‘There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.’ —Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’

PROPHETIC WORDS OR AN AGE-OLD OBSERVATION of the way change, by necessity, is initiated, that is, breakdown serves as accelerant? In America at Risk: The Crisis of Hope, Trust, and Caring by Purdue sociologists Robert Perrucci and Carolyn Perrucci (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), systemic cracks are painfully dissected—with true and actionable enlightenment, hopefully, to follow. The Perruccis’ thesis:

“We believe that the decline of hope, trust, and caring is the unanticipated consequence of the major transformation over the last thirty years in the kind of goods and services produced in America, in the technology that is used in production, and in the people who are involved in the production process. We call the composite of these changes the new economy.”

Their take on our current collective cachexia, all part and parcel of the “new economy,” makes for compelling reading, and the slender book (including index and notes it’s a mere 160 pages) offers up an array of solutions that deserves further exploration, certainly before we move from Cohen’s “Anthem” to Gibbons’ Decline and Fall … (for instance, from Gibbons: “If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honor”—just plug in “terrorists” in place of “barbarian conquerers” and “America” in place of “Rome,” and wait for the cookie to crumble).

SO WHAT EXACTLY CONSTITUTES THIS “MAJOR TRANSFORMATION” reported by the Perruccis? They see a troubling trifecta of globalized production, computerized production and flexible work organization as the primary perpetrators—with the greater populace thoroughly disempowered the distressing result. Globalized production—companies looking for higher profit margins shifted investment to countries with lower wages, less regulation and nonunionization—resulted in the loss of millions of U.S. jobs, that is, the deindustrialization of America. Computerized production—made possible by computer-assisted design and manufacturing, as well as “flattening” advanced telecommunications technology—eliminated many jobs and made it even easier to produce products abroad. Computerized production also created a demand for “knowledge workers” who competently handle the technology and “contribute to the growing income and wealth inequality generated by the new economy.”

Flexible work organization, finally, refers to the greater flexibility companies wield in the type of workers they hire and in their work arrangements. Old-school “social contracts” between employee and employer have been replaced by major restructuring, downsizing and outsourcing—resulting in greater job insecurity for blue-collar and white-collar workers. Privatization is another factor the Perruccis see at work here, the provisional shift of public services to private (including foreign) firms operating on a for-profit basis. The authors glumly report: “Thus, the expanded use of the private sector to deliver public services will continue to cut into the availability and quality of services to Americans and their communities, and it will undermine the unions that represent public employees and protect their wages, health, and pension benefits.”

With the stage set (or should that be wrecked?), America at Risk next tackles hope, trust and caring as they relate to our current state of affairs (and this book is post-Wall St. crisis, post-bailout and enamored with neither Democrats or Republicans). The Perruccis write:

“Recognizing that hope, trust, and caring are interrelated is especially important when we start to think about remedies to improve the lives of Americans. For example, it may be technically and politically feasible to develop strategies to improve hope by expanding public employment opportunities. But if the policy excludes Americans who believe that they also are deserving of help, then hope will have been extended at the expense of trust; that is, loss of trust in a political system that helps some but not all who are deserving. Thus, when we begin to think about remedies in chapter 8 [the book's concluding chapter, "Confronting the Crisis"], we will be mindful of the way that hope, trust, and caring can be part of an upward spiral of improvement, or a downward spiral of continued decline.”

The book sharply examines employment, educational, community and familial experiences as they vary across race, age, class, gender and geographic location. Illustrative, eye-opening facts and figures abound (always sourced), and are opportunely employed for maximum effect. For example:

• 750,000 Americans are homeless on any given night, with 20 percent of them considered chronically homeless
• $892 million—the average annual earnings of the top 25 hedge-fund managers in 2007; up $360 million from the previous year
• 2/3—the income level of Native Americans to that of white Americans; 23.2 percent of Native Americans were living below the poverty line in 2000—the highest percentage of any ethnic group
• 2,258,983—the number of prisoners in federal or state prison or in local jails on December 31, 2006—yep, we continue to incarcerate more people than other country in the world

Without belaboring the point (and this is not to contend that the book does!), America is very much at risk, so what’s to be done? Is there still time? Do we, collectively and individually, have the audacity? The Perruccis say yes. The book’s concluding chapter, “Confronting the Crisis,” offers up a number of suggestions, particularly around the plight of the displaced worker, going beyond merely “expanding the social safety net.” “The ideal solution to a societal problem,” the Perruccis write, “is one that can restore both hope and trust because the majority of Americans believe that it is good for the country and for them.”

Evoking JFK’s 1961 call for “a great new American enterprise” to put a man on the moon by decade’s end (not to mention FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society), the Perruccis call for the rebuilding of America’s deteriorating infrastructure, and share the D average of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2005 Infrastructure Report Card. How will this be paid for? Public money (taxes) and private money (individual and business contributions) will be required—a hard but necessary sell. Also, a “Jobs for America” program should be established, funded by private and public contributions, with additional funds shifted from the defense budget (read military-industrial complex) and potentially NASA. Workers in the program would focus first on rebuilding the country’s infrastructure (green-collar and green-tech jobs would fit nicely in here, I believe), and then on providing support personnel for schools, libraries, hospitals, nursing homes and prisons—all with enhanced pay and benefits.

The Perruccis also call for a national industrial policy that identifies critical sectors of the economy which require support in times of economic difficulty—”while it is too late now for some sectors, this would have meant helping the steel industry, auto industry, and textile industry in the 1970s and 1980s when they were facing competition from firms in other countries”—and an equal playing field when it comes to educational opportunities (instituting, for example, comparable per-pupil expenditures at all schools). The Perruccis contend that term limits and further accountability should be instituted in Washington and locally to restore trust in government. And finally, in-home and long-term care should get better support, as well as the rehabilitation of prisoners and push for less incarceration of nonviolent offenders. I kind of zoomed over these last points—sorry!—but wanted to show that a lot of ground is deftly covered in this imperative “Confronting the Crisis” chapter.

In the Perruccis’ closing analysis:

“Although America is the richest and most powerful nation in the world, nothing lasts forever, and for the last thirty years or so America has gone down a path that threatens its continued viability as the place where most people want to live and raise their children. We believe that the triple crises of hope, trust, and caring threaten to make America a very different country, one different in ways that only the privileged class of Americans will not recognize or understand. The privileged class will continue to enjoy high levels of income, wealth, and security, and their gated-community lives will protect them somewhat from seeing how the other 80 percent are living. But this kind of polarized society is not sustainable. Eventually those who are continuously excluded from the American Dream will submit a bill for payment of their real grievances.” [emphasis added]

It’s high time to heed the light and mend those cracks, and books like America at Risk, while certainly not pretending to have all the answers to society’s ills, can aid in starting a dialogue, if not actually getting things moving forward.

—Allen