09.20.10
Class War and Census Business
Krugman has written about naked class war the past couple days — the rage of the rich over the Obama administration and the Bush tax cuts.
The things that stick out are grievance and entitlement. While everyone else has been going to hell, the wealthy, who have not, are disturbed.
Krugman writes:
But 30 years ago people with high but not super-high incomes generally felt ashamed of themselves for griping — or at least, felt that they would be ridiculed if they gave voice to their gripes. Today, all restraints are off. The fuss over Messrs. Henderson and Stein is the exception that proves the rule: they wouldn’t be providing this spectacle if they didn’t normally swim in social circles where complaining that you only have 9 or 10 times median family income is considered totally acceptable.
Pretty soon, we’ll be having serious, completely un-self-conscious discussions in major magazines about the servant problem.
It seemed familiar.
The anger of the rich can be linked to attitudes. They’re worked up because they’re used to being the people who do the doing unto others. And now that they’re being told what for — rather mildly — that they have to pay a bit higher tax, they’re on the receiving end, if only in a small way.
If you worked for the census in Pasadena this summer, you already knew their sense of entitlement and grievance.
The city has a big upper class and a large group who are close but looking enviously upward.
Among them — usually unseen — is the servant class, living in big houses which outwardly look like average homes. But where the interiors have been cut into flophouse group living arrangements, bedrooms made into single apartments or tiny garages turned into apartments where five people live together. Slum living in plain sight.
As census enumerators, we were tasked with going after the non-responders, the people who didn’t send in their census forms.
After about a week of enumeration, the non-responders — as far as my experience went — fell into two general categories.
The poor and damaged lower middle class, people who may not have even been living in the places we were visiting for most of the year. They were battered by the economy, the necessity of having more than one very-low paying job just to survive, regular dislocation and distress.
It was often understandable that they hadn’t filled out the census form. “When did I have the time?” said someone who had indicated they were at work much more of the day than usual.
It was a legitimate point.
When I ran across those heading downward or in poor situations, they were the easier of the two categories of non-responders to deal with.
The other category were from the upper and upper middle classes. They lived in ritzy gated condos and high button apartments, often protected by passively hostile property managers.
It was possible they’d call call the police if you interrupted during the watching of a Lakers game. Conversely, some census workers saw it as a good time to show up when dealing with determined resisters.
Others would scream — “I don’t have time for this now!” or some variation — whatever the time. And blast the door shut.
It was this class of non-responder which owned the sense of entitlement, the attitude that they were too busy, too high up the social ladder to be bothered with the census.
Some would concoct outlandish and windy arguments over the alleged violation of privacy and civil rights.
“I won’t stand for this tyranny!” was one reaction. Another white guy objected strenuously to having to answer the question on race –whether he was, in fact, white. Or something else, a hybrid, anything, the census could even write it in on the spot — his choice, within reason.
“I feel this is an egregious invasion of my personal rights and privacy,” he said.
This was not as uncommon as you might think.
Some would brainlessly belittle census work to your face.
“Census workers are stupid — nothing against you, personally,” said one man who wanted to know what line in the US Code decreed he cooperate with the census.
There were those who worked for “high-tech companies.” Their time was always very precious. Rather than take a couple minutes to answer a simple set of questions at the door, some would waste days hiding in an interior room when you came around, pretending to be on vacation, or — if caught unawares and unprepared to flee — argue with you for longer than it would take to actually participate without complaint.
There were others who told you to get a “real job.” Another wondered if it was illegal for us to show up on Saturday mornings.
After a couple of weeks of this, everyone who worked the census beat had heard every variation many times over.
Since the swells with their addresses in our binders were into dodging the census — keep in mind that, by definition, we were primarily after hardcore census non-responders — you quickly worked out methods to get at them.
The water meter could be given a look on consecutive visits to see if the address was indeed vacant or not. Showing up on Saturday and Sunday mornings often worked — any time on the weekend or on a holiday when you’d expect the haves to be relaxing, getting ready for a party, or holding a big sitdown dinner — like Sunday eve.
Now, before you think of that as harassment, realize it would only occur after we’d left many little courteous notices of visit during more reasonable hours. And been ignored. Some dodgers tried to fake vacancy by allowing the notices to build up at the door, while using a different exit when census workers were thought to be about.
The census commanded enumerators to get the information on non-responders. And this also left us open, even ordered us, to dragoon the neighbors when the swell non-responder hiding next door wouldn’t cooperate.
Consider that for a moment.
In their census resistance, the dodger swells — all the fancy and fine — inconvenienced their equally swell neighbors who were already in the books. Because the latter had completed their census forms and mailed them in on time like good Americans. And you would have to invariably explain to them why you were inquiring about the adjacent census deadbeat — the one who shouted through the door that he would never cooperate or who anti-socially attached his notices of visits to the doors of his neighbors, a stupid bit of trivial malice that never worked.
Infrequently, the befuddled neighbor — not aware he had a sneak living next door or across — would call the enumerator’s number on the misused notice.
“Hello, I’m returning the call from the census,” they would politely say. “However, I mailed in my census return.”
You would ask the address, then consult the book and the day’s questionnaires.
“Yes, ma’am [or sir]. I see here that I didn’t leave that notice on your door. It’s from one of your neighbors. People do that sometimes to try and throw us off. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good evening.”
One woman, a property manager, asked me why someone was leaving little blue slips of paper on her door. These were our notices of visit.
“Did you fill out and mail in your census form?” I asked pleasantly.
“No,” she replied. “How do I get them to stop?”
“Call the census taker’s phone number on the blue paper,” I told her. “He’ll take you through the census. It’s easy”
Silence.
My experience with the less fortunate was almost never like the dealings with the have-contingent living in the condos.
Often the former were tired after a long day of unrewarding work. But if you were pleasant, spoke softly and made courteous small talk, telling them the census would only take a few minutes and why it was important, they almost never made a fuss.
One last point: As we started census work, no one expected we’d be met with open arms. “Everyone hates the census,” said one enumerator in my working group. It was a fair assessment.
The TV network that now defends the plutocracy is Fox. And Fox News was informally regarded by some of us as a special enemy. The network spent what seemed like a peculiar amount of time early on trying to discredit the census and encourage non-cooperation by chasing the idea that it had hired loads of criminals or that the census was an example of government malfeasance.
Accordingly, DD has produced a really rocking tune, The Census Man Stomp.
It’s here. Do give it a listen.
It works off the commonly held view among the census non-responders that we were just out to persecute them. By the last verse, you hear what every census worker was thinking but not saying by the last week of the big push.
And, yes, that stuff in the breaks — all the statements from civilians I met on the beat.
Here’s an unintentionally great video of some guy who is just like some of the census dodgers I met. We jumped on such grenades many times a week.
Fox ginning up civil disobedience against the census — here.
Another census resister — this one with a camera. I feel sorry for the census enumerators who had to tackle this guy because he got his rocks off mocking and deviling them.
Here’s another video from the same kook — who doesn’t seem to realize — or maybe he does — that the census keeps sending people out, while getting your name and how many people are living in your house from the neighbors. Who probably looked askance at the dickhead with the camera for turning his stalwart civil disobedience into their inconvenience.
And another video from the same guy. You see the routine — he spends more effort opposing the census, futilely, since the local department has sent enough people — at least three — out to his place to do what we called using a “proxy” — the neighbors or even the various census workers — to fill in the information.
He’s not unlike a couple I met in Pasadena. We had ways of dealing with them. While being very courteous, as these good census workers are, of course.
Resisting the census and passively picking on the census employees, who lived in the same community and were just trying to do a hard job in the most friendly manner, was this guy’s bag.
And he documented it and uploaded them all to YouTube for us to enjoy.
And here’s Ron Paul advocating census resistance.
I got my government bag
And my address book
You didn’t fill it out
Now I’m gonna hassle you!I’m on your street
Now I’m at your door!You thought that you were cool
And that I was just a slob
Now I’m on your street
Now I’m at your door!
x2I’m from the government
I’m here to hassle you!
Now, do as your told!How, how, how — how old are you?
x3I don’t care what you say
Heard it all before
Don’t care how busy you areI’m here to hassle you
x3I’m from the government
I need to talk to you
Now, shut the hell up!Shut, shut the hell up
x4