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Title : standard kitchen furniture dimensions
standard kitchen furniture dimensions
welcome friends to another edition of "economicupdate," a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, wages,salaries, incomes, debts, those of our children, and those coming down the road to confrontus in the future. i'm your host, richard wolff. i've been a professor of economics all myadult life, and currently i teach at the new school university in new york city. before jumping into today's updates and avery interesting interview, i wanted to mention that someone that you hear on this programfrom time to time, dr. harriet fraad, talking with me about the psychological dimensionsof what's going on in the economy, and that
many of you comment on in the emails thatcome to us afterwards, dr. fraad and i will be speaking in the bay area of californiain early october. and i wanted to alert you all we will bothbe speaking in oakland, california during the day on sunday, october 2nd and we willbe speaking in san francisco, at the episcopal church of st. john the evangelist, on theevening of wednesday, october 5th. if you are interested in visiting with usand seeing these events, please check our website, democracyatwork.info, look underthe "events" page there - you'll find it easily - and it will give you all the specifics aboutthose appearances of dr. fraad and myself, october 2nd in oakland and october 5th insan francisco.
well, we have many things to talk about today. more than enough to fill the hour and, indeedas usual, not enough time. most spectacular, this week, was the decisionby janet yellen and the federal reserve not to raise interest rates. the simple and most important part of theexplanation is the fact that they are afraid to do that. because if you raise the interest rates, youmake all kinds of borrowing that much more expensive. that will reduce the amount of borrowing businessesand individuals undertake.
that, in turn, will reduce the spending theycan afford to do and that will lessen the jobs and incomes of people. since the so-called economic recovery hasn'thappened for the majority of people, raising interest rates - whatever the logic - is toodangerous, and the federal reserve figured it out. and that's why the rates weren't increased. we now wait until the november and decembermeetings, but it is a long-shot whether the interest rates will be raised even in december. well, the theme for today might be - at leastfor the first half of the program - how and
why large capitalist enterprises and the governmentare two sides of the same coin. i know there are many people who like to imagineto themselves that these two partners are really very distinct and different from oneanother, but it's been rarely less true than it is today. as if to drive the point home, let me tellyou about former speaker of the united states house of representatives, john boehner. he doesn't spell it that way, but he wantsit pronounced that way, because if you didn't it would be embarrassing. well, he's out of the house of representatives,but this week he took a job with a law firm
in washington, d.c. named squire patton boggs. it's a washington-based law firm long knownfor its lobbying. well, turns out mr. boehner's not a lawyer,so they probably don't want him for that. and that leaves lobbying. pressing the government to do what he waspressed to do when he was the government. the musical chairs between government andbig business keeps on spinning. in case you didn't know, two other leadingcongresspersons already are doing that for the law firm of squire patton boggs. one of them is former senator john breauxand the other one is former senator trent
lott. so mr. boehner will be part of the elite corporateand government that tells us all what to do. well, here is another example of musical chairsbetween top government and top corporate officials. it turns out this last week that almost-vicepresident sarah palin sold her mansion in scottsdale, arizona. she sold it - and i want to stress this, becauseit's a good lesson in how to make money being in politics - she sold her mansion in scottsdalefor $2.275 million. and i want to tell you about the house shesold. it has six bedrooms.
it has 6 1/2 bathrooms. it has a square footage 7,971 square feet. wow! it has fireplaces, both inside and out. large kitchen, granite countertops, a walk-inpantry, a home theater, a billiard room, wine cellar and not one, but two spacious mastersuites. outside, there's a 4.4 acre lot that has itsown basketball and volleyball court, putting greens, bocce ball area and a pool with aspa. there's a six-car garage, with a - i'll stophere.
i have no further comment on that. my next item is a response to a question. and the question was: can i explain why thebritish people voted for brexit? that is, to leave the european union. and i've talked about this on the programbefore and i don't want to go over it again, but in response to one person's question,i did look up what had happened to real wages of working people - average real wages. and by that, again, i mean how much you'repaid, adjusted for the prices you have to pay with the wages that you earn.
this is called "real average wages". and the time that we're measuring is the lastquarter before the crisis hit, so it's before the quarter of 2007 all the way up to thelast quarter of 2015. so, basically, what happened to wages in europeacross the period of the economic crash that happened in 2008. and that is, especially in europe, very muchstill with us. well, the story is horrific. if you didn't know it already, the averageincrease in real wages over the nearly ten-year period is in the neighborhood of 4-5% overa ten-year period.
that's a very, very slow increase, given theproblems with how these numbers are accounted for, and given the decline in government servicesover that time, you can see that the average has been very grim for the european workingclass. but two countries stand out. because not only was it grim there, but theydidn't have any wage increase. well, it's even worse: they had a wage decreaseover that period - these eight-plus years. the two countries with the worst record: greece- well, that you know from everything we've talked about on this program for years now. but the country you might not have known,that has as bad a history of wages as greece
did, was great britain. that's right. the real wages of the british working classon average dropped 10% over the last eight years. you wonder why the british working class wasangry at the leadership of their country? the big corporate leaders and government leaderswho confidently predicted that the british people would vote to stay in the europeanunion, because they were making money - excuse me - were supportive of that staying. the very fact those leaders were for it washalf the reason why the british working class
needed to say something about the drop of10% in real wages over an eight- to nine-year period. it's stunning; and the only thing more stunningthan such a history is how few people talked about it. my next update - it's a small one, but ittells you a story. goldman sachs is a bank. you've all heard of it. it's been in the news. most of you probably believe it's a bank basedand located in new york city, which is true,
but less so than ever before. we looked into it, and we just discoveredthat the second largest office in the whole western hemisphere for goldman sachs is ina place you might not have guessed: salt lake city, utah. and goldman announced that it expects to experience"significant growth" over the next few years. it's looking for people it can hire. it doesn't feel safe in new york city, mightbe the reason, and thinks it's less likely to be problematically confronted if it movesto salt lake city, utah. something to think about when you wonder aboutwhere things are going and are trying to explain
what's happening to the decision-makers inour country. well, going behind the news yet again, weare all confronted with extraordinary police actions against african american citizensthat doesn't seem to stop. we're confronted with the black lives mattermovement as one of the efforts to try to confront and deal with this situation. is there some economics behind all this thatmight be interesting? well, an answer is forthcoming in a september20th study by the economic policy institute in washington, d.c. black-white wage gaps is what the articleis about, written by valerie wilson and william
rodgers iii. here's the basic take-away from this report:as of 2015, relative to the average hourly wages of white men with the same education,same experience, same metropolitan location and the same area of residence, black menmake 22% less and black women make 34.2% less than white people. and, in order for you to understand how thatmight be bothering folks, that is a larger gap than those gaps were in 1979. so when people tell you - as they like todo - how much enormous progress has been made in the racial differences economically, inthe united states, at the very least you should
raise your eyebrows. and if you want to know more about it, goto epi.org, read the report and try to connect in your minds, as i am doing in mine, thedeterioration of african american jobs and wages, relative to white people across thelast 25 or 30 years when we were told about progress, and see whether it might have somethingto do with the issues that are in the news every day, it seems. now. next update. and we're cooking right along.
over the last 10 days, you might not haveheard about it, but we are experiencing, here in the united states, the greatest strikeof inmates of u.s. prisons in the history of the united states. it ought to be on the front page and - letme give credit where it's due - on the 14th of september, not very long ago, the wallstreet journal actually gave a story to it. it told its readers - as well it should - thatthese protests were timed to happen in a number of prisons, particularly in the states ofalabama, florida and michigan to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the uprisingin the attica prison in new york state. the prisoners know their history.
and while they were objecting to many thingsas the reason for their strike, one was dominant: that they get treated like slaves. they are forced to work, and they are forcedto work at pay levels that range from 74⢠per day to $3.34 per day. truly slave wages. and they're angry and upset about it. well, i am, too. but my job is to give you some of the backgroundand the analysis that goes with it. for those who do not know, the thirteenthamendment of the united states constitution
outlaws slavery. it's an amendment that came right out of thecivil war here in the united states. but that amendment, very short, has an exception. it outlaws slavery everywhere in the unitedstates, except as punishment for crimes in prisons. here, let me do that again. we didn't abolish slavery in the united states,because we specifically allowed it as a punishment for a crime. think about that for a moment with me, won'tyou?
a person commits a crime. a person is convicted. the person maybe didn't do the crime - we'llnever know, -but he or she is convicted. and they go to prison. now we hope that, in prison, something willhappen to that person so they don't commit a crime when they come out. treating them like slaves probably doesn'thelp a whole lot. it rarely did historically, and why wouldwe do that now? and why would we be surprised if people whoare told that liberty and freedom are the
core values of a human life decide to strikeeven in the terrible conditions of prison against being treated like slaves when, indeed,they are? continuing. here's one that takes the story of how thegovernment and big business are two sides of the same coin another step further. many of you have noticed, because it's beenin the news, that they mylan pharmaceutical company got itself into terrible trouble whenit raise the price of its epipen - an anti-allergy device - by a factor of five or more overa short period of time making a fortune for the company and for its ceo heather bresch.
but over the last couple of weeks - as ms.bresch was forced to testify in front of the congress - more people began looking intothe story and it gets - what shall i say? - sleazier by the day. turns out ms. bresch, the ceo of mylan, takinghome a salary of 18 million bucks from this company that has jacked up the price of theseanti-allergy devices that are widely used in american schools, turns out she's the daughterof joe manchin. who's that? he's the senator from west virginia. oh, goodness!
the father's a senator; the daughter is thehead of a big company doing things that are - at the very least - ethically challenged. but then it got better. ms. bresch's mother, the wife of senator manchin,is gayle manchin and she was president, recently, of the national association of state boardsof education and, apparently, was in that position, during the time, if the reportsare to be believed, that schools around the country decided to make use of the epipen,produced by mylan pharmaceuticals. does this smell? yeah.
doesn't it, though? yet another story on the same theme of governmentand corporate going hand-in-hand. this one concerns a billionaire - yes, anotherone - this one by the name joel ricketts. he was the founder - is the founder of tdameritrade. and he owns the baseball team, the chicagocubs. ricketts, along with his wife marlene, weresupporters of anybody but mr. drumpf. i believe they particularly supported a leading,brilliant leader here in the united states, wisconsin governor scott walker. they supported him.
he flamed out kind of early. and i guess they've been wondering who toput their money to. well, they may have supported someone againstdrumpf at the beginning, but they've changed their mind. as of last week, according to business insiderreporter jeremy berke, ricketts, along with his wife, is planning on spending $1 millionin an effort to help donald drumpf win in november. the wall street journal reported that andalso reported that sheldon adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, is planning to spend $5 millionto support drumpf for president.
wow. this is sort of interesting. but, here again, family politics and businessall combine. when i looked into mr. ricketts, the billionaire,i found out that his son, pete, is the republican governor of nebraska, who endorsed drumpfback in may. oh, goodness. oh, i don't know. maybe it's just coincidence that all thesepeople in the government and all these people who are billionaires seem to overlap moreand more as america goes along.
my last update for today. well, before i do that, let me drive homewhat the earlier updates talked about: government... big business... billionaires... candidates....politicians... executives... millions of dollars made, questionable useof public office, you get the picture. i stress that for a reason. there are efforts made to kind of pick apartthis close partnership that governs the united states and has for a long time. to pretend, in my view, that there reallyis a big difference between corporate leaders of big business on the one side and top politicianson the other.
there are even people who want us to believethe source of our problem isn't capitalism, big business and the power that big businesshas in a capitalist system, they want to believe that's not a problem. it's the government that's the problem! libertarians of all stripes. anarchists of certain stripes. and people who simply need to have the governmentto blame, because they either don't understand or are afraid to look at the business sideof that coin. and, likewise, there are others who want usto believe that big business is the problem,
but the government is innocent. the government is good. and, if we only get the government to do morethings - liberal-ly things - well, then, we'll have a good society. and it's just good to get the government backin to playing a useful role. these two positions - apparently opposed - aren't,in fact, very opposed. they share an unwillingness to see the tight,coordinated, cooperative relationship between the top levels of capitalist business andthe top levels of government. does that mean nothing can ever happen toseparate them?
of course not. there are moments in history when they havea clash and those are important. but, most of the time, and surely today, whenthe major candidates for president are a billionaire on one side and a multi-millionaire on theother. we should stop with these fantasies that oneside of this partnership is vanilla and the other side is bad. no matter which way you play that, it makesthe mistake of not seeing the solidarity, the shared interests and the coalition thatthey present to the rest of us. last item for today.
this one is in the nature of better news. at least for some of us, who watch these things. since last we talked, there's been an electionin the city of berlin, in germany. and what an election it was. the question will be, who governs that city? it used to be that the prime minister - thechancellor there, angela merkel - had a lot to say about that through her political party. and when she didn't have a lot to say on herown, she did it in coalition with a slightly-to-the-left social democratic party, with which she hasbeen making coalitions over the national and
regional levels. but in the election this last week, the peopleof berlin strongly rejected both the social democratic party - which did come in first,still, but a much reduced vote - and they really gave a beating to mrs. merkel. they're not happy with her at all. so the two major parties suffered a stunningrejection by a whole new class of voters in the city of berlin. just as important, was the name of the partythat came in third - just a couple of percentage points less than mrs. merkel's party.
that party is called the die linke partei. that's german for "the left party". this is a party widely perceived in germanyto be anti-capitalist. that is, one of the defining slogans of theparty runs like this: germany can do better than capitalism. third party in berlin, couple of percentagepoints less than merkel and gaining fast. politics is shaking in a europe beset by thecrisis of 2008, from which it can not escape. nor is such an escape anywhere on its horizon. capitalism is a system that thrives on peoplenot understanding or paying attention to what's
actually happening, which is one of the thingsthis program tries very hard to overcome. we've come to the end of the first half ofthis program. please stay with us across a very short break, and come back and we're going to have a very important conversation about the state of higher education, the strugglebetween universities and the people who teach what folks go to universities to learn, andwhat the class struggle in the university has to teach us about the united states - andperhaps beyond that - in this day and age. stay with us. we'll be right back. welcome back, friends, to the second halfof "economic update" for this warm day in
september. i want to begin by introducing a very goodfriend of mine for years, that i'm happy to interview. his name is professor michael pelias. so even before i describe who he is, welcomemichael. [pelias] thank you, rick. glad to be here. [wolff] michael pelias is a professor or philosophyat long island university, here in new york, its brooklyn campus.
he has been doing that kind of work, beinga teacher for over 25 years: social and political philosophy in courses as different as filmand philosophy, european philosophy since hegel, philosophy of education, and indeed,interestingly, courses on the black radical tradition and, of course, on post-katrinanew orleans in the light of disaster capitalism. he is, i believe, from new orleans. [pelias] yes, i am. [wolff] he's also been and activist for 23years as a member of the executive committee of the long island university faculty federation,the union there, and he is a member of the current negotiating team.
and he has participated in all of their strugglesthat he's going to tell us about since at least the early 1990s. so, michael, welcome and let me begin by askingyou to summarize why i brought you here. in other words, there was a very importantlabor struggle at long island university over the first couple of weeks of september. tell us what it is and give us the context. [pelias] okay, i'll back up and kind of providethe context. we began our usual contract negotiations backin late march, early april of 2016, and we were charged, as usual, to get a good contract.
the previous contract, which was a five-yearcontract, was a very minimal wage package of zero, one, one-and-a-half, two-two, sowe decided it's time to, you know, step it up in terms of what you talked about earlieron your show: the real wages, versus the nominal wages, and at least help people deal withcosts of living and, you know, take care of our new hires. we sat at the table for literally five months. we did not get anywhere. we put 25, 26 proposals on the table, allwhich i consider extremely reasonable, and they actually approved one, which was theduration of the non-tenure track appointments.
and that was the extent of the flexibilitythat management had during this contract negotiation. they came back to us with extremely low wagepackage, despite the fact that the president had said the crisis at liu was over, and they'vebeen showing up a rating of budget surpluses of nearly $20 million a year for the lasttwo years, at least $20 million a year. so we're talking about a surplus that wasat least $40 million. our entire package, really, to put it in adifferent kind of context, was about $3.5 million over a three-year contract duration. so we were asking for, maybe, about 10% ofthe actual surplus to go to the faculty. we didn't get anywhere.
they would not move. we sat there all summer in the kind of charade,i call it, kind of an attempt, you know, to play the mask game - a kabuki dance with management- so you don't get charged with an unfair labor practice, which is a euphemism for "laboris stuck by management's proposals". so anyway, we met on august 31st, becausethe contract expired that day, trying to hammer out at least some kind of an agreement. we were informed that we were going to belocked out - the first time this has happened in a university, in higher education in thehistory of the united states. [wolff] really!
[pelias] to the best of my knowledge, yes. we've done a lot of research on this. there maybe was a little "thing" at templeuniversity, but i don't think they were locked out. [wolff] and you were literally locked out. [pelias] literally locked out, effective septemberthe 3rd, which was the weekend before classes start, and the lock out lasted for eleven- no, actually, twelve - days. a week ago thursday, today, it was lifted. we went back to work.
[wolff] so, "lock out," just so everybodyunderstands, lock out means you're not allowed to go into the building where your officeis, or to go into the building where you teach in the classroom. you are literally excluded from your job. [pelias] from the job, and we would be charged,if we did go in, with criminal trespassing. we could go to jail in order to get booksout of our office, meet with students that we may have in classes.[wolff] so let me quicklyask you the question i'm sure people are asking: (1) i remember reading they also took awayyour health insurance? [pelias] during the time of the lock out,yes.
health care was suspended. of course, no wages were paid during thisperiod, yes. [wolff] okay. and what was done for the students who cameto class on the first day - for that day and the subsequent days that were their normalsemester time when the professors were all locked out - what happened? [pelias] well, the amazing thing - and toback up a little more to provide a context - in july, early july, the university advertisedfor jobs. not saying that these were jobs because ofa lockout that may be coming, or a possible
strike. they did not advertise these jobs as such. they were advertised there are positions availableat liu. so they did try to create, you know, a groupof replacement workers, but this was very minimal, and at the same time, they threatenedadministrators: you either go teach courses, or you would be fired. so many administrators, who were not qualifiedto teach actual courses - so, for example, you have, the joke was, the dean of the conollycollege of liberal arts school - who was a biologist, a phd in biology, a biologist wasassigned to teach ballet.
the vice president in charge of operations,who, you know, is a woman that has been there nearly 40 years and a very important playerin the history of liu, was assigned to do yoga. and then you had people teaching english classeswho had no background in english literature, et cetera. so the students were faced, on the first dayof classes, which began september the 7th on the wednesday following - well, convocationday was the 6th - of labor day week. they were faced with replacement workers inthe classroom. and unqualified people.
now before we go into it, how has it been"resolved"? just so we know what happened. [pelias] i don't really consider it resolved. we are continuing to negotiate, but the termsgoing after the lock out was lifted, whether we would work continuation of the old contractfor nine months, which would expire may 31st, 2016 [wolff] 17 [pelias] 17, excuse me, yes- and we would work on that nine-month academic year, calendar year, and we would also berestored the health care and any out-of-pocket costs. however, we still would be docked for thedays we did not work at school.
so they actually paid the replacement workers. so we are being docked, at least up to rightnow, this was part of the agreement. we've gone back to work effective septemberthe 15th - last thursday - you know, one week into the semester. so one full week was lost. so these are the conditions we will continueto negotiate and also we have been assigned a mediator to maybe, hopefully, kick-start the negotiation. i mean that's like turning the ignition onand you're still in neutral, but you may know you're going to take a right or left turn,you know, at least.
[wolff] let me be the economist for a minute... [pelias] sure. of course. [wolff] ...because that's what i do. if they're taking a week's pay - more or less- from you, that's 2% of your annual salary. [pelias] that's absolutely correct. [wolff] which means the whole of last year'sgain in your contract from before has just been erased. [pelias] totally erased, right. and zero going forward, so most people areworking on a minus-two going forward into
the extension, may of 2017. this is one very egregious moment, that hasnot really been discussed yet by the faculty, but they're going to be aware of it when theyget their first paycheck at the end of this month. [wolff] all right, so now let's analyze it. tell me: what's going on? why is the university coming off a five-yearsin which they gave the teachers raises less than what was necessary - just to keep thesame standard of living they had before - now wanting to stick it to the teachers even more?
what's going... why would a university jeopardize? this is a message to every professor: "goget a job someplace else." it's a message to every professor: "maybelook outside of academia - maybe you're in the wrong place." it's a message of disrespect for what theydo. it's a message of disrespect for what thestudents should be getting. what's going on? how do you...? help us understand this.
[pelias] well, i think at one level, the boardof trustees of liu brought in someone who has no academic background. has no relationship to academic value, andespecially no relationship to the humanities and liberal arts. you know, the cornerstone if you will in termsof building citizenship and creative dissent, you know, forming young minds with the capacityto make good judgments about the world they want to live in. so they have created, you know, what i wouldconsider an overall package of austerity by in which the professors are the chief enemy.
but the other enemy to this - or its target- the other target is really the students. the students, as you know, pay enormous amountof tuition. liu's average tuition is about $30,000. it goes up to about $55,000 if you live oncampus. and further, some of the graduate programsare $40-50,000. and most of our population at liu/brooklyncomes from working class backgrounds. average family median income is around $80,000,you know, so they qualify for some aid, but very little. [wolff] many of them are likely borrowingmoney?
[pelias] absolutely. you know, i think the average debt they carrywhen they graduate is between $35-40,000 for an undergraduate degree. we can talk later about the value of that. [wolff] right. [pelias] but, so this is a war also on thestudents. as i tell my students, you've been createdas a new class of indentured servants. you know, you are not here to think; you arenot here to learn. you are here to, you know, reproduce for thesystem and pay back your debts.
and, you know, i think they get it, but still,what choice do they have? you know, given the conditions that, you know,the economy dictates. and, you know, as our friend, stanley aronowitz,framed it once: go to college or die, right, is the mantra. so this, to me, has become an experiment. liu case is very important on the nationaland even the international level as an experiment of how you, first of all, can disrespect andhave absolutely no feeling for your faculty, you know, as educators by locking them out,taking hold of the university, thinking you can manage it on a make-shift shift of workers,right?
basically, you know, all part-time laborers,pay them piecemeal work. they got paid $500 for one class and, youknow, they get paid $3,000 for the entire semester, had we not gone back in. and so, this has become part of an attackon the value of higher education, the value of professors, and is - in my opinion - aneo-liberal framework to create a new model of the university that is built on only thehealth, science professions, entrepreneurialship, business models and, at best, professionalschools, especially at liu, which is oriented mostly towards pre-pharmacy, pre-nursing schooling,you know, and they're starting to create this kind of new model for these second- and third-tieruniversities.
and another thing to remember, in this case,liu is a tuition-driven: 91.5% of its revenue comes from tuition. and there are many schools like this, thatare not endowment-rich, even though liu's endowment has gone up about 30-40% over the last twoyears, i mean, you know, basically reflecting stock market advances and portfolio advances. they still do not use any of those funds towardscholarship or encouraging faculty development, etc. [wolff] it does sound to me, and i'dlike your opinion on this, it sounds to me like we're going back to the way higher educationwas before world war ii in that, if you come from the elite - from the wealthy - you willgo, likely, to a private college where your
development, your over all development - humanities,social sciences, natural sciences - is what the point of the education is. to make you able to analyze problems, understandthe world, have a critical perspective. but if you don't come from those classes,and if you can't afford or can't in to those universities, you're going to a higher educationequivalent of what we used to call "vocational schools". that the liu is becoming an extension of thevocational training system, where the presumption of the business types who lead it is thatall these people need to know is the technical details of whatever career they're going into.
but being trained to be adult, thinking citizens- we don't need them for that. that's a job for the elite, and not for them. it undercuts the whole notion of a liberaleducation as a human right. and just to make one, you know, connectionto today versus - you're absolutely right. the pre-world war ii model, in terms of thevocational training, the difference is today, they are paying enormous amounts of moneyand also to get this vocational and going into debt, which most of them are not goingto be able to pay back, if ever, you know, at the minimum 10-15 years out there if theyget a really good job. and probably the rest of their lives.
i call it, you know, it's the new educationaltax. [wolff] making the people getting it - it'sundercutting public education, the whole idea. so tell me how are the professors - how arethey reacting? how are the teachers - how do they understandthis, and what reaction is building among them? [pelias] i think that the best thing aboutthe lock out, is it did mobilize professors. you know, we voted almost unanimously - right? - not to ratify a very offensive and egregiouscontract. it might not have been so close, had we goneon strike, had we voted to go on strike.
so this had a way of mobilizing the professorsand building a kind of militancy and solidarity that is not normally there. so this has been a good thing. the best part of the lock out, was the students. the students would gather together, builta small movement internally, asking for their real professors. and then they started, every day of the lockout at noon, they would chant "liu professors locked out - students walk out." and they would march out onto dekalb and flatbusharound all the buildings and chant "shame,
shame on you, liu." and, you know, this really created a reallyvery different feeling at liu, where you have had, basically, apathy. you know, for so long of a period of time,so this mixing of the students and the professors really came to be - in a very solid way thelast week - and i think it's going to continue. there's always a problem once people go backto teaching, to their lives, that they no longer organize or get together in meetings. but i think because of this action, we willsee a different kind of militancy at liu, particularly in the union.
you know, the union has a history of goingon strikes. we are probably the most - more than any otheracademic union - been on strike, you know, in the last, in it's existence, in 40 yearswe've been on strike eight times. [wolff] in 40 years. [pelias] in 40 years. so every five years, you can kind of expecta strike from liu. there was a strike over parity with c.w. post,which is one of the main issues going forward. there was a strike over tenure - they wantedto get rid of tenure. there had been strikes, of course, over wages,over the reduction of health care, so...
[wolff] let me ask you a question again fromme, as an economist: in the economics profession, one of the things we take as axiomatic isthat the united states as an economy - if it has a future in the world economy - hasto compete, whether it's with the europeans or the japanese and now the chinese, and soon. and that one of the key determinants of howwell the american economy will be in the years ahead is the quantity and the quality of peopleemerging from higher education. the skilled, the trained, the sophisticated,the creative... what in the world would possess a country,knowing what i just said - because it says it over and over again - savaging its own collegesand universities in this way?
disrespecting the teachers? making it less and less attractive to be aprofessor? giving students shoddier and shoddier educationbecause of the pressures put on the teaching faculty and where money is spent? help us understand how a society shoots itselfin the foot in this way. [pelias] well, i mean, it's beyond any kindof rational imagination here, but on the other hand, you know, in the era of globalization,you know, the united states is, i think, ranked 30th by the un in terms of education. and if you're a business person in the unitedstates and you need a mathematician, you're
not really going to go to the schools in theunited states to recruit. so you have much more of a market now that'sgoing to go towards singapore, or towards india for technology. so, besides the elite schools, i really don'tthink that the american system is really, you know, geared towards educating its populace. i think, you know, the philosophers - since,you know i've read them for many years - marcuse, herbert marcuse, once said the educationalsystem of the united states is they systematic moronization of its populace. and, you know, we're really living throughthat right now.
it's not the fault - you know, you can tellyour students "you come in smart and you leave dumb". so this is a real problem as we go forward. and, no longer, is there a drive for knowledge;it's really the era of data. and as long as you can do data and as longas they can still create minimum wage jobs around data mining and data interpretation, processing,you know, this will go on as a consumerist economy. but forget it. i don't think the united states is gearedtowards, you know, as you pointed out earlier,
the pre-world war ii drive towards educatingits populace for the production, you know, or for, you know, the production that's neededto make this country at least functioning again. so we're really dealing with a collaboration,whether unconscious or not, i think it's partially very conscious of the ruling class to, youknow, not educate people at a certain level. the elite schools remain sort of unscathed,although i think the quality has gone down there, as well. but that's another story about what technologyand its impact on education has happened. but they don't really care about these second-and third-tier schools, or about public education,
or education fundamentally as a public good,you know, it is not a public good. it is not an asset. and, as one friend of mine said, why are theygoing after the assets of the university, i.e., the teachers? [wolff] it's very interesting, historically,because after world war ii, it was the demand of the returning soldiers who got the gi bill,got a chance to go to school - that whole generation wanted their kids to get propercollege educations, which that working class of america never had had before. they wanted it.
they demanded it - that's how public highereducation really got going after word war ii. before, it was a private affair. is there any chance that a groundswell ofstudents - like those chanting at liu - is going to say "wait! you can not devalue us and our prospects bygiving us a lousy education. we won't tolerate it." in the same way that, after world war ii,the working class of america said "we're not going to tolerate only the elite going tocollege.
you're going to create public higher education forall of us." and a major step in that direction was taken. [pelias] i think there's a major awakeningamong students now. i think the debt situation has started thisin their minds. what are they paying for? are they living in the age of diminishingreturn on investment? you know, if you want to look at this as theirtemporal and their psychic investment in education. and i think they're beginning to see verydifferently than just through the career as the model, or that you go to school just toget a job, you know, because maybe the jobs
won't be there or the good jobs won't be there. so, at least, questions have been raised. we hope that this develops into a movement. i think there's leadership and, as we know,the occupy movement raised very good questions which we still are addressing. there's certainly some, you know, effectsfrom that, the black lives matter. maybe we have some possibility of fusion ofthese movements coming together along on the college campuses. that's very, very important.
but, there is, i mean again, i want to saythis administrative class, which is the bloat in the universities - where most of the payis going, you know - there are much higher salaries at the top. those who administrate, who are not educatorshave really, you know basically, destroyed, you know, any notion of what higher educationcould be. and i'd also want to add that, you know, weas professors especially at a place like liu - whose mission is for first-generation collegestudents or second-generation... [wolff] you mean the first-time... [pelias] first time gone to college - firstgeneration students, which was founded in
1926 for, you know, jewish people who couldnot afford to go to school. this is how liu/brooklyn was formed - mikegold's novel "jews without money," basically. you know, that mission has been there, nowthis is being completely attacked and assaulted by this administration. it's a battle cry for all of us. so my hope is, you know, if i can add, myhope is that this executive committee of the union - which has some very good people, imust say, and people have really stepped up - if we can continue to put the pressure,you know, we continue to have interviews and such as a media presence making people moreaware, we can go back to the table and, hopefully,
negotiate a better contract and maybe seethis as a small victory for teachers in both a way of standing up and, you know, makingthis into a transformative moment in higher education. that is the goal that we have at this point,yeah. [wolff] just a final comment from me, if icould. i've been a professor all my life, too, andwhen we started, it was clear to us - in the universities where i taught - that the basicdecisions about what was done in that university were made by collectives of professors. the 27 in the economics department, we gottogether.
we discussed the curriculum. we discussed financially helping students. we were in charge. the administrators were under us in the sense their job was to do the administration subordinate to serving what the professorsdid. this collective power by those qualified todo it has been usurped. [pelias] totally. [wolff] we have a university that copies themodel of corporate enterprise, with a board of directors at the top, typically havinglittle or nothing to do with what the company
does, telling everybody else what to do, payingthemselves wild amounts of money, as if their control ought to be reimbursed, underminingthe very function of what the university was. it's extraordinary. [pelias] i'll put it in another context, becauseyou'll like things like this. the entire wage package for the faculty eachyear is less than what the president of the university makes - one individual. the entire wage package. [wolff] how many people involved in that? [pelias] the entire wage package is closeto 600 people.
[wolff] who make less than the president. [pelias] well, this is the raise package. it's the equivalent, you know, the 2% raisethat is on the table, yes. [wolff] thank you very much, michael, you'vebeen very helpful. [pelias] thank you, rick. my pleasure. [wolff] and to all of you, here's anothercorner of the american economy and the world economy changing in ways we need to monitorand watch. i look forward to talking with you again nextweek.