I Accept Bribes/ Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch

Am I being bribed? I mentioned Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, "Bait and Switch" in an earlier blog and a representative of her publisher sent me a free copy.

Is it a bribe? I think there's enough moral fiber inherited from my Presbyterian minister forebears that I'd reject money, but free books are another thing entirely. I guess the logic is: read it, blog it, all publicity is good. If that's so, I'm corrupt, because I have read it and am now commenting on it. If you don't want to compromise your own integrity, browse another site.

Economists, particularly conservatives, talk of "creative destruction" as characteristic of the free market system. Capitalism allocates money and labor to where they can be best used, which means cutting off inefficient units and encouraging efficient ones. When Ehrenreich and I were young, Ma Bell was the biggest company and Bethlehem Steel, New York Central, Westinghouse, and Univac were all big names in the economy. Telephone operators and secretaries were big occupations and blue collar manufacturing was unionized and paid well, while retailing was dominated by local stores and regional chains. Today those companies are gone; those occupations are gone or diminished. Instead we've Microsoft and Intel, Fed Ex, McDonalds, and Walmart and everyone is her or his own secretary and phone operator.

In evaluating such changes:

• Conservatives focus on the "creative" side, all the wonderful advances in living standards over the years and the elevation of people from poverty in the East Asian countries. They tend to use absolute standards, saying that anyone with a large screen TV and indoor plumbing can't be "poor". They look at all the Microsoft millionaires and say life is grand.
  
• Liberals tend to focus on the "destructive" side, all the psychic harm suffered by those not empowered by capitalism. They tend to relative standards, saying that anyone whose life is insecure is poor. They look at all the people who lost their jobs at Enron and ATT, who lost their guaranteed pensions, and who have no health insurance and say something must be done.
  

Ehrenreich is definitely liberal, as a matter of fact she's a member of Democratic Socialists of America, not that there's anything wrong with that. However she never admits her age (according to Wikipedia a tad younger than I--i.e., 64) in the book. (Why she would want to move from Charlottesville, a town rated the most livable in the country, she never says.)

Ehrenreich is an interesting writer and this is an interesting, though frustrating, book. She says her purpose was to look at the world of the middle-class, white collar America, having documented the struggles of the low wage employees (cleaners, Walmart sales, etc.) in her previous best seller, "Nickel and Dimed". Her strategy was to make up a fake resume as a PR freelancer and proceed through the world of job searchers documenting the weird flora and fauna she found there.

In short, she fails in her quest, but the journey is interesting. She gets some opportunities in sales, but fails to get the $50K job with health benefits she desired. She encounters both the jobless and those seeking to change jobs or occupations, but the more entertaining are the entrepreneurs (French for "shark") who navigate these waters. People losing jobs and seeking jobs create their own market, a market for tests and advice, counseling and contacts, support groups and mailing lists, all sorts of supposed solutions. The whole thing reminds me of the anthropologist who wrote on the function of "magic" in "primitive" societies. Another parallel is a book called "The Witch Doctors"which discussed the gurus who try to sell solutions to management (management is as gullible as some of the people Ehrenreich runs into). It seems any time people run into a risky situation with no clear solution, magic comes to the fore, whether it is the hapless white collar job seeker, or the corporate boss. (Ehrenreich recognizes that, if she were searching for real, rather than as a subject for a book, she would feel much more desperate and, perhaps, therefore more open to some of the nostrums being peddled.)

She has great fun in mocking the people she meets and refuses to take herself too seriously. I would have preferred more open discussion of the age issue. But admitting her age would have changed the subject to age discrimination, not her topic. As I said in my earlier blog, she criticizes advisors who say a job seeker should change herself to meet the company's needs instead of joining others to change the company. But that focus on the individual goes way back in America--Ben Franklin tried to make himself acceptable to the gentry of Philadelphia when he arrived there, he didn't organize the apprentices to go on strike.

The irony is that, despite herself, Ehrenreich's book shows the genius of capitalism. There's no doubt that she's a much better and more interesting writer pointing out the faults of American society than she would have been writing corporate press releases. So, the bottom line is that capitalism is making the best and highest use of her many talents.