There
seems to be no end to depressing books to
read. Gwynne Dyer’s Growing
Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work),
Scribe, 2018 tries to put a positive face on
the present lows of democracies and the
disappearing work for many. This is not a
forceful book, but Dyer shines a light on
parts of our era of the sixth extinction and
climate change. And these parts are useful to
know. Also, he writes well. Yet I had to add
to Dyer's ending from another UK book of this
year - as the reader will discover!
A
Giant Orange Canary
– a reference to Trump - heads an
introductory chapter that touches on the
emergence of regressive and anti-immigrant
leadership and contenders for leadership not
just in the USA but in Holland, Denmark,
Poland, Hungary and France, and in the
Brexit nationalistic and anti-immigrant
movement in the UK. Dyer contends that anger
at the lack of decent jobs powers the shift
to populism. Contrary to Trump’s stories, US
jobs did not go to immigrants, nor to
workers overseas. US jobs stayed in the USA.
But they moved south and west leaving angry
people to vote for Trump. Then jobs started
to be replaced by computers and robots – automation
– but still within the USA. And this
automation will continue, posing a growing
challenge for which the book later, somewhat
half-heartedly, suggests a remedy.
Anti-immigrant
sentiment
plays a big role in promoting Trump-like
populists in Europe, and racism played a
role in the UK Brexit vote. I suspect racism
played a bigger role in the USA than Dyer
may be aware of. Trump’s constant
undermining of the first black President was
a cry for votes from white nationalists.
Dyer
introduces
the reader to a possible response to the
disappearing middle class jobs and middle
class. Universal Basic Income, UBI, could
diffuse the anger and provide dignity. He
refers to several experiments with UBI,
including the all-party trial of UBI in
Ontario now terminated by the Ford populist
government after its election Spring 2018.
However,
some anger surely also comes from the sense
of unfairness about the concentration of
wealth into the hands of a tiny percentage
of national populations. This anger sent out
the “occupy wall street” movement of a few
years past. Government bailouts for banks
and auto manufacturers, leaving misled home
mortgage holders hanging out to dry was
transparently unfair.
Dyer
argues that some of the new democracies
shifted backwards to thugs as usual - in
Philippines and Egypt – but that these thugs
were at least new thugs, and that some to
and fro is to be expected when a democracy
starts. For the Philippines, maybe. But the
end of Egypt’s democratically elected
president seems to have more to do with a
danger perceived by powerful allies (the
US?) that this elected president was carving
his own direction for Egypt and deciding
which countries would be its allies. Gwyn is
right that democracy is desirable as the
best way to deal with a world of humanity’s
self-inflicted challenges – nuclear weapon
spread, climate change and automation. These
are issues he explored next.
Chapter
2 turns to the challenge of nuclear weapon
spread from N. Korea and Iran, and the
dangerous fact that US President Trump has a
virtual free hand in the foreign policy area
including the pressing of the nuclear
button. Trump’s dabbling into N. Korea’s
nuclear program has been on/off photo-op
meetings with outrageous twitter comments.
Dyer argues N. Korea fears the US ability to
deliver a massive nuclear strike against it
that can only be contained by a capability
to strike back. The war with the South is
still waiting to be brought to a successful
end. Dyer predicts that in the end, N. Korea
like Pakistan and others that felt
vulnerable without nukes will get the
weapons and a scarier world will learn again
to struggle on with another nuclear power.
Dyer
joins European leaders in regretting Trump’s
pulling the US out of the agreement with
Iran that the UN group seeking to prevent
the spread of nuclear weapons had agreed
upon. He raises concerns about nuclear war
given hostility towards Iran and given
Trump’s close links with Saudi Arabia and
the oil there. My early 2018 work on the war
in Yemen showed the invasion led by Saudi
Arabia fighting in deadlock with Houthi
rebels supposedly backed by Iran. This
indicates to me that this quite separate war
issue seems to have become tangled in
Trump’s position against the nuclear
program. Dyer shows Iran was successfully
contained by the agreement entered into by
former President Obama. So Dyer hopes that
the world will avert the human disaster from
a renewed Korean war or the dangers of a war
against Iran. He claims to fear the arrival
of populist politics in the world far more.
His
third chapter looks at Brexit, the EU, and
the issue of immigrants. Dyer reminds us
that the EU is more than a trading
agreement. It is a political vehicle
designed to preserve peace in Europe via
democratic principles. That is now
threatened. In the EU Trump is largely
perceived as a foe. Electoral support for
anti EU parties rose in France and Germany.
Poland and Hungary are anti-immigrant and
anti-Muslim. And the UK is leaving the EU.
Other than in England and France, EU voters
in post-industrial areas voted as before.
Immigration was a big issue everywhere on
account of the huge numbers of Syrian
refugees.
Dyer
tracks the UK relationship with the EU.
Britain noticed the trade dimension in the
1960’s but was vetoed by De Gaulle in 63.
Conservative PM Heath renegotiated the terms
and joined in ‘73. Terms were renegotiated
again 2 years later under Labour, then again
in ‘84 under PM Thatcher. The UK opted out
of the single currency in ‘93, then
renegotiated the terms again in 2013. Dyer
says Britain is not alone in seeing the
follies of the EU bureaucracy, but it is
almost totally alone in seeing European
unity as an optional project to be
reassessed from time to time. The unexpected
win of the Brexit vote by the UK
nationalists forced the resignation of PM
Cameron and forced incoming PM May to become
nationalist – against her admitted awareness
of the economic benefits of EU membership.
Cameron’s referendum was for Conservative
party interests. It was poorly planned.
Brexit
was won by a hair’s breadth. It was
divisive: old for; young against; educated
against; large cities against; areas with
many immigrants against! The US cliff-hanger
presidential election that followed Brexit
revealed similar sharp patterns among
voters. In Brexit there were lies about the
EU, about EU bureaucrats’ actions, about the
UK costs and about impending immigrants from
the EU. Dyer gives supporting details of the
distorted tales of each player in the Brexit
campaign.
At
the end of this chapter, Dyer returns to
include the unexpected election of Trump in
the US. He examines factors supposedly
responsible: free trade; globalization;
rich-poor gap; immigrant numbers;
automation; social media. Dyer focuses on
the great anger manifest in the campaigns to
assess the main factor. In Brexit there was
an anti-immigrant and racist component in
the discourse, but it was not the
issue. Dyer says that un-employment and
under-employment provided the essential fuel
for these populist successes.
The
thought provoking and different middle
chapter 4, Democracy:
default
made politics, mixes Dyers
journalistic experiences around the end of
the Cold War with the anthropology of
ancient egalitarian tribes to lead to an
embedded human tendency towards equality,
now enabled by mass communication. The
vulnerability of democracy in an era of
resurgent populism need not be over played,
he says. There is more to democracy than a
few Greek city-states and the French and US
revolutions.
Dyer
reminds us of the end of the Cold War in
1990 and the amazing number of new
democracies that emerged. In the 1980s
Filipinos got rid of dictator Marcos and
South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan flipped to
democracy. Subsequently, South Africa went
democratic. True, much history is built out
of back-to-back hierarchies of power and
privilege, but anthropological circles agree
that earlier bands of hunter-gatherers were
intensely egalitarian.
Around
1991 anthropologists developed theories that
egalitarian behavior had evolved by the
majority of the group acting collectively to
curb dominating individuals. Such early
egalitarian groups disappeared along the
Nile, in the Fertile Crescent, along the
Indus and in the Yellow River valley
5-10,000 years ago. Empires arrived. Dyer
says food production and populations soared.
Social customs checking ambitious
individuals collapsed. Inequalities soared.
Centralized leadership arrived. But the
myths of the lost golden ages – the Gardens
of Eden – remained. The arrival of the major
religions around 2000 years ago declared an
absolute spiritual equality of all
believers. In the everyday life of ordinary
human beings egalitarianism never went away
despite the reality of hierarchy,
militarization and oppression.
Dyer
argues that the arrival of the printing
press in Europe and widespread literacy
brought an ability to discuss means and ends
and to reach collective decisions across
large numbers of people. This happened in
the American colonies. A constitution
recaptured egalitarian values, along with
means for them to function in a mass
democracy. Several revolutions later, and
after a war against fascists, with
limitations and backslidings, sorts of
democracies have arrived in all but the
Muslim world.
Dyer
ends the chapter saying that a large number
of people have their old egalitarian freedom
back after 5,000 years. He continues with
drama. Yes, 7 billion people in the world is
too many. Yes, there is climate change. Yes
there is a sixth extinction. Yes we are
running close to the wind. But consider how
much worse we could have made it.
“…
I don’t think a man as ignorant and
self-indulgent as Donald Trump is going to
destroy American democracy, let alone that
populism is going to do it worldwide.” This
reader remains uneasy - I hope Dyer is
right.
Chapter
5 is an interesting critique of Trump. That
leads to thoughts about what led people to
vote for this person. That in turn leads to
what must be done post-Trump to allow wisdom
rather than populism to feed democracy. Dyer
notes Trump’s win was not a landslide.
Voting patterns were very similar to
previous elections. Trump won by taking 3
states from the democrats by very narrow
margins at the Electoral College. 12% of
Bernie Sanders’ supporters voted for Trump
in these states. Clinton still had the most
voters earning less than $50,000. But there
was a 16% swing from her by voters earning
less than $30,000. Dyer says this suggests
an economic root.
Dyer
notes Trump was no ordinary candidate. He
was a serial liar. At rallies 15 September
to 6 November the Toronto Star recorded 560
false statements – 20 per day. He spouted
casual racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism.
He had filed bankruptcy 6 times. He refused
to reveal tax returns. He is vulgar, vain
and narcissistic. Dyer compares him with the
former Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, noting that, if so, the US is in
trouble, but not terminal trouble. Trump
suffers from the same lack of any strategy
other than self-promotion. Why did honest
Americans vote for him?
Trump
enjoyed $5.6 billion worth of free media
coverage by making himself newsworthy - more
than all the other contenders had when
combined. Dyer quotes 18 of his most
egregious statements – then asks again how
people voted for him. Only 15% of the wealth
generated by the US economy since the 1970’s
has gone to workers. The US poor are now
worse off than the poor in Canada, Holland
or Scandinavia. In contrast, between 1945
and 1980, the bottom 90% earners in the US
got 66% of the money generated by the
economy. (The top 10% did well with their
33%.) A burst of inflation in the 70s made
possible the neo-liberal economic model that
Regan promoted in the 1980s. Thereafter
controlling inflation became the goal rather
than full employment. Globalization in
capital and trade was promoted. Shareholder
payment took priority from re-investing in
the company. Trade union power was broken to
allow more flexible hire and fire markets.
Wealth would supposedly trickle down to the
poor.
In
fact the only serious benefit was higher
incomes for the rich. (Dyer does not comment
on higher wealth for the wealthy.) At the
same time re-investment rates fell relative
to profits and the rate of productivity
growth fell too. Between 1979 and 2013 the
pay of hourly paid workers rose only 8.6%
while productivity rose to 8 times as fast.
A major factor driving wages down (and/or
job loss) was free trade. And despite other
complicating factors, victims see free trade
as a large part of the problem.
Dyer
points out the moral aspect to free trade.
Without trade with richer countries it is
hard for poor countries to break out of
poverty. But there was a third way. Dyer
points out that trade was negotiated
1947-1994 under the UN General Agreement on
Trade and Tariffs, GATT, allowing national
interests to be taken into account. And
trade grew 7% a year for 40 years. When GATT
became the World Trade Organization, a body
taken over by the free marketeers, the
annual rate of trade growth fell to half
that. Dyer claims financial self-interest is
hidden under a cloak of economic policy
preference: Keynes’ policies favor the
majority and the poor; Hayek’s and
Friedman’s favor the rich.
Clinton
and Obama, like Tony Blair in the UK,
followed a “third way” as Blair put it. They
were not true to the interests of the poor.
People in a modern democracy accept a bit of
flexibility in the supposed equality. Basic
needs are covered, people tend to associate
with others of the same social and economic
class and the reality of broader society is
softened by the fiction of equality of
opportunity. But if the rich to poor gulf
gets too big, the patience of the majority
runs out. Dyer says it did so in the US
election of 2016. Anger relief is not a good
guide for voting.
Trump
has been all over the political map. He’s
neither Republican nor Democrat. “He is the
populist voice of the disappointed and
frustrated ‘angry white men’ of both sexes
…” Dyer worries whether the US would bend to
Trump as a dictator. After worrying this
reader, he reveals that on balance he feels
that unlikely. He also thinks it would take
a long time to ruin the US irretrievably.
What is important is for a US government
post Trump to begin to rectify the huge
inequalities and disaffection that made a
Trump victory possible – and to do that
within one or two election cycles. With that
he brings the reader back to the question of
what exactly went wrong – the facts.
Chapter
6 examines what killed the jobs –
globalization or automation. In the US
globalization – that meant free trade to
Trump – was a big issue. People did not want
more of the same. True, free trade pushed US
wages down, but did it take jobs? Overall,
the impact on jobs was in fact small. This
is because trade is a small part, 27%, of
the US GDP. It is much larger for other
countries and 84% for Germany. So for the
US, free trade was not a big job killer –
nor was immigration. The
neo-liberal economic order cut pay and in
the early days “off-shoring” did move some
jobs as factories closed in the US and
opened in Mexico or China. By the 1990s IT
jobs were created abroad to serve US
businesses and it is not clear that they
replaced US jobs or were an alternative to
more automation in the US itself. In sum,
the largest number of jobs was lost in the
early
21st century and few were exported.
A third of US jobs were lost in the last 30
years. US productivity is now twice what it
was in 1979. The presumption is that this
results from automation. Of 7 million US
manufacturing jobs lost, 5 million went to
automation.
Other
jobs moved within the US to the US sunbelt –
south and west - where unions were weaker.
The jobs left behind the “rust belt” that
voted in Trump. But the destruction of the
once beautifully productive Detroit was not
by automation. It was a victim of
inequality. Injustices were suffered by
hundreds of Afro Americans that migrated to
the factories of the North during WWII. The
1967 burning of the inner city in race riots
marked the beginning of decay followed by
“white flight” and a drift to the suburbs.
Then from 1970 wages failed to keep up with
rising productivity. Much the same happened
in other industrial cities. One might think
that linking wages to productivity again and
a few other changes would deal with the
frustration and anger that got trump
elected. But the roots go deeper.
Car
making has now been hit by automation, and
more is to come. For the past 3 generations
making cars has been the largest industrial
occupation on the planet. Now automation has
caused a fall in manufacturing employment.
With fewer employees, it is no longer
significant where cars are made – whether
one pays the few Mexican, Chinese or US
workers. Indeed manufacturing can move back
to the US for convenience at little cost.
But more change is to come.
Countries
are ending gasoline or diesel cars within 20
years. Oil exporting countries will find
incomes falling – no doubt with political
consequences. Oil jobs will be lost but
others in the green electrical industry will
likely be created. Some jobs will be lost
because electric vehicles are simpler to
produce. But a bigger challenge comes from
driverless vehicles.
Dyer
says driverless vehicles will become public
utilities, summoned when they are needed. A
privately owned car, parked for 95% of the
time will become a dispensable luxury. This,
rather than a cheaper taxi, is the aim of
the Über business model. Private ownership
of cars will fall, so that by 2025 half of
today’s number of owners will want to own a
car. That number could fall to ¼ - about the
fraction of the cars presently on the road
at any given time. The result would be an
effective end to the remaining car
manufacturing jobs. The changes go further –
drivers of conventional buses and taxis, and
truckers and van drivers will all loose
jobs. Town parking land will become
available for housing. So maybe there will
be some short term construction jobs?
This
job loss is occurring across other changes
in industries. It is not limited to manual
work. Processes to research legal precedents
or keep medical records are being automated
– insurance claims are being evaluated by
artificial intelligence! Any job with
routine work can be automated. So a new
question arises: who can buy a product or
service if there are no jobs out there
paying people money?
Dyer
notes in passing Henry Ford’s wisdom:
employees ought to be a company’s best
customers. Henry doubled workers’ wages and
cut workweeks and sold Fords! But where are
the Henry Fords? Most research on job loss
and job creation is pessimistic. Twenty
years from now we are looking at a 35-40%
jobless rate. That is more than enough to
generate the anger and frustration to vote
in another few Trumps.
Dyer
reminds us of the terrible employment
situation pre WWII. After that war
aggressive action generated various forms of
a welfare state. (Dyer manages to remind us
in this section that the health care system
in the US is the most expensive model in the
World.) Compared to that time, the present
challenges are not so great. Some thinkers
have raised the old idea of Universal Basic
Income again. It can reduce the anger by
reducing the income gap and put money into
pockets to keep purchasing power afloat. It
is part of how to maintain social justice
and political stability in a democracy where
capital (automation) is replacing labour.
Dyer
warns not to confuse this with the various
attempts to streamline the delivery of other
state benefits into a single package. A
Universal Basic Income goes to everyone,
rich or poor, as a matter of right. I see it
as like Canada’s Old Age Security – but
hopefully more sizable! Unlike welfare there
is no stigma. On the other hand, when those
presently working are asked to rank various
possibilities, UBI comes out near the bottom
of preferences.
Dyer
foresees a major transition in society to
one where work is lessened. It is not a
society of workers and non-workers but
rather one with shorter hours of work all
round. The industrial revolution was an
angry turbulent time. Finding money and
respect for people without those old jobs is
the challenge. In the end it may be UBI. For
now it may be some old patches: higher
minimum wage; stronger trade unions; linkage
between productivity and pay; unemployment
and welfare payments that do not vanish with
the first low-paid casual job.
And
so to the last chapter, Growing
Pains, that brings us full circle
with a review and some filling out. Dyer
returns to how humans order society and
their notion of equality, stating that
equality among adult males is a
long-standing human tradition. But it
vanished during empires: human height fell;
epidemic diseases grew; populations went up,
but lifespan likely went down. By the 14th
-16th centuries CE most of the global
population was in four Old World
civilizations. The Indian, Islamic and
Chinese (with effects from Mogul invasion)
plus Renaissance Europe.
Europe
produced “enlightenment” and notions of
“fraternity” that became equality and that
led to the first democratic revolutions in
the 18th century. Then the Industrial
Revolution began. From 1750 to 2010 the
population increased tenfold, the land
farmed went from 7% to 40%, the sixth
extinction began, atmospheric CO2 went from
280ppm to 400ppm, wars became more
destructive and nuclear weapons were dropped
on two cities.
Dyer
finds re-assurance that over those 300 years
slavery and serfdom ended, traditional
empires vanished and a beginning was made on
gender equality. Many countries ended the
death penalty, torture is illegal but
tolerated in places, major powers do not
fight directly, and there is a UN and an
International Court of Justice. Dyer says we
are a young species in a millennia-long
experiment called civilization. It may
succeed with “mutual respect, global
cooperation, limited intervention in natural
systems, and a democratic political culture
that puts a high value on equality and
restraint – all the things the cynics sneer
at.” Or it may fail.
Dyer
views the Soviet era as a quest for an
absolute equality. He says the learning from
it is that some degree of inequality must be
tolerated to have liberty and prosperity
flourish. The necessary political will to
respond to the present challenges can best
come from a democratic society. The threat
of angry populism comes from a concern about
equality. It does bring some risk of
fascism.
Dyer
returns to thoughts on Trump as the “canary
in the coalmine” revealing the anger in
minorities. His policy seems linked to
undoing Obama’s legacy issues. Clinton had
entertained thoughts about some type of UBI
in her campaign, but dropped them. Dyer says
objections to UBI come from fiscal and moral
concern. Fiscal, because the sums of money
involved are big. A related practical or
moral concern is that it would destroy the
will to get up and go out to work.
Dyer
shows that there are offsetting sums of
money available. Some state benefits would
no longer be needed - such as unemployment
insurance and pensions. Using the brief
Ontario experiment, such previous benefits
accounted for 40% of the cost. Then some
funds would come from income tax because the
additional UBI would raise some people into
a higher tax bracket. The remaining gap
would come from creative things like taxing
the automation! The moral concern of
destroying the will to work can be shown to
be small by Dyer’s accounts of a pilot
project in Manitoba, and of the Iranian UBI.
This is all positive as far as it goes.
The
moral concern is that without work all
meaning and purpose will vanish from
people’s lives. Dyer counters this with
British data showing that many people find
their jobs insignificant or meaningless. He
quotes Galbraith’s sarcasm to the effect
that leisure is good for the rich and for
Harvard professors but very bad for the
poor. My own experience is from early
retirement. I found it liberating to be able
to do some things I had wanted to do. But I
do know some retirees who hang onto a little
part-time work.
The real concern, says Dyer, is preventing Democracy from becoming overwhelmed by the changes of the next couple of decades. And by reducing income equality, UBI would also reduce social ills that might otherwise become major problems - even health and life expectancy. Research supporting that statement is described. Then Dyer leaves us with UBI.
Dyer’s concern is echoed with a twist in
another different depressing UK book I
read this summer: Harry Leslie Smith, Don’t
Let My Past be Your Future, Constable,
2018.
His
book told me something I wasn’t aware of. He
became old enough to join the RAF in 1942.
In that year the multi-party UK war
government commissioned the Beveridge
Report. The Report was a blueprint for a
post-war Britain in which all facets of
the nation would share in its wealth and
its work. It called for public healthcare,
affordable housing and education for all
its citizens. “This report provided a
reason – beyond blind patriotism – for the
working class to defend Britain ... they
were no longer just fighting to defend the
entitlements of the elite, but for their
own future.” Smith joined the RAF.
The
Labour Party manifesto for the post-war
election in 1945 called out for that kind
of Britain. Smith
voted for it. I recall that my dad did too
but my dad didn’t speak of the grand
concept of a post-war inclusive society.
Smith’s
book calls for a new Beveridge Report for
the 21st century to bridge the canyon now
separating the top 10% wage earners – and
I would add the top 1% national wealth
holders – and everyone else. “It must look
at ways to combat automation, the sharing
economy, democratic decline and the
erosion of state services.”