedom” virtually nonstop; once I started, I simply could not put it down.  “The Accumulation of Freedom” is an important contribution to the study of this “new” political economy defined at the beginning, and is a book to heartily recommend.

*****

George Fish is a veteran socialist writer and poet in Indianapolis, Indiana, who has contributed to many left and alternative publications.  He has appeared in New Politics (http://newpol.org), In These Times (http://inthesetimes.com) and Socialism and Democracy (http://sdonline.org), among many others.  He has written on economics (in which he has a university degree), Marxism and socialism, mental health issues and pop music, formerly wrote on Indiana and Indianapolis as a journalist for Examiner.com, and has a political blog, “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com.   

  

A Crazy, Demented Way to Critique Psychiatry

Published May 2013 on the now-defunct Left Eye on Books website.  It expresses succinctly and well how I, as a psychiatric critic as well as a psychiatric survivor, regard the issues of mental health and frequently ineffective and counterproductive psychiatry--but also why I repudiate as well the totalizing rejectionism of psychiatry by certain of its seemingly left-wing critics--GF

 

While the violent, murderous mentally ill—Andrea Yates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates), Seung-hui Cho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho), Jared Lee Loughner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner),

James Holmes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes),

Adam Lanza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting), Jodi Arias [suspected of being bipolar] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Travis_Alexander) [To which we can now, sadly, add Elliott Rogers--GF]—have been much in the news as of late, completely overlooked is that the mentally ill are more likely to do violence to themselves than others, notably through suicide.   Further, in regard to the above psychiatry itself not only failed to protect society, it also failed to protect these persons from themselves.  This in itself is a telling indictment of the way psychiatry carries out its self-appointed task of helping those who are troubled, disturbed, dysfunctional, delusional, and dangerous to self and others.  Another side of “helping” psychiatry neither NAMI (http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=About_NAMI) nor the supporters of psychiatry, not to mention the psychiatric professionals themselves, talk about openly, except to make excuses.

But unconditional psychiatric opponent Seth Farber, Ph.D. (http://www.sethhfarber.com) will have none of this.  In his latest book, “The Spiritual Gift of Madness: the Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement,” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781594774485-2) Farber, somewhat an anomaly in being a family therapist himself as well as a totalizing anti-psychiatric critic, sees mental illness as neither dysfunctional nor debilitating, much less a form of major suffering by those mentally ill themselves; but rather, as a direct gift from God, who supposedly uses mental illness to communicate and share his blessings with mere mortals.  Farber thinks this is especially true for those diagnosed “bipolar” or “schizophrenic”—following R.D. Laing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing), who saw schizophrenia in particular as a sane way of responding to the madness of society itself.  For Farber, those diagnosed mentally ill are directly communicating with the supernatural through their illnesses. 

 

In this way Farber’s book is similar to William James’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James)  classic of psychology, “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780486421643-9)  James, like Farber, a religious person who eschewed much of traditional religion, while not seeing madness as such in the mystics whose visions he favorably documented, and whose sometimes bizarre behavior he overlooked, thought that these mystical visions were the direct communicating of humans with Divine Godhead himself, and that God approached humans not objectively, but, as he put it, “subliminally.”  Of course, some of the behavior of these mystics and seers James approvingly noted were at least bizarre in themselves—for example, Quaker religion founder George Fox suddenly feeling he was “called by God” to take off his shoes and stockings in the middle of winter and go into a village he’d never ever been in before, walking the village streets barefoot and crying aloud for the people there to repent; or the Catholic monk Soso, whose extreme self-abnegation and even self-flagellation are easily seen as fanatic and masochistic.

Further, although Farber has a very favorable and enthusiastic view of the Mad Pride Movement, a significant current among strongly anti-psychiatric former mental patients (or “mental health consumers,” as they are often colloquially called, though many prefer the term “psychiatric survivors”), this enthusiasm is not always shared by Mad Pride advocates themselves. For example, MindFreedom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindFreedom_International), which hosts a major Mad Pride website that Farber touts, disagrees with Farber himself that there is spiritual value in the troubled visions and hallucinations of mental illness—a point that, while Farber mentions in this book, he makes light of, as this direct evaluation by anti-psychiatric “psychiatric survivors” themselves undermines his very thesis in “Spiritual Gift of Madness.”

Personally, I can attest as a “mental health consumer” or “psychiatric survivor” myself that the notion of Mad Pride is far from delusional or incorrect—although I did not suffer from the hallucinations, delusions and unreal flights of fancy that accompany being bipolar or schizophrenic, but, instead, from years of very disabling and debilitating chronic depression.  Like many a “mental health consumer,” I found in my own personal experience that psychiatric treatment was most unhelpful for me, though parts of it I did indeed benefit from; moreover, I found much in my psychiatric treatment that was harmful to me personally, as well as the psychiatric system itself being fundamentally classist.   For I was consigned by lack of insurance and funds to the Community Mental Health Center system, or to university clinics as a student, where much of the treatment offered was indeed assembly-line and mediocre, and where even psychiatrists, therapists and other professionals who really cared about their patients came up against brick walls of disillusionment and frustration by the institutionalized bureaucracies that are endemic to such systems—and where the bureaucrats and those who can accept the bureaucracy in good cheer are often merely uncaring timeservers concerned more with job security than with what is optimal for their charges. 

So I do indeed have a form of Mad Pride, and am also anti-psychiatric, though not in Farber’s totalizing, rejectionist way; for which Farber consigns me to the camp of those who are “pro-psychiatry,” even though such a charge is as laughable as to regard the Greek far left group Syriza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Radical_Left) as “pro-capitalist” just because it runs on an electoral platform that calls for major restructuring of the Greek and European capitalist systems.  But yes, I am “reformist” in that, unlike Farber, I believe in the radical restructuring of psychiatry as it presently is in order to make it a humane, truly scientifically-based system that restores human dignity to the disturbed, the dysfunctional, the troubled and the delusional, and can make them productive, happy and fulfilled human beings, something neither psychiatry at present nor the suffering of mental illness itself make possible.

In self-disclosure I must state that I do indeed know Seth Farber personally, although only through phone conversations and e-mails.  I first encountered him when I answered the contact info given at the end of his first book, which, overall, is quite good, albeit mixed, with substantive weaknesses as well as strengths—“Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels: The Revolt Against the Mental Health System.” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780812692006-10)  Farber initially regarded me in a friendly way, as an ally of his in critiquing psychiatry.  I myself am a published author on mental health issues, with three papers of mine formerly posted on the website of the Boston, Massachusetts mental health consumer advocacy group the Transformation Center; these were dropped when the Center's website changed formats, but are still available for viewing at their original location, Frog Majik Music, http://frogmajikmusic.com. One of these, “Once a Nut, Always a Nut?” Farber himself called a “brilliant deconstruction” of the psychiatric system.  Farber even lists me in the “Acknowledgements” for “Spiritual Gift of Madness,” though he’s since broken off with me.   Principally because, as far as I can tell (Farber is obscure on why he actually came to consider me—mistakenly—as “pro-psychiatry”), I titled my essay on what it actually felt like to suffer major depressive episodes, “What It’s Like to Be Chronically Depressed,” as just that, for which Farber vehemently anathematized me for using the “psychiatric” term “chronically depressed.”  However, this essay was excerpted and published in a very astute and insightful book, Agnes B. Hatfield and Harriet P. Lefley’s “Surviving Mental Illness: Stress, Coping, and Adaptation,” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780898620221-1) which, quite remarkably, devotes sections II, III and IV to accounts from mental health consumers themselves on how they experienced mental illness and recovery.  Hatfield, in writing me to ask permission to quote from “What It’s Like to Be Chronically Depressed,” which had been previously published by the Indiana Department of Mental Health, called my “poignant essay,” as she called it “one of the best descriptions of depression I’ve read.”

 

But in praise of Farber, let me say that he is the author of five books to date, two of which, the aforementioned “Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels,” and the political “Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel,” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781567513264-2) I found especially informative.  Same as in “Spiritual Gift of Madness,” these other two books demonstrates Farber’s special deftness in the art of interviewing—he is a very good interviewer indeed, though he does tend to ask presumptively leading questions, often to the irritation of those he’s interviewing, in order to get the answer he’s specifically looking for, whether those interviewed wish to say that or not.  Farber has six such interviews in “Spiritual Gift of Madness,” and they are the most interesting parts of the book, far more interesting, lively, and informative than Farber’s leaden, didactic prose in which he expresses his own viewpoint.  Indeed, the book outside the lively interviews is a stiff, terribly dogmatic and one-sided polemic in which Farber concedes nothing of value to any who disagree with his central thesis that the hallucinations and delusions of mental illness are anything but the Voice of God communicating with humanity.  His view on this is totalizing, Manichean and black-and-white, and he attributes nothing but malevolence and conspiracy to psychiatry itself, seeing evil when a more thoughtful and astute critic, such as Robert Whitaker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whitaker_(author)) in “Anatomy of an Epidemic” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780307452412-15) or Mark Vonnegut, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Vonnegut) in his own autobiographical account of mental illness, “The Eden Express,” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781583225431-0) would see more correctly (as would I) malfeasance and self-serving “business as usual.”  Certainly, psychiatry as constituted today needs and deserves major criticism; however, in his totalizing rejection and ill-placed assertion of innate spirituality among those mentally ill, Seth Farber does only a disservice to such criticism with “Spiritual Gift of Madness.”              

 

 

 

Indiana’s Brain Drain—the problem that won’t go away

This is a reposting of the very first article I wrote for Examiner.com back in September 2009, and my direct honesty in writing about Indiana's still-continuing Brain Drain raised a slight maelstrom of concern, lest I be seen as tarnishing "images."  But I write it as I see it, no ifs, ands, or buts, the way an honest reporter should.  Slightly edited to bring it up-to-date--GF

According to the Indianapolis Star, the leading newspaper for the State of Indiana, 46.6% of Indiana’s recent college graduates leave the state annually, while the largest influx of in-migration to Indiana consists of those with less than a 10^th grade education.  Already, in a state with an economy that is still nearly 17% dominated by manufacturing, where layoffs are a major occurrence, only a third of Indiana’s workers have a high school diploma of the equivalent, and only 28% of Indiana’s workers in the prime age work group of 25-34 have college degrees.  This compares to 39% nationally.  Yet by 2025 60% of Indiana’s workforce will have to hold college degrees for the Indiana economy to stay productive. (Again from the Indianapolis Star.)

 

But right now a college graduate in Indiana is more likely to be told that she or he is “overqualified and underexperienced” and not hired, rather than hired.

 

I know that personally—for I am one of those “overqualified and underexperienced” college grads, are many of my friends and associates.  And like many of them, I work at CTB/McGraw-Hill in Indianapolis through the temp agencies Kelly Services or Dployit working the regular but strictly seasonal job of scoring the state school system standardized tests that have become de rigueur for the schools since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.  During the peak of the season, over 1,000 college grads are so employed—at a job which, while it requires a college degree, only pays as much as a security guard, with no benefits, and is essentially a niche job with few transferable skills.  (What we do is most akin to what is only part of a teacher’s job—grading tests and papers.)  Yet, for many of us, this is the most substantial employment we have all year round.

 

Jim Weddle, then General Manager for Kelly Services at CTB/McGraw-Hill, keenly aware of this pool of intellectual talent he had out there, has tried to shop around the list of Kelly employees scoring tests to other employers—to no avail.  Just not interested.

 

The recession has made things even worse, of course.  For example, during the 2009 test-scoring season at CTB/McGraw-Hill, from mid-March to mid-June, I saw returning to work many colleagues I hadn’t seen out there for the couple of years.  Their reason for coming back was all the same: laid off from the jobs they’d held previously, often with little prospect of being called back.

 

One such person in this situation is Jerry Hall, a lawyer eligible in Indiana to practice law, but unable to financially afford to do so.  For the last two years he’d had a steady but low-paying warehouse job that enabled him to get by, but he was laid off from that.  He was grateful that there was at least the test scoring to come back to, but had no idea of what he’d do for work when the season ended.  “I hope I can find a warehouse job that will pay me $8.00 an hour,” he said.  Right now he’s diligently looking for warehouse and other unskilled and semi-skilled work to tide him through—but Indiana had 10.7% unemployment in June 2009, considerably higher than the national average of 9.5%, so he was not optimistic.  More pointedly, even if he did have a client who would pay him for legal representation, he couldn’t afford to spend the time it takes to be an effective attorney, for his days have to be spent looking for work, and the regular 2010 test-scoring season won’t resume until mid-March, with little hope for windfall projects being available before then.

 

Ironically, Indiana employers have been importing college graduates from elsewhere to fill the few high-tech jobs available, while Indiana’s college graduates go underemployed and unemployed for “not having the right degree.”  Which defeats the very purpose of the stated official goal of educationally upgrading Indiana’s work force.  Because, for one thing, a college education goes far beyond vocational training, no matter how specialized and technical the profession one’s trained for; a real college education enhances one’s ability to think, to assess critically, to research, to expand one’s intellectual outlook, and to appreciate the arts and culture.  So, while Indianapolis, typical of other Hoosier cities in this regard, has a plethora of shopping malls and upscale restaurants, its dearth of artistic and cultural amenities is not something the truly educated person is going to find attractive.  He or she simply wants more than just shopping malls.

 

Perhaps no where is this better seen than is the latest boosterist fad being promoted to solve Indiana’s economic dilemma: replacing declining manufacturing jobs with new, highly-skilled jobs in biotech.  But Guidant, a biotech pioneer formerly in Indianapolis, left the state when it was bought by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, and the state has not been able to attract significant biotech investment and venture capital since that departure.  Yet, what’s increasingly become a will o’ the wisp for the quintessentially Rust Belt Indiana economy is still touted widely by Indiana’s politicians and business leaders.  This despite that biotech is fast becoming just another economic development illusion that joins those other economic development illusions promoted in the past—such as Indianapolis becoming the amateur sports capital of the nation, or a major convention and tourism site. 

 

Recently, the Indianapolis Star touted the job-creating possibilities of biotech by pointing to the alleged job opportunities created by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co., and prosthetics manufacturer Cook Instruments, both of which had been in Indiana for quite some time—they had provided 7,200 jobs.  This in a state that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had lost 156,000 jobs from May 2008 to May 2009!  Showing that Indiana’s weak economy hurts its workforce across the board, more than just the college-educated.

 

 

Indiana’s educational limitations, thus, are not constraints that confine just the college-educated, although that they certainly do that—Indiana’s lack of jobs and the substantial lack of education among its workers and potential workers cut everywhere.  Consider that Indianapolis Public Schools, IPS, the public school corporation for much of metropolitan Indianapolis, including its inner city, has an overall high school graduation rate of only 47%, as stated in the Indianapolis Star.  In some of the inner-city schools the rate is only 30%.  And of those who do graduate, half or more do not go on to higher education.  “We’re stuck,” said Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington, in the Indianapolis Star.   “We’re stuck because we don’t have the knowledge base we need in the labor force.  A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system.”

 

 

              

                  

Indianapolis: Super Bowl city not so super

Not so super Indianapolis, Indiana's State Capital and largest city, as it was when it hosted Super Bowl XLVI, an event which, ironically, followed one of the absolutely worst seasons ever for the Indianapolis Colts.  Originally posted on Examiner.com--GF

 

By all standard measures, Indianapolis’ first hosting of a Super Bowl, Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012, was a resounding success.  Certainly that’s shown by glowing press coverage.  The Associated Press’ Tom Coyne penned a February 5 story, “No more Naptown: Super Bowl boosts Indy’s image,” that was long, detailed, extensive and fulsome in praise of Indianapolis in snagging Super Bowl XLVI.    “Scoring High Marks,” a February 7 story by Robert King in the Indianapolis Star, the city’s daily newspaper, specifically noted the very favorable impression as Super Bowl host Indianapolis had garnered among the professional sports news broadcasters and networks.  By all press reports (of which those above are only two), Indianapolis had successfully carried off one helluva splashy party that Super Bowl week.

 

But for us who live in Indianapolis, one successful special-event weeklong party doesn’t a successful city make.  For its residents, as opposed to those who came into town from outside specifically for the Super Bowl activities, Indianapolis is still beset by many, many problems and drawbacks.

 

For one thing, participating in Super Bowl week events, not to mention attending the big game itself, was prohibitively expensive for many residents.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Indianapolis-Carmel metropolitan area (Carmel being a suburban town just north of Indianapolis) still had an 8.6% seasonally-unadjusted unemployment rate in January 2012, which meant 76,500 living here were out of work, while many others had only part-time jobs when they wanted full-time, or had dropped out of the labor force altogether.  (Including these, by BLS methodology, nearly doubles the “official” unemployment rate, which measures only those without jobs who are actively seeking work.)

 

Further, parking one’s car in downtown Indianapolis, where the activities that week were, cost $20 per day; and although downtown was served by IndyGo, the city’s public bus system, many parts of Indianapolis aren’t served by public transportation at all, nor are any of the outlying suburban communities.  Just one of the reasons IndyGo is dubbed IndyDon’tGo or IndyWon’tGo by many Circle City residents.  (The moniker comes from Indianapolis having at the heart of downtown Monument Circle, a circular roadway enclosing the War Memorial, the city’s central landmark.)  Nor is public transportation all that convenient even for those areas that are served:  there are long waits between scheduled buses, and because of this, spending six hours’ time at Super Bowl activities could often cost bus riders eight-ten hours’ time when considering the wait for buses.

 

Downtown Indianapolis also presents a sharp contrast between the very rich and the very poor—intermixed with all the high-class hotels and upscale shops, restaurants and bars is a large population of homeless, many of whom are highly-visible street beggars.  Downtown is also home for the city’s missions that provide beds and meals for some of the homeless, though with harsh restrictions.  But they don’t even come close to serving all the homeless.

 

Back in fall 2011 Republican Mayor Greg Ballard succeeded with his plan to privatize the city’s parking meters, resulting not only in a considerable rise in parking rates, from 75¢ an hour to $1.00 an hour an even $1.50 an hour, but also extended the time parking fees had to be paid from 6 PM to 9 PM and eliminated Saturday free parking.  Ballard touted the “convenience” of the new meters which had to be installed, because they now made it possible to feed the meters by credit or debit card—but of course, only if the credit or debit card isn’t maxed out, which isn’t the case for many, including myself at the time (as I was unemployed during Super bowl week, and subsisting on only $150 per week unemployment compensation).

 

 Then there’s Indianapolis’ famous sewer overflow, a perennial problem and health hazard every time there’s a major rainfall or snow melt (neither of which occurred Super Bowl week, so the tourists didn’t have to notice—unlike year-round residents).  This problem stems from a sewer system that was put into place in the 19^th Century and not expanded essentially since then, despite considerable population growth.  The result is sewer water flooding the streets and overrunning river banks during heavy rainfall and snow melt, and it’s a problem that has plagued Indianapolis now literally for generations.  When I moved to Indianapolis in December 1979 residents were then grousing about the sewers, and had been for many years prior; and although everyone acknowledges the problem, political bickering on how it is to be financed, and who is to pay for it, has stymied action.  Due to the conservative nature of Indiana politics generally, which carries over into Indianapolis, the financing plans proposed so far have been regressive, substantially exempting rich property owners while disproportionately soaking the middle-class and poor instead.  The result has been gridlock over the truly-needed extensive overhaul and expansion of the Circle City’s sewer system.

 

While Indianapolis has 43% of Indiana’s college graduates according to the BLS, as

noted in an October 19, 2008 Indianapolis Star story, “Indy area is flourishing while rest of state falters,” it doesn’t mean that having a college degree in Indianapolis automatically translates into a high-paying, high-skill job for many of these graduates.  This results in many college degree-holders being rejected by many employers in low-education, low-skill Indiana as “overqualified,” and thus stuck in low-skill service jobs or only temporary employment.  (After all, 48.6% of Indiana’s college graduates leave the state upon graduation, precisely because of the lack of degree-level jobs.)  I can attest to this firsthand myself, as one who scored the standardized state system standardized tests in a local temp job that requires a college degree and temporarily but regularly employs nearly 1,000 college graduates during the yearly-recurring test-scoring season, but which provides employment only four-six months a year.  Since then, I’ve “moved on” to a permanent, full-time blue-collar warehouse job, grateful that my economics degree from Indiana University was simply ignored, not used against me!  And that was the only permanent full-time job offer I’d even received in the previous ten-and-a-half years.  My personal observations, plus anecdotal evidence, tells me that many of Indianapolis’ college graduates are insecurely employed, working strictly temp jobs when work is available, or if among the better-paid, are working as servers, bartenders, or other tipped employees in Indianapolis’ upscale restaurants, bars and hotels where no college degree is required.

 

Tom Coyne’s story cited above credits long-serving (1976-1991) Republican Mayor Bill Hudnut with making Indianapolis an eventual Super Bowl city.  Hudnut’s goal was to capture an NFL team for Indy, capitalizing on Indiana’s sports mania.  As Coyne put it:

 

In the 1970s, then-Mayor Bill Hudnut decided that sports was the ticket to revitalizing the city and putting it on the national map.

It seemed to be a good fit. Indianapolis was the capital of a sports-crazed state that had Notre Dame winning national football championships in the north, Indiana University winning national basketball championships in the south, the Indianapolis 500 in the middle and a high school basketball tournament that created Hoosier Hysteria.

 

Although Indianapolis already berthed the NBA Indiana Pacers, the team’s uneven playing record, propensity for brawling, and lack of fan support did not make basketball a big-ticket item.  To Hudnut and others, that required snagging an NFL team, which Indianapolis did in 1984, when the then-Baltimore Colts sneaked out of Maryland in the wee hours of the morning, under cover of darkness, and arrived in Indianapolis at dawn.

 

But even that didn’t do it all by itself.  The real ticket to NFL success in Indianapolis all came down to one man:  Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback from 1991 until released by Colts owner Jim Irsay on March 9, 2012.  It was Manning’s stellar playing for the Colts that made the team a top-rated NFL contender that went on to play in two Super Bowls and win one of them.  His reputation was key not only in getting Indianapolis to be the site of Super Bowl XLVI, but earlier, in persuading Indianapolis and the State of Indiana to specifically build for the Colts the brand-new Lucas Oil Stadium and tear down the still-serviceable, not-yet-paid-for Hoosier Dome the Colts now found inadequate, threatening to leave Indianapolis if a new stadium were not built. 

 

But as CNN reported, before Peyton Manning the Colts were a “laughingstock.”  They may become so again—during the 2011 NFL season, with Manning out the whole time because of recovery from neck surgery, the Colts were 2-14 for the football year in which Indianapolis hosted the Super Bowl!  The only honor the Colts snagged that season was the dubious one of having first choice in the upcoming NFL draft because of its bottom-of-the-barrel last-place finish.

 

Indianapolis’ turn-around from Naptown (where everyone napped) and IndiaNOPLACE has been based on an economic development strategy that could be called Third World:  using not just big-name sports, but conventioneering, upscale shopping and tourism as well, to attract big spenders from out-of-state and the affluent suburbs surrounding Indy to make the city flush with money.  But that success has come at the price of long neglect of those who actually live in Indianapolis—for the Circle City, along with Indiana as a whole, continues hemorrhaging well-paying manufacturing jobs and replacing them with low-paying service jobs, while, as mentioned above, nearly half the college-educated continue to leave the state.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2009 Indiana ranked below both the national and the Midwest averages for educational achievement among those 25 and older, and each year from 2006-2011 had a drop in per capita income, according to the Department of Commerce.  In just the last year, two major manufacturing plants in Indianapolis, the General Motors foundry and auto parts manufacturer Navistar, permanently closed their doors, further devastating an already-devastated East Side, once home to 100,000 manufacturing jobs.

 

So yes, while in certain ways Indianapolis has turned around, in other, also-crucial, ways it hasn’t at all.  Indianapolis still resembles all too much the final line in that venerable jazz standard, “You Came A Long Way From St. Louis”:  “You came a long way from Missouri/But baby, you still got a long way to go.”              

 

 

 

             

             

           

  

          

 

 

 

 

             

             

           

I know directly how crummy it is to work at Wal-Mart

The only job I actually walked off of in disgust is described below, when I was assigned as a temp to refurbishing a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Indianapolis.  This was also originally posted on Examiner.com--GF

I know this even though I didn’t directly work for Wal-Mart, but worked for a temp service at an Indianapolis Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, one of Wal-Mart’s grocery, drug and sundries stores.  I worked there from July 9, 2012 until early in the morning of August 2, when I walked off the job in disgust at fellow employee harassment, working there directly under Wal-Mart managers, directly accountable by Wal-Mart rules, and subject to Wal-Mart working conditions.  All of which gave me a good idea of how Wal-Mart operates.

One of the first things I noticed, and this is directly applicable to Wal-Mart’s claim of having consistently low prices, is that a large amount of this cheapness of price comes from the cheapness manifest in the way Wal-Mart stores operate.  The Neighborhood Market I worked at was distinctly tacky in appearance, in supply of merchandise on the shelves, and in the way it incentivized (or rather, dis-incentivized) employees to do a good job.  During my time working there, the Wal-Mart managers liked to put down unionized Kroger’s (Wal-Mart, as everyone knows, is fiercely anti-union), which is where I regularly shop; but when I go to my neighborhood Kroger’s stores, the store always looks clean, items are easily found and in supply, and unlike Wal-Mart, which scrimps on staffing levels, I can always find an employee to answer my queries, give me customer service, and direct me to the proper location.  Further, I’ve always found Kroger’s prices to be perfectly reasonable, and its product lines extensive and of good quality.  So much for the “horrors” of unionized grocery stores!

Further, one of my fellow temp co-workers had actually worked at a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market for several years, was earning nearly $15 an hour, and, with overtime, was grossing $40,000 a year.  He was also training new managers, whom he said started out at $60,000 a year, store managers made $100,000 a year, and regional managers $250,000 a year.  Yet Wal-Mart is known for the extremely low wages and harsh working conditions given its non-managerial employees! Well, good slave overseers are hard to find, you have to pay them well to keep them, I suppose.

 

But he, along with nine other experienced employees, were all let go because their labor costs were too high for Wal-Mart, and they were replaced by green workers who could be paid minimum wage.  So he said, and this tallies well with other reports of working at Wal-Mart, reports numerous and readily available.

Because I was working the graveyard shift I received shift differential pay, and was making the sterling hourly rate of $8.25.  Yet, I was glad to have the employment, and worked conscientiously and quite adequately, at least according to the very little feedback I got from the managers.  My method of working is to be quiet and conscientious, do my job, get it done and done right, and not spend time in horseplay, gossiping or just standing around—in sharp contrast to my fellow co-workers, especially the young ones, the overwhelming majority of whom did all three, and on a regular basis.  And, as often the case, recognition of work performance and ability to do one’s job without hassle often depends on the caprice of the manager, and it was managerial caprice in the face of obvious mouthy harassment from fellow temps that finally made me say “Enough!” and walk off the job.  As that depicted so well classic cartoon, the one with the man with the screw run through his body and the caption, “Do a good, conscientious job and you’ll get your just reward!”

But before I go into that, let me say a little more about Wal-Mart managerial style.  In keeping with its legendary cheapness, Wal-Mart psychs up those who work in it not through concrete incentives, but through generating enthusiasm through psychological manipulation.  We always started our work shape-up with the manager crying out, “How’s everybody doing?” to which we were expected to respond with enthusiasm, and chided when we didn’t—which was the usual case.  Hard to get excited, of course, over a temp job that doesn’t pay well, but to bring that up is a big no-no now in today’s work environment.  Doing so would not only label you a “troublemaker,” it would also mean you’re one of those Occupy types who “won’t take a bath”!  But f course, psychological manipulation is a lot cheaper to put into effect than decent wages and benefits, not to mention job security.

But I got along well with my initial managers, who did seem to be noticing I was doing a good job, and that even though I was not exactly enthusiastic over this, did have a sense of relief at the prospect that I might become a permanent Wal-Mart employee, even as I observed myself the deficiencies in the work environment they were forced to work under.  Financial stress was a common trait among them, and this was indirectly recognized by management with its constant surveillance on employee theft.  Of course, paying higher wages just might in itself cut down the risk of employee theft, but that was out of the question, especially in our global “race to the bottom” economic system.  But that’s the reality as it appears, not to management, but to the grunts who do the actual work, and I can certainly understand the “attitude” one of the regular Wal-Mart employees expressed when he said, “I work in a grocery store.  I’ll never go hungry.”

Another part of Wal-Mart’s cheapness was the constant lack of equipment.  We temps had to compete with the regulars for access to needed, but scarce, pallet jacks, and that was a constant source of irritation and hogging.  One time I needed some cleaning supplies, and I asked one of my managers (they were brought in specifically for the temp assignment we were working on, remodeling the store) where to find them, and she said she didn’t know, go ask one of the regular managers.  So I asked the assistant manager on duty, who was busy eying the cashiers at closing time as they closed their register drawers and took out the money, and he was just irritated at the question, and told me to go ask one of the special managers I was working under—the very ones who had told me to go see one of the regular managers!  I never did get the cleaning supplies I wanted.

We temps were engaged in a variety of tasks in remodeling such as installing new shelving, stocking such, and one particular task we had to that was particularly cockamamie—change the pegboards behind shelves stocked with merchandise without first taking the merchandise off the shelves!  This resulted in a lot of damage, but that didn’t seem to matter to the managers.  In fact, damaged merchandise and empty wrappers and containers that indicated merchandise theft by customers were commonplace findings, which made me aware that was considered just part of doing business, as it was undoubtedly cheaper to do that than have more diligence and security—which, like the maligned Kroger’s, would mean higher staffing levels.

Our supplies were in these storage sheds at the end of the parking lot, and the supplies within were not organized.  This meant that a lot of time was spent just looking for items; further, items needed were not always there to begin with.  Not only that—excess supplies put back in the sheds were put in haphazardly also.  So a considerable part of the shift was spent simply looking for things.

Our temp workforce was mixed by gender, race and age.  I, a white male, was an older worker with steady work habits, something which really set me apart from the young workers, who preferred standing around rather than working if they could.  Also, I worked steadily and quietly, focused on doing my job, in sharp contrast again to the young workers, especially the young African American women fresh out of high school, who much preferred gossiping to working.  These young women, not a single one of them even 21, essentially had no work habits, but they did have mouthiness and insolence, which became my constant irritation.  I endured four such incidents of such mouthy insolence, all of which was tolerated by management (well, if you’re going to be an effective slave overseer, you do have to make allowances for the unwillingness of the slaves to work!), and with me getting the management lecture on “respect.”   But to these young women the name of the game seemed to be “Get the white boy,” and finally, the insolence forced me to walk off.  Not only was I harassed because one of the African American women had shouted halfway down the hall at me to do something which I couldn’t even hear, these young women all thought it very funny indeed when I made a mistake!  There’s nothing so satisfying as being in a work environment in which you’re subject to contemptuous giggling by youth who barely made it out of high school!  But having been subjected to that a total of four times, I’d had enough, especially for $8.25 and hour and a manager who acted toward me like a drill sergeant.

It is truly unfortunate the youth today are the way they are.  Yes, it’s understandable, given the nature of our society and world of work today, but not forgivable.  For, yes, the manifest lack of consciousness and respect for others manifest in youth today can only hurt them in the long run, yet their lack of caring and concern is in itself a major social problem.  I understand now perfectly why the late Abbie Hoffman said shortly before his suicide, “Don’t trust anyone under 30,” and why Angela Davis was so correct when she said at a conference of Black scholars in 1995, “One should not automatically exonerate those who do harm to self and others.”  Yet we as a society seem to be doing just that.  Doing that also in our glorification of the Wal-Mart model of business, measuring “worthwhileness” by strictly bottom-line criteria, and turning the U.S. into an eastern extension of Guangdong, China.       

 

 

Extreme heat and uncertain employment—realities of Central Indiana’s job market

An overall look at Central Indiana employment, particularly in the environs of Indianapolis, originally published on Examiner.com in the late summer of 2012.  Unfortunately, things have not changed for the better since then--GF

Last August I worked a temp job in a Central Indiana warehouse that was the coolest it’d been inside in a long time—it was only 105 degrees!  It had gotten up to 120 degrees there, and workers were still expected to work; never mind heat prostration, warehouses are warehouses, and those goods have to be moved.  As it was, I had to take a break from work lest I find myself collapsing; fortunately, I was allowed to go to the air-conditioned break room for fifteen minutes instead of being fired.

The massive online retailer Amazon came under national scrutiny in September 2011 when the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania newspaper The Daily Call ran a story on heat prostration at the Amazon warehouse in Allentown, where temperatures had gotten to 110 degrees; http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story.

The story was picked up nationally by the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/amazon-allentown_n_971851.html, and Amazon came to national notoriety because of its warehouse working conditions.  Amazon working conditions also came under scrutiny the British press as well, in a 2008 story carried by the Times of London.  As Amazon is an international company that has warehouses across the country and overseas, it does come under the scrutiny of intrepid reporters who actually search out and report news for newspapers where editors know a good story when it comes across their desk, and aren’t dictated to by the advertising departments.  Which is far, far cry from newspapers in Indiana, where only sports are covered extensively, advertisers cow everyone, and besides, Hoosier readers don’t care anyway.  So how could a mere warehouse in Plainfield, Indiana, a small town west of Indianapolis, be  newsworthy to Hoosier editors and reporters, even if warehouse temperatures in Plainfield are more notoriously scorching than those that brought opprobrium on Amazon.com?

 

With the steep decline of manufacturing jobs in Indiana, once the mainstay of employment for its largely low-skill, ill-educated workforce, the Hoosier state has moved to become a warehouse hub, especially in Central Indiana because of its midpoint location, where interstates and railroad lines crisscross, and Indianapolis International Airport is nearby.  This makes for a significant economic opportunity for the many small towns that dot the perimeter of Indianapolis such as Plainfield, Whitestown, Noblesville and others, which now boast warehouses as a major source of blue-collar jobs and community revenue. 

Welcome to the new “logistics economy,” where manufactured goods are now moved from one location to another, as there are precious few manufacturing jobs here anymore.  The new warehouse jobs don’t pay much, only from $9 an hour to a top end of perhaps $15 an hour, and the seasonal nature of much of the work means that they’re largely filled by temps recruited by various temp agencies.  In fact, warehouse jobs filled by a plethora of temp agencies contracted to fill these seasonal and fluctuating job openings have become one of the few sources of employment readily available in Central Indiana,.  Meaning that most of these warehouse workers are not employed full-time all year around, but are at the mercy of whatever comes in to the temp agencies that assign such workers

Such as myself, who is considered by industry and Indiana’s state Department of Workforce Development (DWD) alike as just another unskilled worker with a college degree that renders them (and me) “overqualified.”  But in Brain Drain Indiana such college graduates are plentiful and are employed cheaply, as they are often desperate for work in a state where driving a forklift is considered more of a job skill than analytical reasoning. (See George Fish, “Indiana's Brain Drain the problem that won't go away,” originally posted on Examiner.com, August 3, 2009, and reposted on "Politically Incorrect Leftist;" for a prime example of just how the DWD views its college-educated potential workers, see also George Fish, “Add another Frustration to Being Unemployed: A Case in Point from Indiana’s WorkOne State Employment Agency,” New Politics, December 12, 2011, http://newpol.org/node/564.  The DWD refers to its branch offices and employment assistance programs as WorkOne.)

Gregory Travis wrote perspicaciously on what he called “Indiana’s warehouse economy” in the Bloomington Alternative of October 19, 2008, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2008/10/19/9782.  It’s an economy, Travis notes, that tries to put a smiling Pollyanna face on what are actually diminished expectations, declining wages, and precarious employment—the “ideal” solution for a state that has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs due to plant closures and goods made for sale in the American market now produced in China, Vietnam and elsewhere, while only the parasitic financiers symbolized by Wall Street prosper in the U.S. anymore.  Here alone is Indiana dubiously leading the way for the U.S. economy as a whole.