The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Hating On Workers

    By Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 10:57am | Politics

    I took a chance with my column this week and wrote about something other than Libya.  I'm always more comfortable with social and financial topics anyway as I totally hate relying on my B.A. in Theatre with an emphasis in dramatic writing when people ask my what qualifies me to bicker with generals over combat strategy.

    I decided to explore the growing hatred of the American worker.  It's not just public sector workers, either.  I'm getting the real sense that there are people out there who think that employees are a sort of parasite rather than the engine of American GDP and productivity growth.

    These attacks mostly come from Republicans but they have willing accomplices from the Democratic side, including people like Thomas Friedman, Alice Rivlin, the Brookings Institution and Third Way.  These people hide behind our financial deficits and demand "adult conversations" about how the meager retirement and health care benefits provided by the U.S. government must be cut.  A $14 trillion economy should be able to provide better retirement and health benefits for the population than it does now.  Cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should all be off the table.  I think most of us here realize that our budget problems have more to do with our misplaced priorities than a lack of money.

    I'm dancing around a topic here that I hope to explore in greater detail but here's what I think is going on: the folks at the top of society would prefer it if you never retired or left the work force for any reason.  Work orders society.  It sets up hierarchies that people would not tolerate in the political or social sphere.  Your boss decides to drug test everyone and we've decided that's okay.  But if the government said "everybody should be tested for drug use once a year," that wouldn't fly.  If a cop talked to you the way your boss can, you'd call a lawyer right away.

    Maybe it's just that the rich people would like to shut down Social Security and take the money for themselves.  I'm sure there's some of that.  But I also think there's something deeper.  Our economy, which is based so much on employment, gives wealthy people an immense power over others.  Owning or running a large business is really the only way to be a monarch in a democratic society and there's no point to being a monarch if you don't have subjects.  Your subjects will only bow to you if they need you and that means that the people's government had better not provide for the people.

    Am I taking that too far?  Or is this worth looking into further?

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    Does hiring workers to work for nothing mean you hate them? CNN/Money

    Unpaid jobs: The new normal?


    March 25, 2011 12:33 pm

    While businesses are generally wary of the risks of using unpaid labor, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

    By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

    FORTUNE -- With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they're willing to work for free. While some businesses are wary of the legal risks and supervision such an arrangement might require, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right........


    by NCD on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 11:18am

    I'm sure doing away with employees and replacing them entirely with robots is a businessman's wet dream.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:01pm

    Oh, you're on to something. And I think it's ultimately a mix of rational and irrational motives.

    Very rich Americans are so fucking rich that there's really very little else for them to want. The only way they can feel much richer is by comparison: by making the poor into beggars and making the middle class cringe. Some (not all) of the very rich want to return to something like feudalism, with massive class distinctions.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:03pm

    Good, so I'm not just paranoid!  So much post financial crisis language seems tied up in this.  The notion that "oh, so and so went into debt to buy a home/college education/car they just couldn't afford but felt they should have," really means, "know your place."


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:06pm

    This kind of think has in the past resulted in some very nasty consequences. Of course these elite folks think they are immune to the rage of the masses.  But then so did some other elites.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 9:05pm

    What is just as important is the "workers" who help sustain and grow this hatred.  They dynamic is similiar to any group which participates in the cultural memes and systems that reinforce the attitudes and belief systems which not only sustain the "oppression," but also helps produce the next generation of folks who seek to be the economic monarchs of the society. 

    Why is it that "work" sets up hierarchies that people would not tolerate in the political or social sphere?  Is it inherent in the nature of work?  Or are there beliefs and attitudes in the "workers" that can be modified, which would lead to undermining of those set hierarchies?  If so, why is there such resistance? 

    Since you brought up the theater, Death of a Salesman came out in 1949.  And we as a society still haven't embraced the message of this play 60 some years later. 


    by Elusive Trope on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:15pm

    Since you brought up the theater, Death of a Salesman came out in 1949.  And we as a society still haven't embraced the message of this play 60 some years later.

    Oh yes we have. And in spades.

    He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.

    Sounds to me like all those technocrats we have now running the country and Wall Street.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:25pm

    Great quote.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:31pm

    Too far?   How about not far enough.  

    We live in what may be the most pernicious interpretation of a social economic doctrine since Mao's version of Marx, Engel and Lenin, not that Lenin was not pernicious in his own special way.   

    The Randian version of Capitalism is much more pervasive in the business world than you may think.  It may not be recognized as such but that is because the concepts preexisted Ayn.  She seemed enthralled by Capitalism and resentful of Communism perhaps because of her own perceived personal losses.   Whatever.

    What is happening now is just the latest iteration of people trying to understand and/or justify inequality of outcomes, something they have been doing  as long as they have been living together.

    For more, check out the Calvinist predestination doctrine as described by Max Weber in which those destined for salvation are blessed with earthly riches while those destined for damnation were poor.  What Weber did not note was that Protestant Calvin cribbed much of his theology from Catholic Augustine of Hippo who no doubt borrowed from predecessors.  Also, the Greek Tyche and Roman Fortuna, e.g.

    Besides, if the poor do not deserve their poverty, how can the rich deserve their weath?


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:30pm

    Besides, if the poor do not deserve their poverty, how can the rich deserve their weath?

     

    Wow.  Another great line to chew on.  You guys are on a roll!


    by Ramona on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 8:19pm

    I think you are onto something Destor. There's an odd personal/psychological thing that happens when you very intensely, 24/7, deal only with numbers on screens, and discussions of those numbers, and meetings with people dealing only with those numbers. When you add to that the fact that when you leave the office, it never really leaves you... and the physical places you enter are all separate worlds from those of regular people... so that even the stadia and concerts and arenas, and certainly, at your homes, golf courses and vacation get-aways are your own world... and after a bit, you think no more of those you see in the streets than those you see in the streets in... the Barbados. They aren't your fellow citizens, they're... servants. Whose problems are not yours, in any way.

    As for the mouthpieces that are left, trying to kick off their mealy-mouthed "adult conversations," I have to say it's these professional Wormtongues that get to me most. The very idea that there's to be a conversation had about what we can't afford any longer, WHILE WE SKIPPED OVER THE GREAT BANK ROBBERY, and AFTER WE EXTENDED THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, and with GE STILL PAYING NO TAXES, and with 2, no 3, no 4, NO 5 COUNTRIES BEING SHELLED AS OF TODAY, this just strikes me as time to tar and feather the buffoons. 

    You know what kids? It's wartime. Time for you to pay some special, extra taxes - not time for you to scarper.

    P.S. Combat strategy? Let's go to the video, because I think American theatre has a better record in recent decades than do the Generals. 


    by quinn esq on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:28pm

    Cause and effect are circular.

    The less contact the upper class have with the lower class the more they start to seem first different, then strange, then frightening, then evil, then infuriating and finally , deserving to be punished. Somewhat as Genghiz' describes the Right's conviction of suffering from discrimination

    It's much harder to work up a self justifying hate for the person who picks up the glove you drop in a boarding line.But first you'd have to be that line.

    And it doesn't  depend how you got to the upper class. The kid who sold newspapers at 12 will be just antagonistic to the lower class when he's a 40 year quant than the graduate of St. Grarcklesex.You forget.

    At a certain point I went with my Chairman for my first  dinner at one of  the private dining rooms that line the tops of Park Ave banks.   Afterwards, going down the steps towards his Lincoln  he noticed  it was the only one there and with  real concern  asked how I was getting home.When I said " subway under Grand Central "  he paled and blurted something incredulous about  "Are you sure....." .Clearly so foreign as to be unimaginable.

    His typical week was Monday afternoon till Thursday in the office. Fridays at Burning Tree. Weekends in Florida.

    If private jets and first class sections were abolished I'd like to think that maybe he wouldn't have participated quite so enthusiastically in the habitual board lunch round of denunciations  of any sort of welfare policies. And  all Democratic Party politicians.

    If you wonder whether the discussions at those events are quite as outrageous as they are sometimes presented in a New Yorker cartoon. They're not. They're worse. . 


    by Flavius on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 12:59pm

    Great comment, Flav.  I once worked with a guy (who I like very much) who had made a lot of money on Wall Street before switching careers to journalism.  He was a highly paid journalist too, but he wasn't so much in it for the money.  Also, he came from a rich family.  But he's philanthropic and politically a lefty and skeptical of all the right people.

    And one day he tells me that he was shocked to learn that people take out loans to buy cars.  A car is a depreciating asset, after all.  It's not like a home.  It's the kind of thing you want to pay for outright.

    Of course he put together for himself that most people in America need cars to get to work with and that those jobs don't pay them enough to pay for most cars outright.  But hey, I grew up in a household with car payments.  He'd never seen such a thing.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 1:33pm

    I haven't seen it, but I hear the documentary Born Rich is very good, especially because it reveals just how uncomfortable the insanely rich are about sincerely talking about money and their wealth.


    by Elusive Trope on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 1:50pm

    I think I can come up with a really good treatment for their discomfort. Money mouth


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 3:07pm

    Slightly off topic, but in the same vein, there is this article from Artnet, by art critic Eleanor Heartney, in which she asks:  "Isn’t there something basically unhealthy about a society where social programs that serve the poor and middle class are cut to the bone while a Picasso can go for over $100 million?".

    In Yves Smith's commentary concerning an art critic's seemingly going against the hand that feeds the art world: "Is this a sign that those at the top have become so isolated and increasingly irresponsible that even support personnel are wondering about the true costs of their allegiance?"

    Perhaps there's hope for America's workers yet.  In some ways I hope the corporations and the uber-wealthy keep up their current opposition to paying taxes on a level commensurate with the recent past, until it becomes painfully apparent to all but the most willfully ignorant that their interests are not well served by a society so in thrall with wealth and its acquisition.


    by miguelitoh2o on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 3:03pm

    Of course, I'm glad that Picasso and many other artists have made fortunes doing what they love but, yeah... have to agree with that critique.  Made worse by the fact that somebody paid $100 million to possessthe item and basically to take it away from everyone else.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 4:06pm

    Heartley's point that you quote is a fine rhetorical question. The realities are messier, though. If it says something bad about our society then it says much worse about the rest of the world.

    Definitely since the late 2008 meltdown, and even before that, the majority of the big megamillion $$$ art sales are not to Americans (most expensive painting ever sold is probably still the 2006 private sale of a Jackson Pollack by David Geffen to Mexican businessman David Martinez for $140 million.)

    Asia is why Sotheby's share price is so good right now. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't telling the whole truth--Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's chief auctioneer in the March 24 Wall Street Journal Magazine.

    Note he says Asia, not just China, that would include this notable example. I would add there's a lot of second tier in the running: Russian and former SSR denizens, Mexican and other Latin Americans, EU, Middle Eastern. Except for a few notable nutballs, the heyday of irrationally exuberant American art collectors is past, if anything, it's gone back to a zeitgeist where they want to brag about how cheaply they got something than how much they paid for it.

    There's a new art museum in Mexico City, Carlos Slim's. Nobody else donated anything in it, he bought all of that stuff, bidding against people who wouldn't pay that much.

    My only point is to make it clear that if megadollar art prices cause reflection, it should be on the international wealthy and definitley not just the U.S. wealthy. It really doesn't say much about American society at all, especially in the last few years.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 4:31pm

    The increasing purchasing power of the global megawealthy has even scarier potential effects for American workers, I think.  The oligarchs in our country are lawless enough.  What do we do with the ones who aren't even in the jurisdiction of our legal system?


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 4:31pm

    How much of the art auctions/purchases at these levels genuine appreciation and how much signalling by the relatively nouveau riche?

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 5:26pm

    The simple version of the story. It's been nouveau riche since the early 20th century, there's no change in that, that's the story of the art market. The aristocracy sells as the heirs struggle to maintain some semblance of something, the nouveau riche buy. Afterwards they trade with each other. Hence "estate sales." I can't name any "old rich" that are actually as rich as nouveau riche anymore, can you? Hence things like all the laws in the EU where the tax on selling is set so high that you have to give it to the nation for a tax break or beyond that in many cases, they just restrict a sale and say you have to sell it to the country at an assigned value.

    genuine appreciation

    There is no such thing?  See stock market, gold market, oil market, etc.

    I.E. American nouveau riche in the early 20th century went crazy for Gainsborough oils to a point that has come no where near since. He is still and always was considered an important artist. Like in the stock market, but more so, fashion, frenzy, herds play a big role as does buying at the right time and holding. Most people seriously in the biz laugh at the charts and graphs supposedly showing steady "appreciation" of an artist or style over long periods of time. How popular was 50's furniture in the early 70's? We looked at it and said yuck, everyone wanted wood and ferns.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 5:53pm

    Oops....sorry for the confusion...

    by genuine appreciation I meant love of art or beautiful things -- not the monetary appreciation, but that was interesting information too.Embarassed

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 5:55pm

    Oh I would say that even if you are a billionaire, you have to really really love something to spend a $100 million on it. You are stuck with it for a very long while when you do that or you have to take a loss. Even with the rapid escalation of the past few decades, the big record prices that looked prescient in hindsight took a real long time to look that way. Now that the record prices are in the stratosphere of XXX million, it is hard to see how that can continue like it has in the past unless the number of billionaires should like grow in great multitdues  to like at least 50 times what it is now. A $100 million work of art is a very illiquid asset and long term it is an iffy "investment."


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:05pm

    What is $100 million to a one billionaire?   Ten percent?  A year's income on it and not even a very good year.  That is why I think the purchases are more about signalling status like how David Koch likes to donate money to things named after him.  Art can be donated to 'name' wings' of museums or even to entirely new museums.   The really neat trick is to con governments into subsidizing the purchase/donations with tax credits and maintainence.  Not to mention the prestige and sycophancy that comes with chairing an art foundation.

    Money --- an almost endless fascinating subject.


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:30pm

    David Koch likes to donate money to things named after him.

    When it comes to the David Koch (Formerly NY STATE)  Theatre, wher the NYC  Ballet resides, the money is more like a quid pro quo than a donation.  David loves him some ballerinas (Not that there's anyting wrong with that...)


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 7:15pm

    Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically for ever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of current market value. - The Hobbit or Antiques Road Show

    Sound like more than a few of the upper crust.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:06pm

    The dragons aren't stealing money -- they just like shiny things. ;D

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:33pm

    Just adding a example to give an idea of the actual drivers in the megamillions art market. There are 4 countries in this bio, none of them the U.S., and that's not atypical:

    Lily Safra Paid $103.4 Million for Giacometti, Dealers Say
    By Scott Reyburn - February 26, 2010 19:01 EST

    ...Safra, born in Brazil, is the widow of the Lebanese banker Edmond J. Safra, who died in a fire in his Monaco apartment in 1999. She has a net worth of $1 billion, according to Forbes’s 2009 listing of the world’s wealthiest individuals, and has a home in London’s Belgravia district....

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aoeAOb3JZ7ME


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 5:34pm

    I am absolutely thrilled to see artappraiser writing on these topics.  Vote here for artappraiser to start a high end art blog here at Dag!

    I'm voting "yes."


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:34pm

    Too late: http://www.artmarketblog.com/


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 6:59pm

    I want Double A, not Saatchi!


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 9:05pm

    I am duely flattered, destor.

    However I must explain why that is about the last thing I'd like to do:

    1) I am here avoiding work. Nearly always.Laughing There are lots of places I can talk about the art market with people if I want to.

    2) All I can see getting out of doing that on a site like this is a lot of "off with their heads, eat the rich" comments of anger and outrage, which would be of zero usefulness or interest to me. And I don't envision just the lack of stimulating input, I can see having to take a lot of abuse and not getting a single positive thing out of doing it,....I even envision stalkers should I not clearly state in each post that I want to see all these people decapitated.

    If you yourself really would like to keep up with the general news of the mega$$$ art market, I suggest bypassing the bloggers and go straight to their sources. You really just need to visit these once a month to get pretty well informed:

    Art & Auction magazine
    http://www.artinfo.com/artandauction/

    and

    Artnewspaper market section
    http://www.theartnewspaper.com/market

    Artnet does have a lot but it is scattered and hard to find and way too detailed and not big picture.  Those other two will sum up the big news and trends for you.

    (For those more interested in Americans and the American antique market, and not the megadollar international market, see Maine Antique Digest: http://maineantiquesdigest.com )

    Everyone interested in what I said on this thread might like to take a gander at Art & Auction's cover story from this month:


    Why a Chinese Vase is Worth $86 Million.
    By Madeleine o'dea
    Was it a perfect storm of new money and national pride that drove this piece to amazing heights?

    ....Conspiracy theorists saw this extraordinary price — paid by a Beijing-based bidder for an unknown client at a provincial English auction house whose previous record was $161,000 — as evidence of market manipulation. But experts in China believe that it was the product of a perfect storm of new money, national pride, and historical cachet. And the strength of these combined forces is likely to increase. Following is a breakdown of the factors contributing to the remarkable valuation of a centuries-old piece of imperial pottery and what this previously unseen sum means for the market.....

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/01/2011 - 11:51am

    Great link. Thanks.

    .... now, can we pleeeease off them and eat these people...? ;0)


    by Obey on Fri, 04/01/2011 - 12:20pm

    I'm not sure irony is the right word - maybe poignancy - that the family seems to be so unlucky.

    One of the younger generation was kidnapped and I believe badly mistreated. Then I believe that Edmond's death may have been partly caused by his own  security system. Perhaps, prevented help from getting to him when the fire was discovered.

    They seem to have been at least reasonable employers. At least the employees were sorry when they sold the bank. With good reason because many were let go. At least that was before the financial follies which may have given them an opportunity to be hired before the rest of the industry was in a panic.


    by Flavius on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 7:53am

    By the by, Destorito, when will you tell us how your squeeze and Littler Destorito are doing? 


    by we are stardust on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 9:12pm

    They're both doing fantastic.  He turns 1 on April 19th!


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 10:13am

    His Oneth birthday!!!  Sublime, Destor.  Thanks for the almost-update.   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 10:19am

    Man, just imagine all of the jokes he would've had to endured if he'd been born one day later…


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 10:30am

    I figure that when he's older his birthday parties are going to extend right into that day the same way mine extends right into St. Patty's as I was born on March 16th.  But I've just got beer, he'll have bo--


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 11:44am