Remembering 1984 by
means of a Musical
With all due respect to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984 was less than exciting.
I lived in Colorado near an air traffic control station.
I was moving to Washington State. When the moving truck arrived, so did a crew
of out of work air-traffic controllers, fired by Ronald Reagan for having the
audacity to strike. The American unemployment rate was close to 8%. Those
air-traffic controllers took any job they could get. Reagan had no “heart” for
labor unions.
The reviews
for Billy Elliot emphasized Billy’s conflict with his working class
father who took a big stick approach to the boy’s proclivity toward ballet over
pugilism. The “deep story,” however, is about the Coal Miners’ Strike of 1984.
That conflict involving Billy’s family and their town full of working class
miners is the metaphor upon which Billy does his pirouettes.
The antagonist in the story is Margaret Thatcher. Her complement in the
US was Ronald Reagan. Both were followers of the economic principles espoused
by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. Friedman opposed government regulation
of almost any type, championed the free markets, and believed in the efficiency
of the market rather than the government. Billy Elliot’s story plays out in Britain,
but this tale could very well have taken place right here. US workers suffered
a similar fate in the rust belt, the farmlands, and the timber country of the USA.
When I arrived in the Northwest, out of work timber workers greeted me.
Social services were out of favor. The homeless count was on the rise. It
wasn’t all bad, however. Microsoft and Starbucks were growing companies and
millionaires were being made overnight. Your fate depended on whose shoes you happened
to be standing in.
Billy
Elliot is set to the backdrop of the Great British Coal Miners’ Strike of
1984. The story pits the miners, “protectionists,” who believed their
government has a duty to shield vital industries and workers in order to
protect individual livelihoods, against the so-called “free-traders,” who
believed that the benefits of unregulated “free trade” far outweigh any losses.
The miners have a human face. The “free traders” appear only as Margaret Thatcher dancing in effigy and policemen acting as thugs.
There were differences between Reagan and Thatcher to be sure. Margaret
Thatcher unraveled a socialist economy. Ronald Reagan deregulated a capitalist
system. The US, before Reagan came along, more closely followed a Keynesian
economic policy, advocating predominately free-markets, but with a healthy
helping of government oversight. It offered a middle ground between capitalism
and socialism. FDR’s resolve after the Great Depression of the 1930’s had shown
that government could spare some of the pain by stepping in when things got over-stimulated
by the private sector’s tendency toward crash and burn over-optimism.
Obviously, there were good things that came from deregulation and de-nationalism.
We got cheaper prices. We got new technologies like the internet, which
arguably may not have been able to prosper under tighter regulation. We got cheaper
airlines, but also sardine class service. We got box stores in semi-residential
neighborhoods. We got a glut of phone companies. We got the Dot Com Crash. We
got Enron. We got derivatives, seedy mortgage brokers, opportunistic lenders and
a complete loss of faith in the banking system. And now ten plus percent
unemployment, bankrupt pension funds. California, the eighth largest economy in
the world by last count, is bankrupt.
On October 23, 2008, Allen Greenspan, the former Chairman of the
Federal Reserve (appointed by Ronald Reagan),
acknowledged that he was "partially" wrong in opposing
regulation and stated "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of
lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity — myself especially — are
in a state of shocked disbelief." Referring to his free-market ideology,
Greenspan said, “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent
it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”
Last week the highest court in the USA unabashedly gave corporations even
more rights to protection as citizens, just like you and I, assuming they will
act morally.
Back to Billy
Elliot. We have the “luck” today of watching the story through the rearview mirror.
We know that the mining and timber and raw material exploiting industries of
England and the US were unsustainable. We know that the free flow of credit so
lauded by our politicians enabled a huge rise in economic prosperity. We also
know that the unbridled avarice of some corporations and banks almost destroyed,
and continue to threaten, the foundation upon which they were built.
In the last two years, we have seen the results of a quarter century of
deregulation, and now a partial return back to Keynesian thinking. The free
market’s unbridled audacity and greed have given us cause to pause. But the Tea
Party conservatives are trying to convince us the current crisis is simply a
minor anomaly.
Billy
Elliot went off to the Royal Ballet School and left his hometown to die. Could
this have been Flint Michigan? I don’t see why not. It just took a little longer
to die.
Take
another look at Billy Elliot. There is a worthwhile message here. Change
is hard. Meanwhile, who is minding the store.
