COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

...And comes back with an interesting challenge of her own:

Dear Jason,

Thanks for your kind words about my book Nickel and Dimed.

Re my column in The Progressive: I didn't make up my numbers, but drew them all
from published newspaper accounts of poverty in the US military. If anything was
out of date, I am truly sorry, but the amount you cite for current combat pay --
$225 a month compared to $150-- still seems to me dreadfully inadequate to the
risks involved.

And why is it a Marxist rant to talk about the starving of the American welfare
state (which wasn't much to being with) under our "war president"? I was making
a historical observation: that wars have generally led to more benefits for the
class that does the fighting, not fewer. Can't I point this out without being
labeled as a Marxist?

Yes, I agree that some people serve out of patriotism rather than lack of
economic choices -- it's just that the latter have been the more common reason
within my own extended family. If you have some information showing that the
military is evenly divided among the social classes, I'd be amazed to see it.
I'm hardly the first to note that an "economic draft" has replaced an actual
draft.

Finally, though I no longer live there, lay off Key West! Maybe you didn't know
that it's just outside of a major Naval Air Station on Boca Chica, and chock
full of military people?

Best,

Barbara Ehrenreich

My own response: I don't think it's neccessary to show that the military is "evenly divided among the social classes." It's not going to be, because the American people are not evenly divided among the social classes. Wealth and income (the two terms are very different, and not neccessarily correlated except for the poorest and richest) is not distributed linearly, but as a bell curve.

Second, I have no problem separating the idea from the person. It's certainly possible to posit a Marxist explanation for a historical phenomenon or event without one's self being a Marxist. Historical Marxism is simply a framework for analysis, and every bit as legit as realism.

And yes, I would continue to argue that explaining the growth of veteran's benefits as a way of insulating the ruling classes from the proletariat--essentially a defensive measure of class warfare--is at its core a Marxist argument.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

On a related note, many of you wrote in suggesting that since Ehrenreich didn't understand the military pay system in this article, it taints her credibility in her book, "Nickel and Dimed."

I disagree. Nickel and Dimed relies on her own personal experiences and observations while trying to make ends meet on menial jobs, not on her understanding of military pay, or military culture. It's a separate issue.

I still think it's worth a read. I'm all for class mobility and the American dream. I believe in it. Hell, I rely on it.

But what conservatives constantly forget--and it makes me want to tear my hair out, sometimes--is that the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder is very sticky. Upward mobility relies on the efficient use of income over and above the subsistance level. And because of a variety of factors--poor financial services in poor areas, no access to cheap grocery stores, lack of available public transportation, and predatory credit practices at rent-to-own shops and check cashing stores (more on those guys in a coming post), it is far, far more difficult to move from the first rung to the second than it is to move upward from there.

To get an idea of the marginal utility of wages at different points on the economic ladder, consider this vignette: I drove my car to Publix one afternoon last weekend to go grocery shopping. I'm lucky I have a car don't have to use the expensive convenience store down the street.) I saw a cab pull up in front of the store, and out comes a pretty African American woman about my age. She's wearing a Publix apron. And in the store she goes to start her shift.

Think of it: She probably spent $6 in cab fare--nearly an hour's wages, at market rates around here--just to get to work.

Busses will not be running at midnight, when she gets off shift. If she can't get a ride home, she will have spent nearly 25% of her take home pay that day just to get to work and back.

That's what many of us in the middle class spend on housing.

You don't have to be a bleeding heart. But you ought to understand it!

Many thanks to Ms. Ehrenreich for taking the time to respond!

Splash, out

Jason