admin May 22nd, 2008
If you’ve read Getting a Grip (or know of its author in any other way) then you know: when Frances Moore Lappé has a question about something — Could there be a better way to see things, or even to say things? — she does her research, reaches out, and asks away.
Recently she did just that, writing directly to Robert B. Reich, in response to her read of his 2007 book, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. She’d long admired Reich’s contributions but had some big questions and challenges for the professor of public policy, Clinton’s first Secretary of Labor, and co-founder of The American Prospect.
Reich wrote back at length, clearly glad to engage in the back-and-forth. He has even welcomed us to share Frances’s questions, and his answers to them, with you.
Below is the first installment. Please keep checking back at GettingAGrip.org for future installments. Enjoy, and please: share your thoughts by leaving a comment!
Dear Robert,
Thank you again for your recent email and your invitation to be in touch. I learned a great deal from your book Supercapitalism but feel very uncomfortable with many aspects of your premise and the framing of your primary arguments. I have gathered these reflections and questions that I would love to explore with you.
For convenience I’ll refer here to the period of the mid-40s to the mid-70s as “the first period” and the years since as “the second period.”
Thank you for engaging with my views. I would appreciate knowing your critique of my book, Getting a Grip that covers some of these themes. I look forward to hearing from you.–Frances
1. FML: Throughout [the book], you repeat that in first period we did better as citizens but in the second we have done better as consumers and investors. Yet, as you indicate on page 106, during the second period (even after adding a second earner in most families), our real family income increase pales badly compared to [that of] the first period. If the left axis were the same on both the bar charts, the great setback in the second period would be even more immediately obvious. Elsewhere you note that if household incomes had kept up with productivity the typical household would have had $20,000 additional income in 2006!
To argue that we gained as consumers but lost badly as earners feels profoundly confusing, for, what do we buy things with except with what we earn? While some goods have become much cheaper, in fact, most families’ capacities to buy certain basic life essentials, including housing, education and healthcare, have shrunk drastically compared to [that of] the first period. Plus, of course, the necessity of having two earners to maintain a middle-class household itself adds costs, such as paying for day care and more prepared foods.
Thus, to emphasize our gain as consumers in the second period seems misleading.
RR: This question is really about how prices and productivity are measured. Median family incomes grew more slowly in the second period if you discount the effects of rapid technological change.
If you include those effects, however, median incomes grew faster. Healthcare became far better, longevity increased substantially, houses became larger on average and better heated and cooled, communications and transportation far more efficient and cheaper, and so on. The first period had relatively little innovation outside the defense sector (where computers, transistors, microprocessors, new materials technologies, and aerospace technologies were all researched and developed).
