October 19, 2004 Question: Poststructuralist question from the blog. By their nature, anti-authoritarian. Doesn't seem strict father. Mode 1 Reasoning: problem is specifically defined, proceed in a straight line in an authoritarian line. People who have written about science claim this is what science does, but they don't. Mode 2 Reasoning: non-linear manner of studying. People who tried to apply Mode 1 reasoning to science failed. Gould: science is by-the-seat-of-your-pants reasoning. History behind post-modernism and deconstructionism. 1968 Paris -> defining moment for the figures there. Interpretation of that was largely a Marxist. Seen as anti-authoritarian. Correct observation from deconstructionism: those who control the interpretation have power. How do you seize power over the interpretation? In literature, you got new interpretation that moved away from one correct interpretation. Authors' intended interpretation -> seen as an authoritarian move. Anti-authoritarian -> the critic was the one who interpreted the work, and should have power... deconstruction critic. Anti-authoritarian movement. Idealist vs. pragmatist. Deconstruction folks: anti-authoritarian idealist Moderate vs. militant. They are militants. Step-by-step change or radical change? Radical change. Is there empathy there? Yes -> they see empathy with people who are oppressed by illegitimate authority. This puts them as a version of progressivism. Their means is deconstruction analysis. Does that make them "liberals"? Liberals are a kind of progressive, but they have a different kind of reasoning that they do. Liberals tend to be moderate rather than militant. Post-modernists are very different than liberals in progressiveness, but they're there. Animal Rights Activists. Militant, radical, anti-authoritarian. Very much like pro-lifers. ------ Living Wage Paper. Helped understand one of Bush's responses. Bush was talking about "no child left behind." The conservative business frame - the way to solve these issues is to raise the skill set of those who aren't making enough. [Quoting from paper] Labor as a resource -> make labor a commodity. Skill is important to this metaphor. Skill is a metaphor of value. Higher the skill, the rarer it will be. More skill you have, the more you can sell your labor for. If you accept this metaphor, your response to minimum wage (an externally imposed constraint on the price of labor) is going to be negative because it takes away from optimal profitability for everyone... it's working against nature. The best thing for someone who wants to make more money is not to have a minimum wage, but to improve their skills. Thus, no child left behind. Job loss is important. You want a reasonable level of unemployment because it means that people work harder to keep their jobs. You want a level of unemployment so you can keep wages down, keep costs down, keep profits high. The idea that you should be creating jobs doesn't hold for the idealists. ?History of minimum wage was to keep unemployment up... part of New Deal.? Unfair oppression of class is part of liberal ideals, but not Marxism. Secondary attraction to socialist models in the 60s when it was "discovered" that people in America were in poverty. People though that America didn't have poverty until "Poverty in America" came out. No one going through a center city or who lived in an impoverished area would think there were no poverty, but Harrington went out and documented it. Response to Harrington was that there should be a socialist government. Liberals: new-deal like programs needed to be instituted. Johnson had an anti-poverty program that was an extension of the New Deal. But it was called a socialist program by the conservatives. Read an argument aloud: Right wing think tank that is demonizing Acorn (union based living wage organization). What is the "living wage movement" Henry Ford: living wage so that the male head of household could keep the family together, own a home, keep wife at home and buy a Ford. Anti-authoritarian. Current living wage movement is very different. Cities often try to attract companies. Companies come into cities ask for deals. They want the city to build infrastructure - water, roads. Companies say that they will bring income into the city. Raise taxes to bring infrastructure for us. They want tax breaks of various kinds. They may want the guidelines changed for zoning. Agriculture/residential -> commercial. Cities try to attract companies by offering them money. Companies do a cost/benefit analysis. Include cost of labor in that area. In these cities, the people usually demand a living wage in that area, and health benefits. In return, these cities ask for parks and schools. Current living wage movements demand that the companies support the city, not the inverse. Anti-LW see LWM as communism. Need is defined, not by independent experts, but by the movement itself. LWM have demanded wages of $48K and vacations and health care! ::gasp:: In Baltimore, LWM asked for $6.10 an hour and applied only to those companies that were contracted with the city. In Santa Monica, they asked for a $10+ an hour in the ritzy belt of SM and asked for 24 paid days. As analysts, what are the frames, metaphors, etc that make these kinds of texts common sensical? Factorization... take the factors out of the complex argument. Frames that you know exist elsewhere and see where they exist here. What inferences and language are accounted for by this frame. What is missing. Pay according to skill. Common metaphor. It's hard. Natural market frame used constantly. Conservative business frame. Keep looking for those - where they pop up. Strict father morality first. And then those frames. Need to counteract the natural market frame. 1) it is dominant; 2) it is false - based on government infrastructures; 3) justifies that people are poor and that it's fair for them to be poor - it's just nature. Nature can't be biased; 4) Doesn't allow for other viewpoints, other frameworks... agree or overcome. People have that frame in their mindset. Can't argue for a "true" free market frame because it doesn't exist, wouldn't work and wouldn't last... and it's still arguing in their frame and people think it's the right way to go. There isn't and never has been a free market. That doesn't exist, it never has existed. Not only negatively. Markets are good things when they're constructed using certain criteria: fairness, public good, etc. You want a "fair market." Structure markets to be fair and then say what fairness means. ?Market implies human resources.? How do you conceive of exchanging things that are not people in the market. How do you talk about the hiring and firing of people? Set of frames in LWM: community benefit frame. The more that people pay a LW, the more the community benefits. We give corporations privileges. We expect certain responsibilities in return. Social contract. How do you convert the laziness argument? You will attract people, giving you the employer the choice. Right now, it's attracting overqualified folks who want to live in these high-quality cities. Other impact: due to budget requirements, they can't hire as many people... like in Berkeley, in homeless shelters, having a hard time covering the people. If you make more, are you not motivated to work? Ask people. They have more to lose so they don't want to lose their job. In places where it's been happening, you see a weird mix between living wage and illegal immigrants - they end up filling in... it creates a two-tier structure where more jobs are given to illegal immigrants. Problems: massive competition for traditionally low-skill working class jobs... crowds out much of the working class What happens if LWM goes national? You have to look at the context in which Living Wage arguments happen. If you accept LW arguments, a lot of things in the economy change. Living wage campaigns are aimed at large corporations - people who can afford to pay. It totally challenges the idea that you can move up is challenged. Daycare gets expensive.. you can't pay for this in a small family if things have living wage... housecleaning... Most people who are paying these poor levels can't afford to pay for them. "Wage subsidies" - conservatives hate this.. that's what they call these problems. McDonald's - paid a government subsidy for training programs. Farm subsidies (not farming, water subsidies, cattle growers to graze on federal lands). Railroads used to get a lot of land - 11% of the land in the country was given to the railroad. Drug patents end up being a form of subsidy (particularly when the drug was funded by NIH and the scientists were trained under government grants). Direct subsidies to gas, coal, oil. Oil tankers are protected by the Navy - costs $57B. Companies don't pay for the cleanup costs for dumping. Electromagnetic spectrum is subsidies. General point: there are vast numbers of subsidies right now... what would it cost to subsidize the people who are underpaid for their contribution to society so that they are paid equitably by government negative income tax. Plenty of subsidies that could go from corporate subsidies to wage subsidies. If you work hard and play by the rules, you deserve to be able to make a living wage -> important Clinton frame. [Don't use "should be able..."] 80% of Americans believe this. Conservatives: if you work hard enough, you're already getting a living wage. Ethical business frame. Distinguish shareholders from stakeholders. Mythology: it's a law that the business is supposed to maximize return to shareholders. Turns out not be true in the way that corporations are licensed by the state. Corporations are brought into law by the state.. they give them charters. Charter reform says that stakeholders include shareholders, employees, community and environment - groups with interest in the company. Goal is to maximize what the stakeholders have involved. Board of directors currently represents the shareholders, not the stakeholders. Corporations were originally set up to be in the public good. Balance sheet: total profits - costs. Labor counts as cost, not as people who should get part of the profits. Should you count labor in that way? Opportunity cost: how much they could be making in their next best interest... if i decide i'm going to make business. I'm going to allocate machines, lights in factory, supplies. My cost is also how much i'm losing in the next best use. If i took everything i had and made a glass factory company... what i'm not making by using my machines to make an optimal profit. This comes off your taxes. Businesses aren't supposed to make economic rent... They are just supposed to be considered costs for not taking advantage of the next best use of the machinery. In some ways, energy is a public good. Companies that provide it need to provide it at the level that they're just breaking even. Zero economic profit. That's what you're required to do if you're providing a public good - like a utility. The way that they got away with it in the parameters of the law (not the illegal bits). They said: because i own the grid and i paid this much for infrastructure, i have a huge sunk cost... my opportunity cost is huge because i can't use this generator to make marshmellows... it doesn't convert. Overestimated their opportunity cost. We have to be at this much revenue to be equal to costs. Alternative argument: you have to charge as much as the public can bear. Effect of the former: they make money on it because it's a cost of doing business... comes off the top of their taxes.. tax payers pay a certain percentage of that. Instead of paying these companies for electricity generated, was also paying for generating electricity and not doing something else. In addition, they underprovided to raise the costs (this was the illegal bit). People aren't aware of their own use. So they don't know where supply crosses demand. Don't have to create a court system - 9/10 is for corporate law. Banking system. Stock market. There for you... paid for by taxpayers. Not seen when you start a business, you're being subsidized massively by taxpayers. Adds to the myth of the self-made entrepreneur. Bill Gates Sr: our family has made a lot of money - we didn't train the scientists, we didn't invent the internet - it was there. Believes in investing in the future developments. No idea that the people they hire are GIVING them profits. Earned income tax credits (alternate idea). Still need a living wage because employers would cut wages and figure the government could subsidize. Another argument in this space: affordable housing. Framing is not about finding the right words... but it's about understanding what's going on, fitting things in your values, see who says what given their values. Slogans just step #1 in frame wars argument. Habitat for Humanity: very conservative organization - decides who "deserves" housing and there's a lot of sweat equity, mortgaging. Discussion right now over how involved government should be in funding this. [More data soon on this.] NAFTA Chapter 11: Corporations demand that government pays them billions of dollars as opportunity cost for not letting them pollute. Individual class project: Global Gag Rule (called by the opponents). Mexico City Policy (by Bush and like). Reagan made it in Mexico City... US Gov't will not give $ to organizations that do or promote abortion, even in countries where abortions are legal. Trying to link up to ideas of silence. Both sides are arguing about not being able to talk. Jesse Helms amendment - no US $ can pay for an abortion anywhere in the world. Not only can Planned Parenthood not spend US AID $ to help a woman get an abortion; they couldn't get any $ for anything if they talk about abortion at all. Slippery slope initiative. Not only are you deviating, you're creating a path that makes others think it's OK. Tort reform is about defunding the left. [Discussion about Jon Stewart.] Jon Stewart is seen as a news show. Stewart was all about challenging the framing that Crossfire gave. Stewart was on as a nurturer - calm. Why are you hurting America? Nurturant discourse is civil discourse. All these shows have nasty violent war-like discourse, which is conservative discourse. Engaging in the conservative discourse form plays into it. Stewart is puncturing the media. Accusation: you're just doing performance. Stewart: you're 35 and wearing a bowtie!! [Dive down deep into debate about media fairness, bloggers vs. journalism, expression of "honesty" or "bias" by taking the label comedian or blogger. Disagreement: bloggers are just using an excuse to say that they don't need to have a greater understanding.] This whole course is about framing. Jon Stewart understands that the framing is the point, the discourse framing is the point. He has a show that allows him not to use it, but to reveal it. A lot of comedy is about embarrassment. You laugh out of embarrassment that it was said out loud. Onion Article: Why would you want anyone to be the President who hasn't been the President? Nutrality is balanced - metaphor. Balance and nutrality are totally different things. In place of nutrality, you have one from each side. You don't see the framing in the news. Suppose you're training journalists - what do you do? Journalism students get very upset that they can't just say whatever they want. They don't understand that they've hidden frames in their stories. Frame in newsmedia: we are unbiased. Anchor is unbiased. Person reading the news is unbiased. Unbiased means that you can trust us to be telling you the truth. Jon Stewart: you are not unbiased. We are going to reveal the ways in which you're unbiased. Then he can come out saying, i'm biased just like you, only i'm honest about it. Same with bloggers. Question: who has the most honorable form of discourse. Idea: the bloggers have an honest form of discourse. They may be lying, may be distorting things, but they're honest about their position. Comedians: opening up the dishonesty. Another frame: access to information, sources. If you want, you look in multiple places. From that you try to understand what you're saying. If you're not aware that something is an opinion, you wouldn't know to look elsewhere. Jon Stewart is challenging one of the most dearly held mythologies: media is unbalanced, fair, present all sides and that people can make informed decisions through the media. Notion of truth in media is recent: 70+ years.