News that the Dow Jones index has topped the 12,000 mark, an historical high, adds tinder to a political firestorm in the making.
In an earlier TE entry, “America's Ideology of Hope,” I noted that while productivity in America is rising, wages are falling (and real wages, adjusted for inflation, falling even faster). The explosion of the Dow, which measures stock value among America's largest corporations, indicates how dramatically corporate profits (and in turn, assets and dividends) have risen, enriching the investor class.
We take reports of the Dow for granted. They flicker on tickers on during the TV networks' evening newcasts, on CNN, Fox, and Bloomberg, and are part and parcel of almost every radio station's news broadcasts. For a long time, the Dow's ups and downs were taken to be synonymous with the strength of the nation's economy, all boats rising and falling with the Dow.
But investment income and wages have become disconnected, radically. A rising Dow no longer means good times for the working class (which comprises that 80 to 90 percent of the American people who do not receive substantial investment income). Each time Americans hear about the Dow's climb, it reminds them that things are getting worse for the majority in terms of falling purchasing power, rising household indebtness, and a general decline in their quality of life. The American Dream vies with a nightmare reality.
According to critical theorists, people can indulge in hopeful thinking for only so long before their objective living conditions start to breed intolerable dissonance, dismay, and resentment. That's when societies experience dramatic tensions, often resulting in political upheaval and even revolution.
Once people generally championed the Dow's good fortune and news of its unprecedented rise may still be welcome among America's wealthy (as Donald Trump tells Fox Networks). But for the rest, reporters droning on about the Dow have become a constant reminder that things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. And we experience this on the hour, every hour, all of the time....
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
