http://www.judithlevine.com/2009/10/discouraged-workers/ Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:57:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.judithlevine.com/2009/10/discouraged-workers/comment-page-1/#comment-28265 Nancy Brockway Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:27:29 +0000 http://judithlevine.com/?p=619#comment-28265 Judith - great post, as per usual. A good day for it to come out, as it is a valuable counter to Bob Herbert's op-ed in the Times today. Herbert does not recognize or at least call out the trend towards "Me, Inc." that you cite. When middle class folks came to believe that everything that made the middle class possible (unions, commonality of interests, social safety nets, Keynesian governmental intervention to prevent markets from swinging wildly from boom to bust, etc., etc.) was NOT the reason we had become middle class, we started abandoning these institutions and beliefs. Not surprisingly, we have been reduced as a result, to the contingent worker status you describe. We wanted the brass ring of Maslow's individuation, without any of the grubby ties to others and interdependence that the "old" ways require. We bought the fantasy. As with feminism, it is not true that one can "have it all." But solidarity is, as you say, not only powerful but comforting. We may yet get it back, if we are able to realize that we have dignity even if we are interdependent. Nancy Judith – great post, as per usual. A good day for it to come out, as it is a valuable counter to Bob Herbert’s op-ed in the Times today. Herbert does not recognize or at least call out the trend towards “Me, Inc.” that you cite. When middle class folks came to believe that everything that made the middle class possible (unions, commonality of interests, social safety nets, Keynesian governmental intervention to prevent markets from swinging wildly from boom to bust, etc., etc.) was NOT the reason we had become middle class, we started abandoning these institutions and beliefs. Not surprisingly, we have been reduced as a result, to the contingent worker status you describe. We wanted the brass ring of Maslow’s individuation, without any of the grubby ties to others and interdependence that the “old” ways require. We bought the fantasy. As with feminism, it is not true that one can “have it all.” But solidarity is, as you say, not only powerful but comforting. We may yet get it back, if we are able to realize that we have dignity even if we are interdependent.
Nancy

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