From Tough Luck to Tough Love--the updated version

Below is an updated version of my essay introduction—one that tries to address any confusion over the phrase “tough love” from the get-go.


Usually in America, when someone loses their job or has their fledgling business go belly up, we respond with a collective, “tough luck.”

What we ought to be giving is tough love.

The tough luck approach contains a smidgeon of empathy. But mostly it means the individual is on their own. Society doesn’t feel much responsibility, nor does it offer much help in terms of handling the resulting unemployment and related risks of home loss and deteriorating personal relations.

Saying “tough luck” borders on cruel in today’s global economy, which is ever-more turbulent and in which corporations frequently layoff workers even in good times.

When I call for “tough love,” I mean equal parts care and accountability. Conservatives can define this term to mean that virtually any help given to someone undermines self-reliance. For that reason, I think, liberals who focus on the connectedness of individuals can find the phrase distasteful. I aim to reframe “tough love” as a term that succinctly captures the importance of both personal responsibility and collective aid.

Tough love, in this sense, would mean showing enough compassion to truly help an economically displaced person get back on their feet—even giving them a job if they couldn’t find another. It would mean recognizing that we as a whole share some responsibility for the person’s problem, because society created conditions in which they failed or found themselves without a job. But we’d set limits on how much we would shelter or aid them, to avoid coddling people into dependence or passivity.

Tough love also might mean a different attitude about people before they get into an economic pickle. It might mean doing more to nurture their creativity or talents, such as a universal system of sabbaticals.

Tough love might seem soft-headed or sentimental. And there is a moral component to a social safety net that better protects fellow human beings when they’re blown off the economic ladder. Over the past few decades, economic risk has shifted from companies and government to individuals. The result is increasingly volatile incomes for American families and a kind of mass callousness toward the “losers.”

But a kinder, more proactive safety net also can serve as a springy catalyst for hard-headed economic growth. A degree of economic security can lead to inspired work by employees and individuals. At the very least, it would temper calls to close off global trade in ways that are short-sighted and selfish as a nation. And fostering people’s innovations, including artistic ones, has become vital in an economy where “human capital” is rising in importance and right-brained, conceptual thinking is seen as the future.

Denmark offers a case study in the promise of economic tough love. The country has combined generous unemployment benefits with restrictions on public aid and the ability of businesses to hire and fire with ease. The results of Denmark’s “flexicurity” are stellar economic growth and a highly egalitarian society.

To be sure, there are pitfalls to putting tough love into practice. Taxing the populace too high to pay for the safety net threatens to repel entrepreneurs or others keen on growing wealthy. Denmark is currently wrestling with this issue.

America, though, has a long ways to go before it creates a safety net so expensive that it pushes key talent abroad. By far our bigger hurdle is helping our existing workforce both avoid devastating economic setbacks and reach its highest potential—in part by reducing the fear of such setbacks.

Focusing on Americans’ economic confidence and seeing a significant societal role in their development isn’t easy to do, though, because of some powerful myths at the center of our national culture. Horatio Alger and the story of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps has long steered us to view Americans as solo heroes on very individual paths.

There’s also an American penchant for the all-or-nothing, for betting everything on a dream. These narratives contain kernels of truth about the importance of the individual and the thrill of the extreme. But they romanticize risk and hide the help people get from those around them.

As the United States has become more of a winner-take-all, tough-luck economy over the past few decades, Americans have responded in some dysfunctional ways. We’ve literally turned to luck, spending money on gambling as never before. And we have gravitated to the mean-spirited, fantastical theory of “The Secret,” which claims individual success comes to those who wish hard enough—and implies the unsuccessful are to blame for their misfortune.

But there are signs we’re ready for a new, more social story. That we are starting to remember America’s communal heritage, with its barn-raisings and civic traditions. That we’re more open to learning from other cultures that put more emphasis on the collective than we do. Natural disasters and the potential for them are bringing us together as a country and a globe. Social networking sites are highlighting the fact that other people are not just consumers to be sold to or job competition, but critical supports in one’s career. The populace is shifting leftward politically, even if policies aren’t yet.

Marketers are ahead of our political and economic policies. They seem to sense the greater openness to brotherly- and sisterly love welling up in the country. An Adidas storefront recently had this written on its window: “Every team needs a hero. Every hero needs a team.”