David Harvey

I keep going back to the Nealon article and his brief discussion on corporate efficiency to the benefit of the shareholder and the higher level managers with their enormous bonuses.  Harvey goes a bit further in his discussion that it is not all about the shareholders.  Upper management is rewarded with stock options which gives them controlling interest in the corporation; not all the shareholders benefit.  Profits go to a smaller percentage of the population.  Taxes favor the wealthy while the working/middle classes pay higher proportionate taxes and their income remains relatively flat.


The Reagan/Thatcher discussion was interesting.  I was in social work school when both were elected and at graduation, Reaganomics were taking hold.  It was not a good time to be a social worker in that economy.  And Mrs. Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer.  This may explain her view that everyone can/should support themselves ("personal responsibility):  "dismantling or rolling back the commitments of the welfare state [post WW II]" (23).  Although Sammy tried to access services (DSS), he came up against a wall--a metaphor throughout the book. 


And then there was Sammy's Glasgow where the ship building industry was dismantled taking out jobs--how was he supposed to find a steady job and support himself?


There is a movie--film--coming out later this month, "Pride" about gay rights advocates joining the coal miners in the 1984 strike.  Both entities, so the promo goes, hated Thatcher and worked together despite having no much in common--although I suspect there were a few gay coal miners. But there was the weakening of all the trade unions to the benefit of the upper management of large corporations: surprise, surprise.


Harvey's discussion of how both Reagan and Thatcher were able to gain support for their agendas is very interesting.  Anyone remember "no such thing as a free lunch" and "family values."  Both Reagan propaganda statements to emphasis "personal responsibility" (ala Thatcher) and to denigrate the off center minorities (i.e., gay rights, women's lib as it was called back then, . . .).  But it is also interesting that Harvey pointed out that the fundamentalist Christians were themselves a minority.  I loved the bumper sticker, The Moral Majority is Neither!


I'll stop there.  Happy to finally be on this blog.  It took a village for me to get on here--very patient IT people.  I sent some of my nattering on some other account that I understand you should have received.


Cheerio,


Wayne