It's not just my empty wine fridge

In a recent interview for his new film, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer impatiently asked Michael Moore why he was bellyaching about capitalism since he’d obviously done so well financially. Moore patiently replied that he was simply trying to do what the good priests and nuns had taught him to do: “to help the least among us.”

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been put off by years of the Church hierarchy lining up on the side of the powerful against the weak, and the rich against the poor—all mockeries of Jesus’ core teachings. But like my favorite documentarian, I, too, can trace my concern for human suffering to my early Catholic upbringing. And when I reflect on my education, it’s probably impossible to overstate the prominent role of civics in parochial schools.

The nuns encouraged us as high school students to read newsmagazines and learn about “current events.” And I did so enthusiastically—I subscribed to the big 3: Newsweek, Time, and US News & World Report. And that was just the beginning! Midway through undergrad years, I subscribed to more than 17 publications that ranged from Rolling Stone to Atlas: World Press Review to charter subscriptions for quarterlies on foreign policy and psychosynthesis.

So by the time my kids were watching Schoolhouse Rock on television and singing, “Well I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill…” knowledge about government, culture, and public life had long been second nature, thanks to the good nuns and priests of the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey. I’d even tell anyone who cared to listen that Catholic school kids didn’t need Schoolhouse Rock; they already knew how a bill became law, and why laws were important. (By the way, there was a Cold war comic book in Catholic grammar school that had a future Black US president as its protagonist. See: http://irishcatholichumanist.blogspot.com/2008/12/comic-book-predicts-af.... I remember looking forward to new issues.)

And unlike most people I know, I’ve often caused economic downturns in my own life. I’m not saying that because I buy into the uber-Capitalist ethos that individuals are responsible for their own success or failure—as if such an assessment could ever be made in a neutral environment where everybody gets a fair shot and all things are equal (ha-ha). No, I’ve willingly plunged myself (and my family) into constrained economic circumstances (they’d laugh at this euphemism for poverty) to doggedly pursue goals such as artistic achievement, public service, and spiritual growth.

Yet I’ve always considered myself fortunate. Born in the 50s, I’m well educated and my parents paid tuition for parochial high school and a small private college where I earned a BA (an accomplishment that I wasn’t able to pass along to my own children). And even though I worked part-time as a grocery clerk through most of my undergrad years, it was a union shop and I enjoyed pay that was much better than the minimum wage most other college kids were earning (although I could see that adults with families were struggling). I went to grad school in the late 70s, pre-Reagan era, when scholarships were still available, state-school tuition was inexpensive, student loans didn’t put you in hock with private banks for 30 years, and my $75 a week stipend as a teaching associate seemed to go a long way.

But that was over 30 years ago, and now one of my sons is indebted for a college education that doesn’t help him get a job, while my other son works at a job he dislikes and can’t dare leave because of healthcare for his family. Both of my boys could use my help right now, only its déjà vu and I’m a 20-something again, juggling bills and cutting back expenses to simply stay afloat while I scour want ads and call contacts and employment agencies or work for a week or two.

Of course, my last dozen years of employment have revealed a pattern. First, I worked 6 years in a typically robust NJ industry that serves pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for a typical (modest) salary and (good, but not great) benefits. 5 years ago, a new corporate parent takes over and dumps higher-salaried, experienced workers. Job search takes 3 months; result: better job, nice salary bump with slightly better benefits. I stay for 2 years. No harm, no foul.

But as pharmaceutical company pipelines dry up and the effect of mergers dissipate, a major client furloughs employees and brings other jobs in-house; so our corporate parent closes the NJ office. I’m transferred to New York City, but before I can spend more than 2 days in my new Madison Avenue office, the entire department and its dozen higher-salaried workers are let go. I lose my health insurance and never regain coverage. (COBRA is too expensive to be a real option then or now.)

Job search takes 6 months; result: freelance work, excellent pay, but no benefits. In18 months, workweeks are rarely 35 hours or more, they’re usually 20 or less. And over the course of a year, college grads are hired; freelancers are all let go. Job search takes 4 months; result: I’m hired as a consultant this time. Slight pay bump, but still no benefits. I haven’t had more than a 12-week stretch of full-time work in over a year now, with no prospects for long-term work until 2nd Q 2010.

I grouse to my wife that although my intermittent employment seems to barely pay for basics, it’s very bad on my self-esteem. Doesn’t anyone love me any more? My experience has priced me out of a job market that wants to preserve corporate profits by keeping wages low. Colleagues have been replaced and downsized by eager younger workers desperately looking for an economic toehold. Some colleagues have even lost jobs to overseas professionals who command less pay, get government healthcare, and can e-mail the work from any time zone. (Can anyone say: “It’s a flat world, after all?”)

Oh, I suppose one of my loudest gripes is that the 32-bottle wine fridge that my wife and I received as an anniversary present 3 years ago has sat nearly empty for a year! We’ve had to pass up buying even lower-priced wines and recession-inspired free shipping from great Sonoma County vineyards that we’ve visited in the past. Okay, I still buy a few bottles locally when a vintage we like is on sale; and sure, I look at vineyard and travel websites and blogs, but a vacation is out of the question for the foreseeable future. And If I don’t score a long-term gig soon, tightening credit and mounting bills will overwhelm us, never mind the seismic shock of a major health crisis for either of us.

But as I said before, I still feel fortunate. I’m well educated and have a good skill set. I can’t help but think that I’ll adapt. I have many friends and even some family members who are worse off though, seemingly with far fewer prospects.

In fact, I can’t imagine what’s going to happen to people who’ve been looking for work for longer than a year, sometimes much longer—or who’ve bounced around from one underemployment opportunity to another—only to see their cost of living increase and their ability to afford living decently shrink indecently. How in the world could we ever have let the safeguards against rapacious capitalism that were set up in response to the Great Depression be dismantled to give us the Great Recession? And how much lower will any of us have to sink until we fix the rot in the system?

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, D–Ohio, says in Michael Moore’s latest movie that Wall Street recently orchestrated a financial coup d’état that has essentially socialized their gambling losses. She tells Bill Moyers that mortgage foreclosures have increased 94% in her district and that banks make money even though ordinary citizens are forced into penury. Or read Matt Taibbi’s accounts about naked short selling and other non-productive feints and counterfeits of a run-amok financial sector that rakes in profits from peoples’ misery. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_s...

It’s time to update the toolkit. We need the second bill of rights envisioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt before he died and the Cold War derailed US progressives. It’s time to trust democracy again. It’s time to dethrone the kleptocracy, or perhaps more accurately, the plutarchy that calls the shots and makes our electoral politics a sham.

It’s not really about my empty wine fridge, at all. If I could magically restore a robust economy to everyone in the United States by never refilling it—even if it meant going stone, cold sober—I’d be okay with that deal. But it isn’t about magical thinking either. It’s about realizing that no one can really be wealthy or secure if the weakest links in the social fabric are constantly battered, beaten and abused. The public interest isn’t dead; we just need to see once again that it’s indispensible and start talking about public good in a clear way that will dispel the darkness of crony capitalism, especially the orthodoxy of the omniscient market perpetuated by Milton Friedman and his successors—often at the barrel of a gun.

Besides, when you reach a certain age, it should be okay to indulge in a bit of vino, even if your politics are progressive, don’t you think?