In this week's Sunday New York Times, the economic realities that have been glaringly obvious for years and years were, albeit in the most halting and qualified of general academic fashions, acknowledged. The piece, Signs of a Shakier New Normal, didn't appear in the influential Sunday Review section, where something like this belongs, but in the Sunday Business section. Still, this is a highly unusual breach in the armor of neoliberal propaganda, and worth exploring.
In true mainstream conciliatory fashion, as it is written by a full professor at a good university, and so a person who both has things to lose (rare these days), and hasn't been personally effected by the permanent post-employment economy that has been staring us in the face for a while now, the baseline thesis is that of course the economy will "reset" to normal, pre-Recession levels. Of course there is an underlying normality, which will allow the vanishing middle class to return, and people under 35 will be able to start families, buy cars and homes in great numbers or at the very least not have to live with their parents any more. Of course this will happen--it's so obvious, because it always has in the past.
But what differentiates this piece from the usual Panglossian neoliberal economic tripe, is that there is the very merest of allowances that maybe, just maybe, our post-employment economy is permanent. The closing sentence of the piece: "No one knows whether or how much of a reset may be underway. Yet I can't help but wonder which features of current data might prove to be harbingers of larger, more permanent changes to come." This is classic neoliberal economist thinking--you need to know fully and for sure before making a claim. All thinking must at every possible point be supported by as much data as is conceivably possible. Thought may not begin until data is as close to 100% complete and accurate as possible, until peak, optimal sufficiency is reached. But since data is never sufficient, and can always be bolstered and refined, thinking never starts. And so we end up being led by "experts" who think that our obviously permanent post-employment economy is almost certainly just a passing phase before the salvific Grand Reset.
For these economists, trends are merely passively commented on, data is fetishized, and distance is kept. But the "data" in these economic musings represent years of life for an entire generation in which their confidence is sapped, their experiences constricted, their outlooks permanently and irrecoverably dampened. The "larger, more permanent changes to come" Cowen's allows himself to mention at the very end of this scandalously realistic article are where the piece should begin, since they are already here. What the passage of time will do is allow them to become undeniable. Then once there has been a solid decade in which these larger, more permanent changes can be studied as fully formed data points, Cowen and his ilk will tell us how it all came to pass.
Judging by his picture, the author, Tyler Cowen, seems to be in his early fifties, and came of age in a time when young people could find entry level, $35,000/year jobs without feeling like they won the lottery. In his day, you probably didn't have to be a "rock star" to make 35k. Now you do. Ten years from now, you'll have to be a rock star to make $11/hr.
Though Cowen's piece is rare in that it dares to even begin acknowledging the bald-faced realities that have been a part of daily life for millions of people in their twenties for years and years and years, it is still drenched with the requisite neoliberal self-deception that is the price of admission into mainstream thought. Consider these lines: "One consequence is that young people are living at home longer and receiving more aid from their parents. They also seem to be less interested in buying their own homes." It's rare that neoliberal capitalist self-deception is so baldly stated--of course millions of people in their twenties aren't interested in buying homes. It's not that they desperately want to but regard that as a pipe dream, even if they have degrees in good fields from good schools. It's that they think having a home is totally lame!
There's a similar, equally grotesque, bit of such ideological contortion in this piece by the grating Kyle Chaka, who valorizes the perilous, schizophrenic post-employment vista as an invigorating, freedom-increasing entrepreneurial wonderland. The lengths that intelligent people will go to to defend the rationality of an obviously broken system are astounding.
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