B. Ehrenreichs article asks the provocative question, if an unskilled worker is better off and can support herself -with particular focus on single moms or women in general- through the welfare system or by landing one of the minimum paid jobs on the work market. Her experiment proves ultimately that she, though starting out in a privileged situation, cannot maintain herself under real life conditions. Her report is not surprising and echoes through many accounts and articles in the media. The poverty that can be observed in the US is a poverty that hits many elements of society, but before all it hits people, who never completed a formal education, or who have other constraints in their work life, like rearing children, that makes them less available or flexible and therefore less attractive for employers. It is also very telling that there is such a wide array of jobs that do not require formal education, especially in housekeeping, waiting, as a cashier or shelf stacker etc. In my opinion there are several factors that play a role in providing these conditions: the way American economy is structured is one of it: There is little manufacturing or blue collar jobs for women available, as there are increasingly less production sites in the US.. Another pivotal reason is that education is not free, and therefore not available for everybody, as it is the case in many other countries, some significantly poorer than the US. A social factor seems to be that the number of single moms has been constantly on the rise, and little has been done to address this problem or its consequences. B. Ehrenreich is telling the sad story of manyunskilled worker, who are condemned by their society to live on the edge between low wage and low consideration 'slavery' and the welfare system on the other side, and who cannot be blamed, as she demonstrates, to fall into the latter at some point to simply cover the basic needs of living like food and shelter.
W.Mill's article speaks about the power triangle -cooperate, politics and military- that determines and defines through their power concentration the lives and fates of the average Americans. When reading his article many examples come to mind to support his theory, but seen the development from his time to now, I would suggest that the economic lobby became the most powerful force behind the scenes and it appears to be the force that often employs the two others to its advantage. Politicians, as Mill seems to imply himself at a certain point, are often not only politicians, but their interests are interwoven with cooperate, where they -in one way or the other- 'make' the money needed for their political career and their wealth. It is not accidentally, that the same wealthy family clans have been governing the US almost since its beginnings.
Looking at the recent wars that were initiated by the US, and keeping in mind that nowadays a substantial amount of national income is won through the trade of war machinery (US arms sales tripled in 2011 to 66.3 billion according to a report by the Congressional Research Service), the motivational force can be easily identified. The ultimate motor is the gain of economic advantages, political and strategic gains are always used to increase and secure the economic interests. When the US engaged in the war against Iraq and Afghanistan, they had their eyes set on the rich natural resources of both countries. When the US allocates substantial financial resources in unstable countries in the Middle East or the former Soviet nations to sustain and develop NGO driven initiatives on the ground and works simultaneously on a political level to achieve a special role and position in the country, it might seem that it is about geo-strategic considerations, but ultimately it is to secure their interests in resources again.
I agree with Mill that power leads to wealth and occasionally to prestige for some, and the US government and its hidden players are aware of this too. As one necessities the other, they enforce their influence in world regions until the time comes to exploit these advantages in different ways.
The decision making concerning these concepts and activities are obviously - as Mills pointed out rightly- never passed for consideration or agreement before the regular public. Their influence ends at the ballot box, when they have the restricted power to vote for a government that is part of the same interwoven tapestry as the last one, maybe with slightly different preferences and core themes, but basically running the country under the same given mechanism. This way, we find that increasingly the role of the citizen in the democracy is reduces to a mere scheme of justification for the decisions made and decided by the powerful triangle that holds the financial, representative and armed power of the state.
Clawson/Neustadl/Weller's article busies itself with the role of 'soft money' and its power in politics. It is generally known that railing substantial financial means is crucial when running an election campaign for Congress, Senate or even Presidency. The PACs are one of the major donors when it comes to this ‘soft money’. It is clear that this is done to secure economical advantages and to provide the cooperations with leverage in political decision making. The fact that these PACs are campaign money donors enables them to put enough pressure and feeling of obligation onto the members of Congress or Senate to coerce these politicians to manipulate regulations and bills that will be voted on in the future, or to avoid altogether bringing up certain subjects while protecting Cooperates’ interests. In exchange for the 'soft money' received, the politicians provide Cooperate with loopholes or weakened versions of new bills, while outwardly still representing the interest of the majority of their voters.
Tom Wartenberg's definition of power resonated strongly with me. I agree that the power to make someone do something against his will, or the power to silence someone are powerful factors, but they do not quite explain the entire spectrum of what power is actually able to achieve and how it develops synergies around itself. The "field theory' of power is more plausible, as it recognizes the magnitude in which a single factor of power can interact with others and create a force that almost automatically takes everything around it with it into the same direction.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the authors Marx and Engels describe the class conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat, the possessing and the working class, in the age of early industrialization. They mention the creation of the 'homo economicus', a being only motivated by monetary or economic gains, by the bourgeoisie and its consequences for society. They state that the destruction of township economies or farming economies lead to the oversimplification of the work in the industrialized system. This simplification repels and disinterests the former workman, as it impoverishes his working environment and, most importantly, it is cause to lessen his pay and consequently creates a new class of people, the proletarian.
To sustain the economic model that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels claim that it requires by its nature the permanent struggle to increase the exploitation of the old markets and work forces and also necessitates to continuously acquire new markets to keep the system running; as through the greed of its actors it is bound to overproduce and collapse in periodically returning crises. This is probably the most exiting aspect of this excerpt. Capitalism has been criticized for its inability to efficiently prevent or deal with recurring crises and also with the over time occurring impoverishing of the majority of its society. Today, we often cite the 90% versus the 10% that has been said to keep becoming smaller as wealth tends to accumulate in fewer hands over time. The disappearing of the middle-class might be another proof for this tendency. Another indicator seems to be the urge and necessity for companies to constantly create new market demands and wants, while a further interesting index is the systematical construction of goods with built in parts to guarantee a limited life time (planned obsolescence). It is interesting that Marx and Engels were able to predict the globalization and the necessity for markets for continuous growth and to correctly point to some of its heaviest consequences that early.
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