Hey OWS, what about work & discipline?

By Rod Dreher • November 15, 2011, 9:45 AM

Economist Tyler Cowen has something for the Occupy movement to consider:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has raised important questions about the respect paid to wealth in our society. There is a good deal of unfairness in the American economy, and by deliberately targeting the “top 1 percent,” the demonstrators have opened up a dialogue that is quite useful.

Nonetheless, as someone from a conservative and libertarian background, I find that I am hearing too much talk about riches and not enough about values. It’s worth recalling why so many Americans have respected the wealthy in the first place.

It’s a pretty balanced piece. Cowen says that the typical conservative idea that hard work and discipline will result in economic success has come under serious and reasonable criticism. Excerpt:

The first problem is that higher status for the wealthy can easily lead to crony capitalism. In public discourse social status judgments are often crude. Critical differences are lost, like the distinction between earning money through production for consumers, as Apple has done, and earning money through the manipulation of government, which heavily subsidized agribusinesses have done. The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.

The second problem is that many conservatives have become so attached to their cultural vision that they have ceded sound, technocratic reasoning to the left and center. For instance there is a common willingness among conservatives to defend the Bush tax cuts, even though the evidence does not show much of an economic payoff.

There’s more, so be sure to read the whole thing. Cowen points out, quite rightly, that even if conservatives don’t have all the answers, any reform movement to rebalance the economy in productive ways that does not seek to reinforce the idea that working hard and living in a disciplined way will help you get ahead — that movement will fail.

11 Responses to Hey OWS, what about work & discipline?

JustMe says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:01 am

any reform movement to rebalance the economy in productive ways that does not seek to reinforce the idea that working hard and living in a disciplined way will help you get ahead

What you mean is that we need to create an economic system in which it is a believable myth that “working hard and living in a disciplined way will help you get ahead.” The meritocracy is only partially true. But it needs only to be true enough, and we don’t even have that any more.

Where the system breaks down is that conservatives inevitably feel that “living in a disciplined way” means fulfilling certain social conservative goals and talismans and that anyone departing from those goals should be punished appropriately. Meanwhile, those who are already wealthy, by dint of their wealth, maintain their status as “good people” who deserve all of their rewards and accolades.

Did my grandfather “deserve” to live a middle class life with a car, a house, a TV, and the ability to support a family, just because he worked in a factory? Some might argue that the shareholders and management class of his company were cheating out of wealth and income unfairly claimed by my grandfather and the public treasury, and that it was only in the 1980s we finally corrected this gross inequity and allowed increased wealth and the benefits of the growing economy to be directed at those who “truly” merited it, rather than those who merely showed up to work and made a steady living.
Will says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:02 am

99% of OWS rhetoric gets on my nerves, but people who brag about the “school of hard knocks” have the same effect. For hard work to pay off, there’s has to be some, well, pay off. You can’t expect to make a living from lesbian punk rock, but how is hard work on a menial job any better when there is no prospect to save, increase earnings, or find a better paying job. And did we say pay off debts? You’re absolutely right about the need to make working hard and living in a disciplined way provide rewards. But the hectoring tone from media loudmouths on the so-called right and various knuckleheads who echo them is only the same obsession with process over product or activity over accomplishment. Paint your body and protest or point your finger and ya ya; what’s the difference?
Stef says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:13 am

I’m going to grossly generalize here, but in generalizations there’s usually a nugget of truth.

Europeans didn’t value wealth per se; they valued the idea of “nobility,” of the aristocracy. Never mind that your aristocratic ancestors happened to be invading Norman barbarians who got their lands as a bribe to stop pillaging the natives. Inherited wealth and social position became associated with superiority.

In the USA, our take on that derived from Calvinism. Wealth was a “sign of election.” Poverty became associated with degeneracy (no more Lady Poverty, thank you), and a sign of your unregeneracy.

The association with hard work was in some ways accidental. In the past, hard work was indeed required to add value and build wealth. But somewhere along the line the manipulation of money, of currency, of interest- and rent-seeking supplanted the more traditional notion of hard work.

It’s almost as if anything that results in actual adding of value (like raising your own backyard chickens and selling the eggs) is made virtually impossible by regulations, whereas financial instruments which land people millions in a few moments proceed with very little regulation. In other words, it’s not hard work which often leads to wealth, but cleverness.

There are some exceptions, like highly-skilled doctors (who do apparently make up 10-15% of the top 1% of earners.) That’s definitely a case where the work –> wealth equation holds up. But increasingly the very wealthy are basically rentiers, or inheritors, or both.
Todd says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:21 am

Huh?

What makes you think the wealthy have performed hard work and possess discipline? Outside of a person’s passion, who is motivated to labor long and hard for something, making it into a labor of love?

The whole notion that the wealthy have something to teach the rest of us strikes me as silly to the extreme.
Mont D. Law says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:30 am

From Kevin Drum:

http://tinyurl.com/dxy6uc2

It’s the fact that hard work pays off very, very differently for different classes of people these days.

snip

This has always been true, but it’s even more true now than in the past. College graduates — the kind who write op-eds and blog posts about the virtue of hard work — are sincere in their promotion of an ethic of work. And they aren’t wrong. But they do overrate how much difference it makes for most people. Especially in an era where working and middle-class wages have been stagnant for over a decade, the rest of the workforce just isn’t buying the Horatio Alger story anymore: working hard barely even gets them a small annual raise these days, let alone the chance for significantly higher wages.

snip

As those Horatio Alger tales seem increasingly fanciful, and as dreams of even modest wealth become ever more obviously out of reach to the average person, it’s going to get harder and harder to keep up the pretense that discipline and hard work are really the key to great wealth for anyone not in the upper middle class to begin with.

snip

None of this is easy. But the truth is that it’s increasingly impossible to sell people transparently self-promoting fairy tales that plainly don’t reflect how the real world works. If you want them to believe that hard work and discipline are important, then hard work and discipline have to really be important. Not just modestly helpful. Not mere drops compared to the obviously undeserved piles of so many of the super rich. If we want people to believe, we have to believe too. We have to believe that America should be a country where everyone prospers, not just the cognitive elite and the super lucky. Until we all believe this — until conservatives believe this — the notions of responsibility and discipline that conservatives talk about so much are probably going to continue fading. In recent decades they’ve simply dedicated too much of their lives and too much of their energy to patent unfairness to be surprised any longer that belief in being fairly rewarded is on the wane.

That’s the lesson of Occupy Wall Street.
snip
Rod Dreher says:

November 15, 2011 at 10:36 am

Did y’all actually read Cowen’s piece? Seems to me he was chastising conservatives for satisfying themselves with platitudes about hard work and discipline pay off, when in fact we’ve got a situation in which that is no longer the case, or at least not as much the case as it once was. He’s telling conservatives that this has to change, that the real world doesn’t work the way they imagine it.

But he’s also saying that he wishes the pro-OWS left would stop focusing exclusively on the distribution of income, and more on how income is generated. What’s wrong with that? Not either-or, but both-and.
TWylite says:

November 15, 2011 at 11:41 am

Gotta go with my unscientific sampling of acquaintances from my decidedly white, upper-middle class home town. Most of the people who worked hard in school, and went through college purposefully have done pretty well for themselves. They at least continued to stay in an upper-middle class lifestyle. The people who goofed off on partying, took forever to get through college or never finished, have done a lot less well. There are some exceptions. But the bourgeoisie fetish for work ethic has valid practical reasons behind it. I like to think that success may not come with hard work, but it certainly won’t come without it. So I go with the odds and favor hard work, and try to find hard work I can enjoy on some level.
Going on a psychological tangent: the people who harp the most about unfairness seem to be people who don’t feel in control of their destiny. They have implicit or explicit expectations that others are in charge, and it is up to others to provide for them. And this kind of passivity is self-defeating.
Scott in PA says:

November 15, 2011 at 11:54 am

“To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy…”

Cowen is the one who is confused here. A majority of Republicans in the House voted against TARP, and these were the most “right wing” Republicans.

The article is incoherent, trying to point fingers in all directions so as to give the appearance of even-handedness.

I see he also brings up the canard about divorce rates in “red states” being higher than in “blue states”, but you can’t get divorced if you don’t get married in the first place, can you?
Turmarion says:

November 15, 2011 at 1:02 pm

Cowen, as quoted, emphasis added: , I find that I am hearing too much talk about riches and not enough about values. It’s worth recalling why so many Americans have respected the wealthy in the first place.

Just ’cause I’m in a contrarian mood, let me suggest that maybe American respect for the wealthy is misplaced. Why should being wealthy per se make one worthy of respect? It may be (but as several commenters point out isn’t necessarily or automatically) a signifier of hard work, discipline, etc. I certainly would agree that hard work and discipline are worthy of repect. But shouldn’t someone who works hard and is disciplined be admired for that reason whether or not it results in his becoming wealthy? And shouldn’t a lazy and undisciplined rich person be denigrated, wealth aside?

In short, Stef has it exactly right:

In the USA, our take on that derived from Calvinism. Wealth was a “sign of election.” Poverty became associated with degeneracy (no more Lady Poverty, thank you), and a sign of your unregeneracy.

The reference to St. Francis’ “Lady Povery” is especially telling. Wealth wasn’t always seen as a virtue. Part of the reason that many monarchs were canonized in the Middle Ages was that it was considered remarkable that they were pious and saintly despite their wealth.

As long as we’re on religion, when Jesus said “Woe to you rich,” and the thing about rich men, camels, and eyes of needles, I don’t recall him making any qualifications. It wasn’t “Woe to you undeserving rich,” or “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich many to enter the Kingdom of Heaven–unless, of course, he got rich by hard work and discipline….” Perhaps our society has the wrong values from the git-go?

Cowan, from article: Nonetheless, higher income inequality will increase the appeal of traditional mores — of discipline and hard work — because they bolster one’s chances of advancing economically.

Rod: But he’s also saying that he wishes the pro-OWS left would stop focusing exclusively on the distribution of income, and more on how income is generated.

I think for some of us this is the kicker. If there’s no viable way for income to be generated in the first place, then how can any amount of discipline and hard work “bolster one’s chances of advancing economically? The industrial sector is in what seems to be permanent collapse, there is strong evidence that automation is replacing more and more human jobs, even prosperous companies aren’t hiring, and the credential racket is forcing people who could have made a good living with a high school diploma fifty years ago and who probably aren’t suited for college to go into debt to enter college programs they probably can’t succeed in. So hard work is supposed to help how?

Yes, Cowen says the right “doesn’t have all the answers”; but perhaps that’s just slightly disingenuous–or obtuse–in a milieu in which nothing seems to be producing more jobs, without which infinite hard work and discipline just don’t mean much.
Irenist says:

November 15, 2011 at 1:39 pm

[N.B.: I read all of Cowen's piece. Found it thoughtful, but thought it missed the bigger picture.]
One of the fastest growing occupations in the country is “janitor.” Obviously, no amount of hard work or discipline in janitorial work will make the janitor wealthy.
Fine, we think: he should better himself, and get the education necessary to get a better job.
Two problems:
1. The better jobs aren’t there! Retail sales and nurse’s aide and burger flipper are there instead, if anything is. In a demand recession with 9-10% unemployment, the best any hard working disciplined person can hope for is to shift the misery off himself by being the one interviewee picked. But in the aggregate, 9-10% of people will still be unemployed until countercyclical monetary or fiscal policy is finally used–no matter how many nostrums we preach at them.
2. Even if the better jobs were there, there can never, logically, be enough of them to solve the inequality problem–only redistribution can do that, unfortunately. No matter what values we instill, not all of Lake Woebegon’s above average children can grow up to be chiefs–somebody has to be an Indian; somebody has to be a janitor, a burger flipper, etc.
The reason I applaud OWS’s focus on income inequality is that it is only by a return to 50′s tax rates that you can return to a 50′s-style economy in which the inevitable majority of Indians working blue collar jobs can have a dignified, stable life in which to raise a family.
Cowen’s morality is attractive. But in the face of a demand-side recession and the insufficiently progressive taxation to generate demand, they are irrelevant. If everyone woke up more of a Horatio Alger-style go-getter tomorrow, it would just mean that more resumes would get mail-merged into employers’ inboxes. It wouldn’t mean that there were more jobs–just more deleted resumes in those inboxes.
In the long-term, Cowen is right: a libertarian ethic of entrepreneurship is the best way to grow the size of the economic pie known to man. But in a demand shortfall, we’re not worried about the long run….
Ken Hoop says:

November 15, 2011 at 3:33 pm

Gee, I’m sorry…has it been established that it’s time to write Occupy off because A. Tea Party leaders reached out to attempt to work in coalition with them on agreed goals and were rejected?…or B. it can be assumed that Occupy leadership cannot “grow” in strategic options in such a way as to maintain strength until political goals are acheived with or without Tea Party style coalitions?… or C. I was being charitable in granting retro hippie-anarchists some berth in the beginning but now, time’s up !?