Two
conditions characterize what some are calling “the new economic normal” by
which they mean the intractable, seemingly permanent state of an economy
limping along following the fiery crash that was the great recession of the
last five years. The first of the two conditions: the redistribution of wealth
from the pockets of the great majority (now poorer and less employed) and into
those of the rich (now the super-rich,). The second: the unlikelihood for
millions of American workers of a post-recession return to the America of old,
where people found new employment or returned to their old jobs after a brief
time out of work. The second condition and its apparent immutability is in some
measure a product of the first. Political power is now fully purchasable by
billionaires. Our politicians are now nearly indistinguishable from those of
the third world drug-trade countries where civil servants, being human, are
unable to resist the offer of pesos or dollars in unimaginable quantities taken
from billionaires wishing to buy favor. With the political class in the pocket
of the moneyed class the chances of political reform to reverse the slide of
wealth from poor to rich no longer appears possible, thus the concept of
"new normal".
I
would argue that this is a good thing. (No, I am neither rich nor powerful. I
am a teacher. Enough said.)
How
can I think that a reduced quality of life for the majority of us is a positive
development? I can think this because less money, fewer things does not constitute
a reduction when it comes to quality of life in contemporary American culture.
We are addicted to money as the druggy to his fix or the gambler to his game.
The defining feature of addiction is that the addict obsessively prioritizes the
acquisition of the addictive substance over the components of a healthy life.
Even when the buzz is gone. Even when he realizes he’s neglecting his family,
his friends, his health, his ethics, his sense of himself. Our relationship to the
pursuit of material wealth is that of the addict to the drug, nothing more,
nothing less.
The
balance, the gratitude, the joy and the playfulness of a healthy life stand in
stark contrast to the
money-drug addict’s ever more consuming pursuit of monetary reward. “The ever more
consuming pursuit of monetary reward.” Where
the 19th century would have seen in those words a
description of the exceptional extreme, of society’s Scrooges, today’s average
American is perfectly captured therein. In contrast, there are cultures in the
world where a modest living suffices to assure vitality and satisfaction.
Relationships, time and space, rituals, physical activity, creative projects
and the enjoyment of nature occupy the place that work and the paycheck occupy
in our culture. In a new normal America, the conditions are being created for a
reintroduction of these healthful components into the American lifestyle. The
great recession has reset American society economically. We are now setting out
on a much healthier path.
The
first and foremost of these new realities: housing is no longer affordable for
a hugely increased percentage of Americans. At least that is the way a society
addicted to wealth views the current dearth of affordable housing. I see it
differently. There is more than enough affordable housing for all. You have to
be blinded by your addiction to the
one-house-with-livingroom-diningroom-extra-bedroom-backyard-and-garage-per-generation-per-family
idea of adequate housing in order to see the current supply of American housing
as in short supply or as too costly for the American income. Now it is true
that the available houses and apartments are expensive and out of reach for huge portions of our
citizenry. However, I see housing costs as starting to reweave the parts of our
shredded families back together. Underemployed children moving back in with their families
after college, elders lacking adequate health insurance being cared for by their adult children – these are
universally seen as sacrifices by our addicted culture. But what is really
occurring is that the conditions for de-isolation of the lonely American are
being stitched. Two or three generations living together brings their house
to within financial reach for many, many more families and forces us to find the connections whose loss we bemoaned. It's a win-win.
Let me briefly address the issue of the two extremes: the poor and
the super-wealthy. In a society organized around the procurement of the money-drug,
the poor tend to exist in truly desperate conditions. Not because of a lack of
riches. That has its benefits. Indeed, there are poor peoples around the country
and the world (fewer and fewer, however, as the world Americanizes) whose
satisfaction with their lives is measured at levels that most Americans can
only dream of. The problem facing the poor is that among them live the most
desperate of all money-drug addicts, those who do not possess the wherewithal
to obtain the money-drug by non-violent means. It is crime, the threat of crime
and the fear of the criminal, conditions that are fanned by illegal drugs that turn desperate people into monsters, promise instant status and ultimately doom
them to prison and their families to deeper despair. There are easy answers to
this dire situation: good schools, drug-rehab, good policing and jobs. Much
cheaper than the war on drugs, the war on Iraq, the war on Afganistan or the exploding prison system.
