Summary: The airline industry is a tale of New America. Deregulation, cheap fares allowing more people to travel but with increasingly poor service and rising complaints. It’s an oft-told story of stupid people unaware of the consequences to their behavior. But that’s a shallow view that misses the real significance of these trends. {1st of 2 posts today.}
Contents
- Unexpected fruits of deregulation.
- Interpreting the whining.
- It’s the cry of a dying middle class.
- Conclusion: expect more of this.
- For More Information.
(1) Unexpected but logical fruits of airline deregulation
The rollback of the New Deal began with deregulation of the airlines (except for safety) — done by the President who began the conservative revolution, which his successor accelerated: James Carter. This allowed far more people to fly, people formerly limited to buses, trains and cars. The unexpected side effect: service has slowly and steadily deteriorated. (There are 25 years of data from the Airline Quality Ratings database run for DoT, with many studies of it by experts such as Dean E Headley — but I can find no analysis of the trend over that period — probably for the obvious reason).
Why has service deteriorated while traffic rose (from 191 billion passenger-miles in 1980 to 580 billion in 2012)? It wasn’t the speed of the increase. In the 20 years before deregulation traffic rose over twice as fast as in the 20 years afterwards — with the airlines still providing excellent service. It’s not that the airlines are rapacious and greedy — their industry has an ugly combination of high volatility (in technology, competition, and revenues) and low profitability. During the dark days after 9/11 it was said that the industry had accumulated no net profits since the Wright brothers.
The answer is obvious: customers give their business on the basis of flight convenience and cost. Carriers give people what they want: cheap travel. Since they have no wizards, that means bare bones service — with cycles of cost-cutting, each one clipping off cost and satisfaction. The next cycle features a new class more crowded than economy.
(2) Interpreting the whining: it’s moral decay
This has produced a boom of chortling about “those stupid Americans” (a genre popular with the inner party, boosting their spirits as their wages stagnate and economic security vaporizes). Here are few examples:
- “Frequent Criers” by Alison Griswold, Slate, 24 December 2011 — “Americans love to complain about cramped flights and extra fees. So why do they keep choosing them?”
- “It’s Time For People Who Whine About Crappy Airline Service To Admit They’re Getting Exactly What They Want“, Henry Blodget, 10 March 2013
- “What Rising Airline Fees Tell Us About the Cable Industry“, Neil Irwin, New York Times, 6 January 2015.
- “Are we approaching the airline tipping point?“, Mark Murphy, Fox News, 10 February 2015 — “Until that happens, you are seeing capitalism at work as customers still choose to fly despite the challenges in air travel today.”
- “It’s Not Just Your Imagination: Airlines Are Getting Worse“, Alison Griswold, Slate, 13 April 2015.
Feel the authors’ self-satisfaction and sense of smug superiority! Perhaps deservedly so.
(3) Another view: it’s the cry of a dying middle class.
When my analysis shows that people are stupid it usually means that I have done a shallow analysis, missed something deeper and more important. That’s the problem with the people are stupid to complain about airlines stories. There’s another reason for peoples’ complaints.
Here we see another aspect of the clash between our idea of America — formed in the 50 years after WWII, with a large and vital middle class — and the New America that’s been rising since ~1980, a plutocracy with a thin upper crust, an economically stressed and insecure middle, and a large underclass.
The large middle class feels entitled to a lifestyle they can no longer afford. We know things have changed. Increasing numbers see their downward mobility vs their parents. We do not understand what’s happening — or why — and so lash out. We choose the cheapest possible airfare, because money is tight — then we complain about the poor service that results from our own choices.
It’s irrational, but we’re rationalizing animals more often than rational ones. It’s the kind of thinking that’s become quite common in our time — we’re in what Heinlein foretold as “the crazy years”, destabilization brought about by rapid change.
Here we have another aspect — a small example of a larger phenomenon — of what Thomas Frank described in What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
(4) Conclusion: expect more of this.
The middle class will not die quietly, so we should expect to see more of this self-defeating behavior in the future, spreading throughout society.
Conservatives have tapped the angst caused by the rise of the 1% and crushing of the middle class — driven in part by their policies. They’ve channeled our energy to not just distract us from the causes of the rising inequality but also to further it (as in Rand Paul’s budgets shifting the tax burden from the 1% to the middle class and cutting services). And, of course, to splinter us into powerless factions.
This might be one of the most successful political movements in western history. It only works with our cooperation. It’s our choice to travel this path.
(5) For More Information
For a look at the past see Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about inequality and social mobility, especially these about the dying middle class:
- A great, brief analysis of problem with America’s society – a model to follow when looking at other problems.
- Ugly truths about income inequality in America, which no politician dares to say.
