1. SHORT NARRATIVE.  The problems of American society have been accumulating for many decades, during which the System has increasingly failed to serve the interests of the nation as a whole.  The sixties involved efforts to respond to these problems at both the governmental level (war on poverty) and personal level (efforts to get beyond the economic).  Our problems do not stem from a lack of personal responsibility, but rather from the avoidance of responsibility by the System.
2. UNACKNOWLEDGED SOCIAL CHANGE.  Where the [Conservative] Map sees no essential change since 1776, the Opposing Map sees vast change, much of it unacknowledged that must be taken into account if we are to understand and govern our world.
3. MANAGERIAL ECONOMY.  Major decisions are made by a centralized group of corporate and governmental managers rather than by the operation of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand.”  A managerial economy is morally different from a free market because the individual’s economic fate is controlled by others who thereby incur responsibility for their exercise of power.  For example, the extent of poverty is determined by managerial decisions over which the poor themselves have no control, such as interest rate increases that diminish the number of available jobs.
4. PUBLIC-PRIVATE MERGER.  Talk of “the private sector,” of “privatization,” and of aversion to “big government” assumes a boundary between “public” government and corporate government that no longer exists.  There has been, for all practical purposes, a merger between what is still called “the public sector” (all forms of government—national, state, local) and what is still called “the private sector” (corporate).  Both are equally “bureaucratic”; it is absurd to rail against government “bureaucratic”; it is absurd to rail against government “bureaucrats” but not against corporate “bureaucrats.”
5. THERE IS NO “FREE MARKET.”  Our economy utilizes markets, but they are carefully controlled, not free.  As any working person knows, the large employer controls the labor market.  Adam Smith would not have recognized nor approved of today’s so-called markets.
6. STEEP PYRAMID.  Society is shaped by the System into a pyramid with a few excessively privileged and powerful people at the top and a huge vertical drop to the bottom where people lead lives of deprivation and desperation.  This shape is in contrast to the expectation after World War KK that America would become a country with a large and prosperous middle class and no extreme contrast between rich and poor.  The Steep Pyramid is responsible for extreme inequality, which destroys community and threatens society.
7. POLITICAL V. ECONOMIC LIBERTY.  The Framers assumed that if political liberties, such as the right to vote, received protection, economic liberty would not require protection.  But conditions have changed, and today, economic liberty and political liberty can no longer be separated.  Without economic liberty, there is no political liberty.  In F.D.R.’s famous phrase, “necessitous men are not free men.”
8. CONTROL OF LIVELIHOOD.  Our ideas of economic freedom are based on the premise that we each control our own labor as a source of livelihood.  When conditions change so that a job becomes the only possible source of livelihood for most people, and when jobs are tightly controlled by a small group of large employers, the individual loses the economic basis of independence and freedom.
9. POWER AND PAY.  Under the System, pay is determined not by the value of one’s work to society but by the power one has in the System’s hierarchy.  Teachers are poorly paid even though their services are essential to the future of society.  Members of Congress and CEOs are well paid because they fix their own salaries.  Work is drawn where power predominates.
10. EMPLOYMENT AS A RELATIONSHIP.  A job is not merely an economic arrangement; it is also a personal relationship involving such values as trust, commitment, fair dealing, and mutual respect.  The employee cannot avoid these issues, because they are part of what is expected under the term “work.”  But the employer can and frequently does fail to reciprocate.  For example, employers think nothing of laying off workers after years of loyal service.  This lack of mutuality in the employment relationship is a cost imposed on workers and on society.  Despite denials, lack of commitment by employers to employees is a causal factor in lack of commitment by individuals to families.
11. WORKPLACE RIGHTS.  We need to recognize the conflict between the authoritarian workplace and democratic values.  Workers are discouraged from learning the habits of citizenship.  Moreover, the work place is largely exempt from the Bill of Rights.  Free speech means little if the penalty is losing your job.  This is the dilemma we face without workplace rights.
12. DISMISSAL AS REJECTION.  Employers who dismiss longtime employees for economic reasons maintain that there’s “nothing personal” in the dismissal.  This leaves an injury that the employee must bear without compensation.  Dismissal registers emotionally as a painful rejection and loss of place in the community.  Such dismissals are frequent cause of violence as embittered former employees return to inflict often fatal harm on supervisors or anyone else at the workplace.
13. SURPLUS PEOPLE.  Instead of talking about an “underclass” we should be talking about a growing class of surplus people who through no fault of their own are unneeded by the economic machine.  Since this is a worldwide problem in all industrial nations, the effort to place blame exclusively on the unemployed individuals is without justification.
14. RESPONSIBILITY GAP.  The “paranoia” of paramilitary groups and others who express hatred and fear of the government is fueled by the fact that large organizations, and especially governments, are adept at avoiding responsibility when they cause harm.  One of the great modern “inventions” is the avoidance of personal responsibility by use of the organizational form.  Corporations were expressly designed to limit the liability of investors, and all bureaucracies, “private” as well as public, create such a long chain of command between the initiator of a policy and the person who carries it out that if harm or even death occurs, responsibility is avoided by all participants.
15. AMORAL GROWTH.  Economic growth can be completely amoral.  Growth may be based on the sale of harmful products, such as guns; it may represent the growth of social pathology, such as the building of more and more prisons; it may benefit a privileged few while further impoverishing many.  Economic growth can and often does accompany a loss of values and morality if these do not “pay” for themselves.  Economic growth is as consistent with authoritarian regimes and exploited labor as it is with democratic institutions.
16. DEPLETION.  This word should be as familiar as “economic growth” and as frequently used in economic discussions.  It refers to the impoverishing side of what we call growth—the unpaid costs of growth.
17. UNMEASURABLE COSTS AND VALUES.  Many of the most important social values and costs, such as trust and the loss of trust, have no price tag and costs, such as trust and the loss of trust, have no price tag and cannot be measured.  As a result, they are undervalued or ignored in economic calculations, and are readily subject to depletion.  For example, among the many “intangible” or “unmeasurable” costs of economic progress, loss of security is one of the greatest.  People are expected by the System to live with more and more insecurity is one of the greatest.  People are expected by the System to live with more and more insecurity.  But there is no evidence that human beings are able to tolerate this degree of uncertainty. Likewise, beauty and ugliness have no price tags, but their impact on human happiness or despair is profound.
18. IMPOSED COSTS.  When workers are laid off to increase the employer’s profits, the individual workers and their families are forced to bear all of the costs of joblessness rather than having these costs allocated among stockholders, other investors, upper-level management, customers, and the public.  Costs are borne by those who continue to receive profits and income.
19. ROGUE COSTS.  Costs that are unacknowledged tend to surface in unexpected ways where they are all the more damaging because they are out of control.  If we fail to acknowledge industrial pollution as a cost, then it is free to damage both the natural environment and human beings.  Because we deny the existence of a cost we frequently ascribe its consequences to some other source and therefore lose the ability to control the damage being done.  If we really want to do something about “fatherless families,” for example, we should recognize loss of family unity as a cost of reduced employment opportunities, especially for young fathers.  A society that supports fathers by making decent jobs available is more likely to promote family integrity than a society that confines its efforts to moralistic preachments.
20. GROSS DOMESTIC COST.  We now measure our national well-being by compiling a figure called “Gross Domestic Product.”  However, GDP is misleading because it omits many kinds of cost and losses which should be deducted from growth.  A society could gain a more accurate picture of its well-being by compiling and publicizing a figure called “Gross Domestic Cost,” which would make us aware of costs and losses.  Such a list might include: depletion of natural resources; loss of open space; pollution of air and water; youth unemployment; crime and violence; neglect of children; family abuse and breakup due to unemployment; extreme inequality; substance abuse; fear, insecurity, and psychological depression; and utilization of human abilities.  This list could be extended indefinitely, and huge dollar amounts could appropriately be attached.
21. NEED DEPRIVATION SYNDROME.  More and more people seem to be human time bombs, suddenly losing control and committing acts of senseless violence.  Whenever this happens, the media invariably sum up their reports by asking “Why?” In order to answer this question, we must invent a concept such as Need Deprivation Syndrome.  Human beings have remarkable ability to endure many specific deprivations, but the massive deprivation of many needs sends the individual into shock.  Isolation, loneness, rejection, loss of job can drive one person to suicide and cause another to become suicidally violent.  This is one of the unrecognized costs of an economy that is indifferent to basic human needs.
22. THE OUTSIDE PRISON.  In the nineteenth century, being disconnected from the organized sector meant freedom, because new opportunities beckoned.  More recently, being disconnected from the organized sector means having no money and possibly no home, lacking the means to be free.  The total lack of freedom that accompanies poverty on the “outside” helps to explain why the threat of imprisonment often fails as a deterrent.  Too many individuals in our society have nothing to lose.
23. ECONOMIC DEATH.  In an earlier time, getting fired was part of life that most people could survive and even joke about.  Today, especially for those in middle age, it can mean economic death.  People who lose their means of support, their home, and their ability to obtain the necessities of life are not simply “poor” or “unemployed” or “homeless”—they are not surviving.  This is worth remembering when we read about profitable companies laying off thousands of workers so that the wealth of investors can be increased.
24. CRIMINALIZATION.  This is a process by which society actually creates more crime by passing laws criminalizing behavior previously deemed permissible.  Some actions, such as murder, are always considered criminal.  Other actions, such as manufacturing, selling, and consuming alcoholic beverages or drugs, may or may not be considered crimes, depending on what laws are passed.  When previously lawful behavior is criminalized, society creates its own “crime wave.”  Criminalization increasingly serves as a way of dealing with surplus people.
25. US V. THEM.  This is a view of social conflict in which one “side” is dehumanized, treated as “the enemy,” and subjected to exclusive blame for conditions which are also the responsibility of others.  The common humanity of all groups in society is denied, and warfare replaces a search for the common good.

Reich posits that the Opposing Map makes possible a debate where none has existed for many years.  So long as only one side is heard, its mythology remains unchallenged no matter how outrageous.  Thus the absurd proposition that welfare causes poverty had been repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike in total disregard of history and the worldwide disappearance of jobs.  The origin of the myth in corporate-funded think tanks has also gone unchallenged, although the self-serving nature of the myth is apparent the moment it is pointed out.  An Opposing Map is essential to democratic dialogue.

 

OCCUPY MOVEMENTS

  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00msxgh#synopsis 

Hardtalk

Cheng Siwei - Former Vice Chairman, Standing Committee, NPC, China

Cheng Siwei - Former Vice Chairman, Standing Committee, NPC, China

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Synopsis

This year - 2012 - is the Chinese Year of the Dragon and Chinese workers certainly seem to have fire in their belly.

There's growing discontent amongst the workforce whose labour fuelled the country's economic miracle.

They're angry that export-led growth has largely passed them by - whilst filling state coffers and enriching some beyond their wildest dreams.

Zeinab Badawi speaks to Cheng Siwei - one of China's most influential economists.

How much of a threat is economic uncertainty and social unrest to China's prosperity and stability?

Changing China

A special report on the changing face of China, including the latest news, features and analysis

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