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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #03-99 Winners and Losers: Access to Economic Power Norman Solomon: Welcome to Making Contact an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. I'm Norman Solomon. In 1999 progress is all around us, or so we're told. But, what is it? How do we define progress or pursue it? Maybe these are perennial questions, but they might not be asked enough. Or maybe we're looking for progress in a lot of the wrong places. Today on Making Contact we're joined by two people who've been exploring in theory and practice some possibilities for redefining what is and what might be all around us. Hal Kane is an author and senior fellow at "redefining progress" which is a non-profit public policy think tank. Hal, thanks for joining us today. Hal Kane: Thank You. Norman Solomon: And also here in the studio is Beth Parker, an attorney with Equal Rights Advocates, a public interest firm in San Francisco. Beth, welcome to Making Contact.. Beth Parker: Welcome. Norman Solomon: And I thought I'd maybe start with you, Hal. You're with the group called "redefining progress." Why that name? Hal Kane: Well we think that to solve some of the economic and social and environmental problems that we face, really what we have to do is go deeper than usual. We have to address some of what really lies beneath the issues that we face. We have to figure how we know what's happening. How we measure it, and try on that level. Norman Solomon: And what's implied by the term, "redefining" is that you don't consider the usual definitions to be adequate. Why is that? Hal Kane: Yeah, we have to ask some questions about what we mean when we think that things got better. For example, if we look at Gross Domestic Product as a measure of well being we could really mislead ourselves quite badly. If you take, for example a car accident on the highway. That raises GDP quite a bit because you have the repair work on the car and the hospital work on the people and so forth. But really that's a terrible thing. So we're measuring backwards, in effect, on that. We'd like to ask: How can we measure better? And another question is, what should we measure instead? If what we really care about, say, is laughter. Can we measure children's' laughter as a way of knowing how we're doing? Could we measure honesty? Norman Solomon: As like a "Humor National Product," or something. Hal Kane: If we could have that, imagine what that would do. Because, you know, we try to get more of the things we measure. If we measure GDP, we try to get more money. So if we measure laughter, maybe instead, we'd try to get more laughter, or more honesty. Norman Solomon: Well public radio stations on the hour they have now a business update and they will tell you what's happening with NASDAQ and DOW and so forth. Can you imagine other indexes that might be broadcast if not every hour then at least every day that would measure something other than how people are doing on Wall Street. Hal Kane: Yea, well unfortunately "imagine" is the right word because we're not seeing them, and we’d have to imagine. One thing we did at "Redefining Progress" was we created another one. We call it "The Genuine Progress Indicator." And we started with GDP but then we subtracted out a lot of negative things like crime, like environmental depreciation, like inequity among rich and poor people, and tried to get a much more accurate measure. And when we did that, you know, when we drew a graph of it, it was a different line. It rose actually until about 1973. But then it's been falling since. Whereas the GDP has been rising since. So we get different results. Norman Solomon: Well here early on in 1999 we have been hearing, as we have for some time, that the economy is doing very well, that things are perky and the economy as a term is something that seems to be very macro and micro both. It's kind of big picture but it's also supposed to correspond to what you or I or anybody listening to this discussion right now experience on a daily basis. What do you think about this term, "the economy" and what does that mean in a personal context for people? Hal Kane: Right. I don't think we really know what it means in a personal context. I think we use the term fairly loosely. And it covers up much of what actually happens to people. People care much more maybe about their relationships and their health and how much time they have. You know, one thing that can happen is that people can work more and more, but, you know, husband and wife are both working and not spending time with their kids in order to raise the G.D.P. that way, but they're losing the things they care about the most as the economy, quote, "rises". Norman Solomon: So we could be having, and we're told, I suppose, that we are having more and more progress, the standard of living, quote unquote, is improving in the United States-the country we happen to be talking about, but you're suggesting that actually people's lives, the essence of their lives, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, on into the decades, the quality of their lives, personally, you're saying because these social factors actually might be worse, rather than better. Hal Kane: They could be, yeah. I've been working with various other indicators. I've been trying to come up with new ones. I'll tell you some I've been working with. One is how much distance we cover in a day. And I've found that it's risen very quickly. So, when I went back to 1920 I found that we went three miles a day, on average. That's how much distance we covered. Now it's twenty four miles a day, or about a mile an hour, all the time. So, we're going pretty fast and I don't mean this as a bad thing. It's just different. It's a difference in how we live. But it's pretty fundamental. Likewise, we move a lot. Seventeen percent of all Americans move to a new home every year. And that's pretty much. It means that we're disconnected from the places where we grew up and where we lived. And so you have, you can use these other indicators of changes besides G.D.P. to see what's actually happening. And raise questions, you know: is that really how people want to live? Is that what they really want? Norman Solomon: Well you've got the personal context. I'm sure that it's a familiar pattern for many of us, probably most of us. We get up. We have breakfast. We dash off somewhere. We do whatever we do at work or school, whatever. But we come back, we try to reconnect with people if we're in a household. We have a dinner or whatever. We do whatever we can figure out that we have time to do and then we try to get some sleep before we do it all over again with occasional weekend days or whatever. That's kind of a personal realm. Meanwhile you have all of these social forces of corporatization more consolidation of corporate economic control and centralized institutions and large companies. What's the intersection that you would see, if any, between that personal realm of our daily life patterns and what's happening in the large sphere of the economy? Hal Kane: Well I think the connection is that the large sphere of the economy is making decisions for us in our personal lives when we didn't mean it to. For example, you'd think we could choose how much sleep we get or how much time we spend with our friends. But in reality it gets dictated sometimes by our work schedules, by how much money we need to make, by bills we have to pay, and so forth. The one thing that I tried to measure but could not measure because data was not available, was sleep. How much sleep people get. Yet that seemed to really strike a chord with people. Everyones saying, you know, "I wish I could get more sleep, I'd feel so much better all day long if I could get that." And so the work world, or the corporate world has entered into our personal lives in ways like that that we didn't even think about. Norman Solomon: So you could, I suppose, make an argument from what you're saying that corporate power is exhausting us, literally. Hal Kane: You could. And you know, it's not a decision made by the companies. We're all doing it together in a sense. And so, it's not corporations versus our personal lives as such, but it's an effect of our priorities. You know, again, if we measure income, if we decide how we're doing as people by how much money we make. And if we follow the jobs all the time, we'll tend to give up other things like sleep or family or whatever it might be. Norman Solomon: Let me give you a quick example just that comes to mind personally. I interviewed some people on strike at the Bridgestone Firestone plant in Dekator Illinois in the mid 1990s. One of their largest complaints and demands revolved around the fact that they were not allowed by the company given the staffing requirements and the insistence on twelve hour days from management, in some cases, to spend time with their family. They felt that this was a crunch between the needs of the Bridgestone Firestone Company and their own personal needs. How common do you think something like that is and what forms does that conflict take? Hal Kane: Well I think at its deepest form actually it's something that we don't even think about. It happens without us knowing. For example, family size is shrinking in the United States. Household size has fallen really a lot since about a hundred years ago. And the number of people who live alone is rising very steeply. So that, historically almost no one lived alone until this century. In the whole world it was almost unheard of because people couldn't afford it. They didn't know what that meant. But now ten percent of all Americans live alone. And because each one of them makes up a household, that's a quarter of all households are people living alone. So it wasn't a decision made in a boardroom of a company to try and get people to live alone, But rather it was the direction the country took and the priorities of both individuals and corporations had in that way. So, in a way I guess I use the word insidious although I don't mean it, that sound pretty negative. But I mean that in the sense that it's slipped inside us without us having invited it or thought about it. Beth Parker: But if I may, in your Bridgestone example, it's not always your choice. I mean you may prefer time with your family or you may even prefer to make a little less money but if you're in a community where that's the major employer you may not have any other opportunities without making a major move which is difficult to do, particularly in two career families. So, it isn't always a simple conflict of, "Oh, yes, I'm going to give up my family time and I'm going to go make the choice to work harder and make more money." I think a lot of people don't have much personal choice. Norman Solomon: Well, Beth Parker, I was wanting to ask you as you listened to this initial discussion about how to define progress, from your vantage point, you're director of program and litigation at the Equal Rights Advocates firm, a public interest law firm, and you're dealing constantly with issues that are often described as racial or class oriented or gender discrimination. What has progress meant in the context of equality or ending the kind of biases and discrimination that have effected so many people in the past? Beth Parker: Well you have to look at it in different ways. I mean from a gender perspective women are doing much better today than they were twenty years ago. I mean women have entered the work force in record numbers. They are progressing. A lot of women experience what's called glass ceiling issues. But women in general are doing much better. On the racial front, we're still seeing tremendous problems and in certain parts of the United States, in California for example there's been a large movement against anti, against affirmative action measures and there seems to be an increase in the amount of discrimination and less interest in improving the lives of people who are less fortunate. So you have to look at it in the different realms. Norman Solomon: What about this question of an egalitarian society? I mean for some folks, I suppose, that has nothing to do with questions of progress or quality of life and yet at the same time one could look at it, and I would say ought to look at egalitarian conditions in a society as part of what is quality of life. Beth Parker: True, and actually Hal and I were talking about this earlier. I think there's a very interesting thing that's going on with the fact that people are moving around a lot and the fact that a lot of people are doing much better, and are so busy that they really don't have time to think and aren't even aware of people who are not enjoying the fruits of our bountiful economy. There are many many people in our country who are living in incredible poverty who do not have job opportunities, who do not have education to even enable them to play on same field and apply for the same jobs. But there are also lots of people in our country who are doing very well and probably if given the opportunity would want to help those people out. There's a long history in America of caring for those of lesser means. But currently there just doesn't seem to be much of a will to do that. Norman Solomon: We're hearing a lot about equal opportunity or the attempt to develop more equality of opportunity and I wonder from your vantage point, working on such issues of race and gender and class and so forth, is your goal to create more opportunity, or is it more to create conditions of outcomes? Do you see a tension between those two focuses? Beth Parker: I would say in the first instance, we care a lot about creating more opportunities. And in certain realms you have to overcome a lot of barriers which means you do have to do affirmative steps. In other realms all you need to do is really level the playing field. So you have to look at it very specifically. It can't be done in isolation. But our overall goal is to really increase opportunities for people who haven't had those. And our education system, I think as most people know, has tremendous problems right now and is not an equal system by any means particularly in large urban areas. There's tremendous inequities and those same school districts are dealing with groups of children that have greater needs than in richer, suburban communities. Norman Solomon: What if a law school does not discriminate against African Americans, or Latinos, or Native Americans, but the law school is ninety eight percent white? What if the argument is made to you: "Well, gee, there's equal opportunity and we're not going to worry about outcomes we simply want to level the playing field." Beth Parker: Well, there are several answers to the question. One is, is it equal opportunity if the majority of African American students are, start their education careers in public schools that don't have anywhere near the same opportunities as many white students. For example, many schools in the inner cities in California and many other places, don't even offer the courses that students have to complete to be able to apply to public universities. So they don't even have the opportunity to get into those universities, much less prove that they can succeed there. They get cut off right at the base. So that's one whole issue. Another issue is in terms of a law school, shouldn't you have representatives of different parts of our community in law schools who then become lawyers who can then represent those groups in our society? Do you want ninety percent white lawyers who are representing a population that is, you know, fifty percent Latino, African American and Asian? Which is California's situation. Norman Solomon: You mean a court room or prison population. Beth Parker: Exactly! Norman Solomon: Yeah, I guess it was about a third of a century ago, his essay "The Fire Next Time," James Baldwin posed the question, as he put it, do Black people, at that time called Negroes, want to be integrated into a burning house? And by that I think he was referring to the quality of the status quo among those who are privileged or we might say, have partaken of the progress as it's usually defined. So, I'm wondering, going back to the example of a law school, is there something about a law school itself that would need to be, or should be transformed rather than just adding some more women and blacks and Latinos and Native Americans and Asian Americans. Do you think there's a shift that needs to be made qualitatively above and beyond more equal access to getting through the door of those schools? Beth Parker: I think there are shifts that need to be made in terms of what type of education is provided in the law schools, and in the curriculum to prepare people to do more than just go and do corporate work, to recognize that there are vast segments of our society that today do not enjoy any legal representation. In terms of the admissions process, it's a very complicated process. There are lots of factors that need to be taken into account. And one is accommodating for the fact that people have different backgrounds and bring different strengths and weaknesses and different talents and you want to recognize that, not simply good grades and good LSATs. And then again, I think you do need to go back and look at educational opportunities for people as they come up through the system to make sure that you try to equalize those opportunities and expand the population that can even apply to law school in the first instance. Norman Solomon: So looking down the road whether you look at law schools or law firms or Universities or any other range of institutions public or private, what would you foresee down the road in terms of equal rights in an broader sense. What would you advocate for being our goals down the road so that we would, with reference to the earlier discussion here, redefine progress in those terms. Beth Parker: Well I think that equity in public school education is a really critical issue because that's where this all begins and currently the disproportion of certain ethnic groups in the poorest population ... I mean there's a huge disproportion of people who are poor who are also of color. And so you have to really increase the educational opportunities that they have from the get go, from the K through 12 system. And until that happens I think it's a long ways before we're really going to see equality at the University and professional school system. I think there are measures you can take in the interim to increase the population of people of color in our law schools and our universities. But you're never going to achieve full equality until you improve the educational opportunities in our K through 12 system. Norman Solomon: That's the voice of Beth Parker, an attorney with "Equal Rights Advocates," a public interest law firm in San Francisco. We're also speaking with Hal Kane, a senior fellow at "Redefining Progress," a non profit public policy think tank. I'm Norman Solomon and you're listening to the "Making Contact" radio program. We'll be returning to this discussion in just a minute. If you'd like to receive some free background information about the subject we're discussing today or if you'd like to get in touch with the guests appearing on the program please call us toll free at 800-529-5736 and give us your mailing address. You can call us anytime, again it's 800-529-5736. We'll repeat that number at the end of this broadcast. This weekly program is now heard on radio stations across the United States, Canada and several other Countries as well as via the internet and the short wave station, Radio for Peace International. Also mention this edition of "Making Contact" is co-produced by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a nationwide consortium of public policy researchers. If you'd like to find out more about the institute and some of the issues that it has been tackling including subjects related to today's topic you can go to the World Wide Web and just look in at us www.accuracy.org. That's www.accuracy.org. Let's resume our discussion here. I wanted to ask both of you to kind of pull the threads in whatever direction you'd like to of the discussion we've had so far. How do you define progress? What equal rights might entail? What kind of steps could be taken in terms of research in advocacy to move us in directions you'd like to see us going in. Hal Kane: Well one thing that Beth was getting at that I think is interesting is that we can see us separating among different people in our society as we go through the changes that are happening. So if we talk about going faster or moving often or living alone, many people can't afford to do that or don't have opportunities to join up. If we talk about the internet becoming important or giving out the address on the internet here, well many people don't have access to that information. So we risk a separation just at the time when our institutions have to evolve to take into account these new changes. You're talking about law schools. Well the law takes into account economic values. But now it's going to also have to take into account other ones like environmental values and equality. And so forth, but that will be a new thing for the law. And we're just figuring out what these new things are that it has to take into account. So I think we're at an interesting time when we face all these things at the same time, you know, we face the separations and the inequalities along with the new trends. Beth Parker: I also think when you were talking before about the GDP and how it's continued to rise, that that masks that there is a growing disparity between the rich and the poor in this country and that we have tremendous rich, on the rich side which make it seems like the vast majority of Americans have increased their standard of living, which, as I understand it is not actually the case. Most people's standard of living has not changed or increased that dramatically but there is a section of the population that has increased way more than anybody else. And I think one of the keys that we've been exploring with different groups is, how do you sort of touch the hearts and minds of people that are doing well, to make them really understand that there are lots of people within their own community, community being broadly defined, that are doing much less well. And that they should share some of their own fruits with those of lesser means and hopefully raise the floor for everyone. Hal Kane: It's interesting. I think a lot of poor societies, sometimes even in other countries have things that they get a great deal of benefit out of that we may be losing. And these things may just be each other. They're sitting out on the door step or on the front steps everyday talking to their neighbors as they go by. In this country those of us who become very wealthy may have big sprawling houses and that's very nice but in a way it can be fairly lonely to be in there. People living alone or with a small number of people by themselves. And I think one thing that could happen, maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but it's that people may become dissatisfied with that and start to want things that don't cost money. They may start to just want each other. Again, instead of so much more wealth, you might see a movement in that direction just voluntarily. Beth Parker: And you have seen, it seems that last number of years, a growing interest amongst people to spend more time with their families. And that reaction to spending more and more and more time at work, people are now saying, wait a second, I only have so many years to live. If I have enough put away for my retirement years maybe I can afford to step back a little bit, spend some more time with my family and friends. And that is a really important concept. Norman Solomon: It seems that while that's really of crucial importance for increasing numbers of people, there's a vast disparity of power to have that recognition effect the way you live your life. And this is something that you both, I think, have been alluding to in terms of disparity of economic resources. We're all familiar with issues of segregation and racial separation. What about economic apartheid? Is that an overstatement for what we're looking at in this country? How much is there separation or disparity of power based on economic resources? Beth Parker: I think there's a tremendous disparity in power based on economic resources. And one of the consequences of that is that those of lesser means have less access to the media and other institutions to get out what they're truly suffering. An example we see a lot is in the welfare arena. All the recent press says welfare reform is working. People are dropping off the welfare rolls in record numbers. But what the press doesn't say is that, yes a lot of people are dropping off. Why are they dropping off? Are they really getting jobs? Are the jobs that they're getting permanent, full time, jobs that pay a self- sufficient wage that give benefits, that will be there, that give them the skills and the training that allow them to move up the ranks and at some point become self- sufficient? What we know from some of the studies that we've looked at is that that is not what happening with that population. But that word is not getting out. Hal Kane: And Norman used the phrase "economic apartheid." I was taking a magazine called the [San Francisco Guardian] used the phrase "economic cleansing," talking about San Francisco. An idea that a lot of people who don't make a lot of money have to leave San Francisco now even if they've lived here for years or decades because richer people are coming in and the housing prices are going very high. And so in a sense the answer there would be yes and it would mean that people's communities would be broken up and they'd move away and their kids would lose their friends and have to make new friends. And so forth. There's sort of a restructuring of where we live, in essence. It's like a translation into physical terms of the economic realities. So that people move away based on that economic issue. Norman Solomon: And how does that stuff get quantified, or measured? Are there ways in progress... Hal Kane: We did that actually. I mean, I talked about the "Genuine Progress Indicator" for redefining progress. And it started with G.D.P., but one of the things it subtracted for was the gap between rich and poor. So this inequity was subtracted out through a sort of complicated calculation, along with lots of other things. And that's part of what brought down the measure. Norman Solomon: People are going to hear an 800 number to reach our guests through "Making Contact," but I wanted to ask each of you how listeners might, most easily, contact the organizations that you're part of. How does somebody reach "Redefining Progress?" Hal Kane: At www.rprogress.org Norman Solomon: OK that's www.rprogress.org, and how about Equal Rights Advocates? Beth Parker: We could be reached at www.equalrights.org, or we also have a toll free number if people want to call in for legal advice on issues, particularly gender related issues. And that number is: 1-800-839-4372. Norman Solomon: And again the Web address is: www.equalrights.org? Beth Parker: Yes. Norman Solomon: OK great. Well, we have just a minute left and I wondered if there are any closing thoughts that come to mind? Anything somebody wants to add. How do you foresee the next few years in terms of being able to focus on these issues publicly? How would you rate your own optimism or pessimism? Hal Kane: I'd actually say that I think it's great that we're talking about this here. I think one of the hardest issues we face is that the new issues, the changes in our society now are very ambiguous. We're used to talking about things in terms of good or bad. But many of them are getting wound up in the relationships among the economic and the social and otherwise. You know or we mentioned people moving a lot, say, is not exactly bad but it raises a lot of issues. And so having a dialog about that, like this show, is really great. Beth Parker: I also think people need to be very critical, not in the negative sense, but more the analytical sense. In terms of looking at the media and how the media reports issues. Norman Solomon: Well that's the voice of Beth Parker, director of program and litigation at "Equal Rights Advocates," which is a public interest law firm based in San Francisco, and Hal Kane an author and senior fellow at "Redefining Progress," which is a public policy think tank. Thanks to both of you for joining us. Hal Kane: Thank you. Beth Parker: Thank you. Norman Solomon: And that's about it for this edition of "Making Contact." If you'd like a transcript or tape of today's program or more information about "Making Contact," please get something to write with because you'll be hearing a toll free number in a few moments. The number can be used from anywhere in the US and Canada. "Making Contact" is an independent production funded by individual contributors. Our producers are Phillip Babich and David Barsamian. Our executive producer is Peggy Law. To get in touch with our guests or to receive some background information call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. You can also order tapes and transcripts by calling that same number: 800-529-5736. This edition of "Making Contact" was co-produced by the Institute For Public Accuracy. You can get in touch with the institute at our Web page at www.accuracy.org. Or if you'd like to get on our automated email list, send an email note to accuracy@accuracy.org. A special thanks to Danny Bringer at KQED radio for engineering the program today. This is Norman Solomon. Thanks for now. Bye. |