Was Phil Gramm right?

Wow I thought I was the only person in the universe that agreed with Gramm (well about the whining part anyway). Yeah it's a bit of a cliche and probably not empirically verifiable but it seems like the more someone or people have , the more someone or people tend to be unhappy. I think America seems to illustrate this "Cliche" pretty easily. I guess this is what happens when we pine for the creation instead of the creator.

Dean, you were not the only one. My circle of friends and I looked at each other when the comment came out and we all said, Yes. So what's your point?" To us, it was obvious. We all went through hard times growing up, and we all lead simple, and somewhat frugal lives. We don't get rid of something unless it's worn out, or we decide to donate it to Good Will or someplace similar. I've lost everything a few times, and learned that as long as you have your life, you can rebuild. So, put on a smile and get to it. Whining accomplishes NOTHING.

Dean, I agreed with Gramm, too. In fact, my husband and I had a huge fight the night Gramm's words were all over the news, when I dared to say as much. After I saw that almost everyone out there agreed with my husband (including Rod!), I decided to keep my mouth shut on the subject. How nice to finally have a small support group... :)

He was right about America being a nation of whiners, and he is right to say people are whining about the economy. But the economy is in bad shape, and dismissing that was the bigger fault.

China will be a successful nation, I believe, because the people truly have the can-do attitude that Americans used to be known for. Failure and inequality are the two curse words in America, but one cannot be successful without them.

This is why David Brooks makes me want to pull my hair out. Does Brooks really think that reality TV contestants are typical Americans? The vast majority of Americans have absolutely no desire to have the minutiae of their daily lives shown to millions on television. Like all prosperous people, we take too much for granted. So be it. I wouldn't hold up the American mindset as an ideal, but I still found the stoicism of the Sichuan resident he interviewed to be disturbing in its own way.

And Froma Harrop. Ah, the sainted Greatest Generation. My grandparents were all of the World War II generation. While that generation suffered much, that perspective certainly didn't stop my grandparents from getting irritated about the "small stuff" analogous to the issues listed by Rob. There are members of that generation who lived in big houses, and the 1950s certainly had quite a bit of focus on acquisition of material possessions, even if their bathrooms and their closests weren't as large as those in a modern vinyl village.

I would echo Daniel. Yes, Americans take their relative prosperity for granted, and if Gramm wants to call that whining, that's his prerogative. The "whiners" part of his statement wasn't the objectionable part, even if it was typically intemperate. The objectionable part was the idea that Americans' current economic struggles are imagined.

Um, wow, OK. Great surface analysis, people.

I guess Brooks has a point when he puts earthquake survivors' optimism next to the melodrama of reality television. However, it utterly fails when you see the powerful images of the Sept. 11 bucket brigades or ordinary citizens taking their boats to rescue Katrina victims or folks driving out-of-state to help sandbag cresting floodwaters in Iowa.

As for today’s Americans not suffering as much as previous generations… OK, I’ll bite. But I would have to assume that the worst days of the current economic downturn are behind us. I would have to assume the history-making collapses of gigantic corporations really are nothing to worry about. Nor the rising costs of food and fuel and debt. The trillions of dollars spent on foolish wars that have been largely privatized, ditto. The systematic disintegration of public education, a deeply flawed and immoral drug war that has choked our prison system and turned too many rural and urban communities into occupied war zones. Public officials who, in word and deed, say that they are no longer accountable to the people who elected them. The lack of outrage at the immoral and evil rise of the torture state and secret prisons funded by American taxpayers because we just have to make sure Barack Obama wears a flag pin and John McCain truly appreciates NASCAR. I could go on and on.

Yes, we Americans, collectively, are not suffering with the same intensity as a refugee in Darfur, or an American private who was shot to death in Anzio. We are blessed. But that does not discount the real and severe problems we face today. It does not discount the tireless and often thankless work of thousands of Americans trying to resolve those problems in the face of an ignorant public, a lazy media and intractable bureacracy.

But, hey, let’s put all that aside because the real face of America is the whiny loser who got voted off the island in prime time.

When my friends "whine" excessively over the little stuff--being stuck in traffic, having to buy a new whatever 'cause the old one broke, a minor illness, etc.--I always remind them that they are blessed and should be grateful for what they have. That's what I learned from my parents, who grew up in the Depression Era. They taught to face hard times and disappointments by thinking about what I do have, both in material wealth and intangible things like a loving family and network of friends, and to remember the people on this earth who live in extreme poverty.

But, no, I can't say I agree with Phil Gramm, because his (and his wife's) "funny money" economic policies set the wheels in motion for the problems we face today, starting with the collapse of Enron. He's got a lot of nerve, actually.

I wonder how much of it was due to cultural differences, or being afraid to complain or make China lose face on camera? They put bigger stock on group honor over there - stoicism would publicly demonstrate their national strength and resilience. Enough time has passed most of them can keep it together in front of outsiders at least.

As far as Americans whining - the point is not so much material possessions. There's the hardship of losing your loved ones, and of being in danger of your own life, whether from natural disaster or war. This first hardship is universal - everyone dies, so everyone will lose their parents, friends, and their spouse, in due time. We will all experience that tragedy, whether in Manhattan or in Timbuktu.

But we Americans have better luck with natural disasters than a lot places, have access to health care, more or less, and have successfully outsourced war so the homeland doesn't have to ever reflect on it. This is good, after all no one wants to see their loved ones experience true hardship. But Americans live in a little climate-controlled box, relatively safe from harm.

Guys serving over here get really annoyed hearing about "work-related stress" and "record heat waves" and people crying over a racehorse that had to be put down, when any of us would trade a week in the States for a week here anyday. 90 degress is better than 124, and at least most of you only have to work five or six days a week. Don't get me wrong, we still complain, but there's certain things we don't complain of - we rarely admit fear, and rarely miss a beat even when we hear that four of our guys were killed. Unless we served with them, day in and day out, and considered them like a brother. Even then, it won't come out until we are at the recognition ceremony.

This is a very long read, and I don't expect many of you will get through it, but it's a description of what exactly happens to a U.S. servicemember killed in Iraq, from hour one until he is laid to rest. It's a process almost invisible to the American populace, but if you'd like to step outside your hermetically sealed box for an hour:

http://www.esquire.com/features/things-that-carried-him

Well, yes, Phil Gramm had a point, to a great extent we are a nation of whiners who don't realize just how good we have it compared with the rest of the world. That being said, of course, Gramm is laughably clueless about how our economic problem are seriously hurting ordinary people in this country. I think that's something many of us can agree on.

But did anyone else notice, reading Brooks' column, that the *reason* so many Chinese seem to exhibit *sang-froid* in the face of the ruin of their lives, is because the Chinese government is giving them stuff and bailing them out, at least to a point?

I'm not quite sure where I want to go with that, but it did strike me while reading the article.

Maybe we, as a nation, have developed higher expectations than the Chinese have so far, which is why they seem to be more satisfied with less.

I have a Chinese wife. I know you can't generalize, but she and her family seem devoid of the American obsession of whining, therapy, etc. They tend to work through their problems and move on. The concept of therapy or counseling in particular seems ludicrous to them -- you just need to think clearly and do the right thing, not pay someone $300/hour to tell you what to do.

Is it whining to want America to be a leader in peace instead of a aggressor?
Is it whining to want a government that protects the victims of Nature?
Is it whining to expect that we have health services for all our citizens?
Is it whining to demand that our industries work for the common good instead of hoarding huge profits while preventing jobs at home?

I think I whine all the way to the voting booth. Phil Graham is a whiner and a loser because he could do his job right.

And as I get on my knees today and pray that we have World Peace, am I a whiner?

The job of the government is to provide the opportunities and protect the prosperity of its people, ALL of its people not just the top 5%. We need leadership that will improve the economy of the average man.

The trouble with raw economic data such as Scurvy Oaks provides is that it doesn't show whether people are imagining it, or whether wealth really is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. It's often said that the USA's per capita GDP would drop by a sizeable percentage (I forget the actual figure) if Bill Gates were to emigrate.

And does anyone else find it funny that there is so much agreement with Gramm on a blog that consists of a good deal of whining (mostly in the comboxes, but sometimes in the blog itself) about the fact that gays, Muslims and black people exist?

It's not material possessions. Entirely besides the point...

Pyrrho, I agree. The growth in the national debt scares the living daylights out of me, and the elecorate should be raising cain about it. I also don't think that's what most people are whining about.

I must agree with the commenters who, while agreeing with Gramm's general sentiment, find it disgusting coming from the Einstein who was at the center of so many financial debacles.

Keeping a proper perspective of the nation's economic state is not an excuse for the short-sighted, incompetent leadership of the Republican Party's laissez-faire attitude toward regulating the financial market.

This is like a drunk driver ramming into your vehicle, and, upon you getting out of the heaping wreck that was once your car and bawling him out, lecturing you that it could have been worse -- after all, you could be dead!

DU

I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, etc. But here, with some details removed, is a real story of some real people who posted to a board I read asking for prayers.

They live rurally. They grow some of their own food. The husband must drive a considerable distance to work, the price of living rurally enough to grow some of one's own food. The family was three weeks away from a paycheck b/c the one they had just received was swallowed up by rising bills--not new debt, mind, but higher costs of utilities etc. triggered by the rise in gas prices. Things were so tight that the family had decided they wouldn't be able to get to church on Sundays until things were better, because the cost of the gas for one extra trip into town each week couldn't be met--that is, if they used up gas for a Sunday trip, the husband would run out of gas with no money to fill the tank on a workday.

They weren't whining, just asking for prayers. They continued to ask for prayers when their well broke and they had to spend money they didn't have to fix it--but you have to have water. Luckily the repair ended up being the cheapest of all possible problems--an expensive repair would have required them to take on another bill, which would perpetuate the financial stress even more.

These are the people whose daily struggles Phil Gramm dismisses. These are the people whose lives are looked at with scorn or pity, and the attitude of so many Republicans is, "So quit trying to live rurally, move to a suburb, take the kind of job that requires 50% travel so you never see your family, have your wife put the kids in daycare and go to work too, and you, too, can have the whine-free American dream!"

If a dentist or a druggist or a forklift operator made Gramm's comment it wouldn't have attracted the attention that it did.

Gramm's part of the governing class. He and his wife are people who can always use their proximity to those in power to land on their feet (with a tidy profit) whatever happens.

Check out what this couple has been into over the years. From IBP to Enron, it's not a pretty picture. That's why people objected so much to Phil's remark.

Sure, I'm blessed, especially if I compare myself to people living in other countries. Do I have challenges? Yes. Do I sometimes whine about them? No doubt. Do I want to hear Phil Gramm's opinion on my whining? No. No. No. For all the reasons stated above about Phil and Wendy Gramm.

The Chinese did not whine because if they did they would be making Prisonic batteries for US dollar stores. (I'm not kidding. We actually bought a package of batteries named that and we kept it intact because otherwise no one would ever believe it.)

Of course, Americans have taken our prosperity for granted for years. But I disagreed with Gramm's comments - to me they showed that he had a tin ear for addressing people's legitimate economic anxieties. His remark to John Q. Public was basically: "Are you losing your home? Ask me if I care."

Considering that, even outside our current inflation environment, that prices go up, in general, not down, even staying the same is to be losing ground, financially. And for the median income to actually decrease? Well, not good.

I do know that we are getting more and more people living where I work who aren't from impoverished families or backgrounds.

We had a two income family, one who was an EMT, who makes little enough to qualify for subsidized housing and spent over a week in our shelter waiting for their application to finish.

One of the other statistics to look at isn't just unemployment, these days, but 'underemployment'. People with good skills, and decent jobs where wages have been flat enough, for long enough, that they can't pay basic expenses like rent, utilities, transportation and food, even without extras like repairs and medical expenses, or the cost of missed work due to those problems.

Like they say, from middle class on down, many people are just one unexpected expense, or one missed paycheck from being homeless.

Applause for Erin's post at August 15, 2008 2:15 PM.

My version of the American Dream was learned from the example of my parents, immigrants from eastern Europe, survivors of WWII. It has two parts, in order of priority:

1) Live free, in a society of free people who share their rights and obligations.

2) Material security. Having enough for the present, enough to bounce back from adversity, and enough to give the children a start when they become independent. Leisure - yes; luxury -- don't care.

Phil Gramm is a flaming a**hole. His first priority is the luxury of his peer group, and if that means deceiving the peons needed to provide that luxury, then... well, that explains his attitudes and expressions, at least for me. Those of us who come from a proud heritage of peons know that whining is the prerogative of the aristocrats, to be mocked and taken as a warning to get out of sight until they get over their snit. The irony of the American Dream as she is defined by many is that along with money and luxury comes the privilege of whining, the ability to act like an aristocrat being the definition of the Dream for so many.

Oh, and lest I leave a bad impression of peons amongst the readers, we can whine with the best of them... the difference being that we don't have the money to buy our way out of adversity. So, we know that when the whining is finished (and our just mockery from our peers has been duly administered and accepted) we still have to get to work again.