John Creighton

LONGMONT, Colo. — Matt Miller makes a provocative assertion in his year-old book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas.  He argues that Americans need to get over the idea that future generations will earn higher incomes than their parents and grandparents.  All the evidence suggests, Miller argues, that we will experience several decades of downward pressure on wages.

Household incomes (after adjusting for inflation) have steadily climbed over the past four decades.  But the additional income is the result of more people in each household working rather than an increase in wages.  In other words, more women work outside the home.

Forty percent of women over sixteen were part of the labor force in 1970.  Now, sixty percent of women work outside the home.  And, more than seventy percent of women with children under the age of eighteen work outside the home.

That’s the source of new money for families.  Medium income (adjusted for inflation) for women has nearly doubled over the past forty years.  Medium income for men has been flat during that same period.

The downward pressure on wages makes sense.  We live in an information or knowledge based economy.  Information can be shipped around the globe in a matter of seconds.  Thus, work literally can be done anywhere.  For instance, a radiologist in India can read a patient’s x-rays just as quickly as a radiologist down the hall.

In short, labor for a vast number of professions — accounting, medical information, architecture, customer service calls, to name just a few — is now a commodity.  One person’s labor is indistinguishable from another’s just as one farmer’s wheat is indistinguishable from another’s.

I remember listening to an interview of former GE CEO Jack Welch some years ago.  He said GE’s goal is to buy commodities but never sell commodities.  Profits are unreliable in a commodity business.  Just ask any farmer.  Labor as commodity is not good news for the American worker, including many, if not most, professionals.

Our score card for happiness in America is income.  We say we value family and friends more than money.  But, politicians, pundits and every day Americans focus much attention on income.  It makes sense.  Money helps.

But, is ever increasing wages the best way to measure happiness and prosperity?  We’ve used our extra household income to accumulate stuff.  (Our dollars go further in the past because most stuff costs less than it did forty years ago.)  The size of our houses have doubled.  There are more cars than licensed drivers.  And, how many electronics do we really need?  I certainly need to ask myself this last question.

If Mr. Miller’s assertion — Americans will make less in the future than they do now — is true, what will prosperity look like in the future?  Will prosperity exist?  How will this affect our collective psyche?  To what extent will we still be willing to help one another if we feel constant strain on our own incomes?

America may be facing it’s greatest leadership challenge.  It is easier to be a leader when the coffers are full and growing.  It is toughest to lead when times are lean.

How can and should America show leadership if our incomes don’t grow?  Are there ways for America to be a role model for better living — to do more with less?

These are the questions we face at a household, community, state and national level.  Are we up to the challenge?

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.

Picture credit: stuartpilbrow (Flickr)

LONGMONT, Colo. — I was walking from Boston’s Charles Street T (subway) to our apartment when the power of anonymity hit home for the first time.  I was on my regular graduate school meal plan at the time: Cheerios for breakfast; peanut butter sandwich for lunch; a Happy Hour supper (two dollar beer and free cheese, crackers and chickens wings), and a Snicker bar to hold me over for late night studies.

I broke out the Snicker bar on my walk back to the apartment and, perhaps because I was exhausted, threw the wrapper to the ground.  I stopped dead in my tracks.  I realized immediately that I had littered for the first time since I could remember.

I looked around.  What if somebody saw me.  But, I quickly realized, no one I knew would see me.  I was anonymous in this city.  I could do what I want and there would be no negative social consequences.  The accountability of being part of a community was gone.  Having grown up in a small town, one of those places where your parents learned about transgressions in the time it took to walk home, the feeling of anonymity was foreign.  I had never felt such freedom… to be irresponsible.

It occurred to me at that moment that the old saying is true:  Integrity is what you do when no one is looking.  It also occurred to me in clearer terms than ever before that we tend to be our better selves when we are part of a community.  Accountability to others is one of the mechanisms that forces us to act in ways that foster trust.  We want people to know they can count on us so that they will continue to welcome us in our community.

Civic community is under duress.  Scholars such as Robert Putnam have documented the demise of the public square in great detail.  Social networking tools facilitate our abilities to manage far more relationships than we have in the past.  But, there also is evidence that the depth of our relationships are more shallow.  We know a little about a lot of people and a lot about very few.  There is a difference between being connected and being in community.

Trust also is at historic lows.  In the United States, we not only lack trust for our institutions but we don’t think much of each other, either.  Youth tend to be optimistic people.  Even they lack confidence in their fellow human beings. In 2008, only 21.4 percent of people age 18-29 say most people can be trusted.  In 1984, more than half of people in this age group said people are trustworthy.

Is it a coincidence that trust is low at a time when civic life is stressed.  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.

Donald Brown, author of Human Universals, notes that people of all societies are concerned with what other people think of them.  We look to the approval of others to discern what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior.  Indeed, we crave community as a way to bring order to our lives.  In short, community helps build trust among people.  And, the converse is true, too.  Trust helps to sustain communities and societies.

In a nation like ours, which is becoming ever more diverse, it is important that our communities reflect diversity, too.  Dan Yankelovich, in a talk on The New Pragmatism, cites the growth of self-isolating communities — communities in which people agree so much groupthink takes hold — as one of the difficult cultural issues eroding America’s historic ability to solve problems.

The converse of people’s need for community is fear of the outsider.  As we divide into tribes of like minded people, fear of others increases.  Trust in others decreases.  Our ability to get things done declines.

Stephen M.R. Covey (the son of Stephen R. Covey) says that trust is “the one thing that changes everything.”  In his book, The Speed of Trust, Covey writes:

The future of America is that we will be more diverse.  If we want to retain America’s great gift to solve problems we must learn to trust one another more.  Indeed, building trust needs to be a national priority.  It begins at the local level with building a genuine sense of community.  It is a challenge for all of us to step outside our comfort zones to learn about and with people who are different from us.

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.

Picture credit: ell brown (Flickr)

LONGMONT, Colo. — The Longmont Orchestra is playing again this year in Thompson Park to celebrate the Fourth of July.  It’s one of the traditions I love about this holiday.  My family makes a point of staying home for the Fourth so we can join our neighbors to celebrate America’s birthday.  Similar celebrations of picnics, music and fireworks will take place across the country.  The Fourth and Thanksgiving are the two uniquely American holidays.

The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays.  At breakfast each year, I read the preamble of the Declaration of Independence to my three children.  Perhaps it’s a geeky tradition.  But, I think it’s important to talk about the reason for this important holiday.  I think it’s important to talk about freedom.

I am concerned about the lack of perspective many of my generation and younger have when it comes to freedom.  Far too often, people my age and younger clamor that the proverbial sky is falling.  I receive emails on a regular basis from political advocacy groups shouting that freedom in America is in peril.  Just this morning, I received an email with this alarmist warning, “With each passing birthday of our nation, we are confronted more starkly by the question of whether America will see another centennial.”

Certainly it is important to remain vigilant guarding against threats to our liberty.  As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”  But, I submit all the commotion that “the sky is falling” is indeed analogous to Chicken Little.  And, a tremendous insult to those who worked so hard to earn the freedoms we all enjoy every day.

Let’s take a look at the state of freedom in America.  Freedom House gives the United States its highest rating for political and civil rights.  Not all countries fair so well.  The trend line is moving in the wrong direction on Freedom House’s scale in many parts of the world.

The Heritage Foundation ranks the United States eighth on its Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings.  The U.S. “freedom score” is down slightly because government spending is on the rise and The Heritage Foundation finds U.S. tax rates “burdensome.”  I agree that our national debt is cause for concern.  But, are taxes infringing on freedom?

Freedom is a subjective issue.  Not all, not even most, Americans agree with Heritage about the level of oppression created by taxes.  Gallup finds that American have more favorable views toward taxes in 2009 and 2010 than almost any year since the 1950s.

The data supports Americans’ views.  As I wrote previously, according to Congressional Budget Office, the federal tax burden is near a three decade low.  Data compiled by the Tax Foundation shows state and local tax burdens in most states are near historic lows, too.

I think of freedom as the ability of an individual to live their life as they choose so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others to do the same.  This notion of freedom, too, can be subjective dictated as much by social norms as by laws and statutes.

Ask people fifty, sixty and older whether people are more or less free to do what they choose today as compared to twenty, forty or sixty years ago.  Ask, in particular, African Americans and women.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, has spent sixty-four weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.  People are learning the stories of Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter on beaches, in lake houses and mountain cabins across the globe.  Read just a few pages and ask yourself whether African American women are more or less free.  Did African American women like Aibileen and Minny live as they would choose?

My mother graduated near the top of her class at the University of Kansas in the 1950s.  Our neighbor across the street was the student body president at K.U. in the 1940s.  Restricted by the social norms of the era these two women, after graduating from college, were expected to marry and raise children.  The idea of a professional career was not on their radar screen.

Women’s ability to manage their own bodies (certainly an issue of liberty) was long curtailed by law.  It was still a crime to use birth control in some states in the 1960s.  In my lifetime, it was illegal to sell the Pill to unmarried women in some states.  Such legal restrictions placed many restrictions on the lives of women.

Today, the tide is turning.  Today, more women than men earn a bachelors degree.  Education is a key element of personal freedom.  And, for women, educational attainment is on the rise.

Do we believe that American women are less free than a generation or two ago?

What about our personal rights protected by the Constitution?

Spend just a few minutes surfing the internet or watching cable television and it should be clear that Americans feel little, if any, inhibition to speak freely.  The social norm today is that a person can say anything about anybody… no matter how outrageous or grotesque.  I often wish people exercised more discretion over their freedom of speech.

Drive down the streets of many American towns and cities and it is readily apparent that freedom of religion is alive and well.  In my community, I see new churches opening in strip malls and renting temporary space everywhere I go.  Worshipping as one chooses is alive and well.

The Second Amendment is as strong as it’s been in decades.  The Supreme Court recently decided that states and municipalities cannot place restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.  This decision turned over Chicago’s thirty year-old ban on handguns.

Too many people suffered, struggled and persevered to earn the freedoms my generation and younger generations take for granted for us to flippantly complain.  It is petulant at best to sound cries of alarm over acorns falling from the sky.

I recently read complaints in our local newspaper (no electronic link available) that onerous zoning codes are a threat to our liberty.  The example given is a requirement to plant a tree and four bushes on the property of newly built homes.  I agree that’s a bit over the top.  But how, with any ounce self respect, can such a trifling nuisance be compared to Jim Crow laws?

One of the ways to remain vigilant in guarding against violations of our freedoms is the ability to differentiate true threats from things we find annoying.  If we work people into a lather over acorns, will it still be possible to rally people when we face a real threat.  Chicken Little lost her audience when she over reacted one too many times.

Enjoy the Fourth of July.  I hope you will join me in taking some time to consider what it means to be free.  And, I hope you will join me in expressing gratitude to those who did indeed suffer, struggle and persevere to create the freedoms we far too often take for granted.

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.