Friday, November 28, 2008
All a matter of confidence
From the RoundTable blog
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Sam Riley
Riley is a professor of communication at Virginia Tech, where he teaches journalism.
Someone long ago observed that all it takes to enjoy love and sausages is confidence -- a point well taken. Just now, public confidence is at an ebb. To get through the morass of economic troubles that now beset us and regain prosperity, finding a renewed sense of confidence would seem to be crucial.
For the past eight years we have had a certain kind of confidence, of course. Many of us have felt every confidence that if new ways could be found to further enrich the wealthiest 5 percent of the U.S. citizenry, the Bush administration would find them. If a new way to fleece the bleating herd of common taxpayers could be devised, then devise it they would. But this is negative confidence. What we really need, of course, is positive confidence -- confidence that our federal government will make honest efforts to work for the common good.
With the approach of the Obama administration, we hope for leadership that understands we are all in this economic mess together, not leadership that says: "Hey, let's you guys sacrifice to make things better." For too long now, the way of things has been to address bottom-line problems by firing "worker bees" and then rewarding the executives with year-end bonuses for having "managed" the situation so well. Problem is, jobs in America are melting away like ice cubes on a sunny August day. And if enough Americans lose their job and cannot find another, we will not just have a recession. We most certainly will have a depression.
Last year, I saw a small sign on the office door of a young colleague. It read, "You are either a leader or a victim." Good grief, I thought. Has it really come to that? My first reaction was to think that sign's message was pure bilge and drivel. By now, I'm not so sure. Perhaps we really have pretty much become divided into the wolves and the sheep.
To correct the loss of general public confidence, what's needed is for leaders to show more regard for their followers. Gone should be the euphemistic terms that now are tossed about so merrily when underlings' jobs are being cut: "rightsizing," "unlocking shareholder value," and the like. People getting "downsized" should not be further insulted by saying that they were "nominated for early retirement." Gone should be tax breaks for corporations that send jobs offshore. Gone should be the enormous and ridiculous bonuses for the executives of those very corporations that now are pushing their way to the public trough to seek corporate welfare in the form of taxpayer-backed giveaways, loans or guarantees. Gone should be the absurd polarization of income separating top corporate management from the good, old expendable employees who work under them. Sure, those in charge should be paid more, but 1,500 percent more? No, no and no. Not if they are just managers rather than owners.
The election of Barack Obama to the presidency should do a world of good in lessening the racial polarization of America. Let us devoutly hope that President Obama and his advisers are also adept at addressing the economic polarization that plagues us. Conservatives fear that to do so would mean taking from the successful and giving to the lazy. Would it not be better to reduce financial polarization by adopting policies that discourage a corporation from trying to give Warren Buffet-sized compensation packages to their top executives -- regardless of whether those managers have performed well or poorly? Would it not be more desirable to enforce the anti-trust laws so as to foster competition and cut back on the failed idea that bigger is always better, which has brought us companies that are said to be too big to fail?
Would it not be a fine thing if we, as a nation, could begin to more seriously address our own problems and stop trying to run the rest of the world. The "be like us, or else" approach has brought us nothing but grief. Gone should be the strip-mall patriot who slaps a Support the Troops ribbon on his car but whose actions seem to say, "Let's you less affluent people enlist and be patriots, but not me or my children. Obviously, we've got more important things to do with our time. And don't expect us to contribute financially, either."
To keep America great, we need a lot of change -- soon. But the key to climbing back out of the hole we now find ourselves in is, in a single word, jobs.
