I am reading Cordell Hull's Memoirs. This is the last major work I plan to take notes on before starting on the final draft of The U.S. War Against Asia. I knew little about Cordell Hull except that he was Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which meant he played a major part in the events leading up to the Battle of Pearl Harbor. This just illustrates how even history buffs like myself tend to think in terms of Presidents, when actually Congress is the body that is entrusted to govern our nation. Problem is, there is a lot of history, so it is a lot easier to remember the names and actions of a few Presidents, rather than the tens of thousands of citizens who have been elected to Congress since 1776.
Cordell Hull was from a Confederate family in the hills of eastern Tennessee, and he took an interest in politics from an early age. He reports:
"It was at that age, and at Celina, that I saw my first daily newspaper. This was the Nashville American. In that year, 1886, a Senator from New Hampshire, Henry W. Blair, introduced a bill for Federal aid to State education. That was the major issue in the 1886 campaign. I read about it avidly in the newspaper, and we discussed it among ourselves. The bill was considered to be an attempt to infringe on State rights and to give the Federal Government power to go down into the States and interfere with their education systems. The amount of Federal aid the Senator proposed was only nominal at the time, but the incident is illustrative of how serious such issues could be in those days." [Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1948, p. 17-19]
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about education. It is a fair argument that for a very long time education was a matter reserved to states and localities. On the other hand, the Constitution says nothing about education. It does not explicitly say that Congress can't spend money on education.
I don't know the full history of federal funding of education. Aside from research grants to universities, I believe Head Start and the School Lunch program were among the earliest large scale programs. Head Start was authorized in 1964. But the School Lunch program was initiated much earlier, in 1946. Federal money for school lunches for children from poor families would not, in itself, have any effect on how local schools were run, like the curriculum or teaching methods. It was not even used as a wedge to desegregate (black and white) schools.
I was on a local school board for 7 years, and I can only describe federal funding of public schools as a mixed blessing. The amount of "paperwork" involved, mostly computer work now, was staggering. The federal money was not just targeted, in the sense that it could only be spent on one type of thing (hence the paperwork to prove that). It often brought rules with it that were really unrelated to the cause for which the money was given. This included the school lunch program. Do this, don't do that, or we will take the school lunch money away.
I'm not sure how effective the federal rules are, including No Child Left Behind. Intentions, I think, were good. It just is not possible to legislate good behavior of students, parents, or teachers (or school boards, for that matter). I used to joke that my School Board should just pass a resolution that "All children in the district shall behave all the time." Like that would put an end to our discipline problems. Behave, Suzy, or we'll send you to detention at the White House Oval Office. Fail to read at grade level, and the First Lady will read with you at night when you would rather be playing video games.
I believe that, on the whole, schools would be better off if they were governed by local school boards using local (including statewide) funds. Sure, some districts would be poorly governed, but most would not, and none of them would be stuck with federal paperwork and misguided guidelines. The main problem with the all-state and local solution is that not all states and localities have healthy economies that can easily support good schools. You can see how a collapsing rust belt city, or a poor rural area, would be unable to provide good schools with local funding. Worse, anti-tax states and localities might refuse to raise taxes needed to fund good schools, even though their economies were strong enough to support the additional taxation.
Leaving this educator, on the whole, feeling that we need a more pragmatic approach to funding.
Those who believe in the wisdom of a national education system should work for an amendment to the Constitution that would give Congress the power to run or at least oversee the public schools of the entire nation, using a federal tax base. Those who want a states-only education system should try to pass an amendment to forbid the federal government from interfering with state education systems.
The rest of us should aim for excellence and hope to muddle through. Send federal money, not a complex set of rules and regulations that take up too much teacher and administration time. Increase the local tax base for public education. Focus, district by district and school by school, on what (and who) works. Some things may work in every district in America, but a lot of actions need to be district specific, school specific, even child specific. Large bureaucracies can have their beneficial moments, but they are notoriously bad at dealing with rapidly changing specific situations.
Showing posts with label localization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label localization. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Humboldt County, Localization and Imperialism
Yesterday my dear friend Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, matriarch of Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, posted this on Facebook: "At SBDC's Technology Bootcamp for biz owners and one of the 1st recommendations we're getting is to outsource and hire "virtual assistants" in India for $4/hr or Georgia for $8/hr. And bonus, they can be paid as contractors - so no benefits! Hmmmm."
I have complained about outsorcing in the past, and have actually had work I did, and got paid well for, outsourced to India. But since Kaitlin already expressed that outrage, I took it to the next level, commenting: "An Internet downside for U.S. workers for sure. After 65 years of being privileged workers inside an imperialist economy, we Americans are being tossed back into the international proletariat. Who woulda thought." Lots of other people left interesting comments too.
Of course, a person could offer their services in the $4 to $8 an hour range in Humboldt County. You can't be someone's employee at that scale, it violates the minimum wage laws, but you can freelance for as little as you want. And as long as you don't get sick or have a family to support, and know how to live very frugally, you can live on that scale even in the U.S. I know, I have done it, but I hope to never do that again.
American workers' share in the enjoyment and production of American wealth has had a complicated history. Indentured servants and African slaves obviously produced much but consumed little. The vastness of virgin lands "liberated" from Indian tribes meant family farms could do pretty well until about 1870. Then we had the period of robber capitalism until the Great Depression. A lot of people think the Democrats and New Deal paved the way for the Great Prosperity of 1940 to 1970, but a lot of variables were involved.
Americans forget, or do not know, that two of the world's most historically evil people, Adolf Hitler of Germany and Joseph Stalin of the U.S.S.R. (Russia), nevertheless deserve a lot of credit for ending the Great Depression. Because the U.S.S.R. was communist, its economy continued to grow through the 1930s. Germany had a very bad economic meltdown, which is one reason Hitler came to power, and he basically ordered everyone back to work, so Germany recovered from the Depression years ahead of the United States.
Then World War II came along. Germany destroyed Russia's factories. Their bombers tore up Great Britain pretty well too. German and American bombers destroyed Germany's factories. China was pretty well destroyed, and Japan's factories were bombed, in some cases vaporized, by the U.S.
Come 1946, almost all of the factory capacity of the world was in the United States, and a great deal of what was abroad was owned by American capitalists. Making wage concessions to union, or even non-union, workers in the U.S. was no big deal. Buy peace at home, extract wealth from abroad.
I believe that workers should share the wealth that they produce and that democratic government should be used to control the excesses of capitalism. In fact, I would prefer an anarcho-syndicalist social system, in which people work cooperatively and don't need much in the way of governance.
Localism posits that a healthy economy and society can be built up apart from the global economy and society. Certainly historically some areas have prospered and some areas have failed and most have been somewhere in the middle. So it is a gamble. Make yourself an island and maybe you can pay your workers $20 an hour for work that has a global scale of $4 per hour. On the other hand, you might be setting up a downward spiral towards being one of those places where people would be happy to get $1 an hour and not starve, rather than not working at all.
In 1700, China and India were the wealthiest nations in the world. Their highly paid artisans were reduced to poverty in the next two centuries as manufactured goods from Great Britain replaced local crafts. Today Chindia is rapidly become the world's most important economic region. Contrary to U.S. propaganda, that growth is not particularly fueled by exports. It is mainly fueled by infrastructure development and a growth in internal consumption.
Unionism in the U.S. failed for a variety of reasons, but the main one was that unions never took power from capitalists. Instead, using the profits from imperialism, the U.S. capitalist class bought off sectors of the U.S. workers with middle-class levels of pay. And in the case of AFL-CIO bureaucrats, upper-management levels of pay.
The times they are a changin. Worker pay relative to management and capitalist pay has been declining in the U.S., which should upgrade revolutionary potential. But culture usually lags, rather than leads, economics. Worker culture in the U.S. is mostly looking to a return of the glory days of 1940 to 1970, when you could get a good paycheck without becoming a radical or even joining a union. Unless the U.S. blows up everyone else's factories again, those days are not going to return. The workers' movement has to be based upon the new economic realities. A key question is: can it be a national struggle, a local struggle, or must it be an international struggle?
I have complained about outsorcing in the past, and have actually had work I did, and got paid well for, outsourced to India. But since Kaitlin already expressed that outrage, I took it to the next level, commenting: "An Internet downside for U.S. workers for sure. After 65 years of being privileged workers inside an imperialist economy, we Americans are being tossed back into the international proletariat. Who woulda thought." Lots of other people left interesting comments too.
Of course, a person could offer their services in the $4 to $8 an hour range in Humboldt County. You can't be someone's employee at that scale, it violates the minimum wage laws, but you can freelance for as little as you want. And as long as you don't get sick or have a family to support, and know how to live very frugally, you can live on that scale even in the U.S. I know, I have done it, but I hope to never do that again.
American workers' share in the enjoyment and production of American wealth has had a complicated history. Indentured servants and African slaves obviously produced much but consumed little. The vastness of virgin lands "liberated" from Indian tribes meant family farms could do pretty well until about 1870. Then we had the period of robber capitalism until the Great Depression. A lot of people think the Democrats and New Deal paved the way for the Great Prosperity of 1940 to 1970, but a lot of variables were involved.
Americans forget, or do not know, that two of the world's most historically evil people, Adolf Hitler of Germany and Joseph Stalin of the U.S.S.R. (Russia), nevertheless deserve a lot of credit for ending the Great Depression. Because the U.S.S.R. was communist, its economy continued to grow through the 1930s. Germany had a very bad economic meltdown, which is one reason Hitler came to power, and he basically ordered everyone back to work, so Germany recovered from the Depression years ahead of the United States.
Then World War II came along. Germany destroyed Russia's factories. Their bombers tore up Great Britain pretty well too. German and American bombers destroyed Germany's factories. China was pretty well destroyed, and Japan's factories were bombed, in some cases vaporized, by the U.S.
Come 1946, almost all of the factory capacity of the world was in the United States, and a great deal of what was abroad was owned by American capitalists. Making wage concessions to union, or even non-union, workers in the U.S. was no big deal. Buy peace at home, extract wealth from abroad.
I believe that workers should share the wealth that they produce and that democratic government should be used to control the excesses of capitalism. In fact, I would prefer an anarcho-syndicalist social system, in which people work cooperatively and don't need much in the way of governance.
Localism posits that a healthy economy and society can be built up apart from the global economy and society. Certainly historically some areas have prospered and some areas have failed and most have been somewhere in the middle. So it is a gamble. Make yourself an island and maybe you can pay your workers $20 an hour for work that has a global scale of $4 per hour. On the other hand, you might be setting up a downward spiral towards being one of those places where people would be happy to get $1 an hour and not starve, rather than not working at all.
In 1700, China and India were the wealthiest nations in the world. Their highly paid artisans were reduced to poverty in the next two centuries as manufactured goods from Great Britain replaced local crafts. Today Chindia is rapidly become the world's most important economic region. Contrary to U.S. propaganda, that growth is not particularly fueled by exports. It is mainly fueled by infrastructure development and a growth in internal consumption.
Unionism in the U.S. failed for a variety of reasons, but the main one was that unions never took power from capitalists. Instead, using the profits from imperialism, the U.S. capitalist class bought off sectors of the U.S. workers with middle-class levels of pay. And in the case of AFL-CIO bureaucrats, upper-management levels of pay.
The times they are a changin. Worker pay relative to management and capitalist pay has been declining in the U.S., which should upgrade revolutionary potential. But culture usually lags, rather than leads, economics. Worker culture in the U.S. is mostly looking to a return of the glory days of 1940 to 1970, when you could get a good paycheck without becoming a radical or even joining a union. Unless the U.S. blows up everyone else's factories again, those days are not going to return. The workers' movement has to be based upon the new economic realities. A key question is: can it be a national struggle, a local struggle, or must it be an international struggle?
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