The Public Policy

...Community control of schools is now terribly chic, it seems, but not so community control of porn parlors and skin flicks...

...All the wealth is just out there, see, and it's all a matter of dividing it up more equal like, you dig...

...A handbook on how to practice bacterial warfare would be a likely candidate for censorship by even the most liberal of liberals...

...but no longer, as witness the following interview with a laid-off worker with /ess than a year's seniority: Q: So the company won't be paying you anything...

...This is over-the-counter stuff in most big cities, and a simple request for more "action" will bring even raunchier material from beneath the counter...

...the "economy of wealth" exists, mirabile dictu, as if by itself, an autonomous product of industrialization, created without the aid or effort of human hands...

...At the time, it seemed quite a concession...

...For example, Feldstein points out that most unemployment is of relatively short duration---over 50 percent being unemployed for less than five weeks...

...Galbraith, moreover, has others in the faith who have almost certainly never read his prose...

...What we have lost in our rational perspective on economics is the countervailing presence of prerational value judgments, a feeling for the cultural and historical and philosophic roots of the capitalist way of thinking...

...The irony of our modern defense of capitalism is that the more thoroughly our "economic" and "valueless" arguments are vindicated in a narrow sense, the less effectively they will persuade or convince...

...Milton Friedman would tell you (to oversimplify) that it doesn't work because the government simply competes with the private sector for available loan money, so there's no more money being spent, in toto, than there was before---only 8 The Alternative March 1974 the spenders have changed...

...its effect on our spirit, even more so...

...Pause) Q: Do you think that's fair...

...The politics of affluence is deeply ingrained, and one's acceptance of it has become a measure of his sophistication in any number of academic, journalistic, and political circles...

...When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, this concept was regularly trotted out as a recommended focus for concerned student attention, usually during those spells when the war in Vietnam seemed relatively quiet...

...In fact, the issue concerns magazines, photographs, films, and books explicitly depicting sado-masochism, child molesting, bestiality, lesbianism, oral and group sex, anal fetishism, and a variety of other practices and positions that defy description...

...Alan Reynolds Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Pornography F ROM TH~ WAVE OF hysteria that followed the Supreme Court decision on pornography, one might suppose that Galileo and Darwin would not have made the grade under contemporary cormnunity standards...

...And so, with the aid of our helpful leading questioner, GM's cruelty in not paying the salary of everyone whose services are no longer required is exposed for all to see...

...the other half is that some people won't take or keep jobs that they find "unattractive...

...In part, this may be a reflection of sublime innocence...

...The issue is discussed, in editorials and TV talk shows, as though it were addressed to Playboy and the novels of D.H...

...This quaint little conception of macroeconomics has by no means died out the way student demonstrations have...

...There was, however, one aspect of these events which always struck me as f a s c i n a t i n g - namely, the "economic theory" which seemed at the core of the entire ritual...

...The Public Policy by Peter Rusthoven "Come and Get It ": The Politics of Affluence B ACK IN THE DAYS when s t u d e n t demonstrations were in vogue, one of the more popular themes for these little street convocations was "worker-student solidarity...

...Most of this, of course, very rapidly became trite to any nondemonstrator exposed to it for any length of time...

...This calamity could easily be avoided, he thought, siiace our highly industrialized society could well afford to support such a right...

...rather, the problem is that people won't take them...

...bad business drives out good...

...Most communities have effectively limited minors' access to pornographic material...

...This is not so insurmountable a problem as many claim...

...But it seems it doesn't quite work...

...For one thing, through welfare and unemployment compensation, whatever their other merits or demerits, the government provides notorious disincentives to work...

...Indeed, many smut suppliers are only too happy to identify their products as intended for "adults only," as a selling point, thus advertising the prurient intent...

...4) Under the name of democratic political process, a trust in a Benthamite, individualist consensus rather than in a Rousseauian "general will...

...Considering how much indifference has greeted conventional rhetoric since the war, it may be time for those who wish to defend capitalism to look in the same direction and adopt the same method...

...If there is benefit in an economy rapidly growing short of gasoline, paper, fuel oil, and electricity, it is surely the lesson that all these things are not the boundless gift of a munificent and indulgent providence...

...A: No...

...out would come the marchers, the speakers, the bullhorns, and the homemade signs, as if on cue, for a little display of concern and relevance in the collegiate Marxist tradition...

...I suspect that this same portion of the population would be highly offended if this nation decided it would no longer subsidize that preference...

...In essence, this less-than-weighty tome attempted to systematize the aforementioned view of the economy...

...The bosses can afford it...

...The goodies are '%here," somehow...

...Simple, yes...

...One could easily dismiss all this as just one more expression of the self-righteous n~/ivitd of a few leftist students, but to do so, I think, would be a mistake...

...As one of my fellows put it to me after class, if we forced one to starve in order to exercise his right not to work, we would render that right "meaningless...

...A multimillion dollar effort to fix-up downtown Sacramento, in an effort to bring back family shoppers, was partly thwarted by the infestation of the area by "adult" bookstores and movie theaters...

...But the idea was straightforward enough...

...Nor does anyone really believe that any business should be permitted to operate anywhere it wants: A refinery, auto body shop, or kennel would be most unwelcome in the residential sections of Scarsdale or Beverly Hills...

...usually, this means more deficit spending by the government, which creates more demand for goods and ~ervices, and thus generates new jobs for the unemployed...

...The one would characterize society as a collection of individual decision-makers, in which the state must uphold some common measure of civility and reason...

...It would appear, then, that a significant portion of the population no longer thinks working is worth the candle...

...Art itself is seriously threatened, we're told, by the "average vigilantes...

...This was best expressed in a particularly silly, but incredibly popular slogan which kept popping up at these demos, to wi't, "30 Hours Work for 40 Hours Pay...

...But the most significant point of his article seems to me to be the one he makes at the very beginning...

...A Boston manpower program in the late 1960s had well over half of its participants turn down openings that the program agency had located for them...

...For the idea it expresses---namely, that there's all kinds of wealth just sitting around, a certain portion of which belongs to every individual as part of his birthright--is actually a fairly pervasive one...

...Understand...

...The former (Aristotelian rather than Platonic model) has always preceded the growth of a capitalist voting public...

...When a Galbraith writes a book, a hundred Schlesingers and other worthies say things like "This brilliant book opens new paths in our understanding," or that anyone who fails to read it "will be opting out of serious discussion of the future of American life...

...Now, you might suppose this to be patently absurd to anyone with a week of high school economics under his belt, but not so...

...There is yet some hope, however, that what we lesser lights call "reality" will intrude...

...We can afford it...

...There really is an end...

...Unfortunately, the current minimum wage law prevents many people from accepting jobs with low pay and valuable experience...

...Why on earth can't urban residents exercise similar control over the location of porn businesses, which are certainly no less offensive to the senses...

...My own suggestion that the "right not to work" did not carry with it the right to be supported at someone else's expense was met in turn with mostly tolerant amusement...

...A: None...

...In his words, "A firm can generally provide the opportunity to acquire new marketable skills--by on-the-job training, detailed supervision, or even just by learning by experience--only to a worker whose net product during the period of training is at least equal to his wage...

...All this is well and good, and Mr...

...It seems there really is a bottom to the barrel...

...The economy is not, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, the World's biggest Reader's Digest Sweepstakes, with 200,000,000 prizes guaranteed to be awarded...

...Lawrence...

...In recent decades, the bestknown research into these aspects of capitalism have been conducted from diverse, but uniformly critical points of view (the names of Weber, Sombart, Hobson, Veblen, Commons, and Schumpeter come to mind...

...In short, the idea of the '%ard-core unemployed," unable to find jobs, is only about half true...

...Unlike the subjects of most liberal-statist restrictions, these are matters that do affect third parties who are neither buyers nor sellers...

...But the purpose here is not so much to be comprehensive as to give shape and texture to what Roepke means when he talks about the "framework of a free market...

...A vigorous campaign of racist or anti-Semitic propaganda would be denounced for the same reason that wide-open pornography ought to be denounced--many innocent people would be injured or offended by such material and by the clientele it attracts...

...Moreover, this is true even when substantial public effort is made to find jobs for the unemployed...

...so are 'kmfair competition," "intent to defraud," %insanitary conditions," and "loitering...

...But it is not, after all, that painful a lesson...

...How does one counter all this...

...The individual who dismisses the idea of a cornucopia of easily available wealth as so much bosh and attempts to put in a lonely word for the dignity and necessity of individual endeavor sounds, by contrast, as if he is singing the opening song of All in the Family along with Archie Bunker...

...The other day in one of my law school classes the professor mentioned in passing his "firm belief that individuals have a 'right not to work.'" (Don't ask me how these topics come up in a law class--I've given up trying to figure it out...

...The problem is very real to those who are close to it...

...Similarly, much unemployment is voluntary-about 50 percent representing people who have voluntarily left their jobs...

...But Feldstein offers yet another reason: the problem isn't that jobs aren't there...

...There is a good possibility that reasonable restrictions on the location and sales-tax exemption of such material might well be workable using the industry's own classification scheme...

...All in all, it's a pretty insulting, elitist view of the average man in the average community...

...It is difficult, to say the least...

...Now, the UAW won a contract with GM some years back which has the company paying any worker with more than a year's seniority a sizable percentage of his salary for a considerable number of weeks in the event of a layoff...

...the other suggests an organism, in which the state must form the organizing nucleus...

...Q: No benefits...

...Conservatives are properly wary of granting judicial or regulatory bodies the authority to The Alternative March 1974- 9...

...I think, though, that this one had something to do with trying to mangle the Constitution to produce this new 'Tight...

...Finally, consider the following informatio~t, gleaned from "The Economics of the New Unemployment," an article by Martin Feldstein in the fall, 1973 issue of the Public Interest...

...For another, the minimum wage laws, as Feldstein illustrates, help turn many entry-level jobs into dead ends...

...In any event, this idea was greeted with some considerable approval among those assembled...

...Discrimination" is hard to define...

...On the one occasion when I foolishly approached a young man carrying one of these signs and inquired about it, he responded impatiently with "Come on, man--you know the bosses can afford it...

...Its effect on our economic life would be most welcome...

...Doubtless there are many other prerequisites...

...To say that pornography is hard to define is not to say that it doesnt exist, or that it doesn't present a problem...

...It follows Gresham's law...

...Feldstein suggests a number of policies to alleviate the problem which merit serious consideration...

...Pornography shops are beth a symptom and a contributing factor in the exodus of middle-class families from the cities...

...Any strike or firing or other labormanagement dispute was a sufficient catalyst...

...Now, there are several reasons for this...

...Didn't have no welfare states/Everybody pulled his weight/Gee, our old La Salle ran great/ Those were the days...

...Few people have objected to this control, or have maintained that the classifications arrived at were entirely arbitrary...

...But the idea is the same in either case...

...As Feldstein points out, the standard Keynesian formula for decreasing unemployment is to increase aggregate demand...

...jobs are there, but people won't take them, even in a tight labor market...

...Or words to that effect--I'll admit that I didn't write them down at the time...

...General Motors recently laid off some auto workers, (Cadillacs aren't moving too well in this season of gasoline shortages), and the satraps of ABC decided this was worthy of a few '~human interest" interviews to be broadcast into the ~ation's living rooms...

...It was, in the words of his paperback publisher, "A challenging argument for new economic structures based on an economy of wealth...

...Many people have to walk past skin flicks and "massage parlors" on the way to work, and their children may be indirectly or directly exposed to a rather demeaning, vicarious approach to sex ("Mommy: What's a 'Deep Throat...

...Although he would resent the label, an academic entrepreneur named John Kenneth Galbraith earned X thousands of dollars a few years ago, as well as the accolades of T/me, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and all the Arthur Schlesingers of the world, by writing a book called The Affluent Society...

...In short, minimum wage raises the pay scale for entrylevel jobs, but makes it too expensive for firms to turn those jobs into a route to something better...

...To control pornography, one must first be able to identify it...

...In the polite language of social science, there are obvious "externalities," "social costs," or '~aeighborhood effects" arising from having an "adult" bookstore or theater next door to your apartment, stere, or office...

...The book sold tons of copies, and became required reading in more economics classes than one cares to remember...

...New York's Times Square area has been ruined as a tourist attraction by scruffy little porn shops...

...Insulated by their affluent suburbs, the ritualistic liberals don't address themselves at all to the main issue of what proliferating smut shops and theaters can do to the aesthetics and safety of a shopping or entertainment area...

...The current wage structure is a rip off...

...It is strange, perhaps, that man's most advanced technological society needs tc learn all over again the world's most fundamental lesson: Nothing is free...

...A: No, I don't think it's fair at a l i b i don't get a thing...

...A less charitable summary might be, "John Kenneth Galbraith tells an eager America how it should split up all its goodies...

...Nobody, in fact, really believes in unrestricted communications...