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I wrote the first draft of this standing on the shoulder of Highway One just north of Buena Vista Road waiting for the Triple A to come and put on my spare. Not because I’m incapable of putting on my own spare. But for some reason my car didn’t have its tire irons in the trunk. I think I had bett.rer check out both cars for tools and evacuation supplies.
So here goes. This morning I was talking about class. That was the p[reamble, really, to what I want to talk about, which is the implications of the principle that the health of a community depends on the health of its working class. Having defined the working class this morning – or no, I didn’t, did I? I just undefined “underclass” and “middle class” and folded all of the first and most of the second into the working class where they belong – I’m ready, now, to think about what the health of the working class entails.
What makes a healthy working class? Decent work, with decent working conditions: affordable, decent housing: safety (and how we define safety has a lot to do with what we do to secure it and what we get in return): comfort: culture: and a sense of community.
What decent work entails is: a reasonable wage that allows the workers and their families to do more than survive: protection against physical hazards, injustice in the workplace, and harassment (which entails clear, enforceable, and enforced rules): a say in the policy and operations of the workplace and the business of which it is a part: and work that is itself not harmful to the community or to the world, including the natural world (which we should please be a little relaxed about when it comes to tiny venal things like liquor stores and smut shops, okay? Let’s save harmful for toxic or exploitative or criminal, okay?).
So cities can encourage decent workplaces with a little encouragement and can discourage indecent workplaces with the clever use of land use permits and fees and taxes and ordinances. Let me return to “encouragement.” Some communities in the past have gotten themselves declared “enterprise zones” which means the employer coming in pays less taxes and lower wages and lower benefits on the promise that somehow their being there is going to revitalize stressed towns. Excuse me, how? If you lock a town in to a bad deal, where it is paying for infrastructure and getting no return for it, where its population is getting screwed and not making enough to buy those extra things that feed the local economy – how does that revitalize anything but the pockets of whatever corrupt politician designed this foul deal in the first place?
But communities can offer other kinds of encouragement. Infrastructure guarantees, locked in with clear obligations. “We’ll build and maintain public transportation with routes timed to be convenient for your workplace, if you make promises about hiring, promotion and training. If you guarantee a distribution system, we’ll even make reduced fares available to your workforce! We’ll build the water mains in your part of town, state of the art, if you make commitments to water conservation and pollution controls above the Federal guidelines. We’ll make sure to include training programs relevant to your industry in our adult education programs if you commit to a fair promotion policy. We’ll zone for housing convenient for your workforce if you make commitments to stay in the area for at least fifty years.”
Sorry, tax breaks are stupid. Communities need money to provide infrastructure and protection, and large workplaces make large demands on communities. It’s no good letting them off the hook, because you will end up paying your public safety officers less than they could get washing cars and that will result in personnel shortages and corruption. Employers need communities to provide these things. Privatizing those services results, as we have seen, in waste, chaos, and abuse.
(as I write this, Gloria has the television going, and I swear the reporters sound drunk. All they seem to know anything about is that some of the people in New Orleans refuse to leave. They don’t seem to know anything else. Is there a connection?)
Employment is only one way that good planning for the working class is good planning for the whole community, but this is already quite long and I will have to get to housing, open space, and the rest, some other time.
On other fronts, I’ve seen “Broken Flowers” with Gloria, and you don’t have to. It has some very good things about i, but it is not a must-see, especially if you’re burned out on long slow scenes and ambiguity, or if it is possible for you to have enough of long loving shots of Bill Murray’s depressed face. The ambiguity is interesting, and the characters are portrayed sympathetically, even the monsters. It’s downright sweet. But not a must-see.
Late tonight, or tomorrow, I'll share my amazing insights about housing.
So here goes. This morning I was talking about class. That was the p[reamble, really, to what I want to talk about, which is the implications of the principle that the health of a community depends on the health of its working class. Having defined the working class this morning – or no, I didn’t, did I? I just undefined “underclass” and “middle class” and folded all of the first and most of the second into the working class where they belong – I’m ready, now, to think about what the health of the working class entails.
What makes a healthy working class? Decent work, with decent working conditions: affordable, decent housing: safety (and how we define safety has a lot to do with what we do to secure it and what we get in return): comfort: culture: and a sense of community.
What decent work entails is: a reasonable wage that allows the workers and their families to do more than survive: protection against physical hazards, injustice in the workplace, and harassment (which entails clear, enforceable, and enforced rules): a say in the policy and operations of the workplace and the business of which it is a part: and work that is itself not harmful to the community or to the world, including the natural world (which we should please be a little relaxed about when it comes to tiny venal things like liquor stores and smut shops, okay? Let’s save harmful for toxic or exploitative or criminal, okay?).
So cities can encourage decent workplaces with a little encouragement and can discourage indecent workplaces with the clever use of land use permits and fees and taxes and ordinances. Let me return to “encouragement.” Some communities in the past have gotten themselves declared “enterprise zones” which means the employer coming in pays less taxes and lower wages and lower benefits on the promise that somehow their being there is going to revitalize stressed towns. Excuse me, how? If you lock a town in to a bad deal, where it is paying for infrastructure and getting no return for it, where its population is getting screwed and not making enough to buy those extra things that feed the local economy – how does that revitalize anything but the pockets of whatever corrupt politician designed this foul deal in the first place?
But communities can offer other kinds of encouragement. Infrastructure guarantees, locked in with clear obligations. “We’ll build and maintain public transportation with routes timed to be convenient for your workplace, if you make promises about hiring, promotion and training. If you guarantee a distribution system, we’ll even make reduced fares available to your workforce! We’ll build the water mains in your part of town, state of the art, if you make commitments to water conservation and pollution controls above the Federal guidelines. We’ll make sure to include training programs relevant to your industry in our adult education programs if you commit to a fair promotion policy. We’ll zone for housing convenient for your workforce if you make commitments to stay in the area for at least fifty years.”
Sorry, tax breaks are stupid. Communities need money to provide infrastructure and protection, and large workplaces make large demands on communities. It’s no good letting them off the hook, because you will end up paying your public safety officers less than they could get washing cars and that will result in personnel shortages and corruption. Employers need communities to provide these things. Privatizing those services results, as we have seen, in waste, chaos, and abuse.
(as I write this, Gloria has the television going, and I swear the reporters sound drunk. All they seem to know anything about is that some of the people in New Orleans refuse to leave. They don’t seem to know anything else. Is there a connection?)
Employment is only one way that good planning for the working class is good planning for the whole community, but this is already quite long and I will have to get to housing, open space, and the rest, some other time.
On other fronts, I’ve seen “Broken Flowers” with Gloria, and you don’t have to. It has some very good things about i, but it is not a must-see, especially if you’re burned out on long slow scenes and ambiguity, or if it is possible for you to have enough of long loving shots of Bill Murray’s depressed face. The ambiguity is interesting, and the characters are portrayed sympathetically, even the monsters. It’s downright sweet. But not a must-see.
Late tonight, or tomorrow, I'll share my amazing insights about housing.
no subject
I have, for some time, felt that work is something that gets left out of most SF stories and fantasy is particularly lacking in real solid occupations. As it happens the workplace, safety issues, pay rates and the consequences of free market global capitalism are things I want to tackle several books down the To Write queue. With dwarfs. Dwarfs are also sadly under-represented in fantasy, I feel. Apart from in the Discworld.