Looking at Economic Policy from a Perspective of Economic Dignity

About a year ago, when spring was just another spring, Gene Sperling, who was National Economic Adviser for both Clinton (1997-2001) and Obama (2011-2014) wrote a very interesting essay for Democracy - A Journal of Ideas. The first paragraph makes you wonder if he reflects on missed opportunities, since he was there as an adviser during a time when two Democratic Presidents focused much of their attention on Wall Street (and where their top economic advisers came from firms like Goldman Sachs) at the expense of Main Street. Sperling opened his essay Economic Dignity with these words:

For all the things we find time for in the ongoing economic policy debates I have seen or been part of over the last 30 years, there seems to me too little reflection on the most basic economic question of all: What exactly is our ultimate economic goal in terms of increasing human happiness and well-being?

 And soon he adds:

Over the years, I have found myself stepping outside of the normal metrics that define our national economic dialogue to ask myself: What would a person on his or her death bed say mattered most in his or her economic life? That is the question that guides this essay. It seeks neither to explore highly technical issues of economic measurement nor sort out competing theories of social justice. It is rather one policymaker’s attempt to go out of the comfort zone of numbers to delve into this larger question. 

What follows is an interesting and thoughtful discussion of the role - and often lack of role for - economic dignity in modern economic-political praxis. It is admittedly a vague concept, but if you suffer from having your dignity ignored, you know what it means without having to google it.

As University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has written, compared to the focus on getting jobs, there is an eerie degree of silence on the arbitrary domination so many millions of Americans experience when they are actually working. To start, this means elevating worker dignity when making cost-benefit regulatory decisions—such as in the case of maximum line speeds in the poultry and hog industries. Oxfam and the National Employment Law Project have rightly called those industries out for leading to injuries or to the humiliation of denied bathroom breaks that leave workers no option but to wear diapers. 

Recognizing the fundamental importance of economic dignity has a deep impact on a wide range of policy strategies, including Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is a much more complicated and troublesome policy than some of its supporters understand.

It's a very interesting essay, and well worth your time.