Jtheme reflection

Main thoughts/conclusions/questions:

1) JTheme was a good chance to be reminded how little I know about American (or any) history.

2) "American history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes"-- Twain. American economic philosophy goes in such cycles, certainly. Very recently we were back in the 1920s in many ways, and now we're in the Great Recession. What will we do this time?

3) Did Reagan genuinely believe a return to free market philosophy would help the poor? ...Why is he my dad's favorite president?

4) Even today the myth persists that people who are wealthier automatically must be harder workers, and than less wealthy people are at fault. This follows a theoretical model of the world that says we all essentially started out equal, in theory, and so, in theory, those that worked hardest rose to the top. I encountered this viewpoint very recently when I was talking with a friend of mine who happens to be somewhat conservative. One question I have for people who actually hold this belief somewhere in their heads-- at what point in human history have all humans ever been on a level playing field in reality? What about geographical determinism? Slavery? Socioeconomic status? And even if there were a level playing field at some point in time (there wasn't), was it really recent enough to continue to base our current philosophy on the gems that resulted from it? How much do we deserve of the privilege given to us by occurrences in our distant past that weren't necessarily that desirable?

5) The concept of freedom in America has undergone fascinating permutations. What fascinates me now is why some people are willing to allow others freedom to reap the most benefit while the majority lose out, touting this as giving all the most freedom, and arguing that allowing everyone the chance to fall the farthest will give others the chance to make it way to the tip-top. But my first thought is, who cares about one person's freedom to make it to the top if it creates massive disparities in wealth? Is all of our life just trying to outdo others stupendously for our own self-interest? I find it so interesting that this follows an animalistic Darwinian model. But the irony is, that according to evolutionary biology, at the societal level what leads to the best survival is group cooperation at the sub-optimal level, with group solidarity despite variability-- not blind individual self-interest that destroys diversity of business. The animalistic Darwinian view values the animalistic individual only, even though humans live within a cooperative social sphere that requires its own set of evolutionary principles. The extension of the animalistic philosophy is that businesses can become big enough to take out and consume others. And yet, one of the most significant requirements for survival of a species is genetic diversity, otherwise the entire species (i.e. the economy) is similarly vulnerable to environmental change, making prone to extinction (i.e. recession).

6) For some reason, people are terrified of Obama for being 'socialist' and 'redistributing the wealth.' Wealth is always being redistributed! Before it was being redistributed to go towards the top 5%-10% of the wealthiest people in America. Having it go back down is not-so-scary.

7) THANKS FONER

8) History is so weird, it's amazing it actually happens the way it does.

Jtheme

Over the past week or so I've pretty much been doing a lot more research on the topics outlined in my last blog during the time we've had off. I've simplified the different things I've researched in to some general bloc-themes to cover in my paper: economic, political, and cultural evolutions in America that have affected the minimum wage in one way or another.

More specifically, minimum wage, as there isn't conclusive economic research about its effects/benefits/problems, can be spun any which way depending on the rhetoric/ideology of a time period. Especially, support of minimum wage primarily depends on peoples' perception of how/to what extent the government should interfere in everyday life. In other words, some would argue the government ensuring a wage floor harms freedom, while others would argue that a wage floor, especially a high one above the poverty level, should be enacted because Americans can only be free and independent (i.e. not on welfare, and not spending all time working) if they're free from poverty. Each political view has a very different definition of 'freedom.'

Some people put the burden of obtaining a higher wage on that of the poor, holding them responsible for improving themselves through education in order to demand a better pay (the idea is that employers can't afford paying higher wages if the worker isn't educated/skilled enough to be productive enough to create sufficient profits for the business to cover the higher wage paid by the employer). In contrast, others think that higher pay should be guaranteed and the burden of maximizing productivity from an unskilled worker falls on the employer, so the higher wages motivate the employer to invest in educating/training their employees.

That's not my thesis, but I guess you get the idea of the types of a couple of the things affecting minimum wage.

The main task now is to do more organizing/outlining, and then get writing, basically, in order to see what works and what doesn't. My interview is coming up in a couple days. I've communicated with the professor a bit and he's really nice.

Jtheme update

(Topic: minimum wage)

Junior theme has continued progressing. I have my interview subject, a professor at U of I @ Chicago, who specializes in labor. I really don't want to talk to him yet, though. I also contacted the Chicago Federation of Labor, but they haven't responded, and I contacted Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed), who didn't want to be interviewed but recommended I look at a book called 'Raise the Floor' by Holly Sklar. I don't know if I'll look at Holly Sklar's book, but I found a Bill Moyers interview of her on youtube, and it looks pretty good: [link].

As far as research goes, my main task is to look in to the dialog going on surrounding minimum wage during several time periods. In particular, I need to look at when minimum wage was favored/disliked/neglected and why.

To do this I've spent a long time going through google archives of news and Proquest Historical. A few time periods I've narrowed it down to are:

1) the time leading up to the New Deal,
2) the time leading up to minimum wage's peak in '68--steady increase (Johnson?)
3) the beginnings of the fall of minimum wage (Nixon)
4) factors leading to the time of steady decline (Reagan, Bush H, Clinton, Bush)
5) recent increase in the minimum wage--why higher/not higher ('07 end of Bush presidency)

I guess I covered that in my last blog post more or less, but now it's more clear.

The main issue (area of confusion), I guess, is how I'll organize this in to a paper (how to categorize what I know/find out).

Meh. I'm actually pretty clueless at the moment. Aside from the fact that I feel a bit behind in my research, what it comes down to is that even though I have different eras to look in to, I have no idea how I'm going to organize this in to a paper.

The first issue is finding more good resources. Foner has been great in describing different political philosophies coming in to dominant/govt belief at given times. However, minimum is always mentioned very obliquely. Foner has definitely been the most helpful so far, but finding sources that talk about minimum wage/evolution of american ideas of economic policies/freedom hasn't been that easy. I've found a bunch of primary source documents from different presidential eras, but they're probably not going to end up that interesting (I've read a few and they're disappointing) and they're extremely repetitive: democratic guy wants spending and minimum wage hike, republican doesn't want the free market restricted. Do I lump all of the democrats with similar views together in a paragraph, and vice versa for republicans, or do I have a paragraph on different key presidents in chronological order? Do I have a paragraph devoted to who's-in-power-in-congress, or do I include that in each paragraph? I have no idea where this is going. There are a ton of factors to look at and after looking in to all of them successfully I have no idea how it's going to be organized.

The main issue is just categorizing. How much of my paper is going to focus on the past? Am I going to have paragraphs about different eras, or different ideas/perceptions?