10/19/04 georgelakoff.com/blog bittorrent for john stewart/larry king john stewart/ ted koppel danah blogged: http://www.zephoria.org/lakoff/2004/10/why-are-post- modernistsdeconstructioni.html Why are Post-Modernists/Deconstructionists considered to be the Left? Coturnix asked: Why are Post-Modernists/Deconstructionists considered to be the Left? Is it their historical source, or they somehow fit into the Liberal system (perhaps on a big radial diversion away from the core). I find it difficult to align disdain for science and reality with the Nurturant Parent model. Lakoff: Yagel said science is seat of the pants reasoning... Deconstructionism comes out of 1968 in Paris, and the interpretation is largely marxist/anti-authoritarian.. There is an important correct observation: who ever controls the interpretation has Pavlovian power... Author's intention is an authoritarian move.. and so the person who can give deconstructionist interpretation takes this away P. 89 of the Elephant.. what divides progressives... idealist or a pragmatist? An antiauthoritarian pragmatist? Militant or incremental change? Then ask, is there emphathy? If there is empathy for those repressed by ilegitimate authority.. then there is a progressive view Is this liberal? Tend to be moderate rather than militant.. usually socio-economic.. and this looks very different than post-modernists... Living Wage paper on website: How to look at framing. Written for a media kit for living wage activists. Regarding minimum wage: Bush immediate talks about no child left behind.. so the conservative business frame believes the way to solve this is to raise the skillset of those less well off. Frame: market as part of nature and law of supply and demand, and rational pricing with fairness, external forces on pricing is bad.. then, labor is bad. Skill is a measure of value, and the more skill the more labor is worth. So if accepting of this metaphor, and that labor is a commodity, then minimum wage is bad, because it's an external force, takes away optimal profitability. Best thing for government is to improve skills. Argument that jobs were lost doesn't hold water for idealogues... even conservatives see lost jobs as a balancing effect, where some unemployment is necessary to give people an incentive to keep their jobs by doing good work because there are people to replace them, and it makes unionizing hard. Michael Harrington documented poverty in the US for the first time... before that people believed there was none... and what followed in the 60's was Johnson's antipoverty program. P. 4 of the Living Wage paper argument: from employment policies institute, dedicated to opposing living wage and minimum wage movements... demonize ACORN. They ask: what is living wage? goal to set pay rates according to need instead of skill (translation: marxist) which is a huge cost to consumers or tax payers.. need is not defined by even taxpayers themselves, but rather by The Living Wage is something that people who work for minimum wage, where in cities that try to attract companies, so the cities offer money, tax breaks, infrastructure, etc. Included is the cost of labor. Is it cheap, in the cost benefit analysis. People in minimum wage movement asked why companies are giving all this away, without asking for something, so therefore companies should pay workers living wage, and even maybe pay for parks or other things... then living wage groups banded together to do the same thing in multiple cities. For every inference, what is the frame underneath, what are the metaphors, that make a text make complete sense? Factor out the frames you know (like long division), work case by case, and then work these things out until you get all the inferences.. to see what frames are being used. (Are we looking at conservative frames because we tend to be a class of progressives.. and so it's hard for us to understand the other side? But in a way easier to get the frames, because we are unfamiliar with those ways of thinking? Verses apprehending our own frames.. because they are familiar and understood, and thereby somewhat invisible? Consider it a character flaw, my need to be fair and look at both sets of frames, but I was wondering why we are doing this. Is it a desire to balance the larger perspective where the conservatives spend upwards of $100 million a year on think tanks to figure out their own frames and appeal to people who understand them?) Fiscal fairness frame: its only fair to balance the flow of wealth from tax payers with the flow of wealth from companies... but need to counter the natural market frame... have to because it justifies that people are poor at the bottom and that it's fair for them to be poor... it's absolutist, doesn't allow for anything else, you either have to agree with it or overcome it. Arguing the free market frame is arguing within the conservative frame, and having a true free market wouldn't work or last, and there isn't and never has been a free market... there is no such thing... the causes of markets are constructive, and if they are constructed in a certain way, they are good. A progressive thought might be the fair market... structure markets to be fair.. might imply that there are resources and therefore there are human resources.. is that fair or right? If you look at tax breaks and getting around zoning requirements are actually payments. And you can't hide payments (companies see them as financial benefits, so why not see them this way?), so therefore getting payments means they should give something back. Problem with living wage cities is they exist in pockets, so people who are overqualified with Phds and MSs are doing jobs that would be working class.. and so the living wage crowds out people at the bottom, esp during recessions. But this happens because of the pockets of living wage cities verses the rest of the country which doesn't have it. Also there is a correlation between these pockets and lots of illegal workers that get underpaid. Creates massive competition in living wage areas. So, does living wage need to expand nationally to prevent these problems with it? Companies get subsidies, patents, training of employees through government grants, exploration, R&D, oil exploration is paid if there is no oil discovered, protection by military for off shore oil company tankers ($57 billion per year), pollution, spectrum, etc. Can you take corporate subsidies to support living wage subsidies for cities? 'If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to do well.' This is the basis for the living wage. However, depending on who hears this, there is both a conservative and progressive way of understanding this. It's the word 'should' verses the word 'deserve.' Shareholders from stakeholders... mythology says it's a law that business is supposed to maximize return to shareholders. This is not true. Corporations are licensed by the state through a charter. There is currently a charter reform movement, where they say that there should be two concerns: shareholders and the people affected by the company. Balance sheet: total income minus total costs = profits. Part of costs is also the opportunity cost of not making what you also make. The 'economic rent' is the cost over and above what they could make, and they want to deduct this as part of the costs. Starting a business means that you are vastly subsidized by taxpayers.. stock market, education, public R&D, roads, oil subsidies, etc are all subsidies, and this means it's a myth that people / companies are self-made. People work for these businessses, and there 'ought' to pay a living wage. (Can comedy (jon stewart) profess and excuse his stuff as the bias of comedy, and say that the news (crossfire) should be better/more honest/more fair or admit to bias.. is there a comparison to bloggers assertion that they have bias / make analysis and that journalism can never be honest unless it admits there is no way facts can be reported without admitting bias...) The bias and framing are everything in this discourse... there is no view from nowhere... (my frames) on jon stewart, bloggers and comedy: why are comedians and bloggers compared? they are both resistant to the unbiased claim framing and that the news can exist in this place... who has the most honest form of discourse? bloggers and comedians? are bloggers honest about their favoritism? and are comedians honest about their comedy around news and the bias of this? jon stewart is challenging one of the most dearly held tenants of journalism: that it's fair, objective, ... this view of "truth" is very american in journalism, and recent in the last 70 years.. Question: what can reasonably be produced by next week? the frame email by next thursday: lakoff at .. next week: topics will be discussed.