by Ravi Katari / August 6th, 2012
Dealing with superfluous populations has been a vexation shared
by all industrial capitalist societies for generations. In other words,
the problem for modern rulers and leaders is what to do with societal
segments that contribute little to wealth creation by production or
consumption. Columbia Professor Emeritus of Sociology Herbert Gans
referred to the modern U.S. constituents of these segments as “surplus
workers” that eventually become superfluous via indefinite unemployment.
The “surplus pool” increases in size with the failure by job creators
to do what they claim to do. The concept, however, generalizes to any
society or state in which the exploitation of land and/or resources is
being obstructed by the presence of unnecessary humans.
Throughout history, ruling classes employed a variety of strategies
to shrink the surplus pool. In 1788 the British Empire began exporting
some of its surplus to Australia in order to establish a new penal
colony. The endeavor was delayed by the presence of the indigenous
society that needed to be dealt with: one surplus displacing another.
Similarly, they and other European empires exported feudal leftovers to
the Americas and subsequently established colonies after exterminating
the native civilizations we learn about in elementary school.
Other alleviating mechanisms include war enlistment, extreme poverty
resulting in death, or illness resulting in death. All three
effectively reduce the burden of superfluous populations. Moral traits
and altruistic inclinations, however, get in the way sometimes and
history does reveal welfare implementations for the indigent, orphaned,
and widowed that were often inspired by Abrahamic doctrines.
Enlightenment-era renegotiations of the social contract and the
upsurge of global wealth during the rise of industrial capitalism
gradually reinforced the notions of not only expecting but demanding the
fulfillment of welfare commitments by state governments particularly in
Europe. The United States, however, was never as anchored to social
obligations as mainland Europe given its comparatively blank
socio-political history. This contributed to the country’s delayed
abolishment of slavery and recognition of worker organization.
The chattel-based planter economy of the early Union along with
concurrent industrialization in its northern territories created
difficult conditions for poor white farmers. To avoid drowning in
economic hardship, the only option was to take part in the drive toward
western expansion that was eventually encapsulated in the philosophy of
Manifest Destiny. In order for the blossoming nation to move forward
with continental ownership, the truly unnecessary Native Americans had
to undergo displacement or simple erasure.
20th century dynamics, labor-capital dynamics limited the ways in
which the United States could deal with its superfluous elements. The
Great Depression highlighted the inability to exterminate, export,
resettle, or enslave the unemployed. It was during subsequent
administrations over several decades that the formalized welfare
provisions were enacted which are readily recalled as the New Deal,
Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicare, and
Medicaid. And, of course, consecutive military engagements were able to
partially absorb displacement shocks.
These welfare distributions became increasingly important as
neo-liberalism and financial enterprises began to dominate U.S. policy
beginning with the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system in 1973 which
allowed multinational corporations to benefit from an unprecedented
degree of capital mobility.
Naturally, domestic labor being restricted by land boundaries and
socio-cultural beacons was thus unable to sync with overseas investment
by U.S. firms. This ultimately contributed to increasing unemployment,
downward pressure on wages, poverty, and further dependence on welfare
programs. Indeed, Nobel laureate and economist at Columbia University
Joseph Stiglitz warned that unaddressed inequality in America, already
the worst among industrialized societies, is fostering a resemblance to
two-tiered societies of the Third World.
Peter Edelman at Georgetown University Law Center has revealed a great deal about current poverty in the U.S.
,
His research demonstrated that as of 2010, 103 million Americans had
incomes below twice the poverty line; i.e., below $36,000 per year for a
family of three. 20 million Americans live in deep poverty which
includes incomes below half the poverty line; i.e., below $9000 per year
for a family of three. These are people that depend on health care
assistance such as Medicaid, nutritional assistance like food stamps and
tax credits. Research done by the Heritage Foundation estimated that
federal welfare spending approached $700 billion in 2010 alone.
The growing surplus pool has been a constant irritation to policy
makers and business planners seeking to tap into the welfare cash flow.
The vast portion of that money that is not filtered through private
institutions (e.g., public funded private health coverage) is largely
wasted on unnecessary humans. The most prominent effort to correct this
blunder is the endeavor to privatize Social Security which happens to
be a quite functional, efficient, and well-funded system as Nobel
laureate Stiglitz confirmed.
However, the current implementation sustains beneficiaries without
generating very much profit. Allowing them to simply pass would free up
potential sources of capital. Another possibility would be for them to
take out loans which perhaps can be repaid by their children.
These latter two options, however, would be difficult to implement
given their friction with values of sympathy and compassion that reside
in the ethos of the general public. That is to say, the moral foundation
that sustains welfare spending the U.S. threatens the viability of such
measures. In the face of this type of opposition, legislators and
executives have resorted to the employment of subversive rhetoric
appealing to irrational elements of the human psyche in order to justify
institutional oppression of superfluous segments. This includes the
exploitation of latent nativism, racism, jingoist nationalism, and
religious adherence to the obscure and, in fact, unknowable motives of
the “founding fathers.”
The clearest example is undoubtedly the United States penchant for
incarceration that disproportionately targets racial minorities as
Michelle Alexander’s recent book
The New Jim Crow explains in great detail.
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The War on Drugs that was escalated by President Nixon in the 1970s was
continued by Presidents Reagan and Clinton with some pretty ugly
consequences. The strategy was to impose over-the-top punishments for
minor drug offenses overwhelmingly committed by the poor while at the
same time demonizing blacks as welfare queens and gangsters. The effect
is the underhanded shift of superfluous elements into prison camps
where they can perform something comparable to slave labor and
simultaneously evade poverty statistics.
And,of course, for efficiency purposes, a portion of the public
spending on incarceration is handed to correctional corporations that
profit from America’s toughness on crime.
The state-initiated demonization of population segments not in accord
with neo-liberal reforms is not unique to the United States. The
Indian government has repeatedly labeled a vast sector of its own
population as terrorists in order to justify the use of paramilitary
forces to destroy associated rural societies that obstruct economic
initiatives. The reactionary group, known as the Maoists, has employed
violent tactics in an effort to oppose the corporate and government
infiltration of the farmers’ lands.
For these people, there is no New World or Manifest Destiny to absorb
them. The only options aside from succumbing to state violence are to
pick up and move into urban slums to find work or to simply commit
suicide. Incidentally, the latter option has become a full-blown crisis
with a quarter-million farmer suicides since 1995.
However, overt violence like that in India would be intolerable in
the United States. Still, there are other tactics aside from
incarceration that severely undermine surplus citizens struggling to
keep up with the new global economy. Take, for example, the Affordable
Care Act which is President Obama’s flagship legislation. Its purpose
is to deal with the current health care crisis that has left over 50
million without health insurance: 17% of the population. Furthermore,
recent estimates link 26,000+ deaths of working-age adults annually to
lack of medical insurance.
To be honest, Obamacare is quite far from solving the actual problem
and is a step in the wrong direction. The fact remains, however, that
it would expand the insurance umbrella over millions previously
uninsured. Though that insurance may still bankrupt them, it would at
least allow them to see a doctor when they’re sick.
The opposition to the health reform has been expectedly
silly. Conservatives claim that it’s too expensive a burden for a
debt-ridden economy. The latest CBO projections, however, show that
Obamacare is likely to reduce the federal deficit by $109 billion over
ten years: a modest amount, but a reduction nonetheless.
Falseness makes a weak argument, so Governor Rick Perry of Texas
resorted to evangelical constitutionalism when declaring combat on the
new law recently by rejecting federal funding to expand Medicaid. He
patriotically refused to “socialize” medicine in the great state of
Texas out of respect for the kind of freedom envisioned by the Founding
Fathers.
Unfortunately, Texas happens to be the state with the most egregious
coverage gap in the country: 25% uninsured while home to some of
nation’s best hospitals. Governor Perry’s refusal to address the
problem reflects outright contempt for his state’s unnecessary humans.
So at this juncture we ought to ask ourselves, how far has
civilization come in the treatment of underclass constituents? Governor
Perry is a small example, but his outlook readily generalizes. He
can’t exterminate or export them, but ignoring them seems to work.
Though the implications for democracy are frightening, sometimes it’s
difficult not to laugh at the irony present in religious devotion to
founding principles. To be sure, the poor and/or unemployed are, in a
commercial sense, valueless. They effect no labor and they can’t afford
to buy any products. The only thing that makes these people
necessary is
their capacity to cast votes, but only in a functioning democracy. Do
we have one? If we could deposit our superfluous population in prison,
in war, or underground, would we have one then?
Ravi Katari (a University of Virginia graduate in
Biomedical Engineering) works for a health law firm that specializes in
Medicaid reimbursement cases on behalf of hospitals. He can be reached
at:
ravik008@gmail.com.
Read other articles by Ravi.
