Production is the meaning of life? Reading "The Affluent Society"

Galbraith was a public intellectual of a generation that I missed.  I had previously read his book on the crash of 1929 and enjoyed his clear, concise writing style which sometimes rolled into figurative language when it seemed necessary.  That same writing is on display here, but this is a more troubling document in a couple of ways.  Basically, Galbraith is making the argument that the United States was over-everything: producing, consuming, and working.  In the time he was first writing this, he sounds like the economic consequences of Keynes’ grandchildren had come through, and affluence reigned.  It did, but then, as now it was unevenly distributed.  My key takeaway was a feeling that the minimum income is a thing whose time has long since come, but also that Galbraith would sit so far left of conventional discourse these days that he would be a marginal figure.  He is the man who invented the phrase, in this book, of “Conventional Wisdom,” but sadly his wisdom would not be listened to today.

The second aspect that makes this a “troubling” book to read is that it has gone through multiple editions where there was fairly heavy editing.  I’m used to a new edition just having a amendatory preface and the text staying the same.  I can’t really say how this changes any interpretation of the work, but the edition I have is the 40^th anniversary from 1998.  I was expecting a book from 1958, and I was thrown at the first mention of Nixon as president.  I got used to the long time frame that Galbraith used for references, but I wanted a first edition.  I really wanted to have all the editions together to see when and where his thinking shifted, but I was reading this for pleasure and not for any sort of school assignment.  I think it detracted from the work, but only because I was aware of it. 

Where I'm coming from: a bit of biography

First appeared here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3184DHFZN4CQD

I was in college what seems not too long ago (2000-2004). It was a large state university. I had two majors, trending from chemistry to English. I was aware of internships, but it wasn't something everyone did. I knew one guy that I has classes with in Chemistry, and he ended up doing a co-op in engineering. A woman I knew did an "Internship" at the university press for an academic year. One person I knew was somewhat obsessed with them, but she was in "Business," which I didn't see as an actual field of study. Internships were for chumps. And business majors.

Or so I though.

They were creeping in and I didn't realize it. I had to apply twice to get a job at the student paper. I only got the job the second time because I was friends with the editor of the section I ended up working in. I was paid fifteen dollars a story, period. It wasn't worth it, so I dropped it. I dropped it because I had a job.

I had a job in a restaurant, making pizzas and subs and pasta dishes. It was my real job that was horrible and exploitative and that I only held onto because I understood that potential employers in "real" jobs valued a long and stable work history. I worked my way up to manager where they thought enough of me to pay me six fifty an hour.

I only worked that because I was going to be a poet. My fall-back job was being an English Professor. I ended up going to graduate school, the second year I applied because the first year I didn't get into any of the programs I applied to. I ended up making half of the poverty line teaching and grading underclassmen in their composition abilities. I should have applied for food stamps, but I wasn't savvy enough to think of it.

None of it mattered to most people. It was what you did to get to your future, whatever that may be. You go into debt, you live in moldy basements, you make do. Perlin doesn't get into a critique of capitalism at large, but that is where his book and my personal experience led me to. You push the wage floor to zero; it gets pushed to where you pay for the privlige to work. The Martians looking down shake their heads.

The problem with _Intern Nation_, if there is one, is that it is too limited. Of course those starting out feel that their employment is contingent and precarious. No matter what their official status, at the bottom you try anything to hold on. This happens no matter what your future might be. The market controls us by fear. Internships in a decade have gone from something someone might do to something you have to do. The current economic situation only reinforces this. I have a younger brother and sister still in school. They have many of the same things to do to build a future that I did, only more explicitly. The lines saying "Graduate Teaching Assistant" and "Staff Writer" on my resume say little about me but much about the economic system we have to exist in.

Perlin sees hope in organizing interns. I share his hope, but have trepidation. I tried to organize workers at the restaurant I worked at. I ran for president of the graduate teacher's organization in graduate school. My whole platform was on organizing to increase wages and benefits. I lost the vote to the other ticket two-to-one. The problem I faced was that Perlin's project faces. The workers and the GTAs didn't see themselves as what they were. I am reminded of Sinclair's explanation of why socialism never took root in America: they didn't see their present situation, but were "Temporarily embarrassed millionaires". There was no sense of identity, and that hurts anyone trying to organize based on that particular identity. I don't fault Perlin for Upotianism though. This book starts an important argument in the larger discussion on the role of labor in a capitalistic system.

Buy Gold!

If you plan to take physical delivery of the gold, hold it personaly, and it only takes up about 10% of your savings.

Otherwise, stay the fuck away from that shit.

If the world fails, your foresight won't save you.  And you won't be able to trade it without someone assaying that stuff.  Ergo, you lose.

Sticky Prices

Seriousley.

Who spilled orange juice all over the prices.

Man.

It got all over the wages too.

Windfall spending

My wife asked me today what would happen if I went on TV and won a lot of money on a quiz show that tops out at a million dollars.  She hedged down to a couple hundred thousand.

Would we pay off the mortgage?  I explained that if we had a safe investment that could return more than the interest rate on the house plus inflation -- we'd do that if we were economically "rational".

But then I explained that even though I know this, I would instead pay off a chunk of the mortgage instead. 

Damn present bias. 

Even when you know better, you don't do better.

A thought against the John Bates Clark Medal

So.

Econ is a "science", but of the social kind, no matter how much you math it.

Which means, in a nutshell, that it is about the relationships between people.

Each x on your cartesian plane has a y that is a function of x.

So...

these are relationships between people.

Do you think that anyone under 40 really understands peoople in isolatuion, let alone together?

And we accept a medal for this as a "Nobel" precousor?

Even worse, these are people who have spent a number of years in academia.  That means they are further alienated from actual people who actual act in a market.  

Compressed Timeline

Hey.

I got the most recent copy of the Journal of Economic Perspectives in the mail this week.

Is anyone interested in reading it?

I am, but everyone stopped talking about it two months ago.

It already feels dated.

I guess I'll just read my friend's book that hasn't been released yet.  I suppose that will be fresh.

Hey.

What's on twitter?