The "Grievance Industry"

[paft.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, just after the end of Reagan’s first term, I was listening to a local Talk Radio host, Ronn Owens, doing a sort of “summing up” of the Reagan administration so far. He brought up Reagan’s question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and he said, “I gotta tell ya. Yes, I am. And everyone I know is better off too.”

Ronn invited his mostly white, middle-class listeners to weigh in. One after another they lined up to chirp about how well they were doing in Reagan’s America.

Then, he got a black caller, who informed the host, “I’m not better off. I’m not better off at all. In fact, things have gotten worse. And I don’t know one single black American who’s not doing worse.”

“Oh now sir,” Ronn said, with the air of someone calming down a hysteric. “don’t you feel you’re being a little myopic?”

I guess the farsighted, non-myopic approach would have been for the caller and all those other black Americans to think happy thoughts about how well Ronn Owens and the other white folks were doing, rather than focusing on their own petty concerns.



There has long been in the United States mainstream the unspoken assumption that a poor, female, gay, non-Christian or non-white person voting in his or her own interest is a form of whining rather than common sense, even though the stakes for these voters tend to be higher than the concerns of wealthy folks who don’t want to pay those extra taxes that could price them out of that second house in the Hamptons. The rule of thumb is, apparently – if you have a real grievance influencing your vote, like “I could lose my healthcare if the Republicans have their way” or “I could end up unable to afford birth control or unable to get access to an abortion” or “As a black American, I don’t want a guy who’s taking advice from Charles Murray deciding policy that’s going to affect my kids” or “My family could go hungry” or “I could end up in jail for having consensual sex with another adult” or “this guy wants to pass legislation that would endanger my right to vote” you are part of the “Grievance Industry.” And that’s a bad thing.

This attitude has recently been kicked into overdrive by the passing of ACA. The right wing is now in full panic mode over the horrifying discovery that people like being able to afford healthcare and are not going to like having that access taken away. Worse, these same people will actually vote in favor of their own physical and civic well-being. The right seems to think this is awfully unfair, and they believe it’s even more unfair for Democratic politicians to point out to these voters how much is at stake.

Joan Walsh at Salon puts it beautifully:

So let me make sure I understand. Telling your voters, accurately, that Republicans are trying to make it harder for them to vote, and are blocking action on pay equity, the minimum wage and immigration reform is unfair “grievance politics”? Likewise, any effort to deal with the scandal of $1 trillion in student loan debt? Oliphant compares it to the grievance politics practiced by Republicans under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But that form of grievance politics mainly relied on inflaming white voters’ fears of cultural and racial change with false or highly exaggerated claims about Democrats. (emphasis added.)

The difference between accusations that are accurate and accusations that are highly exaggerated or quite simply untrue is apparently unimportant, as far as some in the media are concerned.

I mean really, it’s all about whether or not they make people get all emotional. All that arm-waving and emoting about “I want to cast a ballot” or “I want my heart medication” or “I don’t want to end up homeless after my unemployment benefits run out” is JUST like those Republicans who said that black people were going to take over and John Kerry didn’t deserve his medals and gay people were going to kidnap your little boy and marry him. So vulgar!

Why can’t people directly affected by these policies stop horning into conversations that should really be conducted as abstract conundrums over cocktails at a DC reception?

*

Comments

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

As for myself, I am remunerated in a manner that I believe reasonably reflects my productive worth to the company. If I did not feel this way, I would go get a job somewhere else. Every last single woman has the same right to do likewise. That's as good as it gets. That's real equality, Comrade. You are not Santa Claus, to know the secret heart and valuation of every employer and employee in the market and abrogate and modify their individual decisions as you see more fit. You cannot find any objective way to second guess the myriad value judgments made by individuals all over the world every day, no matter how many "experts" you presume will be put on "the problem."

No, instead of going out and starting your own company and hiring women at a rate you believe their individual productivity is worth, at your own risk, and according to your own value judgments, you sit there and fling silly little revenge fantasies at me. So why do you do this? If the so-called discrimination against women is not rationally rooted in economically valid reasoning then economics tells us that you are looking at a sure thing! You should be able to make an absolute fortune in the market, hiring women at a few cents on the dollar more than the "average market discrimination pays them," and getting productivity at least equal to the "overpaid" males. Go for it! If you're right, it's easy money for you. Do you lack the courage of your convictions? This is your idea of solving "the problem," picking on people who are telling you a truth you don't want to hear?

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I love all your theoretical arguments. Hey, don't like your job, go get another one. Only someone who has had their head in the sand the last few years would fail to realize that employers aren't hiring all that much. And most people would rather have a job, even if there are problems at that job, than be unemployed. To pretend that there aren't impediments to labor mobility (for both men and women) is so pathetically naive that it almost defies imagination.

Also, if you don't have access to wage data, how do you know that you are not being paid fairly? Employers go to great lengths to discourage or outright forbid employees to discuss their wages with each other. Obama just signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against employees who talk about their salaries or other compensation information. That's huge, though most people don't realize it yet. So many companies that we don't think of as government contractors fall under this executive order (Walmart for example).

As for rational economic behavior, again I have to ask you to remove your head from wherever it's been stuck. Prejudice isn't rational and yet it exists. At my last company, a vice-president vetoed a promotion for a highly talented Indian employee because 'they make good workers, but lousy managers.' Is that a rational decision? And in this case, the employee did leave. They ended up having to hire two employees to cover his job. Rational? And I can assure you that the VP never spent one moment examining how irrational his biases were.

As for starting my own company - you know, now that the ACA is law, I might just be able to do that. See before, I couldn't due to being uninsurable in the private market. But really why should I have to? Why shouldn't I expect companies to reward equal pay for equal work?

Sure there are subtle differences in performance that are best left to manager. However, if sex based, race based, disability not related to job based wage discrimination doesn't exist, why don't companies just publish their wage data? Because when a company pays all their experienced women managers less than all their newly hired, untrained men, it would pretty obvious that their compensation practices had a gender bias.