The American Institute for Progressive Democracy

2012 May 1

Working Less?

In the 1930’s, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote an essay in which he advocated a shorter work-week, more holidays and longer vacations – thereby reducing the hours worked per year by each person – in order to spread the work around, eliminate unemployment, eliminate support of the unemployed by the employed, and those who have jobs more free time.

Why not?

We don’t live to work; we work to live.

Of course, that doesn’t deal with the issues of immigrant and imported labor, or of seniors who keep working because they can’t pay their bills from their Social Security and meager retirement, both of which occupy some of the available jobs. Should we keep shortening the annual work-hours as the citizen and non-citizen workforce increases? I don’t recall whether he said that employees’ annual pay could remain the same. But we certainly can’t tolerate millions of unemployed and underemployed even during the statistically prosperous segment of the economic cycle. Perhaps a lower consumption lifestyle throughout our life spans is necessary economically as well as environmentally, in order to facilitate full employment while spending less of our lives working.

FREE AND FAIR

It has been one of my themes here that a pair of American ideals are captured at the end of what all of us learn as children, the Pledge of Allegiance: “with liberty and justice for all”. However, just because they are ideals doesn’t mean that they and we are in for smooth sailing: for often enough they (like other ideals) come into conflict.

And frequently enough we have to limit freedom in specific ways because some free acts do harm, are unfair, to another. Your freedom to take my apple is blocked because of the unfairness to me of your doing so no matter what your size or income.

In their first speeches when it became clear who the two American presidential candidates would be, each appealed to one of those ideals. One talked about freedom over and over, citing instances when the present administration encroached on freedom. Of course, what was ignored was whether those limits placed on liberty were justified restraints in the interests of justice. The current president talked about fairness, about giving everyone a fair shot. He of course did not talk about how some people’s freedom to do as they wish must therefor be blocked in certain situations in order to ensure justice for all.

It would be wonderful to have this presidential campaign have an as explicit theme those American ideals and how and when they come into conflict. It isn’t to be expected though.

RELIGION IN THE MARKET

The flap over whether hospitals owned and operated by religions, including those that oppose birth control, should be required to offer contraception services as part of the medical insurance for their employees reveals much incomprehension on the part of the religious institutions, the media and the broader public.

For an example of that failure to grasp the issues see the following remarks from Father Paul Scalia, a parish priest in Virginia and son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Fr Scalia thinks that the analogy between the HSS requirement and the case of Thomas More in the 16th century is “striking and instructive”: More was put to death by Henry VII for refusing to accept the King as head of the church in England. The present American administration did not propose, not even remotely suggest, that it is head of the church. Again Scalia: “The crisis now before us between the bishops and the administration turns on the rights of the Church and the rights of man: the Church’s right of self-governance and the rights of individual conscience. Since the mandate is imposed not only on Catholic institutions, but on all providers of employee health insurance, the individual Catholic as private citizen will suffer the injustice of this law. Just as Thomas More was not left unoppressed, neither will the individual Catholic be today. He too can be made to violate his conscience by conformity to this ruling.” That is a cousin of and as misguided as the idea that regulation of business activity is socialism. The possibility of a fine for failing to provide the contraception provision in insurance is said by Fr Scalia to be “In effect, a fee to be Catholic.” Hogwash!

Fr Scalia, the protesting religious institutions and their friends fail (refuse?) to see that churches, by putting themselves in the marketplace by operating public hospitals, are removing themselves from the religious arena in which their religious views are protected speech and thought. If those hospitals hire people not of their own religious persuasion, then they are engaging in market behavior and are to be governed by rules of the market-place. And the rules are that there must be no discrimination on the basis of religious orientation – which is what denial of contraception coverage for their employees outside their religion amounts to.

Moreover, as with all hospitals today those hospitals receive federal monies. That makes them subject immediately to federal regulations. To receive federal funds and yet to claim exemption from public rules on the grounds of religious belief would be to violate the principle of the separation of church and state.

To claim, as was so often done, that requiring the coverage would be an attack on religion shows a complete lack of comprehension of the nature of our system. Of course, it might simply show that you can try to get away with whatever you can get away with without regard to political and moral principles.

TEACHERS: THE GREAT AND THE AVERAGE

We chuckle when Garrison Keillor tells us that all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. However, we fail to recognize the similar ridiculousness when we are told that all the teachers in our public schools should be great. No one plans for an educational system in which the teachers are average.

Of course, an increase in salary and status (in this country those are nearly but not quite the same thing) would raise the average quality of teachers. But then those who urge having only above average teachers don’t want to indulge in that straight-forward piece of improvement. Of course, if that were done, teaching staffs would still mainly consist of average teachers.

2012 Apr 1

Even if Science is Wrong About Global Warming
Those who oppose taking action to avoid or at least reduce global climate change fail to admit the advantages of doing so whether it’s necessary or not.
Switching to clean renewable energy sources will reduce pollution of our air and water; this will reduce our expenditures for health care and – most important – will improve our health. Reducing our use of oil enough to end our oil imports will reduce our vulnerability to unrest and anti-Americanism in the Middle East, Central Asia and other parts of the world. We’ll be able to reduce our military presence there, save American lives, and use the financial savings to reduce the national budget deficit and to repair and upgrade our crumbling infrastructure. Deepwater drilling and the eventual oil spills -- which ruin ecosystems, fishing and tourism -- will no longer be necessary. Energy sources such as wind, sun, tides and waves are free fuel. Once we convert, we won’t have to keep buying fuel. In addition, their supply is inexhaustible and doesn’t become ever more difficult to reach, which can’t be said of oil or natural gas. So even if the scientific consensus is wrong that climate change is occurring and that we’re contributing to it, we’ll still benefit from acting as if the consensus is right.
On the other hand, if we keep using fossil fuels and they add to climate change, we’ll be in really big trouble. Rising ocean levels will inundate low-lying coastal areas in the USA and elsewhere. Property will be lost; millions of refugees will need to be relocated. Storms which are more violent and more frequent will destroy property and lives. Changing weather patterns will disrupt farming, so farmers will be ruined, and food will become more scarce and more expensive. More people will suffer from malnutrition and starvation. Diseases and harmful species previously known only in tropical areas will become more widespread. The reduction in mountain snowfall will reduce the supply of fresh water in many areas, such as here in California. Fracking to unlock deposits of oil and natural gas will make tap water unusable in more places. And we’ll continue to have the respiratory and other health problems which cost money and cause suffering and death.
We would be foolish not to act as if we believe that climate change is occurring, because we can’t afford to be wrong if it occurs.
BG

Ayn Rand and Ethical Egoism

The great popular heroine of the libertarian movement Ayn Rand espoused a doctrine called Ethical Egoism. It is not to be confused with Psychological Egoism which is the idea that we humans do, as a matter of our nature, act only for our own self-interest. Ethical Egoism finds, along with many others, that of course we can do things not generated by self-interest – but it insists that what we are morally required to do is only what is good for ourselves. Other people don’t count morally. They of course may help or hinder us in our self-centered projects and so must be taken into account but not as having any moral standing themselves.

To call the doctrine ‘Ethical’ is madly mistaken. Egoism is to be contrasted with morality – the moral perspective requires that it is the good of others that must be taken into account when working out the right thing to do. The name ‘Ethical Egoism’ is an attempt to claim the moral high ground when in fact it is a denial of morality. It is not the moral ‘should’ in the thesis that we should pay attention only to number 1 – it is like the ‘should’ in ‘The shortstop should be playing more to his left’: the shortstop who does not position himself to his left is not failing morally but is failing to be effective. To claim that people should act only in their own self-interest is to urge people only to be more effective as egoistic agents.

Deep Confusion About ‘Government Handouts’

Susan Mettler (Cornell University) has conducted a study that reveals how confused the American public is about what a government program is. It turns out that 44 percent of Social Security recipients report that they “have not used a government program”. So too say 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits and 40 percent of those on Medicare.

These people must think that ‘government programs’ are directed to people other than themselves, specifically to the idle and undeserving poor. Disliking such programs, they then condemn government generally ignoring the fact that they themselves are the beneficiaries of our social conscience. Through their confusion they put themselves in the pocket of the wealthy (the 1%) who have other (self-interested) reasons for condemning government.

Below is a graph of Mettler’s findings.

Mettler chart

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March11/ChartLarge.jpg

2012 Mar 5

Some memorable stats on Super PAC contributions:
In the previous two years a little less than 200 very rich people (think 1%) contributed about $90 million to Super PACs. Were you one of them?
93% of itemized contributions to those Super PACs were in amounts of $10,000 or more. Can you afford that? Can you even conceive of that?
37 people gave $500,000 or more. I suspect that you weren’t one of those 37 people.
Sheldon Adelson and wife by themselves gave $10,000,000 to a single Super PAC.
See: <http://www.demos.org/publication/auctioning-democracy-rise-super-pacs-and-2012-election> and <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/adelson-s-10-million-pac-bet-gives-gingrich-boost-for-southern-primaries.html>

MR

College admission practices include affirmative action for children of alumni, of major donors, and of parents who are affluent enough to pay for an SAT prep course or to live in an above-average school district. Conservatives don’t object to these forms of affirmative action. However, they object strenuously to affirmative action which finally gives a break to hard-working and capable children who have been denied equal opportunity all of their lives. They even try to eliminate financial need as a pivotal criterion in awarding scholarships. In college admissions, as in the economy, conservatives want to give more to those who already have more and block those who have less from getting more. This is the basic attitude which underlies conservative positions on most issues. It violates the moral teachings of every known religion.
BG

A few issues ago I proposed that the Tea Party people think of themselves as William Wallace as depicted by Mel Gibson in Braveheart: dying at the hands of the political authorities while shouting ‘Freedom!’. My guess has been confirmed. It turns out that during the end-of-the-year House debate on the deficit, several of the right-wing representatives fired themselves up by watching Braveheart in a conference room. It was their equivalent of a locker room speech, a ‘Win one for the Gipper’ moment. Of course they, like Wallace’s Scots, were slaughtered – but it was by vote not by sword. See the Dana Milbank piece in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/braveheart-republicans-or-false-hearted/2011/12/20/gIQA2Rxz7O_story.html
MR

Nouriel Roubini -- who was the only one who predicted the current economic crisis -- and two of his colleagues representing different areas of expertise have prepared an in-depth analysis of its causes and a set of recommendations for resolving the mess in the short, intermediate and long term. It's long but worth reading. Since it's a pdf, you can easily save it and read it in sections if you wish. See: http://growth.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/NAF--The_Way_Forward--Alpert_Hockett_Roubini.pdf
BG

In the still developing response to the evils of the Citizen’s United decision most of the criticism has focused on the Corporations are Persons and the Money is Speech principles used by the Supreme Court (in a 5-4 vote) to justify its decision making unlimited money available to subvert democracy. But recently much more attention has been paid to another aspect of the decision: the claim by the majority of the Court that a corporation that spends millions and millions of dollars to elect a candidate will not be a corrupting influence on the office-holder’s political positions. The Five presented exactly no factual evidence to support that thesis: and common sense says that it is plainly false.
MR

2012 Feb 4

GOING FORWARD AND GOING BACK

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are no longer usefully descriptive in American politics, largely because self-defined conservatives are more liberal toward big business and wealthy individuals than so-called liberals are, and because liberals are trying to conserve nature and existing institutions that serve the 99% more than the so-called conservatives are.

"Progressive" and "regressive" are more accurate terms to characterize our major American political views.

Human progress has been marked by two interdependent trends: an increase in the standard of living and quality of life for the 99%, and their greater share in political power. Persons who value these trends and want them to continue are progressives. Those who want to stop or even reverse these trends are regressives: they support the re-concentration of wealth and power, a return to not long absent past.

Almost all of the differences in policy preferences between the left and right in US politics are related to this fundamental difference in values.

A PLUTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE

The formula Money is Speech is jargon that enables and encourages sloppy thinking. In a money economy, money is a means to all kinds of things (even if not everything), including speech - one has to spend money to buy a stamp to mail a letter to the editor of the newspaper in order to exercise the right to speech.

The crucial thing is that the slogan has a corollary that is the root of the problem with the Supreme Court decision. If Money is Speech, then it follows that the more Money you have the more Speech you are entitled to. That is not the principle of a democracy but of a plutocracy: the rich are entitled to more speech than the rest of us (and we, simply in virtue of our wealth, are entitled to more speech than the guy living in the LA Mission.) Now it may be that as a matter of fact in a society marked by inequality of monetary resources, those with more will have greater opportunities to speak than those with less. But that is a factual matter. What the Supreme Court has done is to erect as a matter of principle the foundation of a plutocratic political order. Those of us committed to democracy, and that includes the Constitution, will find the Court’s principle abhorrent.

SPEAKING WITH TENTS

There are those who say they support the exercise of the free speech rights of the Occupy folks, but they cannot support the encampments. These supporters of free speech are either blind or hypocritical. The key point is that it is called the “Occupy” movement precisely because they are NOT simply marching in a demonstration with signs and speeches, but are making a political statement by the act of staying 24/7 and occupying the space in this on-going manner. It is precisely this act of “occupying” that is the political expression of the seriousness of their concerns and commitment.

The Boston Tea Party is remembered not because it was a demonstration, but because of the political act of throwing the tea into the harbor. During the Vietnam anti-war protests, it was the political act of burning the American flag that was the form of political speech that expressed the degree of outrage felt by the demonstrators: the Supreme Court understood and upheld their right to burn the flag as a form of political speech. This time, it is precisely the act of erecting tents and staying in one place 24/7, giving up their daily routines to stay, eat, sleep and talk to people that IS the form of political speech.

To say that one upholds their right to free speech, and to then deny them the form they have chosen for that speech is in fact to deny their right to that speech.

Does anyone doubt that it is precisely this form of speech, the very act of “occupying” that caught the attention of the American public, the media and the political system – and that spread from Wall Street to more than 1400 cities across this nation, and to many other nations as well? The “occupation”, the encampment itself, is the act of free speech.

LONGING TO BE RICH AS ROCKEFELLER (OR CAIN OR ROMNEY)

Those around the country who assiduously watch Fox News are echoing the recent statements by Republican candidates for President, claiming that the 99% - 1% rhetoric and the demands for higher taxes on the rich and more regulation of corporations and banks are all simply expressions of envy and evidence of lazy self-indulgence by the middle class and the poor in not becoming rich themselves.

Aside from the patent absurdity of this position, it must be pointed out that many of the rich got rich by bribing (some call it lobbying and making campaign contributions) members of government to secure unfair advantages in the form of discriminatory low tax rates and tax breaks, and to secure or avoid regulations that allow them to gain their riches by damaging the interests of the 99%. They also got rich in part by using the infrastructure, the roads, bridges, airports, courts, schools and universities that the 99% paid to build, establish and maintain.

We in the 99% are not envious of the 1%’s wealth, and are not seeking the end of capitalism. We are objecting to the corruption of the political and of the economic processes that too many in the 1% and too many banks and corporations regularly use to attain their wealth and power – and to prevent others from moving up the economic ladder. To attempt to trivialize our objections by talking about it as simply envy is to attempt to preserve a system that has now resulted in the U.S. having less equality of opportunity and less possibility of upward mobility than many other nations – according to a whole series of recent studies. These 1%ers and corporations, and their defenders and supporters, are the ones who are destroying the fabric of American society and its goal, not of equal distribution of wealth, but of equal opportunity – which once was, but no longer is, the hallmark of America.

C&J M

FOR THE LOVE OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

Talk of creative destruction is flying around these days in the wake of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. His firm, Bain Capital, engaged in creative destruction and he is proud of it.

I suspect that he and those who are chiming in on the side of creative destruction do not realize that the notion was Marx’s (we progressive’s, however, will not thereby call them Marxists as they would were the shoe on the other foot). It was Joseph Schumpeter who invented the term while working out Marx’s notion – and Schumpeter, like Marx, thought that it indulging in it would lead to the demise of capitalism. It is to be expected that those on the right do not attend to that feature of Schumpeter’s argument.

2012 Jan 4

MONEY IS SPEECH: THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Try this: imagine writing an intelligent letter on some topic of current interest to your elected representative; then imagine writing a letter expressing somewhat more crudely a contrary view but enclosing a $5000 check designated for the representative’s campaign fund. Ask: which of the two will have the most impact, which is the more powerful speech from the representative’s point of view? Money is not speech: it is (among other things) a means of getting attention to speech.

SCALES DROPPING FROM ONE’S EYES

Having epiphanies is not a frequent occurrence so it should be reported that Naomi Klein’s piece on global warming in The Nation (a precursor to a book) has had that effect on me. For long I have simply said that the conservative denial of global warming is plain irrational. But Klein made me see that their view is an (partly) intelligible mixture of reason and madness. She holds that what the conservatives see, more clearly than progressives, is that if the earth is warming as the scientists and liberals say it is and if we must therefore act to slow it (or whatever is possible), one of the rational consequences is that the very ideology of contemporary conservativism must go out the window. Acting to stop/slow global warming will requite a massive revision of our economic system and a corresponding large increase in government intervention in our economic lives. The conservative is thus caught between the case for global warming and their entire outlook. The irrationality comes in because they choose the ideology and thus are forced to deny the undeniable, the facts.

TAXING WEALTH

Until now, all of the discussions abut reducing the Federal deficit by raising revenue have focused on taxing incomes and maybe financial transactions, but not about taxing wealth. It shouldn’t be off the table. When we tax real estate at the state and local level, we are taxing one type of wealth. Other types shouldn’t be exempt. Real estate taxes pay for the services which presumably benefit the owners of those properties. Well, the owners of businesses and of financial assets benefit from many public services, too, such as national defense, law enforcement, education, infrastructure, and laws which protect property ownership and contractual obligations. Therefore, it’s perfectly legitimate to have a property tax on forms of wealth other than real estate. Actually, the fact that real property is taxed while most other forms of property aren’t is a leftover from earlier times in which real property was the primary form of wealth and source of production. That ended with the industrial revolution. Now it's the ownership of businesses and financial assets. The system of taxaion needs to catch up with economic realities.

MONEY AS THE RIGHT TO RULE

"There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with 'a money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers:"

TR (The TR)

2011 Dec 4

AUTHENTICITY AND TEA BAGGING

In the 1960’s a colleague of mine gave a student’s paper in an introductory philosophy class an F. The student came in to protest the grade. His justification for why the paper did not deserve an F: the thoughts were his. It had not crossed his mind that the grade was to be based on the quality of the ideas, arguments and presentation. Authenticity ruled!

Our current tea-baggers are the descendants of that student, of the spirit of the ‘60’s (as much as they would hate to see those students as their ancestors.) Their protests are fervent, heart-felt. They are being authentic in what they say and feel and admire political figures (Bachmann, Cain, Perry) who say what looks to be authentically their own. The idea that thought, effort, and self-criticism are necessary to produce good political ideas has not crossed their minds.

Moreover, the thoughts really aren’t their own. They fail to see that the movement is bankrolled by very very wealthy people who have been spreading these supposedly new ideas since the FDR era. The money-bags of the movement do not care a fig about the well-being of those shouting most loudly. They, in their drive for authenticity and lack of interest in thought, are being taken for a ride by an economic elite who are interested only in a political system that furthers their own well-being.

Again in the ‘60’s, my department had a holiday party at which a graduate student slipped in, then out and left a dish of brownies – spiked of course with pot. The ensuing antics at the party were to say the least disjointed. The tea-party movement is not like a typical tea-party but rather like what happened to the unsuspecting pot-consuming party-goers: incoherent thought produced not by themselves but by someone who stayed well away from the mischief.

THE GREAT CCC – THEN AND NOW

During the Great Depression President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put young people to work. Let's have a new CCC to install solar and wind generators all over the country -- on homes, offices and factories as well as in wind and solar farms -- and to upgrade the grid to manage it.

This will create jobs, train young people in practical and transferable skills, reduce utility bills, avoid fossil fuel pollution of our water table, reduce illnesses and health care costs and global warming due to emissions, cut or eliminate our oil imports, reduce our trade deficit, enable us to extricate our country from military involvement in foreign oil producing countries and (from all of this) rescue our economy now and fight climate change which can destroy our economy in the future.

George Lakoff says that we progressives need a "narrative" to counter the supposedly conservative narrative that demonizes government and taxes. This proposal hangs together as a complete story, not a collection of disparate and seemingly unrelated bits. The public will understand it and approve of it, and the benefits will be enormous.

Our government should sell special "Recovery Bonds" to fund this effort. Financial institutions, individual investors and others who support the plan or simply want a safe investment will buy those bonds.

CAPITALISM AND MORALITY

It is often said that one of the beauties of capitalism is that moral considerations (are to) play no part in the decisions of the firm (nor for those of the consumer.) But that is precisely what makes it imperative that businesses be subject to regulations. Without regulations, capitalist firms are like a sociopath in the body social.

CAPITAL AND CONSUMPTION

An economy needs both capital and consumption, but not too much or too little of either. With not enough capital in proportion to consumption, there will be shortages and price inflation, plus failure to increase productivity and to introduce new inventions. With too much capital vis-a-vis consumption, ordinary commerce will not produce good enough profits, and capital will seek better returns in speculation, leading to bubbles and crashes, which destroy jobs as well as savings. An excess of capital self-corrects only through crashes that destroy some of that capital but also reduce consumption; thus they are ineffective in restoring a balanced and vibrant economy. An excess of consumption, however, self-corrects by increasing business revenues and profits, which provide new capital. The new capital is then available to increase and improve the provision of goods and services, thus possibly restoring the balance without doing further harm, as long as the additional capital is put to work creating jobs (admittedly a big "if" when jobs are being offshored). We should fear an economy in which the capitalists receive too large a piece of the pie, but not one in which they receive too small a piece. The former will not self-correct in a benign manner, but the latter can.

2011 Oct 30

SO MONEY IS SPEECH? WATERGATE IS THUS LEGAL!

During a recent interview, when asked about the Supreme Court's recent decision that campaign expenditures are speech, retired Justice John Paul Stevens said: "Campaign expenditures pay for all kinds of things that are not speech, like polls and travel. By that theory, the Watergate burglary was a campaign expenditure and therefore was speech. That example exposes how the argument is flawed.

L.A. Times, October 9, 2011

THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE INTERNET (AND FURTHER)

Elizabeth Warren – mark that name; she is already being touted as the prime Democratic candidate for 2016 - vigorously set out a fundamental piece of progressive outlook and did so in a memorable fashion. What she had to say is a litmus test for being a progressive.

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

She clearly hit a nerve. For speaking the truth she has been vilified by major conservative pundits: Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Jonah Goldberg. For an excellent critical analysis of Will’s attack on her and thus on the progressive outlook see E.J. Dionne’s Refuting Straw Liberals.

IT’S MY HOUSE, MINE I SAY!

Those living near our southern border are likely to have encountered the welcoming saying ‘Mi casa es su casa’ (to those without simple Spanish ‘My house is your house’.) The motto has a place in our politics, even if its authors and promoters do not notice it. Liberals apply ‘Mi casa es su casa’ to all Americans (not so enthusiastically to the rich among us) and even more broadly to those who have made their way into our lives (and often into our actual casas) without benefit of legal recognition: see support for the Dream Act. Conservatives are appalled by that. Their chief fear is that the poor of the earth have listened to the liberals and adopted a variant of the slogan, namely ‘Su casa es mi casa’. So the conservative hangs outside his political door the plaque ‘Mi casa is MI casa’.

THEY WANT MY CADILLAC!

Today’s conservative simply does not understand what people want. The protesters on Wall Street, to the conservative imagination, have no interest in the well-being of the country, are not motivated by the recognition that the high-flyers on Wall Street deeply damaged not just the US economy but the world’s and did so out of greed, seeking nothing more than their own personal (monetary) interest. Not being able to see someone with motives other than their own, they attribute that outlook to the protesters. They are protesting out of greed, the desire to have what the banksters have. So Herman Cain: the OWS crowd are “jealous Americans”, people who have not succeeded in the Great American Game and so are “playing the victim card” and, get this, people who want to “take somebody else’s Cadillac”!

For the right, the protest is founded on nothing more than the principle: Su Cadillac es mi Cadillac.

(See http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-cain-occupy-wall-street-20111009,0,972806.story )

WEALTH AND HAPPINESS

We Americans have often proclaimed that the purpose of government is to protect "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", as first stated in our Declaration of Independence. Studies have shown that poverty decreases happiness, but that wealth beyond what's necessary to provide comfort does not increase happiness. We may reasonably conclude that the pursuit of happiness requires using the powers of government to prevent poverty rather than to promote the accumulation of wealth. In fact, the possession of wealth is an obstacle to the pursuit of happiness when it exists side-by-side with poverty and when a reduction of the imbalance would decrease poverty.

2011 Sept 23

CAN YOU SPARE A BILLION BUDDY?

The right-wing is always complaining of government ‘handouts’. The phrase conjures up the picture of slipping a dime (or a buck on generous days) into the hand of the guy on the corner. The conservative, though, slips the word and the picture into criticism of the government for handing out (his) money to the undeserving (poor).

However where do the big time government handouts go? The Pentagon is the handout king – and favored companies and corporations (down at the heels fellows, struggling to get by) are the recipients.

Any Goodman: “Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s use of no-bid contracts has tripled since the United States was attacked on 9/11, in spite of promises to reform the controversial practice. According to a new investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity, no-bid spending has ballooned from $50 billion in 2003 to $140- billion in 2011.” Now that’s really handing it out, slipping the undeserving the odd billion.

For much more on the practice see: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/2/
MR

SOMETHING OF A HERO

Jered Weaver of the Los Angeles Angels recently signed a five year contract extension for $85 million. He could have got a lot more by going into free agency and taking what the market would give him. (Neo-classical economics of course rates him as irrational for that decision.)

Part of his reason is worth noting: “If $85 million is not enough to take care of my family and other generations of families [note that] then I’m pretty stupid [i.e. irrational], but how much money do you really need in life?”

Would that the Wall Streeters learn to ask themselves how much they really need in life!

If they can’t ask that and decide properly, i.e. within the bounds of common sense, then it is up to the rest of us, though government action and tax policy, to see that the question is correctly answered.

On the other hand, even if he poses the right question, Weaver will after all be getting $85 million over those 5 years – most people have to do with a very great deal less over the course of their entire lives. How much do they really need?
MR

SEXUAL ORIENTATION

When I reached the age of puberty, I discovered that I was attracted to females. I didn’t decide; I discovered.

When gays and lesbians say that they “discovered” who they are – meaning who is attractive to them – I believe them, because that’s the way it works for heterosexuals as well.

This isn’t a lifestyle choice; it’s an inherent (God-given, if you’re a believer) trait.

A long time ago, left-handed people were considered immoral. “Sinister” is the Latin word for left. Lefties are a small minority, as are homosexuals.

Some people are ambidextrous: they favor both hands. That’s analogous to being bisexual in the gender preference context. These are an even smaller minority.

Hand preference and gender preference are traits with which people are born. They should not suffer discrimination because of these birth characteristics, any more than because of gender, race or ethnicity
BG

TAXES AND WARREN BUFFETT

The conservatives’ response to Warren Buffett’s reminder that he and the other rich (especially the super-rich) are being under-taxed: well then, freely send the IRS the money you think you should be paying in taxes.

Once again conservatives fail to engage the progressive view of taxes and consequently of living in a modern democracy. In a democracy, the willingness to pay taxes is a recognition of being a member of a civilized social order. To (only) make charitable contributions to government would be to treat oneself as the a completely self-contained being who has no moral and social responsibilities to anyone other than oneself.

The narcissism of the conservative view is astounding.
MR

2011 Aug 23

Unemployment Insurance: Who Should Pay?
The funding mechanism for our unemployment insurance system may have made sense before the economy became globalized, but it's self-defeating now.

When companies lay off American employees, they are charged for the unemployment benefits that those former employees then receive. Because of the boom-and-bust economic cycle, companies that use American employees but have to reduce staffing during recessions cannot avoid this charge at just the time when their finances are usually at low ebb. However, we don't charge companies for hiring foreign workers in lieu of American workers, although they thereby contribute to unemployment ongoing. This system penalizes companies for hiring Americans.

It would be better to change the system so that companies -- both US and foreign -- which offshore their production pay into the unemployment insurance fund. Perhaps base the payment on the difference between their revenue in the US and their American payroll, including their current payments for employees' health insurance and retirement benefits.

I'm not an economic nationalist, seeking to benefit the US economically at the expense of foreign countries. Instead, I expect that impoverishing American workers will harm not only Americans but also the foreigners who depend on America's appetite for imported goods. If American consumers decline economically faster than the poor countries' consumers can replace our demand, the whole house of cards will collapse. However, if Americans remain prosperous, we can continue to buy from the rest of the world and lift others out of poverty. The creation of jobs in poor countries may be slower than if we eliminated more of those jobs in America, but it will be more certain and will last longer.
BG

Liberty and Justice
We Americans all have learned the Pledge of Allegiance with its rousing final words “with liberty and justice for all”. Focusing on those words is one, only one, way of understanding the nature of the current tea party outburst.

For the tea party folk and their organizational and individual fellow travelers, those words from the Pledge should be rewritten to say only “with liberty for all.” If you listen carefully enough – and sometimes not much care is needed – you will hear that the only value the TP bunch has is liberty, freedom. They like to imagine themselves as William Wallace at the end of Braveheart as he is disemboweled by the English: shouting ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ Hear their speeches and read their writings: the old American ideal of justice for all is never mentioned.
MR

Are we being had?
Electoral politics is important in the natural order, but when winning the next election become more important than the safety and well being of the nation, politics will have driven us over the cliff’s edge. And that is where we may be today. When John Boehner says that the most important agenda for the Republican Party is to insure that Obama is a one term President, political skullduggery has trumped the economic survival of the nation.

Perhaps the major reasons why the current manufactured debt cap debacle is not being solved is because the Republicans do not want it solved, and will do anything possible to see it stays unresolved. It is to their advantage to see that the argument is reignited a year from now–prior to the 2012 election. This paired with a lack of serious interest in getting us through the economic pit which has us bogged down, makes the chances of a Republican victory next Fall very likely. Solving either problem may be a death wish to Boehner’s goal.

If solving the current problems is good for the country it may be bad for the Republicans. The strategy therefore, seems to be to let these critical issues drags on, crippling even further the economy and providing an additional weapon to use against the President. If the GOP won’t let it be solved, that means they have ammunition to use against an Administration that cannot solve it without their serious negotiated support. Here may be one of the most cynical political ploys in all American history. I wonder what it will take for the American people to wake up and realize we have been had?
CB

You the Master
As you read the following from Ludwig von Mises, that unbending advocate of the free market, seriously ask yourself whether you feel that you have the power and the mastery that he ascribes to us as consumers.

“In [a market economy] the entrepreneurs and capitalists are the servants of the consumers. The consumers are the masters, to whose whims the entrepreneurs and capitalists must adjust their investments and methods of production. “ (von Mises, Omnipotent Government, pp. 49-50)

Forget the Koch brothers and other billionaires: take a somewhat smaller target. When you walk into your bank, say Bank of America, you do act, think and feel as if that branch of the B of A is your servant, that your whims will cause them to bend to your will? Or take something even less grand, say your local shoe repair store: does it cater to your every desire? Does the owner promise you everything and wake up in an anxious sweat if it looks as if the promise might not be fulfilled?

The libertarian free-marketeer defends a piece of propaganda in the slogan ‘The consumer is king’. It is generated by sliding from a bit of economic theory (applicable to an economy where the capitalists are small scale and have no power) to a description in terms of human life. The libertarian loves the theory – progressives think of what life is actually like.
MR

2011 June 25

It is difficult to contradict oneself within the space of two sentences but Grover Norquist, in his best known remark, has done so. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” If one wants to drown government in the tub that certainly seems to be getting rid of it. However, that contradicts his first sentence where he says he doesn’t want to rid us of the ‘evil’.

Marx, Engels and Lenin spoke of “the withering of the state”. When the proletariat were well entrenched in power and the slogan ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ was fully operational, the state would fade from existence. Norquist, a hero to the right, cannot wait for the state to wither in some fuzzily distant future: it must be put out of its miserable existence pronto.
MR

The World Turned Topsy-Turvy
There is an American myth that says wealth is generated by hard work. Of course some is. But the larger truth is that most big wealth is generated, not by hard work, but by already existing big wealth. Money breeds money! If work did it, coal miners would be rich and bond holders and hedge fund operators would be insisting on a raise in the nation’s minimum wage.
CB

Requiring Health Insurance
In 1994 Kentucky (in those pre-Rand Paul days that state must have had some sense) required insurance companies to insure anyone without regard to pre-existing conditions, as our new Health Care Act does. But the Kentucky law did not require anyone to purchase insurance (the ‘mandate’). As a consequence, many Kentuckians waited until they needed medical treatment, then purchased insurance – a variant form of free riding. As a result, insurance costs rose so much that insurers dropped out of the Kentucky market and the state was forced to repeal the law.

Massachusetts on the other hand (good ole Mitt Romney) instituted both the provision that everyone in Massachusetts is insurable no matter what their antecedent medical condition and the mandate. As a consequence, insurance premiums there have dropped 40% at the same time as the national average has gone up 14%.
Huge cheers for the mandate.
MR

The Washington Taliban
The Taliban in Afghanistan dynamited some of that country’s cultural treasures, the enormous 6th century Buddhas carved from the cliffs in the Bamiyan valley.

The conservative contingent in the current House of Representatives is the American Taliban: they want to destroy (among other things) NPR and PBS, American cultural treasures. They don’t use dynamite: eliminating federal funding is their preferred method.

Fundamentalists world-wide are alike.
MR

2011 May 14

Cost of Free Riding
Health care free riders do not have insurance and use emergency rooms for service. Since hospitals must treat people who appear on their doorstep but get only about 10% reimbursement for what it costs them to treat the uninsured, the rest of us pick up the tab for the treatment in higher taxes and/or in higher fees for our own medical treatment.
So much has long been known. However, there is now a more precise and memorable number for how much medical free riders cost the rest of us. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that in 2008 the uninsured shifted $43,000,000,000 (that is, $43 billion) worth of treatment costs to the insured.
Those who are calling for the repeal of the Health Care Act are either free riders or idiots defending free riding.
MR

The 2011 Budget
The House of Representatives has made a timid effort to peel an infinitesimal slice of skin from the whale-sized problem in its 2011 spending bill. But behind the unpaid for wars, what are they continuing to budget each year without a blink?
11 billion Estate taxes for millionaires.
9 billion    Mortgage interest for vacation homes.
6 billion    The cost of estate planning.
4 billion    Tax breaks for offshore operation of US companies.
2 billion    Write-offs for oil companies in drilling subsidies.
2 billion    Ethanol fuel tax subsidies.
2 billion    Tax loopholes for hedge fund managers.
And the list goes on.
And what do they want to cut?
11 billion Early childhood development.
9 billion    Low income housing programs.
7 billion    Nutrition for low-income families including (WIC).
6 Billion    Teacher training and afterschool programs.
4 billion    Job training for the unemployed.
2 billion   Energy assistance for the poor.
2 billion    Community health centers.
2 billion    Homeless assistance grants.
And the list goes on.
Congress is playing around with peanuts when the huge reasons for the debt come from unpaid war expenses and a healthcare system whose costs are far in excess of those nations with fiscally responsible universal programs. Sanity, not the scoring of political points, is a path unlikely to be taken by a House of Representative knee deep in tea bags.
CB

Two Birds with One Stone
As our nation's founders protected firearms ownership in order to have well-regulated militias, all persons who possess firearms should be required by law to join the local troop of their state's National Guard and comply with its rules. Since this would fill the ranks quite easily, there would be no need to pay more than a nominal amount for attendance. Most of them would belong to the political faction which would happily patrol the border with Mexico. That would get them and their guns off our streets.
BG