The Curiously Non-Ideological Debate over the “Falling Down Professions”
posted by Frank Pasquale
Over the past year, law and medicine have been characterized as the “falling down professions“–losing both status and economic clout to “masters of the universe” in CEO suites and Wall Street offices. We now better understand some of the sources of those Wall Street profits. But as doctors and lawyers in training lament their plights on message boards, I’m struck by the curiously non-ideological nature of their complaints. Most appear to believe themselves afflicted by economic forces as natural and unavoidable as a tsunami–when in fact it’s political decisions that have led us to where we are.
Whatever complaints the young lawyer or doctor has today, they must be contextualized in a larger economy. As Nan Mooney’s new book (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class argues, most young professionals today feel more financially pressed than their boomer parents. Basic costs of health, education, and housing have skyrocketed. In the health arena, politicians are adopting policies that allow more and more of the costs of health care to be shifted from the government and employers to individuals. Alan Greenspan disastrously inflated the housing market, and anyone in a big urban area on the coast is caught up in the uncertainty of wondering whether an inflation-fearing Fed will shock prices back to normal or if “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke will keep the easy money flowing.
I could go on and on, but just look at the recent spate of books on new middle class anxiety:
*Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, The Two-Income Trap.
*Jared Bernstein, Crunch.
*Steven Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze.
*Peter Gosselin, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families.
*Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch.
*Jacob Hacker, The Great Risk Shift.
Each of these authors examines particular political and legal decisions to shift risk from government and business and onto individuals. So those who feel economically insecure today shouldn’t think their worries are the bane of a particular profession or region, or the inevitable result of global economic change that could be remedied if they could just get a bit more education. And a final note for practicing attorneys: it would be quite surprising if an ideological movement to shut the courthouse door to the injured failed to threaten your livelihood. Just as primary care doctors should not be surprised if their incomes suffer in the face of extraordinary efforts by the federal government to avoid spending money to help those entitled by law to care.
May 28, 2008 at 10:18 am
Posted in: Law and Inequality
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Responses (7)
Orin Kerr - May 28, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Frank,
Maybe I’m breaking the rules by speaking against the guild, but I would think that any forces that lessen the clout of lawyers is likely to be good for America. We have too much influence and too much clout to be the subject of a great deal of concern, I think. Maybe I’m just quirky, but I’m much more interested in what forces are helping or hurting the small businesses and entrepreneurs in our society that create jobs than I am in what happens to my fellow attorneys.
Maryland Conservatarian - May 28, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Ditto what Orin says…also, to the book list, I’d add ECONOMIC FACTS AND FALLACIES by the always excellent Thomas Sowell. Ok – technically not just about middle class anxiety but then again, what makes him excellent is that he is not peddling class warfare.
Frank - May 28, 2008 at 3:05 pm
OK: When you say “we” have too much clout, I’m wondering who exactly the “we” is. Those who’ve prospered on the defense side working for big corporations might be included . . . and we should not forget David Cay Johnston’s work on how well such corporations and attorneys get tax breaks and other competitive advantages that help them smother the hopes of the small entrepreneurs you celebrate. (Let’s also not forget the role of Chicago-style antitrust law that cares only about the fate of “competition” and not about survival of “competitors”–a development I’m confident most on the Social Darwinist right applaud, but which has pretty bad consequences for many small businesses.)
As for the lawyers for people like Deborah Shank or Lily Ledbetter–I have a hard time characterizing them as having too much clout.
Of course, given the bimodal distribution of starting lawyer salaries that Bill Henderson has discussed, there’s an important class overlay on the simple plaintiff/defense division I’ve drawn. But in the end what helps the plaintiff bar creates demand for the defense bar, so I feel it’s accurate to describe lawyers as a group with some common economic interests.
MC: The class war has been on for a long time; the books I’m citing are a belated call for its victims to organize a defense.
A.J. Sutter - May 29, 2008 at 6:04 am
1. Memo to law profs: not all of us practicing lawyers are in the plaintiff bar or defense bar, or make our living passing through courthouse doors. Some of us are helping entrepreneurs and small businesses, for example.
2. Maybe a reason for the nonideological tenor of the professional students’ laments is because they’re fed the fiction that economics *is* a study of natural forces. If you’re teaching law and economics to your students, do you go out of your way to tell them economics is a kind of applied politics (notwithstanding that its planes of cleavage don’t necessarily match those of US party politics), rather than a science?
3. Apropos of David Cay Johnston, I haven’t read his work, but are you suggesting that attorneys get tax breaks *for themselves* that smother the hopes of entrepreneurs? or was that just blog syntax?
Frank - May 29, 2008 at 8:31 am
to AJ:
1) duly noted. . . my rushed comment paints in broad strokes.
2. I take that approach re skepticism about economics (or at least a need to supplement it with other points of view), but I don’t think many others do.
3. Just blog syntax!
A.J. Sutter - May 30, 2008 at 10:39 am
I suspected as much … on all three counts.
JW - June 1, 2008 at 9:22 pm
A few points:
While the debate may be “curiously non-ideological,” it’s somewhat odd to suggest that the trend emerged as either political decisions or economic determinism. To test this flimsily supported theory, you have to look back at the political forks in the road and ask whether they’re but-for causes of the current decline of the middle class. We’re in a skills-based economy. Might as well get used to it instead of pretending we can resurrect the past without immensely punitive tax and redistribution schemes.
Also, criticizing that evil Chicago school and the social darwinist right probably feels good, but claiming that enterpreneurs are going to suffer because the big corporations win the competitive battle due to pro-competitive antitrust laws is misguided. If they’re merely offering a similar good or service which a larger corporation can provide more cheaply, that doesn’t really strike me as entrepreneurship, but as poor business judgment. Consumer market tastes are becoming more particularized, consumers care about how their goods are produced more than ever before, and the internet has dramatically reduced geographic constraints to new market entrants. That we don’t see more small business growth may suggest that we’re not equipping the creative workforce with the right tools to be successful in the market.
Orin is exactly right that we need to look more at whether we have the proper incentives for *creative* enterpreneurs instead of wringing our hands over whether everyone who earns a JD will be set for life. One labor market is undersupplied, one is oversupplied–zhouldn’t we start there instead of jumping straight into the political arena?
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