The Wire, S02E11- Bad Dreams (Patreon)

I'm running a little behind today so I will make this quick. First off, this episode we have Steven Attewell guest-hosting again, so that's fun! It's such a great episode and there's so much going on with the Union angle that it seemed like a good fit. 

This gets super emotional, especially with Ziggy. He's just so damn broken down in that scene. Meanwhile, Frank is just desperate to get him out of there, and as a result is just taking whatever deal he can find, no matter who it's with, in order to ensure that happens. The result being that he's not going to please anyone and almost definitely wind up dead. 

Ugh, this show. 

Welcome to all you new Patrons, this is very exciting! Can't wait to see you on the Facebook page, you can find it here: www.facebook.com/groups/unspoiledclub

Below is the usual link to the dropbox for this episode, and there is also a link to the primer that Steven Attewell wrote for this season regarding the unions. Below is the text for this episode, and you can find the entire document at the link. 

Episode 11:

David Simon is the bald reporter shouting “is it just you or is it the whole union?”

“for twenty-five years, we been dying slow.”

Given when the show came out, this would be the late 70s, which is when American manufacturing began its decline. Part of this had to do with increased global competition, but part of it also had to do with a larger change in U.S economic policy (my area of expertise). To kill inflation in 1979-1980, Carter’s (and later Reagan’s) Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker yanked up interest rates to 20%, plunging the economy into a massive recession that lasted pretty much through 1982 and saw unemployment hit almost 11%. Industrial areas like Youngstown, Detroit, and West Virginia’s coal fields saw unemployment rates as high as 23%.

One of the long-term consequences of Paul Volcker’s increase in interest rates is that foreign money poured into the U.S – raising the value of the dollar, and thus increasing the price of domestic goods relative to foreign imports and U.S exports relative to their local competitors. This “strong dollar policy” was basically continued through the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II presidencies, and scholars estimate that it had the same effect as a 20% tariff against our own manufacturing.

The combination of these two factors put the hammer to the unionized, blue-collar manufacturing economy that Frank refers to when he says “we used to make shit in this country.” From a high of almost 20 million workers in 1979, U.S manufacturing employment dropped to a low of 11 million in 2010.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xdpihy3p08cuvo0/The%20Wire%2C%20S02E11-%20Bad%20Dreams.mp3?dl=0