Life in the ‘post-price’ economy
In Geddy Sveikauskas’ recent columns about the economy around Ulster County and the Levy Institute of Economics at Bard College, he described some interesting trends regarding the demographics on where residents from the cities of Hudson and Kingston commute to work, and how the Levy Institute provides cutting edge data on economics. In Sveikauskas’ essay, he describes the history behind the origination of the Levy Institute, and how their informative research is an asset towards understanding the economical dynamics of Upstate New York.
My father, who was a regular attendee of economic seminars at the Levy Institute, recounted one particular seminar to me from the 1990s which stuck in my mind. At that seminar, an economist described how the Unites States had been locked into what he termed as a “price economy” since the late 1970s. Through this presentation, the economist chronicled how the days of the mid-level manager or the top-level executive hitting golf balls into a cup during the work day were long gone. With the growing emergence of the global economy, profit margins became much slimmer as price points became more sensitive. And as the global economy proliferated along with the emergence of multi-national based corporations, many U.S. based manufacturing jobs were sent overseas. And as the science of human resource management became more sophisticated, companies began to eliminate the positions associated with lower- to middle-level management. Through these economic trends, real wages fell within the United States, health-care benefits no longer became the status quo within compensation packages, and the social contract was essentially eliminated.
Prior to this, the social contract had been the unwritten rule of the U.S Corporate World, as it had espoused the sentiment that if you worked hard, were reliable and exhibited proficient-level performance and skills in the workplace, then you would have a long-term future and continuance of employment within that particular place of employment. The global economy and the “price economy” changed all of that, and no one place of employment optimized the notion of the social contract more than IBM had throughout the pre-price-economy-era. When IBM located manufacturing, sales and management facilities within the Upstate communities of Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Fishkill, Endicott and Owego and Essex Junction, Vt., these communities and the areas around them flourished. And along with the coupled presence of other manufacturing industries around IBM, the middle class was solid in Upstate New York and other parts of the Northeast. Since the downsizing of IBM, and the closure of other manufacturing, research and industrial plants throughout this region, the middle class has struggled to keep pace with the economic vibrancy that was experienced in previous generations. This essentially killed the notion behind the Horatio Alger narrative which believes that each future generation should be more successful than the previous generation. Ideally, a proliferation of new jobs will begin to emerge throughout the Northeast, and as more quality jobs appear on a local level, less people will have to commute in order to be middle class.
Chris Allen
Ulster County Legislature
Anti-nuclear activists unjustly prosecuted
“[I]f thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt though.” George Orwell wrote in his cogent essay, “Politics and the English Language.” These circular harms come to mind concerning the crime of sabotage charged by the U.S. government against three individuals after they protested about nuclear weapons in a peaceful symbolic action.
In July 2012 Sister Megan Rice, an 82-year-old nun who spent her youth helping to build schools in Africa; Michael Walli, a Vietnam veteran; and Greg Boertje-Obed, an honorably-discharged Army medical officer, walked onto the Y-12 federal uranium facility in Tennessee to spread their message about the dangers of nuclear weapons. They carried no weapons as they cut through perimeter fences and reached the uranium storage building, and offered bread to security officers who came to arrest them. At trial the district court had doubts about the defendants’ intent but let the jury’s guilty verdict stand, and allowed the government to introduce evidence of defendants’ prior convictions and invoke 9/11 to the jury, with no probative value but with great prejudice to the appellants.
Today, on March 12, oral arguments for the appeal are taking place. The government still charges the appellants with sabotage, based on its unjustified interpretation of the Sabotage Act. This applies to anyone who, “with intent to injure… the national defense of the U.S., willfully injures…or attempts so to injure… any national defense premises…” The statute contains two elements which the government must prove: that the defendants willfully injured or tried to injure national defense premises; and it must also prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants had the intent to injure the national defense. The government improperly conflated the two elements by using the terms “national defense premises” and “the national defense” interchangeably to the jurors, thus leading them to believe that if the defendants injured national defense premises (Y-12) they intended to injure the national defense.
The Sabotage Act was passed in 1917 just before the U.S. entered World War I; its scope has narrowed since then. This is the first instance when defendants have been tried and convicted in peacetime without injuring government property involved in defending the U.S. or interfering with a national defense industry needed to respond to an immediate threat. In U.S. v. Platte, defendants entered a missile silo knowing that the site had nuclear missiles to be launched within 15 minutes of a presidential order. This case is distinct: the appellants lacked knowledge or intent to damage Y-12, primarily a manufacturing site and not involved in the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons.
In 1946 Orwell warned about abstract, Latinate words that blur meaning and corrupt language. In this case there seems corrupting links between the government’s language, its reasoning, and the results. It is ominous to consider the chilling effect on other potential peace protestors, and the harmful consequences to civil liberties in general, if the sabotage charge in this case is upheld on appeal.
Elizabeth Shafer, J.D.
Saugerties
Vice-president, Lawyers’ Committee
on Nuclear Policy
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