The Great Recession: the world changed overnight

I across this blog post, which led me to this NY Times article:

Like steelworkers in the 1980s recession, Mr. Blattman was part of an industry, financial services, where entire companies and divisions collapsed and disappeared. “It wasn’t anything about me personally,” he says. “The world around me just changed overnight. Like East Germany, one day it was there, next day gone.”

That comparison with East Germany I like. it is a different world now, all of a sudden, for many, many occupations and people. The end of this Great Recession, whenever that happens, might not mean much to Mr. Blattman, et al. Cruel, but real. I can only wish them well.
This comment from him says it all:

“Here’s the reality,” he continues. “I used to be somebody, I had a job. Not anymore. Everything ground to a halt. No sense of purpose. No self-esteem.”

You pay for Faux News, but not for the NY Times?

More than a decade ago, after returning from our Europe trip, I contacted the cable company and asked them whether I could get rid of CNN and instead get CNN-international, because the international version of CNN was infinitely better then. The cable company said I could purchase the CNN-international channel at an extra cost, and explained that there was no possibility of picking and choosing my own channels.

I hated this bundling then, and hate it even now. After Faux News came on to the scene, and the more it became insanely partisan, I simply programmed the television to skip that channel when we surfed looking for something interesting to watch.

You can see, therefore, why I like the way Peter Osnos frames this television channel bundling and contrasts with the "free" newspaper/magazine journalism:

Once aware that they are supporting Bill O'Reilly et al, most of my interlocutors shrug and say something about bundling charges on cable or their combined bill, which includes broadband access and even, in many cases, telephones. Paying these bills, which on average are well over $100 per month, is routine now in the overwhelming majority of American homes. There was a movement a few years ago to consider "a la carte" pricing for cable, which would allow customers to choose the channels they wanted. That concept went nowhere because it meant that only popular channels would flourish. Those favored by smaller numbers--my relatively esoteric cable favorites are the Independent Film Channel, Turner Classic Movies, and C-Span-would probably disappear or certainly suffer.

In the current economic media crisis, cable companies have remained consistently strong because of this fee structure, even in the face of a reduced (but steady) stream of advertising, and because cable is among the last things that struggling households would cancel.

Few readers of this piece, I suspect, would be surprised by what I have written so far. But the point of reviewing the issue now is the next question I put to people. "How much would you pay for a monthly Internet subscription to the New York Times?" The answers range from "name the price" to "why should I pay? I already get it for free." And therein resides the challenge: Americans willing to pay for cable television subscriptions to channels they never watch must be persuaded to subscribe to online versions of the publications they read in print or on the Internet.

Health care debate proves democracy in America is well

Thanks to the Internet, I was closely following the news about America and Oregon even when I was out of the country for two months.

Despite that sense of continuity, after coming home I am simply overwhelmed by health care reform debaters — the informed and uninformed alike.

And yet, I am simply delighted with the cacophony created by these intense and loud — sometimes shrill — concerns over the reform. The delight is for a simple reason — the debates are signs that democracy is alive and well in the good old United States of America. The state of the union is healthy, indeed.

Every time I re-enter this country that has been my home for more than two decades, I feel as if I am following in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocque­ville.

The 25-year-old de Tocque­ville toured America in 1831. He ended up writing “Democracy in America,” which is even today a wonderfully rich treatise on America’s economic system, its peoples, and the political process and institutions.

De Tocqueville, like many intellectuals of his day, was fascinated with the American experiment — which had no place for royalty and where leaders did not rule because of any divine right. Instead, America was successfully experimenting with representative democracy. De Tocqueville spent a year observing the process and talking with people.

De Tocqueville wrote in the preface to “Democracy in America” that, “It is not, then, merely to satisfy a curiosity, however legitimate, that I have examined America; my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit.”

De Tocqueville wanted to extract an instruction manual for democracy and see if it could be successfully adapted in his country, France. He wrote: “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.”

Such an approach continues on in the contemporary world, too, and the fascination with American democracy persists. While different people are impressed, or disappointed, by various aspects of this American experiment, I always have been captivated by the American penchant for what sometimes seem to be endless debates about public policies, trivial and profound. I suppose writing opinion columns is consistent with this American trait!

Modern technology has provided even more opportunities for debates and discussions, in ways that de Tocqueville might never have been able to imagine. Talk radio, call-in shows on television, blogs and discussion forums offer us limitless opportunities to put our First Amendment rights to work, and, boy, are Americans expressing their feelings about health care reform. Of course, there are still the “old” ways — town hall meetings, newspapers, etc.

Whatever de Tocqueville might have meant when he referred to “prejudices” and “passions,” we see plenty of both in the health care discussions.

De Tocqueville praises the superiority of democracy, where “the people are invested with supreme authority,” and one of his remarks is quite appropriate in the context of health care reform discussions where we are trapped in details. He noted that, “The thirst for improvement extends to a thousand different objects; it descends to the most trivial details, and especially to those changes that are accompanied with considerable expense, since the object is to improve the condition of the poor, who cannot pay for the improvement.” How true!

So, even if it is an obvious point, let me make it nonetheless: Whether you and your friends advocate a certain plan or are opposed to any reform to the health care system as it is now, take a moment to celebrate the vibrant health of our democracy, the process and the leaders. And yes, celebrate, too, our fellow citizens who refuse to hide their passions.

As I reflect on democracy in America, I cannot but wonder whether world history might have taken a different turn if we had had such intense discussions — from the grass roots to the halls of Congress — prior to the invasion of Iraq.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Tuesday, Sep 1, 2009