Half Changed World

In 1999, Katherine Newman published No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City.  This book examined the experiences of 300 individuals who had applied for minimum wage jobs at fast food restaurants in Harlem during the early 1990s.  Newman found that competition was fierce for these jobs, with as many as 14 applicants for each position, and high school graduates in their 20s crowding out teens and high school dropouts.  Moving back and forth from generalizations drawn from the broad study to detailed profiles of individual workers, she reported on the fast food workers’ pride in being part of the legitimate economy — even in low-status, low-paid jobs where their friends teased them and they came home stinking of grease.   They valued the semi-independence that paying their own way gave them, even though almost none could afford to live on their own.  Published just after welfare reform, the book was a stinging rebuke to those who said that the poor didn’t want to work.

Seven years later, Newman is back with Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market.  She’s followed a subset of the workers she first met in 1993 and 1994 and is back to tell us how they fared during the boom years of the late 1990s and the recession of 2001-2002.  The book opens with an update on the workers who were most prominently featured in the first book. Jamal is now working at a lumber yard in a small town in Northern California, having followed his new wife back to her family out west.  Kyesha has a union job as a janitor for the NYC Housing Authority.  Carmen is out of work, having been fired from her department store job for a rules violation, but her husband Sal is the manager of the video store.

Newman divides the workers into three groups — "high flyers," "up but not outs" and "low riders."  While many, even most of the workers are still struggling, perhaps the biggest surprise in the study is how many high flyers there are in a group that once seemed so disadvantaged — about 20 percent of those Newman was able to track over time.  (She also uses a national sample for comparison, and estimates that the figure is closer to 10 percent for overall minimum wage workers in retail food industries.  She also argues that this figure is not much lower in economic bad times than in boom years.)   Although Newman doesn’t explicitly make the connection, one of the points I took away was that the "welfare reform success stories" that various governors liked to flaunt were neither as rare as the opponents of welfare reform suggested, nor as much the result of welfare reform as the supporters implied.

Newman concludes the book with a review of suggestions for how to improve the lives of the working poor, and generally I agree with them (expand the EITC, make higher education more affordable, support quality child care).  But the book left me with many unanswered questions about what made some of these workers succeed while others struggled.  By and large, formal education wasn’t the answer — the high flyers were more likely to have succeeded by getting into a unionized position or a skilled trade than by getting a bachelor’s degree.  (Those pursuing advanced degrees may not yet have seen the payoff, since they were usually only able to go to school part-time.)

In addition to the core ethnographic study, Newman pulls in a lot of data and information from related studies.  I’m a policy wonk, and even I found myself glazing over at times.  But the book is well worth reading, mostly for how it will undermine your preconceptions, whether you consider yourself a liberal or a conservative.

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By the way, I’ve set up an Amazon aStore as a way to display the books that I’ve reviewed by category.  It’s a work in progress, so let me know if you have requests.

I’m feeling low energy, so turning to the cute kid story category for an easy post:

• When I got in this evening, the boys were running around with blankets over their heads and crashing into things and saying "who turned out the lights?"  D. thought it was absolutely hysterical when we found in the Ranger Rick he brought home from school a picture of a squirrel with its head in a peanut butter jar.  The caption, of course, was "who turned out the lights?"
• I went up to my bedroom to change into jeans.  I was hoping to maybe sneak in 2 minutes of checking my messages, but N followed me upstairs, saying "I keep you company, mommy."  When I had the nerve to shut the bathroom door on him, he protested "I need to keep you company."  I told him "I want my privacy."  "Are you using the potty, mommy?"
• When N finished eating, he was playing around with what happened to his plate when he put it on top of the tines of the fork and pushed down on the handle.  "No catapults at the table," I told him. "Oh, wight, I fowgot, no cataputs at the table.  At dinner," he responded.
• For my birthday, D gave me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we’ve been reading it out loud.  It’s a near-perfect read-aloud book — short chapters, each of which end on a cliffhanger.
• In D’s folder, we received notice of an "honors ceremony" tomorrow morning.  It’s possible that this notice was sent home on Friday, since D was out sick then, but we didn’t get it until today.  For K-2, it’s from 8.30 to 9.15, which is right when N needs to be dropped off at preschool.  I can go into work an hour late, so I’ll show the flag, but I’m still a bit irritated.

Not only did T get up early this morning to wait on line for a Wii, he took the boys with him so I could sleep in, read the newspaper, etc.

Alison asked me what political blogs I like.  That’s a harder question to answer than it seems.

A short answer is provided by my bloglines subscriptions.  As you’ll see, there’s a lot of blogs there, and no, I don’t read all of them every day — nowhere near that.  But these were all ones that I liked enough to think that I’d want to find them again, and the easiest way to do that is to add them to my subscriptions.

But, of all those blogs, which ones are political?  That’s hard to answer.  Majikthise and Pandagon were both finalists for Koufax awards last year.  But what about Bitch, PhD?  Does the fact that she sometimes tells cute kid stories make her less of a political blogger?  For that matter, what about me?  I don’t generally think of myself as a political blogger, because I write about a lot of things, but I’ve been interviewed by two different academics studying political bloggers, and was invited to participate on Gather’s election 2006 group. 

I tend to prefer bloggers who mix the personal and the political to those who are all politics all the time.  For one thing, I think it dramatically reduces the level of flaming — when you think of the words on the screen as coming from a real person who gets frustrated with their kids and likes to watch trashy tv, you’re less likely to tell them they’re a moron.  For another, the volume of postings tends to be more managable.

I may lose my blogger credential for saying this, but I think that for most national political issues, the much maligned mainstream media generally does a better job of covering things than bloggers do.  Where blogs shine are the issues and races that get overlooked by the mainstream media.  So I love reading Not Larry Sabato who covers Virginia politics down to the delegate and state senate level.  The now defunct Democracy for Virginia used to highlight specific bills.  Nathan Newman writes about labor issues.

For the high volume political blogs, I mostly depend on others to point out the most interesting posts.  I usually only read Kevin Drum or Matthew Yglesias when Laura at 11d sends me over to them, but then I almost always find something else there that’s interesting.  TAPPED and inclusionist are other blogs that often point me to interesting content elsewhere. 

It’s worth noting that the biggest "political blogs" aren’t exactly blogs.  They’re community sites, like DailyKos and MyDD.  I generally don’t read these unless someone points me to a specific post, because I haven’t figured out how to handle the huge volume on them.  I do check out TPMCafe every week or so. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to view the Motherhood Manifesto documentary.  (I work for one of the Moms Rising aligned organizations, so we set it up in the conference room during lunch and brought popcorn.)

It’s very well done.  For each of the letters in the MOTHER agenda, they have a funny pseudo-fifties animated clip, a feature about someone affected by the issue, and brief interviews with experts who are working on the issue with aligned organizations.  It’s a nice mixture of wrenching personal stories with just a touch of policy wonkery and, unlike many discussions of work-family issues, they leave viewers with hope that progress is being made rather than with handwringing over the current state of the world.

When the movie was done, we sat around and discussed it.  Some in my organization (which focuses on low-income individuals and families) were concerned that there weren’t more low-income mothers featured in it, but I’m pretty sure that was a deliberate choice.  I think it’s almost certainly true that the way to get more affordable child care, health care, etc. for poor families is to get middle- and upper-income families to fight for changes in the system, out of self-interest as well as altruism.  But I think it’s also important to make sure that the solutions then work for everyone.  (Recently, there was a discussion on one of my parenting email lists about the high cost of child care in the DC area, and the solution that someone suggested was to increase the amount that could be put aside tax free for child care in Flexible Spending Accounts.  I tried to be polite in pointing out that FSAs don’t help people who don’t make enough to owe federal income taxes.)

The more interesting question that was raised was whether it’s limiting to frame this as a mothers’ organization rather than as a caregivers organization, since many of the proposals are needed by people caring for the elderly or sick as well as by parents.  And someone — not me — did ask my favorite question of Where Are The Dads?  I’m really ambivalent about this one.  On the one hand, I do think that always talking of these issues as mothers’ issues lets fathers and others off the hook.  But I do think that being a mother is a very salient part of lots of mothers’ identities, and so it’s a good way to mobilize them.  In particular, there are a lot of people who don’t think of themselves as activists, but if you convince them that being politically engaged is an important part of being a mother, they might do it.  And I’m not sure that a broad "caregivers movement" would engage people in the same way.  What do you think?

In any case, the documentary is worth watching.  If you’re in the DC area, and want to see the movie, the Women’s Information Network is having a screening and discussion tonight at AFSCME.  (Sorry, I won’t be there — I’ll be at D’s soccer team dinner.)  If that doesn’t work for you, let me know if you’d like me to arrange a kid-friendly viewing at my house some time.  (Probably not until January.)

Today’s book, The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us, by Robert Frank and Philip Cook, is somewhat dated in the details (it was first published in 1995) and can be repetitive at times, but is nonetheless a must-read for anyone interested in inequality in American society.  Frank and Cook were among the first to note that the biggest driving force in inequality today is not the gap between the very poor and everyone else, but the one between the very rich and everyone else.  Paul Krugman is probably the person who has spent the most time in recent years discussing this fact.  As Krugman noted in the NY Times in February:

"Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn’t a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint."

Frank and Cook labelled this phenomenon "the winner-take-all society" and argued that a variety of technological, political and economic factors have combined to create highly competitive national or global markets in which relative position is more important than absolute skill, and in which the very few top performers in any given field capture the vast majority of the returns.  The most obvious examples are in sports and the arts — while the superstars get millions in endorsements and appearance fees, no one can name the 100th best tennis player or violinist in world.  Frank and Cook argue that the same thing is going on for doctors, lawyers, authors, and CEOs. 

While I’m not entirely convinced by their explanations for why this happens (for one thing, in most fields it is not possible to rank people’s performance as accurately as in pro golf), I don’t think there’s any doubt that the description of the phenomenon is dead on.  The math is beyond me, but I am assured by people I generally trust that there are a wide variety of occupations in which the earnings distribution can best be explained by assuming that there are a series of "tournaments" in which only the winners proceed into the next rounds, and that small differences in skill thus are magnified into huge differences in earnings.  This probably explains a significant portion of the penalty for part-time work — it handicaps people at early levels of the tournament and makes it unlikely that they’ll get into the "leagues" with the really high payoffs. 

It’s hard to pin Frank and Cook down on a left-right scale.  They are economists, and I think they overstate the role of markets and understate the role of institutional structures in creating the outcomes that they describe. (See this American Prospect article for a good sample of their approach.)  But they believe that there are huge inefficiencies in this distribution — because people don’t take into account the effect of their entry into competition on other people, more people than is economically efficient compete for the few prestigious slots — and thus argue for progressive taxation, especially if tied to consumption.

After I finished this book, I had a really interesting conversation with T. about how the idea of the winner-take-all society interacts with the long tail — the ability for even very small niche products to find their audience using the powers of the internet.  I think our conclusion is that the long tail makes it possible to opt from the tournaments without giving up entirely on being in the game.  T’s example is that while it’s harder and harder to get a book (commercially) published these days, he thinks he makes more money self-publishing his game than he could make if it were picked up by a publisher, even recognizing that they could get it into distribution channels that he can’t reach.  But I think that for most people, the money they are going to make from their piece of the long tail is for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from zero.

At the church where my son’s Hebrew school meets, there’s a poster on a wall that says something like: "It’s October — are you feeling overloaded yet?"  Well, it’s November, and I’m feeling overloaded.

This week we have a PTA event at the school, the end of season dinner for D’s soccer team, and parent teacher conferences.  Some people from my office are going out for post-election drinks tomorrow evening.  I’m going to try to join them, as I’m sure a cranberry-tini will make me appreciate Math Night all the more.

I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is next week.  I’ve got people coming to my house, and have done nothing to prepare yet.  The last time I  hosted, I made the turkey using a non-conventional recipe that called for a short cooking time at a high heat.  It came out great and I’d like to do it again — but I have absolutely no idea what I did with the recipe.  Stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries.  What else should I make?  My son the ridiculously picky eater won’t taste any of this — should I be kind to him and make biscuits as well?  Gack.

Hanukah is on the early side this year — mid-December — so we need to figure out what we’re getting the boys.  Basically D would like the entire lego catalog.  I think the rule this year is that all presents have to fit inside a shoe box. 

I’m feeling somewhat out of control at work.  I’m much better at coming up with ideas for things that I’d like to do than I am at following through, especially when there’s no deadline.  (I’m very good with deadlines.)

Today my CASA case had a review hearing.  The protective order was dismissed, which means that my CASA assignment to that case is over.  I think it was probably the right decision even though the family still has lots of issues, since I don’t think any of them rise to the level of requiring the courts or the child welfare agency to be involved.  I do think the kids are going to be safe.  I just wish I were more hopeful that they are going to get from the adults in their lives what they need to succeed.

Stepping away from the politics for a little while, I thought I’d do some reviews. 

• First, Curious George, the movie.  (Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy.  While I don’t necessarily praise the things that I get sent, I do feel guilty if I don’t get around to posting about them.  Should I?  Is it unethical to accept the offers if I don’t review the item?)  This is a cute, inoffensive kids movie.  Unlike most G-rated movies these days, there are no hidden pop references that are designed to go over the kids heads.  The plot is not directly based on any of the Curious George Books, although they inspire various scenes (George painting the walls, George hanging from a balloon).   The writers figured out how to avoid the most cringe-worthy elements of the book (e.g. that the man in the yellow hat kidnaps George) and also answer such pressing questions as what he’s doing in that stupid yellow suit in the first place.  My kids loved it.
• Street Fight.  I netflixed this, and asked T. if he wanted to see it.  What’s it about, he wanted to know.  It’s a documentary about a mayoral race, I said (the 2002 Newark mayoral race between Sharpe James and Cory Booker).  Not interested, he said.  But 15 minutes later, he was watching it just as intently as I was.  It has the hypnotic qualities of a car crash — you can’t believe that James’ goons didn’t realize how bad they were going to look on video.
• I’m an Amazon Associate on this blog (last quarter I earned $2.42), so they occasionally send me emails pitching products I might want to feature.  Most of the toys they’re promoting for this holiday season made me yawn, but both T and I are sorely tempted by the new Lego Mindstorms robots.  We’re resisting the temptation, because we know our boys are really too young for them, but boy do they look impressive.
• I’ll admit that I’m also quite tempted by the Nintendo Wii.  If that controller is as cool as it’s being described, I suspect we’ll be getting one, although maybe not this holiday season.  The idea is that the controller is motion sensitive, so instead of pushing a combination of buttons, you can use it as a tennis racket or steering wheel or whatever the game requires.
• In browsing through the toys r us catalog, I had to laugh at the Lifestyle Dream Kitchen, which is described as "realistic and upscale."  A quick comparison with the regular play kitchen reveals that what makes this "upscale" is the fake stainless steel on the stove and the refrigerator.  But this has to be an aspirational pitch, because my guess is that the mommies and daddies who have stainless steel appliances in their ktichen wouldn’t buy their little darlings anything with so much plastic — they’d go for something like this wooden version.

What’s on your wish list?

Wheeeeeeee!  It’s really looking like the Dems have taken both the House and the Senate.  Given that Virginia uses overwhelmingly electronic voting machines, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances under which a recount would find another 7,000 votes for Allen.  It’s not like Florida, where you can argue about chads and voter intent.  I think Webb has pulled it off.

There’s an odd little debate that’s floating around the blogosphere about how progressive the new Democratic representatives and Senators are.  This is both a question of who should get credit for the victory (e.g Emanuel vs. The Netroots) and a question about the upcoming legislative agenda.

In particular, I think it’s a question about how much Pelosi should use her power as Majority Leader to promote her vision of the Democratic party and keep more conservative members from making common cause with the few moderate Republicans who are left.  Over the past couple of years, she’s really pushed Democrats to maintain party discipline — to vote strict party lines, so the Republicans couldn’t claim that they were acting in a bipartisan manner.  And that’s made sense, since the Republican leadership has been using their power over the rules to prevent any amendments from being voted on that they didn’t like, even when those amendments could have won the support of a majority of Representatives.  But now that the Democrats are in power, it will be interesting to see whether she tries to maintain that sort of strict discipline.

On the Senate side, because of the possibility of a fillibuster, most legislation requires 60 votes.  In recent years, the Democrats have gotten very leary of providing the needed votes to move any legislation forward, because even if the Senate-passed bill was reasonable, they knew that they’d get screwed in conference committee.  So it will be interesting to see how things play out.

Finally, everyone should pay attention to what Congress does over the next six weeks, as they return for a lame duck session.  The continuing resolution that provides funding for most of the government only runs through November 17, so they have to come back and finish up the budget process.  This gives the Republicans one last chance to try to ram through some of their priorities before they lose control.  It could get ugly very fast.

Please vote.  Please please please.

I’ve got a little bubble of hope that’s been trying to come out, and I keep pushing it down because I don’t want to be too disappointed.  I can still feel what it tasted like in 2000 when the initial Gore lead disappeared somewhere around midnight, and the sick feeling in my stomach in 1994 as the size of the Republican win became clear.  I’ve been obsessively checking the Post website and Not Larry Sabato, even though neither has anything particularly interesting to say at this point.  While individual polls point in different directions, they’re all within the margin of error.

I’m going to head to bed soon, because I’m getting up early to volunteer at one of the local polling places.  I’m actually volunteering for the Commonwealth Coalition, rather than Webb, because I really don’t think that anyone is going to show up at the polls not knowing who they’re voting for in the Senate race, but I actually think that handing people the full text of Ballot Question 1 might sway some votes.  And then I’m going to vote myself, and then head into work, and then come home and obsess.  If you’re in the area and want to come obsess with me, you’re invited.

I think it’s going to be a long night.  If the Dems lose most of the close Senate races in the East, it could be over early, but otherwise we’re all going to be waiting for the Montana results to come in.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more races were close enought to require a recount.  (The Post suggests that Missouri is the most likely state to have problems.)  So we may not know Wednesday morning who is in control of the Senate.

Hey, Bill Clinton just called me.  Well, sort of.

How about everyone posting tomorrow after they’ve voted and saying what the lines were like, etc?