Just watched the second episode of the third series in Netflix’s political drama, House of Cards. As much as I like the show and can indulge the writers in a suspension of disbelief in order to create tension and entertainment, the latest Underwood storyline leaves me slightly disappointed. America Works or AmWorks as Kevin Spacey’s President of the United States likes to call it, is a piece of fictitious legislation that, if the House of Cards is set in the modern era, makes no sense at all. Especially given tirade of Underwood, on the notion of not going against the force of winds to his henchmen during the episode, when trying to plot out how to combat the forces against him running for the next term.
We are not given any specific detail but AmWorks is a bill that wants strip bare the welfare system and use the money to create 10 million jobs. The jobs program is meant to create employment within 3 major categories. Infrastructure, military and the private sector. I fully agree with the notion that US infrastructure needs an overhaul. There is plenty of data to indicate that this needs to be done. The US defence spend is about half of what the entire world budget in this sector. So when in doubt, increase military. The private sector has delevered since the last global economic crisis and balance sheets beefed up. More so, the S&P500 now trades at all time highs. They are in a position to help with AmWorks lofty goals of 10 million new jobs surely?
Does automation not exist in President Frank Underwood’s universe? If you follow macro trends at all, you don’t need to be told the problem in our modern world is that capital trumps labor. This trend of automating away swathes of jobs isn’t going to taper off but rather accelerate. House of Cards writers are thinking in the same rigid box that is governing the minds which look to lowering unemployment in the real world. Only recently has public opinion understood, this metric doesn’t mean much when it isn’t coupled with sufficient wage increases. This lack of wage growth trend for lower and middle incomes has been persistent since the 1970s, so it isn’t an issue that has come out of nowhere. The debt crisis and automation makes this trend worse.
This fictional President was comparing his bold vision of AmWorks to the FDR’s New Deal. The fact of the matter is, to simplify things, creating well paid jobs for the masses due to modern automation is as illusory as the set of Kevin Spacey’s Oval Office. In fact, what we need in real life are policy makers to create bills and legislation opposite of AmWorks. Both sides of the political divide need to acknowledge automation, lack of wage growth, inequality and create a version of the New Deal which make sense in the 21st Century. We have never been as close and yet equally as far away to the age of leisure worlds described by the likes of Keynes in the early half of the 20th Century. But first we need policies to allow these new times to bear fruition. The focus should not be about destroying welfare systems but improving them. Harnessing automation so everybody can enjoy the fruits of the toil of the millions who got society this far. Find new roles for the masses. This requires bold thinking from policy makers, which sadly sounds as fictitious as the plot and intrigue of House of Cards itself.
