THREE DESTRUCTIVE TRENDS
Kettering Review, Fall, 1995

by Daniel Yankelovich

The American public is in a foul mood. People are frustrated and angry. They are anxious and off balance. They are pessimistic about the future and cynical about all forms of leadership and government.

In 1992, the voters, in their frustration, threw out the Republicans. In last November's elections, in their frustration, they threw out the Democrats.

The worst feature of the mood is that it is likely to last for a long time. I doubt very much whether it will lift in six months or a year or two years. Some of its forms of expression may change in the next few years–perhaps for the worse. But the mood has been building for a long time. And it will not lift until its basic causes have been addressed.

There are no signs that this is happening. The United States and other industrialized democracies find themselves in the grip of powerful forces that no one understands very well and for which our societies are almost totally unprepared. The forces are not bad in themselves, but they do require adaptations that our society is not making–at least not yet. My fear is that if we fail to adapt, the present mood will harden into class warfare, generational warfare, exacerbated racial tensions, polarization and political extremism, demagoguery, and instability as we careen from one oversimplistic solution to another.

So what can transform this bleak scenario into a positive renewal of our society? There is nothing inevitable about the dark picture we see developing before our eyes. It represents a failure to adapt to change–both in government and in the civil society. But the window of opportunity is still open. It is certainly not too late. You never know what can happen when Americans of goodwill come together to confront a grave threat to our nation's future–if we can pin down the causes of the public's distress and identify the solutions that will remove them.

Three destructive trends account for the public's foul mood. One is economic and political; the second is in the domain of social morality; the third is in the domain of culture.

The trends are, first, that our economy is becoming increasingly lopsided: the majority of Americans are failing to participate in the benefits of economic growth. The second trend is that core values Americans share in common are growing weaker. And third, a serious disconnect is growing between America's leaders and the citizenry.

 

Let me elaborate each of these three trends.

The first trend is the result of the impact of technology and the global economy on American jobs and income. A Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: "Most Americans' income falls though the economy is booming."

The facts are these:

• The U.S. Census Bureau shows that median family income has declined every year since 1991.

• Controlling for inflation, average wages for workers who are paid by the hour have stagnated for more than 20 years.

• The total economy grew last year, but the main beneficiaries were the top 20 percent of the work force. The next 20 percent benefited slightly. The income of the bottom 60 percent majority stagnated or declined.

• In exit polls after the last congressional elections, 75 percent of voters said they were worse off economically than they were two years ago.

The reason voters are so frustrated is dashed expectations. During the recession their leaders told them they would be better off when the economy picked up. Well, the economy has picked up, and they aren't better off.

Why is an improving economy lifting only the bigger boats rather than all boats? This is a new phenomenon, fraught with political danger. The reason is a combination of global economics plus the spectacular advance of information technology. In the past decade, American industry has grown more competitive by downsizing. Companies have utilized new technology to improve productivity with fewer people, passing the benefits to shareholders rather than workers. And they have saved money by outsourcing jobs to Third World countries, enabling them to keep tight control over labor costs.

As a result, the private sector has succeeded in creating a strong economy but, at the same time, has exacerbated job insecurity and frustration for the majority of the work force. There are enough good full-time, full-benefit jobs for the highly skilled and/or well-educated minority (about 40 percent of the work force) but not for the 60 percent majority who either lack a four-year college education or those specialized skills that happen to be in demand at the moment. As a consequence, the incomes of all but the top tier stagnate or deteriorate.

Among the majority, expectations are lowered. Political ressentiment grows. The underclass swells. The gap between rich and poor widens. Social cleavages, crime, and social pathology grow ever more serious, threatening to undermine political stability even though the economy flourishes according to the familiar standards of Gross Domestic Product growth and return on capital.

The brutal reality is that in today's global economy, employers can grow and be profitable by restructuring their operations so as to be less dependent on full-time, full-benefit employees. They can systemically reduce their workforce, utilize the people of other nations, and organize their work in such a way that much of it can be done by a contingent labor force that does not have to be paid full benefits and does not have to be granted job security, not even the security of working for full weeks or months at a time.

In all the industrialized democracies, it is now possible with modern technology to achieve economic growth by employing only a fraction of the total number of people who are seeking jobs. The result is either high unemployment, as in Europe, or the steady substitution of low-wage, low-benefit jobs for high-wage, high-benefit ones, as in the United States. At some point when the public's frustration level reaches a critical mass, the issue ceases to be an economic one and becomes political. We are on the verge of this transition.

If this gloomy trend continues, it will represent an enormous setback for our society. One of the great achievements of the era following World War II was the creation of a two-track job economy: not only could people with a college education make a good living, but so could people without a college education. This was a political accomplishment of the first order: it led not only to prosperity, but also to a conviction of rightness and fairness and legitimacy. It was this two-track job economy that made us a middle-class society, with home ownership in the United States reaching the 70 percent level.

If the economic trends that have already eroded the middle class continue and even accelerate, our society will grow ever more divisive and embittered, fanning the flames of demagoguery.

 

The second destructive trend relates to changes in social morality: evidently widespread moral confusion and a breakdown in the shared norms that hold our society together. Our studies show that almost nine out of ten Americans (87 percent, up from 78 percent last year) believe the nation's social morality to be in a state of decline and decay.

The most visible sign of this concern is fear of crime and violence. Americans fear crime and violence for itself but also as a symptom of a broader malady, a sickness in the very soul of society to which they cannot give a name.

Americans fear an erosion in the handful of core values that hold us together as a society. These core values are what make us distinctive as a nation. They are the unifying thread in the great diversity of American life. Our national slogan is e pluribus unum–unity in the midst of diversity. These core values are the unum– the unity. Our research shows that some core values remain strong–for example, our national dedication to patriotism, and to freedom. But certain other core values are battered and besieged and no longer universally embraced.

For example, we have always been a hopeful and optimistic people. Europeans have marveled at this characteristic of American life when, time after time, we have lunged ahead to take on problems that other nations have regarded as insoluble. Today, however, the levels of American cynicism, resignation, and shoulder-shrugging equal or even surpass those of world-weary Europeans.

Another core value showing signs of strain is the high value Americans place on neighborliness and community. Recently, we conducted a study for one of the most civic organizations –the Healthcare Forum. The study showed that the public's conception of the "good community" has changed dramatically in recent years. In thinking about a good community in the past, Americans emphasized such essentials as being friendly with your neighbors and sharing a common outlook with them. Today, these concerns are secondary to criteria such as "freedom from crime," "not being afraid to walk at night," and "low levels of child abuse."

These are sobering findings. They imply that Americans can no longer take for granted safety and order in their communities. What we are seeing here, again, is a lowering of expectations. Some minimal level of order and safety and civility are needed before one can even begin to build the higher-order values long associated with community and neighborliness.

Our nation's schools find themselves in a similar plight. The Public Agenda recently completed a study on schools, titled First Things First. The title tells the story. Average voters care as deeply about education as ever and firmly support the "new standards" movement. But that is not what is on their minds. For the public, new standards and other ideas for improving education come second. What comes first is safety and order, instead of students so fearful of being mugged that they even avoid going to the school toilets. The public is convinced that the rights of troublemakers take precedence over the rights of orderly students and that learning cannot take place in so threatening an environment.

Nor should we delude ourselves into thinking that this situation is found only in inner-city schools. In our research, people always start out by blaming other communities. But they almost always finish by admitting the gravity of the problem in their own cities and towns. Citizens are in a state of denial about the quality of our schools. But beneath the denial, there is a strong undercurrent of frustration and anxiety.

The most important core value that has suffered damage in recent years is that of individual responsibility. The United States may be the world's most individualistic society, placing less emphasis on group solidarity and more on individual freedom, individual competitiveness, and individual rights than the other industrialized democracies.

One reason our individualistic society has worked so well in the past is that we have taken for granted a high level of individual responsibility, a virtue that can no longer be taken for granted. Americans today give more attention to their rights than to their obligations and responsibilities. Consider, for example, a moral maxim like "putting duty before pleasure." It has such an old-fashioned ring that it sounds like a slogan from an earlier century. And yet, when I began doing studies of the American public in the 1950s, it was universally embraced.

The erosion of individual responsibility has many causes but it is its consequences that now concern us.

Throughout human history, most societies have put the welfare of the group ahead of the individual. American society has taken another path–up to now a highly successful one. We have created a viable, dynamic society by giving the individual pride of place, elevating individuals above the group. It is now becoming clear, however, that the main reason this priority worked so well was because it was accompanied by a strong sense of individual responsibility.

We don't know what will happen to our society if we continue to focus on individual rights, while simultaneously weakening individual responsibility. In all likelihood, any society that elevates individualism to the highest rank of values and then proceeds to weaken individual responsibility is asking for disaster. It is to be doubted whether any such society can continue to function well. Instead of self-sufficient individuals coping with risk and adversity, you will get a nation of whiners who feel victimized by the slightest threat to their rights, privileges, prerogatives, and possessions.

Fortunately, this is not yet the reality. But it is a threat; and average Americans are well aware of it. Our research shows that voters are ready to discard the politics of benefits without obligations. The majority of voters are receptive to replacing the philosophy of entitlements–getting benefits simply for breathing in and out–with a social morality based more on reciprocity. If someone receives a benefit funded by public taxes–higher education, say, or special training or other forms of assistance–then that person should be prepared to accept personal responsibility for reciprocating, in some appropriate form.

The social conservatism we see rising up all around us has its roots in the instinct of the American people to preserve the core value of individual responsibility. Some of the policies and solutions proposed to preserve this value are anathema to many citizens But it would be folly to reject the motivation behind even apparently obnoxious proposals, for they stem from the conviction that we have lost our way morally and must somehow find our way back to the core values that are the glory of American civilization.

As if a lopsided economy and a dysfunctional social morality weren't enough, there is a third destructive trend that is exacerbating the other two. It is the most subtle of the three. But, it is unlike the other two in that the nation's leadership holds the power in their own hands to reverse it.

 

This third trend is the growing disconnect between the thin layer of the nation's leaders (which John Gardner estimates to be about 1 percent of the population), and the general public (the other 99 percent).

When voters are troubled by public issues–and the economy, crime, violence, and social morality are surely public issues–they turn to their leaders. At best they hope for solutions. If solutions prove elusive, they hope at least for good faith efforts, or some degree of responsiveness. What drives people wild with frustration is the lack of responsiveness, a feeling of being ignored, misunderstood, exploited, and played upon like a pack of fools.

In the past few years voters have sent our political leaders a clear message: they have said, "Our problems are too serious for partisanship. Please put partisanship aside, cooperate with each other to find solutions, especially to our economic problems." The administration and Congress heard the message, and responded perversely by giving us one of the most partisan national governments in our history.

 

The experts and professionals are out of sync with the public. Economists look at the economy and pronounce that it has recovered and that times are good. Average Americans look at the economy and arrive at the very opposite conclusion. Times are not good when you fear you might lose your job, when you have trouble making ends meet, and when you can no longer look forward to steady improvements in your standard of living.

Journalists love to write about the public's lack of information about issues. Their silent subtext is about how ignorant and dumb the public really is.

Political leaders–left and right–pursue their own extreme ideological agendas, ignoring the public's pleas for moderation, practicality and pragmatism. It is almost as if the public were living in one world and the 1 percent elite of politicians and economists and journalists and other experts in another.

Because this disconnect is intangible, it tends to be minimized. But it should be taken very seriously. In my judgment, the gap today between elites and average citizens is as great (though different in character) as the one that divided the French people from the aristocracy in Marie Antoinette's pre-Revolutionary France. The causes of the disconnect are deep and elusive. I can do no more here than hint at them. They are firmly embedded in our culture.

One revealing hint comes from the noted anthropologist, Clifford Geertz. In analyzing the culture of his own profession, Geertz writes that anthropology has long been dominated by a "me-anthropologist-you-native" outlook. Geertz says that professional anthropologists automatically take for granted a vast social distance between themselves and their subjects -- with the anthropologists occupying the higher status, and their subjects reduced to impersonal objects of study. Its effect is to preserve distance and superiority in status for the professionals at the expense of their subjects. David Mathews writes that the relationship of professionals to the public "grows out of a conviction that the public is deficient and that what the public lacks can only be supplied by the professional...From within the professional paradigm, there is no other way to understand the public than as a passive mass."

In effect, these attitudes of experts, professionals, and leaders create an invisible barrier between them and citizens. Leaders come to see themselves as elites who "do things for" the people. And "the people," who are placed in the role of those for whom things are done, grow passive and unrealistically demanding. The relationship inevitably deteriorates. People constantly nag at government about their rights, while government officials, tiring of the unreasonableness of incessant public demands, respond by becoming more secretive, cunning, and manipulative. A vicious cycle is set in motion that erodes our democratic institutions.

Despite this gloomy analysis, there are grounds for hope and optimism. No one of these trends is irreversible. With regard to the first -- the inequitable distribution of economic opportunity -- the American economy is the most dynamic in the world, and in the last decade has renewed its competitiveness to a remarkable degree. Keep in mind that it is far easier to introduce fairness, skill training, and job creation into a growing economy than into a stagnant one.

The second destructive trend -- the weakening of shared values -- is more elusive. But here, too, there are grounds for optimism. Only a small fraction of the public is pushing for a counterrevolution in values. What the majority is saying, as I interpret it, is that as a nation we must find a way to reconcile our new social mores with America's core values.

There is room for disagreement about what these core values are and which are most at risk; we hear the cacophony of this disagreement on talk radio every day. It sometimes gives the impression that the nation is lurching to the right, toward self-protection, nativism, intolerance, reaction. The public voice does not always express itself with exquisite clarity. But I believe time will show that the public impulse to seek safe moral harbor in traditional core values is sound. Surely, a renewed sense of community, neighborliness, hope optimism, and individual responsibility is a better foundation for coping with the future than a psychology of victimization, entitlement, and egocentricity.

The third trend -- the disconnect between leaders and the public -- is so deeply embedded in our modernist culture that as recently as a decade ago we were not even aware of its strength. It will be the most difficult to reverse, because this will require changing the culture. As a society we are not as comfortable with tackling cultural problems as economic, political, and ethical ones.

Surprisingly, perhaps, our nation's business corporations have in recent years gained invaluable experience in learning how to change their own corporate cultures. Business corporations have discovered that the old command-and-control forms of top-down leadership no longer work well: they disconnect the company's leaders from its employees. To realize their vision of the future, managements are learning that they must rely on the commitment and discretionary effort of their employees, and that you cannot buy this commitment with money alone. You must create a corporate culture in which loyalty, commitment, and creativity can thrive.

Sooner or later, the leaders of our other institutions, even government, will learn how to change culture in the interest of broader participation in decision making. They will come to understand that when people are asked to sacrifice they will not do so unless they have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, and that this involves genuine dialogue, not clever advertising and public relations, nor merely lecturing to people.

 

What priorities should our society set to reverse these three destructive trends? What vision of the future can we visualize?

Vision is a difficult word. There are many ways to define it, most of them grandiose. But there is one simple down-to-earth definition of vision: a vision is simply a picture of what life would be like if we were able to reverse certain destructive trends. This definition embraces Jean Monnet's post-World War II vision of a united Europe free of national wars and Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a future free of racial hatred.

What, then, would life be like in the United States if we were able to reverse the three trends that are currently causing our citizens so much anguish? Let me sketch one fragment of such a vision.

To reverse these destructive trends our society would begin to give priority to reinventing a multitrack job system where Americans with or without a college education or the fashionable skills of the moment could make a good living. The new multitrack system should not, of course, be based on yesterday's type of mass-production manufacturing jobs. These are gone forever. Instead, we would begin to emphasize jobs addressed to the unmet human needs of our society. Voters would recognize that it makes no sense to have a diverse population and yet reward only the narrowest band of skills while at the same time neglecting fundamental human needs.

In this vision, voters and leaders alike pay greater heed to the thoughtful voices in the land. They listen to organizations like ''Jobs for the Future" and to individuals like Bob Stempel of the Michigan Partnership. Stempel, the former chairman of General Motors, tells people about his company's training programs and how difficult it has been for skilled metal benders in the automotive industry to make the transition to computer-based manufacturing. Their education and training never prepared them to master the relentless logic of the computer, which demands a cognitive style alien to their former work. This troubling experience is not unique to people in retraining programs. Everyone cannot be fit or refit into a narrow professional or technical mold.

In this vision, voters come to realize what a disaster it would be if only computer-literate people, or those with high levels of professional or technical skills, were to have a monopoly of the well-paying jobs of the future. What if most Americans do not possess these particular skills? Does this mean that the majority of the workforce must despair of making a good living in the future? If we do not have the economically correct skills, are we to be deprived of the opportunity to share in the American dream? It makes no sense, politically or economically or morally, for the American dream to be open only to those who happen to possess a narrow set of skills which, however useful, meet only a narrow band of society's needs.

Once voters and leaders grasp this truth they will begin to look more closely at the vast areas of America's unmet needs, and they will realize that potentially, there are tens of millions of jobs needed to provide better child care service, home care for the aged and the infirm, training for the millions who are functionally illiterate or whose jobs skills need to be upgraded, support systems for homeless and for those excluded from the mainstream of American society, as well as jobs renewing the nation's infrastructure. For tasks such as providing first-rate child care or elder care, people need gifts other than high levels of analytic skills or verbal adeptness or computer literacy.

With this priority in mind, voters and leaders alike will begin to confront the many obstacles blocking the path to re-creating a society that values its children and communities as much as its automobiles and homes. Those obstacles are formidable:

Only a powerful political will can overcome these immense difficulties. But I believe that the potential for mobilizing such a political will exists in the nation today. In its inarticulate way, the public is seeking to convey to its leaders that they must come up with better ideas to counter grave threats to the future well-being of our society. People know that America cannot function as a vital and viable society unless the majority of its citizens have an opportunity to realize the American dream through hard work, keeping faith with core values as they seek to better themselves, and sharing responsibility for the policy decisions that shape our lives as a people.

 

This essay is adapted from a speech given to the National Civic League's 100th National Conference on Governance in November 1994.