7 Recognizing Work

ERODING THE DIGNITY OF WORK

Sandel notes the deterioration in the dignity of work --- feeling part of something while earning enough to support a family --- for ordinary people, as indicated by:  “In the late 1970s, CEOs of major American companies made 30 times more than the average worker; by 2014, they made 300 times more. The median income of American males has been stagnant, in real terms, for half a century. Although per capita income has increased 85 percent since 1979, white men without a four-year college degree make less now, in real terms, than they did then.”

In DIT terms, the problem is the lack of attention to freedom and liberty, dignity and equality for ordinary people.  A few people at the top have it; everyone else has been left behind. The meritocratic system “… legitimates the lavish rewards the market bestows on the winners and the meager pay it offers workers without a college degree … (based on the mistaken assumption) that the market value of this or that job is the measure of its contribution to the common good. (p. 197).”  Disdain from the top --- why pay the deplorables down the ladder, as said people are not deserving --- so looking down also assures lower pay and compensation down the ladder than what is reasonable. DIT clarifies that operating on the ego-based and meritocratic self-interest path 0G takes the system out of homeostasis and toward chaos, especially political economic chaos. In DIT terms, the dignity of work shared with others in a company and a community of shared other-interest acknowledged by that company on path 0M is essential to said homeostatic stability.

In DIT framing, globalization took it away as absurdly overpaid CEOs outsourced factory work to low wage (and often low environmental regulation) countries, with the only goal being to maximize shareholder value. All sense of social responsibility as in the shared interest with labor and the community was set aside. The stock market boomed, while everyone not in that market, and not paid by that stock market (CEOs now paid with stock payouts, a bit incestuous to say the least), were left behind.  Freedom and liberty, dignity and equality were stripped away from millions of ordinary Americans by the disdain directed at said workers by that meritocratic system and the hubris at the top.  

DEATHS OF DESPAIR

Sandel points to how the loss of the dignity of work in a reasonably well-paying job led to an uprise in  “deaths caused by suicides, drug overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease. … (the researchers) called them ‘deaths of despair’ because they were, in various ways, self-inflicted.  Such deaths, which had been mounting for more than a decade, were especially frequent among white adults in middle age (p. 199).”

Sandel quotes the British sociologist Young:  “… ‘in a society that makes so much of merit’ it is hard ‘to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that’ (p. 199).”   Meritocracy without limits --- in DIT terms, without empathy --- leads to a feeling of hopelessness at the bottom.  In recent times, as Sandel notes “when Oxycontin was the drug that dulled the pain, the rising tide of death revealed a dark consequence of meritocratic sorting—a world of work that accords little dignity to those who have been sorted out (p.  199).”

SOURCES OF RESENTMENT

Sandel quotes a researcher Joan Williamson who has criticized progressives “…for their ‘class cluelessness’ (who tend to)  belittle working-class whites (like in) talk of ‘trailer trash’ in ‘flyover states’ afflicted by ‘plumber’s butt’—open class insults that pass for wit … (said) condescension affects political campaigns, as in Hillary Clinton’s comment about ‘deplorables’ and Barack Obama’s about people who ‘cling to guns or religion’ (p. 202).”  Sandel points out how many Trump voters are people who have been belittled in the meritocratic system.

Sandel also points to a study done by Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist, who found many people held in disdain by the meritocratic hubris at the top “who believed they had been waiting patiently in line for their chance at the American dream found that other people were cutting in line ahead of them—Blacks, women, immigrants, refugees. They resented the people they viewed as line cutters (the beneficiaries of affirmation action, for example) and were angry at the political leaders who allowed them to get away with it… and, when complaining about the about the line cutters, elites called them racists, “rednecks,” “white trash,” and other insulting names.

Sandel points to a researcher named Hochschild who offered this sympathetic account of the predicament confronting her beleaguered working-class hosts: “You are a stranger in your own land. You do not recognize yourself in how others see you. It is a struggle to feel seen and honored. And to feel honored you have to feel—and feel seen as—moving forward. But through no fault of your own, and in ways that are hidden, you are slipping backward (p. 202).”

So, it is meritocratic hubris toward the top, with disdain looking down the ladder, with resentment and a sense of hopelessness down that ladder.

RENEWING THE DIGNITY OF WORK

DIT clarifies work must serve the common good, as in seeking to produce things on path 0Z with good balance in individual&common good.  Said kind of work also brings dignity to the worker, as in feeling part of producing that common good.

Conservative framing on the matter is that people at the lower end of the income and wealth ladder are laggards and loafers, unwilling to put in sufficient effort to build on whatever talent said person has, so “… cutting welfare honors the dignity of work by making life harder for the idle and weaning them from dependence on government. Trump’s secretary of agriculture claimed that reducing access to food stamps ‘restores the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population.’ Defending a 2017 bill that cut taxes for corporations and mainly benefited the wealthy, Trump stated that his goal was ‘for every American to know the dignity of work, the pride of a paycheck’ (p. 205).”  It is questionable that Trump came up with said line, as it seems he never did have to earn a paycheck, being a millionaire from the luck of being born into a wealthy family by the age of 10 years.  But, good speech writers know how to win votes from the people struggling at the bottom. It is not at all clear that cutting welfare and snap benefits does anything to bring the dignity of work into play, as lots of hard-working lower income people with talents not recognized by the Market as having any value (perhaps someone helping the homeless, with a real talent for doing so) will confirm.

Liberals also seem to miss the point, as in: “… liberals sometimes appeal to the dignity of work in seeking to strengthen the safety net and boost the purchasing power of working people—raising the minimum wage, offering policies for health care, family leave, and child care, and providing a tax credit for low-income families. But this rhetoric, backed by these substantial policy proposals, failed to address the working-class anger and resentment that led to Trump’s 2016 victory. Many liberals found this puzzling. How could so many people who stood to benefit economically from these measures vote for a candidate who opposed them? (p. 205).”

The problem is: Neither conservatives nor the liberals grasp the fundamental issue: It is about the dignity of work as recognized in a shared interest with the other, e.g., pride and dignity coming from working together in a Ford factory producing reliable, road-worthy automobiles in shared interest with the consumers driving same.  Humans have a dual interest, not only in the pay expressed in price P for work done to serve the  individual good --- satisfying some consumer demand --- but also feeling like the effort contributes to the common good, and feeling a part of it.

WORK AS RECOGNITION

So, it is not just anger and resentment related to the low pay represented in price P wages and compensation, but also the “anger is about the loss of recognition and esteem. While diminished purchasing power certainly matters, the injury that most animates the resentment of working people is to their status as producers. This injury is the combined effect of meritocratic sorting and market-driven globalization (p. 207).”  Such payoff represented in recognition, esteem and status is in the realm of the non-money value O.  So, it is not only anger about a lack in distributive justice in the domain of price P which is all about individual good, but also in the realm of contributive justice in the domain of value O which  brings the common good into view.

The idea commonly used in the framing of SIT --- and the ideology that uses that frame to think about economic policy --- is that common good is simply a summation of the payoff in individual good, measurable by the contribution to money valued individual goods (e.g., the Ford truck has price P, and wages in the form of price P are paid to build it). It is what Sandel refers to as the “consumerist notion of the common good (p. 207).” In DIT framing, the focus is completely on the consumers buying money value price P goods, and the value of work is only what it contributes to producing said individual goods on some path 0G.

Sandel refers to another measure, as represented in the civic notion of the common good.

Through the DIT lens, said civic related common good on path 0M is distinct from but yet joint with the individual good as represented on path 0G. It is “about reflecting critically on our preferences—ideally, elevating and improving them—so that we can live worthwhile and flourishing lives … cannot be achieved through economic activity alone … requires deliberating with our fellow citizens about how to bring about a just and good society, one that cultivates civic virtue and enables us to reason together about the purposes worthy of our political community (p. 207).”  DIT clarifies said efforts go on in the Other Forum(s) of an inclusive, democracy based system, which works to temper and influence the Market Forum. DIT frames it as recognizing consumerist&civic, market-forum&other-forum, or, writ large, market&community:government.

Sandel claims that even the famous economists Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes focused all attention on the consumerist view, as in the claim producers existed only to provide what consumers wanted.  Well, perhaps, but moral philosopher Adam Smith also saw the key role of what Sandel calls the civic, in that Smith pointed to the need to tamp down the inherent and primal arrogance of self-love, tamp down the self-interest expressed in consumption and producing to that consumption with the moral sentiments.

Said sentiments reflect the civic, as in what reasoned people acting on mindful consideration of the other might do to tamp down the arrogance.  It was all about an act in cognitive empathy, and then perhaps influenced by the affective empathy after pondering the situation of the other.  After said contemplation, one might see the need for dignity in work beyond just serving the self-interest in a consumerist society.

Sandel refers to the German social theorist Hegel who “argued that the capitalist organization of work emerging in his time could be ethically justified only on two conditions, described succinctly by Honneth: ‘first, it must provide a minimum wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be a contribution to the common good’ (p. 210.”  DIT clarifies the Hegel-Honneth claim that a worker must produce on path 0Z, not path 0G… and the consumer needs to recognize that essential need, and also consume on the equivalent consumer path 0Z.

CONTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

So, it is not only about distributive justice which looks at individual good, but also contributive justice including a concern for the common good.  Sandel points to how “… we are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of our fellow citizens for the contributions we make. According to this tradition, the fundamental human need is to be needed by those with whom we share a common life (p. 210).”  Like Adam Smith said it, so, again, Sandel is not giving Smith a fair voice, it was essential to not only Be Loved but to Be Lovely.

The first is about the individual good and the respect accorded the individual that became wealthy in the consumerist sense, while the second is about the common good relating to the  respect accorded the individual for contributing in the civic sense, and, it had to go both ways. So, while a meritocracy based in a focus on only the arrogance of self-interest works at flattering the winners and insulting the losers, in contributive justice everyone is treated on the grounds of the need to Be lovely.  In order to Be loved one must not favor the meritocratic hubris of the winners at the top with disdain for the losers, but everyone must strive to Be lovely, and the less fortunate at the bottom must also Be loved for the contribution to the common good.

DEBATING THE DIGNITY OF WORK

The need is to see the fundamental flaw in the contention that “market outcomes reflect the true social value of people’s contributions to the common good (p. 213).”  The flawed view comes from the flawed conception of the Human --- referred to as the self-interest only Econ ---  in the matter of economic and social choice as represented in SIT.  The both science&humanities, empirically founded claim of DIT about  the Human needing to strike balance in the individual&common good needs to be recognized, with the dignity of work being a substantive part of that balance.

Meritocracy if it is to survive needs to take work, and the dignity of work, seriously.   Market outcomes do not reflect the true social value to the common good.  The price P can overstate, and understate, the true value like the contribution of the owner of a casino as compared to the contribution of a life saving nurse or doctor. Meritocratic framing relying only on the Market Forum measures some price P which may totally ignore the value O as the true contribution to the common good. What really counts as a contribution to the common good is not always best measured only in the Market Forum.

The Hubris of the “Open Agenda”

Refers to an Owen Cass.  Renewal of work requires giving up the focus on free markets.   Enable workers that pay well enough to support a family. Perhaps a wage subsidy for low-wage workers.  Some European countries used it during Covid.  Kept paying the wages of people put out of work, enables employers to retain workers. Affirmed the dignity of work.

Other Cass proposals:  Scale back environmental regulations.  View immigration from the perspective of workers not consumers. Restrict trade.

Overall, Cass wants to shift focus from maximizing GDP to a focus on workers and work.  Scathing critique of globalization.   Only the highly skilled are rewarded. The lower skilled pay the cost.  Better education is not the solution. Economy has to work for the average worker.   The open agenda not sustainable when the majority gets left behind.

Finance, Speculation, and the Common Good

Reduce the role of finance, which does not focus enough on production.  Finance has remade the economy. Transformed the meaning of success.  Trade and immigration is the source of backlash. Financialization is actually more corrosive than trade and immigration. Shows the gap between market reward --- people in that industry make 70 percent more --- and pays too little attention to the common good. And, it is not all productive.  Finance facilitates economic activity, allocating capital --- but does little to invest in the productive economy. Just moving money around.  Not contributing to productivity. 

Actually, the financial industry is extracting rent from the real economy rather than contribute economic value. So, deregulating caused more problems than it solved, e.g., the complex derivative trading hurt the economy more than it helped. High speed trading adds nothing of economic value.  Credit default swaps as another case in point,  a kind of casino gambling.

Buy backs of shares not reinvested in the company does not benefit the workers, only the shareholders.  Casino aspect of our financial industry, with high individual rewards ---unproductive windfalls ---with little contribution to the common good. Only 15 percent going into productive activity, the rest is just moving money around, with financial gains to the traders.  Lacks in the moral and ethical.  Hinders economic growth. Little to no contribution to the common good.  Lots of meritocratic hubris in that industry. 

Concerned with moral and ethical considerations.  Perhaps tax system should be used.  Raise taxes on consumption and financialization, and reduce taxes on production, e.g., lower payroll tax and raise taxes on moving money around which does nothing to raise productivity.

Taxation is also a way to express a society’s judgement of what counts for the common good.

MAKERS AND TAKERS

Continues with the expressive role of taxation. Need to encourage taxes that recognize the common good. Like tax alcohol, carbon emissions --- tax the bads.  Moral judgments are always implicit in the tax.  Like why income from capital gains be taxed lower than that for the worker. Points to the Warren Buffet example of his secretary paying a higher rate than Buffet was paying.  It is unethical.

Investors to be rewarded for investing with lower taxes.  Welfare recipients as takers.  Investors as makers.  Financial entities have become the takers…engaged in speculative activity without contributing to the real economy.  Has brought financial crisis that destroys real companies.  Slows economic growth.  Supposed makers are actually doing most of the taking, not paying high enough taxes, and counter to economic growth.  True makers are the people laboring in the real economy, and the entities are investing in same. It is all about contributive justice, as to what counts as the true contribution to the economy and the common good.

Need to look at the moral (and ethical) underpinnings of our approaches.  Like what do we owe each other as citizens.  Need to reason together.  Need to have a sense of belonging, members of  a community, see how we depend on each other.  Everyone is in it all together, all travelers on the same Spaceship Earth.

Market Forum driven effort unravels the moral ties. Yes, it focuses on path 0G and not paying attention to the solidarity on path 0M.  Erodes our sense of indebtedness. The age of merit has undone our solidarity.