Media outlets can no longer ignore our souring economy when even official government statistics are now reflecting the bad news. It's safe to say that we now have inflation, declining home prices, stagnating wages (see chart on page 36 of the link), and rising unemployment rates. As soon as the statisticians run out of seasonal adjustments to tinker with, we might even be able to declare that we are entering a recession.
The reporting of our economic woes does not sit well with the financial elites. Pity those who can only maintain their lavish lifestyles by shipping our jobs overseas, devising even more complex and exotic financial instruments, and lobbying politicians for favorable treatment, while all the time relying on an endless supply of easy money courtesy of Ben Bernanke, Chinese investment, and the Japanese carry trade.
We've wised up to the fact that there's not a lot of good news to report in the economy. Financial publications are running out of creative ways to gloss over the bad news and emphasize the positive. Luckily, through the techniques of codespeak, subliminal messages and subterfuge, they might be able to keep the American public off the scent for a little while longer. Although London-based, The Economist's recent article, "Workingman's Blues", is a perfect example of one of those condescending "so simple even a [pick your favorite target: factory worker, Midwesterner, retiree, or soccer mom] can understand it" types of posts.
For those of you who are too busy to read the article, it basically says, yes, some economic indicators are heading downward, but these factors only affect people who don't really matter, like poor people, blue-collar workers and baby-boomers. The rest of us are just getting hysterical over negative media headlines and really ought to get a grip on ourselves.
For those of you with time to read the article, I offer you this simple translation guide to all of the double-talk.
Codespeak #1: "American voters are in a horrible mood this year. Democrats are sick of George Bush. Republicans are sick of the Democrats running Congress. Everyone worries about Iraq, either because they think the war should never have been fought, or because of the long, costly and thankless slog it has turned into. The latest violence in Afghanistan is depressing. The culture war grinds on: America is slouching towards Gomorrah or theocracy, depending on your viewpoint. The earth is either cooking or being overrun by eco-fanatics. And the American economy is tottering."
Translation #1: The general public is uneasy, for the good reasons listed above. Americans are getting feisty and combative. In these dangerous times, all we need is a normally innocuous event, like, oh, for the sake of argument, the economy taking a nosedive, to set this simmering dissatisfaction on fire.
Codespeak #2: "The polls tell a dismal tale. Only 29% of Americans approve of the president. Only 14% approve of Congress. And just 6% view the economy positively. Yet many Americans combine despondency about the big picture with personal contentment. More than 80% say they are satisfied with their own circumstances. Even more are satisfied with their jobs. And although nearly everyone despises Congress, most Americans like their own representatives."
Translation #2: Since more than 80% of us are satisfied with our lives, our concern for other people who may be suffering is clearly displaced. The article even goes on to describe the recent Phil Gramm debacle over our "nation of whiners", and how we are being profoundly influenced by the negativity in our nation's headlines, and the even gloomier predictions from overseas news outlets.
What exactly does "More than 80% say they are satisfied with their own circumstances. Even more are satisfied with their jobs." mean? There is a huge difference between "I love my house. I love my retirement fund. I have no reason to believe that I'll ever lose my job." and "I love my job, but I'm terrified I'll lose it next week, then lose my house because I won't be able to make my mortgage payments. My 401(k) goes up and down like a yo-yo since Wall Street insiders handle my money as if they were playing in a sandbox, and I've already had to tap into my retirement account the last time I lost my job. But yes, I have a roof over my head, I'm not starving, and I have the love and support of my family. I can't complain."
Codespeak #3: "Amity Shlaes, the author of a history of the Great Depression, thinks the comparison [to the Great Depression] is absurd. During the 1930s, she notes, 'people lost their homes even though they had borrowed only 10% of the purchase price." People losing their homes today often borrowed more than 90%. And today’s unemployment rate, though rising, is 5.5%. In the Great Depression, it peaked at 25%."
Translation #3: You know an article is in trouble when it quotes Amity Shlaes as an authority. As the author of the book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, she is regularly paraded out in public to let us all know that we are not nearly as bad off as our ancestors in the 1930's. If I understand this correctly, we should all go back to our homes and re-emerge with our pitchforks only after our official unemployment rate hits 25%.
Subliminal Message #1: After devoting several inches of copy about the rise in gas prices, the decline in housing values, and the loss of employment opportunities (in an attempt to seem like the authors aren't totally oblivious to our pain), the article comes up with this seemingly harmless item. "John plans to quit construction, move to Texas and get into publishing. He is a college dropout, but reckons that “if you do some research, you can make a lot out of nothing” in America."
Subliminal Message #1 Brought into Consciousness: Hmmh. John is having problems because he does not have a college degree. We all know that a college education is the key to guaranteed success. Right? Also, John lives in Dale City, Virginia, an area that is experiencing an economic downturn. If we could all get our diplomas, pile into our rusting SUV's and move to Houston, all of our problems would be solved. Once we get to Houston, we should probably plan on continuing to live in our SUV's to make it that much easier to move to the epicenter of the next economic bubble when the opportunity arises.
Codespeak #4: "Meanwhile, others see an opportunity in Dale City’s collapse." Housing is all of sudden much more affordable.
Translation #4: Smart people avoid getting involved with any activity associated with an economic bubble. When the bubble collapses, smart people swoop in and feed off of the carrion.
Subliminal Message #2: "But some shocks are hard to adjust to. The American suburban idyll of big homes and big gardens relied on cheap petrol. With gas prices high, many suburbanites yearn for a shorter commute. But they cannot quickly or easily sell their homes and start living in denser clusters with better public transport. Nor is it clear that they want to. So they suffer, and pray for petrol prices to fall. Sometimes literally: Rocky Twyman, a community organiser from Maryland, leads group prayers at petrol stations to beg for divine intervention. "
Subliminal Message#2 Brought into Consciousness: Americans are a bunch of idiots who wouldn't recognize an easy solution if it came up and bit them in their faces.
Subliminal Message #3: "But the earnings gap between the most-skilled workers and everyone else has been widening since the early 1980s."
Subliminal Message #3 Brought into Consciousness: Go to college and major in something besides art history.
Subterfuge#1: "Figures collated by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at Berkeley, make the point starkly. In the 1990s, the incomes of the richest 1% of taxpayers went up 10% a year in real terms (see chart), while those of the other 99% grew at an average annual rate of 2.4%. Between 2002 and 2006 the richest 1% saw 11% annual real income growth: everyone else got less than 1%. Three-quarters of the gains from the Bush expansion went to 1% of taxpayers, who now receive a larger share of overall income than at any time since the 1920s.
Technology is probably the main culprit, but Americans prefer to blame trade. The latest Pew Research Centre survey of global attitudes found that only 53% of Americans think trade is good for their country, down from 78% in 2002 and lower than in any of the other 23 countries included in the survey. "
Remedy of Subterfuge #1: Did an editor accidentally delete some verbiage between the two paragraph listed above? How did we jump from the richest 1% getting 11% annual income growth to us blaming trade because the remaining 99% of us plebeians are getting less than 1% income growth? Could The Economist have forgotten the part about how, in the search for the lowest costs possible, whole industries are being shipped overseas along with the associated blue collar and manufacturing engineering jobs? Did the authors think of how many seemingly safe information technology, engineering, legal, accounting, financing, journalistic etc. jobs are also heading overseas? And employees for the jobs that are remaining here in the U.S. are facing competition from both illegal and legal guest workers and immigrants who are imported to do the jobs Americans supposedly won't do? And many of the high-skilled jobs performed by H-1B guest-workers are exported out of the country for good after the guest-workers have been sufficiently trained? And the consequence of all of these events is to bring down our wages?
Technology is the culprit, and the free trade that allows this movement of jobs and workers is just one big red herring? Could someone please sit down with their pretty charts just one more time and again explain to us all of the benefits of globalization?
Subliminal Message #4: "The baby-boom generation (people aged 43-62) are glummer than the young or the elderly, according to Pew. Some 55% of boomers think it unlikely that their income will keep pace with the cost of living in the next year, compared with 44% of 18-42-year-olds and 43% of those aged 63 or more."
Subliminal Message #4 Brought into Consciousness: Those self-centered baby boomers deserve all of the bad luck heading their way. That's no problem, since most baby boomers are no longer in any key marketing demographic group, and businesses don't really care if they spend their money or not.
Wait a minute! Since when has being realistic about our income prospects meant that we are being gloomy? Wasn't this irrational exuberance about our economic prospects the root of all of our overspending to begin with?
I'll end right here, since the last paragraph is worth it's own post.
As we can see from "Workingman's Blues", our economy and financial system is clearly in shambles. However, trying to make reforms to make everyone's lives better is just too much work, and may cause the unintended consequence of the richest 1% having to put even more of their money in offshore tax shelters in order to maintain their current lifestyles. If we can take a few simple steps, we should be able to fool ourselves into thinking our lives are getting better for at least the next five years or so. If this can help stave off criticism of the financial markets in Britain, so much the better.
By all means, do everything you can to improve yourself. Pay off your debts. Conserve on gasoline and heating oil. Take classes and upgrade your skills. Move to parts of the country that are actually hiring people. But once you get settled in, don't forget about all of the political and financial abuses that caused this mess. Vote intelligently, send letters to the editors, boycott products, and do what you can to make a lot of noise. The people ruining our country right now know what they're doing. Help them rediscover their guilty consciences.
(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)
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