Kruse Kronicle

Calmly Considered: The Year in Review 2023

In the final episode of 2023, Michael and Allan reflect on 2023 and look forward to 2024.

Calmly Considered: The Israeli Palestinian Conflict

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the perennial tragedy of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Does Character Count? Does Virtue Matter?

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan explore why it appears that American society has jettisoned the importance of character and virtue for leadership, particularly in the realm of politics. Does character really count? Does virtue really matter?"

The Supreme Court--Guardians of the Constitution or Judicial Legislators?

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered" Michael and Allan discuss the Supreme Court of the United States: its history, development and its politicization by politicians throughout the decades."

Managing Tensions, Or How to Keep from Making Stupid Arguments

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the importance of polarity management, a way of viewing tensions not as either/or problems to be solved, but both/and tensions to be managed. When tensions are turned into problems as is so often the case in today's politics, stupidity reigns supreme and solutions remain elusive."

Calmly Considered: A Discussion on Deconstruction

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss deconstruction particularly as it relates to religion and faith. What is deconstruction? Is it new or something that's been around for a long time? Is deconstruction present in the Bible? Was Jesus a deconstructionist?

Calmly Considered: The Mainstream Media-- Purveyors of Truth or Peddlers of Propaganda?

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss today's media in America and whether or not it can be trusted to give to the public a reliable picture of newsworthy events. They also ponder the implications for Christians who believe in telling and discerning the truth in a world of information overload.

Calmly Considered: Global Population-- Will It Become Standing Room Only?

On this episode of Calmly Considered, Michael and Allan discuss the growing global population, its implications for the future and why it's important for the followers of Jesus.

Calmly Considered: Does Social Security Have a Future?

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the sustainability of Social Security and the necessity of seeking the common good.

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the sustainability of Social Security and the necessity of seeking the common good."

Calmly Considered: The Sport of Gambling-- Should Christians Take the Bet?

In this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the rise of betting on sports in America and gambling in general.

Calmly Considered: 2022 Review, 2023 Preview

Allan Bevere and I look back at 2022 and forward to 2023.

Should Christians Participate in Black Friday?

Allan Bevere and I discuss materialism, and Black Friday specifically.

The Mid-Term Election and Voting as a Christian

Mid-Term elections are next month. This month we reflect on voting with Christian integrity

Student Loan Forgiveness and Thinking Christianly

This month Allan Bevere and I discuss student loan forgiveness, reflecting not just on the merits of proposed loan cancellations but also on how we use (and abuse) scripture to justify policy ideas. 

Christian Nationalism - Christ AND Caesar?

Here is the August dialog between Allan Bevere and me about Christian nationalism and its implications. 

What's Up With Inflation

Dr. Allan Bevere and I reflect on what inflation is, how it is used in politics, and what it might mean for Christians.

Calmly Considered: Gun Violence in America

Allan Bevere and I reflect on the issue of gun violence in America.

The Middle Class is Disappearing ... Into the Upper Class

U.S. Census Bureau recently released time-series data on household income. All data in the following chart is pegged to 2010 dollars, which is adjusted for inflation - a dollar in 1970 buys the same as a dollar in 2020.

The Census Bureau divides the income distribution into nine segments and three broader categories:

• Poor: $0 - $35,000 (again, 2010 dollars)
• Middle Class: $35 - $100,000
• Rich: $100,000 - and up

Source: Economist Anthony Davies

The percentage of households in the low and middle-income segments has declined while the percentage in the high-income segments has increased. Furthermore, over these fifty years, the average number of people living in a household has been steadily shrinking the further down the income distribution we go and increasing the further up we go. Not only are there more wealthy households, but more people are living in those wealthy households.

The middle class is disappearing into the upper class. I am not making any policy statement here. I am saying that policies based on the perception of the middle class being driven into poverty - "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer - are demonstrably wrong.

Calmly Considered: The Demise of Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism

In this month's installment, Allan Bevere and I reflect on the rise of authoritarianism in recent years. 

"Democracy is receding in the world and authoritarianism is on the rise. Why is this? What is authoritarianism and what are the circumstances that lead people to trust their futures to authoritarians? How do we recognize authoritarian figures? Is character necessary for good?"

Calmly Considered: Climate Change, Yea or Nay?

Allan and I discuss the issue of human-caused climate change, the realities and the economic complexities in dealing with it, and how Scripture informs us on creation care.

Calmly Considered: Free Speech and Cancel Culture

In this month's installment of Calmly Considered, Allan Bevere and I discuss free speech, cancel culture, and the complexities of political engagement in a pluralistic society.

Calmly Considered: Scarcity or Abundance-- Which Is Our World?

Last month, Dr. Allan Bevere and I got together to discuss the nuances of "scarcity and abundance" from theological perspectives. Too often people from the two fields talk past each other with unfair characterizations on this topic. Our conversation hopefully shines some light.

Calmly Considered: Global Living Conditions-- Better or Worse?

Are global living conditions getting better or worse?

There are three simultaneous truths:

1. Living conditions are awful for a great many.
2. Living conditions are better than they ever have been, by far.
3. Living conditions can be improved and the trajectory is in a positive direction.

Join Allen Bevere and me as we calmly consider global living conditions.

Calmly Considered: Immigration-- The Biblical Witness and Current Challenges

Immigration is a complex topic. Unfortunately, our public discourse produces much more heat than light on the topic. Allan Bevere and I recently had a conversation that only skims the topic, but maybe it will provide some food for thought and encourage helpful conversation. 

The Future of Black-Owned Enterprises

The rate of Black entrepreneurship has always been lower than for other communities due to systemic and overt racism over past generations. This CNBC piece does a good job explaining the ongoing obstacles faced by Black-owned enterprises.

Calmly Considered: How The Church Fails Businesspeople

Last week, I participated with Allan Bevere in a discussion centered on John Knapp's book "How The Church Fails Businesspeople (And What Can Be Done About It)." Discussion focuses on integrating our faith and working lives, with reflection on why that integration is so challenging.

Calmly Considered: Race in America-- History, Story, and Changing Faces

This is the latest installment in Calmly Considered, hosted by Allan Bevere. This month we are talking about racism in America. We barely skimmed the surface of the topic, as would be expected in a one-hour discussion. Hopefully, our conversation will inspire some deeper thought and encourage more reflection. Are there books or resources you have found helpful in thinking about race in America? Please share in the comments.

Calmly Considered: Socialism vs. Capitalism-- Getting Beyond the Memes

"In this month's episode of "Calmly Considered" Michael Kruse and I discuss the complex realities of socialism and capitalism that are so often distorted by simplistic social media memes, caricatures, and politicians seeking re-election."

Thanks to Allan Bevere for hosting another fun discussion. Below the video are three articles related to our discussion you may find useful.

"Capitalism vs. Socialism is the Wrong Way to Frame Today's Economic Debate" https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/capitalism/streeter-reeves-capitalism-vs-socialism.html

 

"Capitalism vs. Socialism: What's the Difference?" https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-are-differences-between-capitalism-and-socialism.asp

 

"Capitalism with Scandinavian Characteristics" https://www.startribune.com/capitalism-with-scandinavian-characteristics/505916412/

The World Is Becoming A Better Place To Live For Most People

The great majority of people throughout most of human history have precariously been able to subsist. (See Level 1 below.) A great divergence began just over two centuries ago. Global life expectancy at birth has more than doubled, and abject poverty as a percentage of the population has declined. 

The average life expectancy at birth used to be about 30 years. That doesn't mean no one lived to old age. One in four children born alive died before their first birthday, so the average life expectancy at birth was skewed downward. But life expectancy at every age has improved, especially over the past century.

The researchers at Gapminder have constructed this informative chart showing anticipated improving economic status over the next twenty years. (These numbers attempt to account for changes in the value of "a dollar" over time and across national borders.) Each block equates to 100,000 people. As you can see, the population is larger in twenty years, but a higher percentage of people have moved rightward on the continuum to greater prosperity. Many people find these numbers too abstract. What does this mean in practical terms? Gapminder has constructed this helpful chart to describe what life is like at the four levels. 

You can learn more about these four levels here. 

Three truths. The world has become profoundly better in recent generations and is improving. There is much suffering and injustice as vast room for improving our world. We can make the world a better place.

New Voting Laws and Critical Race Theory

New voting laws around the country are not a response to voter fraud. How do we know? Because there is no credible evidence of consequential voter fraud anywhere in the country.

The new voting laws respond to voter turnout, especially turnout of the "wrong kind" of voters. The laws do not mention ethnicities in their explicit language, but the voting barriers are made more significant for minorities. This brings us to Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory looks at how racism has, directly and indirectly, influenced the legal system to perpetuate racial disparity – like maybe rigging the voting system in favor of white people without saying so. And now you know why one political party, which I used to call home loosely, is so animated in its opposition to Critical Race Theory.  

Calmly Considered: Economics, the New Testament, and the 21st Century (in podcast & videocast)

This is the first installment of a once-monthly series called Calmly Considered, in which Allan Bevere and I will be discussing topics related to faith and economics. In this episode, we discuss Peter Oakes'  Empire, Economics, and the New Testament. We barely scratch the surface but hopefully some meaningful dialog. 

Globalization. Its Passing Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

From researchers Steven A. Altman and Phillip Bastian:

Despite recent trade turbulence, the ratio of gross exports to world GDP is still remarkably close to its all-time high. Even after falling from a peak of 32% in 2008 to 29% in 2019, this measure of global trade integration is still 20% higher than it was in 2000, twice as high as it was in 1970, and almost six times higher than in 1945. ... Globalization can go into reverse—as demonstrated by the trendlines between the 1920s and 1950s—but recent data do not depict a similar reversal. ...

[T]he world is—and will remain—only partially globalized. Globalization can rise or fall significantly without getting anywhere close to either a state where national borders become irrelevant or one where they loom so large that it is best to think of a world of disconnected national economies. All signs point to a future where international flows will remain so large that decision-makers ignore them at their peril, even as borders and cross-country differences continue to make domestic activity the default in most areas.

Economist Timothy Taylor reviews the report and offers other insights: What's Happening with Global Connectedness in the Pandemic?

How to Increase Intergenerational Mobility

Intergenerational mobility is low in the US. Economist Timothy Taylor discusses findings from a recent study investigating how we might make improvements: Intergenerational Mobility and Neighborhood Effects. The unique study incorporates 20.5 million Americans and enables them to analyze down to the city block level.

 

The study determined that neighborhood (.5 mile radius around family) is twice as significant in determining upward mobility compared to family status. Two policy options to consider:

 

First, empowering families to move to locations with greater opportunities. For a variety of reasons, low-income families have significant barriers to relocating for better opportunities. The article shows that when low-income people are provided with brokerage services (much like wealthy professionals get when being relocated), they relocate at dramatically higher rates.

 

Second, rebuilding impoverished neighborhoods with the institutions and resources necessary to achieve upward mobility for people who live there. This one is more problematic to measure and, therefore, more difficult to address confidently. But it does seem to suggest neighborhood development, including economic development, is more critical than isolated aid to families. It seems aid to families without a corresponding improvement in societal support systems is ineffective. 

Confederate Monuments Are A Rewrite of History, Not A Remembrance

Confederate monuments were the product of a campaign to rewrite history, not to preserve it.

There were few Confederate monuments thirty years after the Civil War ended in 1865. The placement of monuments came in two waves, the first much larger than the second. One wave began at the turn of the last century, and the other began about 1956 (See chart).

Source: There are certain moments in US history when Confederate monuments go up

First Wave

The first sustained wave of monument placement began in the late 1890s, peaking in 1911 and then tapering off to a lower placement rate in the 1920s and early 1930s. Why this spike?

By the 1890s, Confederate veterans were dying off, and Southern elites feared younger generations would lose the “right” perspective on the history of the Civil War. The “Lost Cause” movement began to take root in the South as a response. The mission was to recast the Confederacy as a heroic and just attempt to preserve the Southern way of life while minimizing the experience and impact of slavery.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy was born in 1894. Organized by daughters and granddaughters of the Southern elite, they set out to promote the Lost Cause narrative through textbook writing, children’s programs, and the erection of monuments promoting the Lost Cause. Their financial and political clout gave them considerable influence, especially in the formerly Confederate states.

In 1896, the Supreme Court handed down its Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling, institutionalizing the Separate but Equal doctrine. By 1914, Less than twenty years later, all Southern states and most Northern cities had enacted laws segregating people.

1925 Klan march in Washington DC

From 1902 to 1907, Tom Dixon wrote a popular trilogy of novels 1902-1907, targeting the “unfair” treatment of the South in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fifty years earlier. The middle novel, “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” inspired D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” in 1915, glorifying the Klan and employing deeply racist troupes. It was the first true blockbuster movie. Not coincidentally, 1915 was the birth of the Second Ku Klux Klan. By 1922, the Klan had a million members, possibly as many as five million by 1925, and millions more in sympathy. Lynching was prevalent throughout this period, as were race massacres like the Red Summer of 1919 and the Tulsa massacre of 1921.

Second Wave

The United Daughters of the Confederacy began to lose steam in the 1920s, and from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, monument erection mostly subsided. But another smaller spike developed from about 1956-1965. What happened here?

In 1954, in Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Supreme Court overruled Plessy vs. Ferguson, effectively delegitimizing segregation. The Civil Rights Movement came into its own at the time. Up went more monuments to persevere the ethos of the Lost Cause and white supremacy, dropping off after 1965 and the passage of civil rights legislation. The financial and political clout to promote these efforts was not as powerful by this date.

Conclusion

The great majority of Confederate monuments were never a product of some high-minded project to help us holistically remember the past. They were the product of a concerted effort to rewrite the past with the Lost Cause narrative. They were integral to waves of white supremacy that swept America, attempting to whitewash the past and intimidate people of color. They have no business standing in places of honor in our public spaces. Their removal aids in the remembrance of history, not its neglect.

View this video for a short history of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their role in promoting the Lost Cause and Confederate monument placement.

The Numbers And Economics Of COVID-19

Last Thursday, Dr. Allan Bevere interviewed me about my thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic and the economic costs. Thanks for an enjoyable time, Allan. Be sure to follow his blog Allan R. Bevere, Faith Seeking Understanding. 

COVID-19 Is Not Just The Flu

In mid-April, Bill Bennett said COVID-19 is no big deal. Projections showed 60,000 deaths, about the same as the flu. Our stringent "stay-at-home" measures were unnecessary. It is faulty reasoning on several counts. As I noted on Facebook, "We didn't lock down the country to try to prevent 60,000 deaths; we locked down the country to limit deaths to 60,000 (or whatever the ultimate toll is)." (See The Absurd Case against the Coronavirus Lockdown)

By March 31, the tally of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. doubled every three days. Had that rate continued, there would have been 275,000 deaths by April 21. Instead, we had 40,000. The doubling rate has stretched to nine days. We flattened the curve. We do not know the exact rate at which deaths would have multiplied had we not acted, but it is certain it would have been much higher. Slowing the fatalities prevents medical facilities from becoming overwhelmed and ensures that each new hospitalized victim gets optimal care, thus dampening the fatality rate over the course of the pandemic.

Furthermore, the 60,000 flu deaths represent the total for an entire year. In the U.S., COVID-19 is barely two months old. This is like looking at a baseball player's strikeout totals for the previous season, comparing them with his total strikeouts for his first month of the following year, and upon seeing they are about the same, concluding he is doing okay. What will the death count comparison be like a year from now?

Finally, comparing deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 to the Center for Disease Control's flu death total is invalid. (1) The reported flu deaths are calculated using an algorithm. (2) Over the last six years, the number of flu deaths officially coded as such (direct or comorbidity) ranged from 3,448 to 15,620 (See Jeremy Samuel Faust.) The CDC believes flu deaths are underreported for a variety of reasons. Instead of official tabulations, they take the number of flu and pneumonia hospitalizations and report a percentage of them as flu deaths. According to Faust, the result is about six times more flu deaths than the officially reported number each year. (Faust is critical of CDC methods, believing it significantly overstates the death total. I have no way of evaluating that.)

Recent analysis indicates the official COVID-19 count is a significant undercount. Using average numbers of deaths up to a particular point in the year from recent years, analysts are finding sharp rises in the number of fatalities where COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred. Yet, the officially reported COVID-19 deaths account for only half the increase in deaths. That suggests the true COVID-19 impact may be much higher (double?) than the official account. (See here) 

As of today, May 5, we have 70,000 officially reported deaths. So if you want to make legitimate comparisons, it is 70,000 versus about 9,500 for officially reported deaths. Using algorithms to capture unreported deaths, the comparison is more likely something like 100,000+ deaths to 60,000 deaths. And this is comparing COVID-19's first quarter to an entire flu season.

COVID-19 is not just the flu.

1 "Official." A CDC database tracks COVID-19  deaths reported through official channels. Their provisional death count in the National Vital Statistics System shows almost 40,000 COVID-19 deaths. They note that it can take weeks for deaths to make it into the NVSS. The numbers for past weeks are revised as the data is received. The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System is the source for the numbers we typically see in the media and an up to date report of confirmed and probable deaths. That total stands at about 70,000 today. I am using this number as the "official" count. (Source: Did the CDC Significantly 'Readjust COVID-19 Death Numbers'?)

2 Center for Disease Control, Frequently Asked Questions about Estimated Flu Burden. "How many adults die from flu each year?: Flu deaths in adults are not nationally notifiable. In order to monitor influenza related deaths in all age groups, CDC tracks pneumonia and influenza (P&I)–attributed deaths through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Mortality Reporting System. This system tracks the proportion of death certificates processed that list pneumonia or influenza as the underlying or contributing cause of death. This system provides an overall indication of whether flu-associated deaths are elevated, but does not provide an exact number of how many people died from flu. As it does for the numbers of flu cases, doctor's visits and hospitalizations, CDC also estimates deaths in the United States using mathematical modeling. CDC estimates that from 2010-2011 to 2017-2018, influenza-associated deaths in the United States ranged from a low of 12,000 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 79,000 (during 2017-2018). The model used to estimate flu-associated deaths uses a ratio of deaths-to-hospitalizations in order to estimate the total flu-related deaths during a season." The site offers links for those wanting more detail.

 

Billionaires do NOT pay an overall tax rate lower than the bottom 50%.

Two months ago, the New York Times uncritically ran an article claiming billionaires pay lower tax rates than the bottom half of American earners. (I see this and related pieces circulated by my progressive friends.) The unsubstantiated and yet-to-be-reviewed data came from economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, a tease to promote their soon-to-be-released book. Their claim is contrary to other economic entities that monitor and study taxation. Once the book was released, the methodology became public. The methodology conflicts with the methodology they used just a few years ago in peer-reviewed research.

I am not a tax expert, but I have tried to follow the discussion. Econofact gives one of the best summaries of the claim. (Are Taxes (And Also Spending) Progressive?) A couple of observations:

"In their book, Saez and Zucman reach conclusions that are at odds with a variety of previous studies. … What explains the difference? Relative to previous estimates, the current choices and assumptions made by Saez and Zucman generate higher estimates of income among high-income households, and of taxes on low-income households."

"Considering only positive tax payments gives an incomplete picture of the tax system. Some taxes are "refundable" and actually offer credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). These credits can create negative tax liability for households. For example, if a household pays $1000 in a given year but receives $1,500 in an earned income tax credit, on balance, they have paid negative taxes. Conventional analyses count programs such as the EITC and the CTC as negative taxes, but Saez and Zucman exclude these credits from their analysis, making the tax system look more regressive than other studies show."

Taking this a step further, assume you have an income of $10,000 and tax credits that net you $5,000. You have $15,000 to spend. Assume the local sales tax is 10%. You pay $1,500 in local sales taxes. But these economists don't count the credits. So the tax rate is effectively 15% because the denominator by which you divide $1,500 is $10,000, not $15,000. It artificially inflates the tax burden even more. They do other "unique" things, like count health insurance premiums as taxes. 

On a further note, these two economists are key economic advisors to the Elizabeth Warren presidential campaign, and this book was written and released to support her political objectives, not as a scholarly analysis.

I am not defending billionaires or the present tax system. A factual claim was made concerning billionaires and taxes. Is it true? Outside of these two economists writing with a clearly partisan objective and using unorthodox methods, there is no support for the claim. A disdain for billionaires and a passion about inequality does not make the claim accurate.

The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We're All Dead - Book Review

The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We're All Dead  (Quotes are from the e-book version.)

Is economics value-free? Can it be? In the nineteenth century, economics emerged alongside other social sciences, aspiring to apply the scientific method to study human behavior. Economists distinguish positive and normative economics - positive being descriptive and normative being prescriptive. The latter requires value judgments, making it beyond the realm of science. While an economist may wish to offer their perspective on what should be done, economics eschews prescriptive behavior. But is that the way economics works?

In The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We're All Dead, Dr. Victor Claar, professor of economics at Florida Gulf Coast University, and Dr. Greg Forster, Director of the Okonomia Network at Trinity International University, argue the story economists tell about themselves does not match reality. Simply reading the book title, one might assume this is another installment in the ongoing battle between Keynesianism economics and other economic theories. It is not. The authors say something transformative happened in the 1930s with the rise of John Maynard Keynes' economics, misshaping the discipline. Virtually the entire discipline (including the free-market Chicago school and Austrian economics) battles about a means to an end from within the Keynesian framework. The authors conclude with thoughts on a reforming agenda but first take us on a rich historical journey.

"Economics" Before the Nineteenth Century

Until the nineteenth century, "economics" was part of moral philosophy - political economy. Philosophers and theologians made normative appeals for economic behavior. Human existence has ultimate purposes. They inseparably connected their normative prescriptions to teleological realities. The authors identify a succession of three ethical paradigms related to economic thought over the millennia.

Nature paradigm – Classical philosophy. "What sets classical thought apart is the idea that nature has purposes, and human excellence is fulfilling those purposes." Wisdom comes from correctly understanding nature and its purposes. From this wisdom, we shape our daily affairs, including economic activity.

God paradigm – Judeo-Christian theology. "It began with the assumption that human beings are created by and under the authority of God and are placed both within and over nature by God. Their economic needs and behaviors are structured by God's design in creation and are being restored to that design through the redemption of the world in Christ, so conformity to God and his purposes was their standard for economic thought."

Reason paradigm – Born in Enlightenment philosophy. "It began with the assumption that human beings are rational, and their economic needs and behaviors can be understood and arranged rationally, so conformity to reason and its purposes (they understood 'reason' to include moral reason, including teleology or purposes) was their standard for economic thought."

Claar and Forster revisit these three historic paradigms throughout the book, demonstrating their normative and teleological components in contrast with Keynes emerging philosophy in the 1930s. The authors identify a fourth paradigm with Keynes, the Consumption paradigm. So how did the Consumption paradigm emerge?

The Beginning of Modern Economics

As scholars labored to establish economics in the late nineteenth century, there was substantial intra-disciplinary conflict about how to proceed; differing on what roles historicism, theory, and science should play. (The book gives some great history.) John Neville Keynes, John Maynard Keynes' father, assumed the role of peacemaker. He popularized the "positive versus normative" frame and worked to move scholars beyond endless squabbling toward productive research, thereby gaining credibility for the discipline.

Despite these ambitions, economics was not born in a vacuum. From the 1890s to World War I, societal gatekeepers saw themselves as stewards of a moral and cultural order, envisioning evermore progress and human improvement in keeping with the Reason paradigm. Decades before, John Stuart Mill had introduced homo economicus, human beings as rational, utility-calculating machines. Mill and these later economists retained at least a sense of the progress teleology, even as they began to apply the scientific method to evaluating behavior. Homo economicus was a knowingly simplified anthropology, but with research, one might imagine revision and nuance could be brought to bear over time. A variety of social changes in the years before and through World War I rocked confidence in the progress narrative, leaving the discipline adrift. Enter John Maynard Keynes.

The Keynesian Revolution

We frequently view John Maynard Keynes as a tedious academic. In reality, Keynes was a core member of the highly influential Bloomsbury Group in London, a collection of intellectuals and artists including Leonard and Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Clive and Vanessa (Woolf) Bell, Duncan Grant, and Lytton Strachey. In Keynes's words, they embraced an "immoralist" philosophy devoted to pursuing pleasure. "Though they weren't sure what the highest forms of pleasure might be, their sense was that they could be found only among their greatest loves—in intimate relationships and in things like the arts, theater, and music—rather than in more pedestrian forms of enjoyment."

The Bloomsbury Group was disdainful of traditional values. This included values like diligence, frugality, and self-control, found in the Reason paradigm. Wealth accumulation and consumerism were dehumanizing influences obstructing the pursuit of pleasure. However, they believed only a select few could pursue pleasure as they envisioned. A materialistic bourgeois existence was the best for which the rest of humanity could hope. It was the task of the elite to shepherd the masses toward this end as the elite went about their higher pursuit of pleasure. Claar and Forster walk us through how Keynes' economics reflects this philosophy, but I will jump to a couple of takeaways for the sake of brevity.

The most revolutionary effect of Keynes' influence is his reshaping of means and ends. Mill introduced homo economicus as a rudimentary construct to aid in economic inquiry, not a characterization of human essence. Within Mill's construct was an assumption that we will rationally discern and pursue certain ends. Reason is the means for choosing between various courses of action to achieve those ends. These ends include teleological ends.

Keynes retains the idea of homo economicus but with substantial revision. With Keynes, there is no teleological purpose to guide economic behavior. "Animal spirits" drive human behavior, not reason, in pursuit of meaningful action. Reason is how each individual can best satisfy animalistic desires. Consumption to meet these desires takes center stage. For Keynes, homo economicus is not simply a methodological construct. It is an anthropological given. We must base economic policy on this premise.

In the General Theory [Keynes seminal book), economics abandons its nineteenth-century ambition to moral neutrality. It no longer seeks a place alongside chemistry and physics as a detached, disinterested, purely positive observer. It becomes, once again, a practical discipline with a moral vision.

But now the moral vision is radically different. Instead of the virtue, piety, or the progress of humanity, the moral vision of the General Theory is an animalistic homo economicus whose only economic goal is to satisfy his own consumption appetites. …

Another aspect of Keynes' influence is his introduction of "the economy." Before Keynes, economics was microeconomics. It was focused on how individuals, firms, and other players make decisions. Keynes introduced macroeconomics, focusing on the aggregate economic phenomenon for a nation or other large societal entity - money supply, interest rates, aggregate employment, gross domestic product, etc. Macroeconomics dominated the discipline to the point that when people hear "economics" today, they think of macroeconomic concepts.

For Keynes, "The economy" is a machine-like entity employed by elites like himself and members of the Bloomsbury Group in transmuting humanity to an elevated state. Keynes was sympathetic to socialist aims, but he writes:

It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary.

The authors note:

Keynes shares Marx's goal of giving the state control over our economic lives, which is to say, over all the most intimate and important decisions we make. He just thinks the state can accomplish this control without seizing ownership of assets.

The authors paraphrase Keynes' view this way:

In an ideal state, we would 'transmute' human nature, raising people not to care how much money they end up with after playing the "game" of money-making. However, for now we need to keep the game going. If we stop, we'll have nothing to eat; the economy runs not on productive work but on satisfying consumer appetites. Thus it is the responsibility of government to keep the game going. Keeping the game going involves all the players being highly motivated and playing to win—"strongly addicted to the money-making passion." The wise and prudent statesman will therefore "manage" human nature, keeping it in a state of socially beneficial greed , rather than attempt to "transmute" it toward real selflessness, at least so long as we live in the current state and not the ideal state.

Keynes has a vision of where he wants to take feckless humanity. His superior wisdom and that of people like his Bloomsbury peers will lead us there. Pragmatically, it must be done with manipulation. Moreover, some will never be transmuted. Keynes had an answer for that. He was chair of the British Eugenics Society from 1937-1944. He deemed eugenics to be the most important branch of sociology.

Keynesianism and Its Rivals

Claar and Forster explain Keynes was not particularly eloquent in expressing his ideas. Articulate acolytes popularized his economic constructs. For decades, Paul Samuelson, Nobel economist and author of the leading economics textbook, was probably the most important figure in advancing Keynesian ideas. However, these advocates made substantial qualifications to give us what we know as Keynesianism today.

The Keynesian advocates muted Keynes' crusading vision and reclaimed the idea of economics as a value-free science. However, they continued to embrace the view that people are bundles of appetites driven by animal spirits – Keynes' version of homo economicus. The goal should be to maximize consumption, enabling people to satisfy their appetites. Economists should guide the economy machine in these pursuits. This was the Consumption paradigm. It effectively institutionalized Keynes's homo economicus while eschewing teleological judgments.

The Chicago School (and the older but smaller Austrian School) emerged as the primary competition to Keynesian economics, rejecting Keynesian interventionism in favor of free market systems. They resisted "economics" as purely about large aggregate concepts and called for greater attention to microeconomic decision-making. Claar and Forster write:

However, the attention-grabbing conflict between these schools conceals a deeper uniformity. Both counter-revolutions accept most of the key elements of the Consumption paradigm. Most importantly, they accept Keynes' redefinition of the purpose of economic systems: to maximize consumption possibilities. They also accept Keynes' redefinition of Mill's homo economicus, which lay at the heart of the new focus on maximizing consumer satisfaction—they accept the instrumental rather than substantive understanding of rationality, and they accept the reversal of the relationship between gaining wealth and enjoying wealth.

The Keynesian constructs became so dominant that even schools that emerged to challenge aspects of Keynesian economics have internalized core Keynesian concepts.

The Consequences

The consequences extend well beyond an intra-disciplinary dispute. To a degree unparalleled by other social sciences, economics has succeeded in exerting influence over public policy and commerce, which has had ripple effects on other societal institutions. With varying degrees of resistance, homo economicus is largely how we institutionally treat our existence.

The problem, the authors would argue, is that we are not homo economicus. Human beings are meaning-makers. We see ourselves inside teleological narratives. We want not only to experience pleasure but also to participate in activities with lasting significance. We have not only consumption preferences but also production preferences. The impact of homo economicus is a world with greater prosperity, but that is largely vacant of meaning. In an existential sense, "we are all dead." This lack of meaning has people restless and increasingly impatient with societal institutions. A consequence is the rise in populism ranging from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders, amassing power by feeding on palpable anger and frustration.

The empty economy produces polarization, because our daily economic activities no longer convey meaning and purpose (leaving us to seek those things in extreme movements) and because our daily economic activities no longer establish shared, public moral commitments (leaving us convinced we have no common ground with our neighbors). 

A Way Forward

"What would it look like to study economics on the assumption that people really do have higher purposes in life, but that we need not agree about everything concerning those purposes?"

The authors argue that the way forward is to escape the Consumption paradigm with its "animal spirits" anthropology and revisit teleological and anthropological assumptions. We may not thoroughly agree on every value across nations and cultures or even within them, but our values have much more in common than we may think. Some things are good whether everyone chooses to do them.

* People have production preferences as well as consumption preferences, including a desire to participate personally in the production of the intrinsically good. A sustainable economic life must account for both types of preferences (production and consumption) at the individual and cultural level.

* Production preferences can also be understood as stewardship preferences, meaning a desire to leave the world with more intrinsic good than it had when we arrived. A sustainable economic life must account in complex ways with the long-term time frames within which people make cost-benefit calculations, at the individual and cultural level.

* People are substantive reasoners who have the right and responsibility to discern the intrinsic good for themselves and participate personally in its production. A sustainable economic life must make this personal process of discernment and participation, not impersonal aggregate metrics, the goal of economic policy and discourse.

To conclude the book, the authors write:

In the long run, we are all dead—but life will go on when we are gone. We all know this, and in our economic lives we do not always behave as shallow, short-term consumers who don't care what we leave behind. If the discipline of economics wants to understand economic behavior as it really is, it must come to terms with the moral reality of human life. To ignore normative and teleological realities is to ignore the human, and to ignore the human is strange way to conduct a scientific study of how humans behave.

If we do not care what kind of world we are leaving, our economic systems will continue to be wracked by moral anxiety and the outrage it produces. Nationalists and socialists have their own reasons for wanting to block any movement toward a moral renewal that would restore confidence in our systems, but the rest of us should be seeking such a renewal with all the energy that the urgency of our situation demands. A return to economic vitality must begin with a restoration of confidence in our economic systems and practices, on the basis of a sustainable moral consensus for a pluralistic society.

We love economics. We love it because it matters—a lot. Tough new questions that overturn old certainties are already being asked in the discipline. We look forward to finding out what comes next.

Assessment

In short: teleology matters. Claar and Forster pack a lot into this book. My summary only scratches the surface. It is well worth the read for economists and those who think more broadly about economics and values. While I work to be conversant with economics and the history of economic thought, I am not an expert in either of these fields. People with better bona fides must evaluate the veracity of details presented in this book. Yet based on what I know, the overall argument rings true.

The history of how the Consumption paradigm came to dominate economics - with economists simultaneously fixating on consumption and claiming to be value-free - is helpful. There is no way to do social science without anthropological models and value assumptions. Economics is no exception. Homo economicus may be useful as a methodological tool for aspects of economic research, but it is insufficient as a model for grasping the complexities of human decision-making. I do not think that economics has so much rejected teleology, as it has uncritically embraced a teleology that is inadequate and subhuman.

I sense a discussion has been building on this topic in recent years. As with other social sciences, there seems to be an ongoing clash between those pursuing a grand unified theory and those who prefer more modest research into micro-level behavior from which larger models of human behavior can be derived. Unlike other social sciences, economics is unique in that "economics" and the concept of "the economy," a machine that can be directed toward particular ends by skillful elites, has gained considerable credibility in broader society. That likely makes challenges to macroeconomic models more difficult, but the importance of economics in policymaking also underscores the importance of getting underlying models of humanity right.

The book's most critical point is that "we are all dead." Human beings have a desire for the transcendent, to be a part of something meaningful, to pass on a legacy. Teleology matters. To use the authors' words, there is a production preference and a consumption preference. The Consumption paradigm is dehumanizing in that it robs people across economic strata of meaning-filled work. Resurrection of meaning in daily life will have to come from moral institutions outside of economics, but we cannot realize that ambition of understanding human decisions without economics. If economics is a study of human behavior, can it be said to be to accomplish its mission if it ignores the production preference aspects of human decision-making?

I appreciate the authors' advocacy for finding common ground on teleology across human cultures. Maybe a first step is for those of us invested in moral institutions to clarify our own values. As someone who has invested decades of service to Mainline Protestantism, it strikes me that there is a profound need for Christian theology to engage economics genuinely and respectfully and to move away from what all too often is a sophomoric and adversarial posture. Repeatedly, I encounter theologians and Christian thought leaders pontificating on economic issues, demonstrating they have not made the most rudimentary attempts to grasp basic economic concepts or represent those concepts faithfully. Theologism is all too common, but that is a conversation for another day. For now, we have this thought-provoking tome by Claar and Forster as a point of engagement. It is well worth the read.

 

Maternal Mortality Rates Are 27 Times Higher Globally Than In Europe. Why That Is A Good Thing

The chart below is based on maternal mortality rates, the number of women per 100,000 who die from pregnancy-related causes in a year. The first bar shows how many women die each year, while the second bar shows how many would die if they had Europe's living standards. What conclusions would you draw?

The global rate is 216, while the European rate is 8. The global rate is 27 times higher! About 290,000 women die each year because they do not have the living standards of the most affluent countries.

I would hope this would spark a sense of injustice. Something is wrong with a system that creates such a disparity in outcomes. Surely, we must upend this inequitable system and replace it with something just.

Now look at the second chart. What conclusions would you draw?

Before 1800, the global maternal mortality rate was 900. Today it is 216! It has dropped by 75%. By historical standards, this borders on miraculous. Something is right about a system that radically improves human well-being. How can we preserve and extend the improvement? (Note: The global rate dropped steadily from 385 in 1990 to 216 in 2015. The trajectory continues rapidly downward.)

A holistic view of human well-being will consider this chart, including all three bars.

Some observations.

First, we would have a more equitable maternal mortality rate without the systems that developed over the past two centuries. No place on earth would have a rate of eight deaths OR 216 deaths. We would still have a very equitable world of 900 deaths. Is that "equality" preferable to today's eight vs. 216 inequality? I do not think many would agree. The eight vs. 216 differential is good relative to the historical alternative.

Second, that some locales have a rate of eight, points to the possibility of a world where this level of well-being spans the globe. Justice requires that we pursue this equitable outcome. We must look back to understand what brought us to where we are and be discerning about obstacles blocking this objective going forward.

Third, I am using maternal mortality rates as a symbol of broader improvement in human well-being in recent generations, sometimes called the Great Divergence. Appreciating this significant divergence from human history neither requires us, in some consequentialist way, to a) embrace all that has developed in the past couple of centuries nor b) to refrain from asking rigorous questions about justice going forward. There have been profound injustices and inequities in the past two centuries. There are today. And yet, the Great Divergence happened, and it continues. Lack of historical context and blindness to trajectories can lead us to snap-shot-in-time views that inspire us to well-intentioned but destructive actions, destroying good in the process. Keep what works and adjust with discernment. Neither revolution nor complacency will do.

Why Population Control Is Not The Answer to Climate Change

Population control is sometimes championed as a way to fight climate change. Bernie Sanders recently raised this idea. The world population is growing. There are 7.7 billion people today. According to United Nations estimates, there will be nearly 11 billion in 2100. Extra people mean extra CO2 emissions. While two children per woman may seem reasonable, women in the poorest countries can average five or sex. Sanders and others believe this excess fertility is why the world population is growing. Fewer children will mean less CO2. Unfortunately, this perception is decades out of date.

We are already at "peak children." Globally, there are 680 million children under the age of five. U.N. projections show a peak of 700 million in about 2060. There are projected to be 650 million children in 2100, fewer than today. Yet the overall population will grow by nearly 50%. How can that be? The compounding effect of people already born will drive population growth over the next century, not excessive birth rates.

Trends in Fertility

Assume women have two children over their lifetime. They replace themselves and one other. Population size will be stable from generation to generation. (The actual replacement fertility rate for an affluent nation is 2.1 children per woman.) Throughout history, the total fertility rate has been six or seven children. One-quarter of children died before their first birthday. Another sizable percentage died before age five. Many of those who made it past five died before marrying and having children. High fertility rates ensured a couple of children would survive to continue the family.

As affluence emerged and health practices changed (first in Europe and then spreading elsewhere), more children survived into adulthood. We needed fewer births to perpetuate a family, but it took a while for customs related to fertility to adjust downward. That lag between declining death and fertility rates led to the population explosion that began two centuries ago. That growth accelerated into the twentieth century and continues into its final stages today. As recently as the 1960s, the global total fertility rate was as high as five children per woman.

Today, the global total fertility rate is about 2.4 and dropping, but the rate is not evenly spread worldwide. Europe, the Americas, China, Japan, and other regions have fertility rates below the replacement rate, well below it in many nations. A handful of smaller poor countries have fertility rates of five or six, but they also have some of the highest child death rates. The world average is fast approaching the 2.1 replacement rate. However, because the global fertility rate has usually been higher than the replacement rate for most of us now living, it means the cohort of people born one year is usually larger than those born the previous year. So let us think about what that means for the future.

The Compounding Effect in Future Fertility

To keep things simple, assume going forward that we birth the same number of children each year, the death rate stays the same, and no one lives past one hundred years. Now say there are 100,000 people aged 100. By next year, all will have died. The group that was 99 will now be 100. Because more of them were born, there will now be maybe 105,000 people 100 years old. After two years have passed, the new group of 100 hundred-year-old people will be the people who are 98 years old today. They will be a still larger group. That will continue for one hundred years.

At the other end of the age continuum, we have the largest number of children ever born in a year and the largest age cohort alive. A year later, this youngest age cohort will replace a smaller cohort a year older than them. But keep in mind that the number of women of childbearing age will increase yearly for the next forty-five years. Therefore, each year the total fertility rate will need to fall slightly below the replacement rate if the population is to stabilize. It can then rise to the replacement rate after forty-five years. This will continue until 2120, when each age cohort is the largest age cohort that has ever existed for that age. This is the primary driver of population growth in the future, but there is at least one other key factor. (Clearly, I am oversimplifying to illustrate my point. We are not down to replacement rate fertility, so there is still some marginal population growth due to "excess" fertility.)

Furthermore, actual global death rates are not constant. They are dropping. People are living longer. So not only is each age cohort larger than before, but it is also living slightly longer. This, too, contributes to population growth over the coming decades.

Therefore, we would need considerably less than replacement-rate fertility to limit global population growth substantially. In fact, there are credible projections of a population peak of fewer than nine billion. Demographers once assumed transition to low fertility and death rates would stabilize at about the replacement rate. Instead, the fertility rate has dropped well below the replacement rate in nearly every affluent nation, in some cases nearly one child per woman. This may look like a good thing from the narrow view of CO2 emissions. From a holistic standpoint, many social scientists are troubled. Depopulation can be as destructive to human well-being as overpopulation.

The Depopulation Problem

A vibrant society needs a critical mass of productive workers relative to its dependents (primarily children and the elderly.) This is the dependency ratio (dependents divided by workers multiplied by 100). With excessively low fertility rates, it is possible to have a great imbalance with many seniors and too few workers to provide for society. We have already seen that current U.N. projections say we will have nearly the same number of children now as in 2100, but the overall population will be almost 50% larger at eleven billion. That growth is a consequence of a burgeoning number of elders. A smaller population of nine billion may mean fewer total people but an even worse dependency ratio.

Modest help may come from lengthening the number of years people work or a higher participation rate in the workforce for working-age people but at some point, that will be insufficient. Then consider the possibility of medical breakthroughs that cure cancer or dramatically reduce heart disease. That means more people living longer, intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance.

As an ever-shrinking number of people (potentially a minority of the population) is expected to support everyone else, improving living standards will begin to stall and possibly reverse, making the world ripe for any societal dysfunctions. It will not take eighty years for this challenge to become real. Japan is already struggling with these issues. China is already headed down this road. One can envision China opening up to immigration from the remaining regions with the highest fertility rate and investing its resources in growth economies. However, if every nation is headed to fertility rates well below the replacement rates, it is only a temporary fix. The dependency ratio for a world with eleven billion people is already a challenge. The only way to get a peak population under nine billion people is to achieve fertility rates well below replacement rates, substantially intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance just a generation or two down the road. (For more detail, see the Brookings' piece, How will we cope when there are too few young people in the world?)

Decoupled Economic Growth

At the most basic level, climate policy must be about economic growth decoupled from CO2 emissions. Population growth is one issue driving this need for economic growth. But also consider people are advocating for a $15 living wage for every worker in the United States. That would put nearly every U.S. worker in the top 10% of wage earners in the world. Meanwhile, despite astonishing improvements in human well-being around the world and the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty, there are still hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty. A couple billion more have more stable lives but still live well below standards we would consider tolerable. If it is a matter of justice that everyone in the U.S. has a $ 15-an-hour living standard, then it is only just that all citizens of the world have something approximating that standard. The only way that happens is through economic growth. Measures like population control are shortsighted and potentially disastrous. The principal mission is decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel consumption and other disruptive measures like decoupling land use from agricultural production.

Global Childhood Deaths In Steep Decline

Worldwide, there were 12.6 million deaths of children under five in 1990. As of 2017, there were 5.4 million. Keep in mind that the world population grew by 50% during this time. Had death rates continued at the 1990 rate, there would have been about 19 million childhood deaths.

(Where in the world are children dying.)

Our ancestors did not live in balance with nature. They died in balance with it.

One of the most important observations (among many) from the late Hans Roslings' Factfulness:

When a population is not growing over a long period of time, and the population curve is flat, this must mean that each generation of new parents is the same size as the previous one. For thousands of years up to 1800 the population curve was almost flat. Have you heard people say that humans used to live in balance with nature?

Well, yes, there was a balance. But let's avoid the rose-tinted glasses. Until 1800, women gave birth to six children on average. So the population should have increased with each generation. Instead, it stayed more or less stable. Remember the child skeletons in the graveyards of the past? On average four of six children died before becoming parents themselves, leaving just two surviving children to parent the next generation. There was a balance. It wasn't because humans lived in balance with nature. Humans died in balance with nature. It was utterly brutal and tragic.

Today, humanity is once again reaching a balance. The number of parents is no longer increasing. But this balance is dramatically different from the old balance. The new balance is nice: the typical parents have two children, and neither of them dies. For the first time in history, we live in balance. (pp. 87-88)

Demographers refer to this as the Demographic Transition – the move from high fertility and mortality rates to low fertility and mortality rates. A few centuries ago, living standards in some regions began to rise via technology, specialization of labor, and extensive trade. That trend dramatically accelerated about 250 years ago with the Industrial Revolution. Fewer people died young, and more people lived to old age, but the fertility rate lagged in its decline. The population explosion of recent generations was due to this lagging decrease in the fertility rate relative to the falling mortality rate.

The Demographic Transition began in Europe, but we have seen it repeated in every part of the world in recent generations. The global fertility rate is now below 2.5 children per woman, down from 5.0 fifty years ago and heading toward "balance" at 2.1 children within about twenty years.* Furthermore, life expectancy at birth in recent generations has risen from about thirty years throughout human history to seventy-tw0 today – in excess of eighty in some affluent countries.

Every time I reflect on these numbers, I think of Isaiah 66:20, where Isaiah describes the new creation:

Babies in Jerusalem will no longer live only a few days. Old people will not fail to live for a very long time. Those who live to the age of 100 will be thought of as still being young when they die. Those who die before they are 100 will be considered as having been cursed by God.

We are approaching that reality. The world we live in today was positively Utopian until the past generation or two.

We did not get here by being content to die in harmony with nature. We decoupled from nature. We become radically more innovative and productive. The key to future well-being and the planet's welfare lies in greater decoupling – climate-friendly fuels, environment-friendly production, more productive agriculture, and the eventual transition to endlessly recycled materials. It must be a world where everyone experiences abundance through participation in productivity and exchange networks. That is what "living in balance with nature" truly is.

(Note: At replacement rate fertility, the global population will grow from about 7.7 billion to between nine and eleven billion by the century's end. The children born in 2020 will likely have children at about the replacement rate. However, the population born in 2010 is larger than the coming 2020 population, and the population born in 2000 is larger than in 2010. If all these age cohorts replace themselves in the next few decades, the population will continue to grow but at a decelerating rate.)

Why I Have Never Met a Neoliberal

I recently rediscovered this excellent blog post I read last year, The problem with "critical" studies. Joseph Heath's observations about the term neoliberal are spot on. This explains why I have never met one, and likely neither have you.

"For instance, I had noticed a long time ago that the term "neoliberal" functions as the most important piece of cryptonormative vocabulary in critical studies. For those who don't know, here's the basic problem with "neoliberalism." It's a made-up thing. It's just a word that Foucault popularized, to talk about economic ideas that he didn't really understand. There is no group of people out there who actually describe themselves as a neoliberals. Because of this, there are no constraints on what it can refer to, and there is no one to answer any of the criticisms that are made of it. Compare that to terms like "conservative" or "libertarian." Because there are real people who call themselves "libertarian," if you write something that criticizes libertarianism, an actual libertarian might write back and contest what you say. With "neoliberalism," on the other hand, you can say whatever you want, without any fear that a real-life neoliberal will write back and contest your claims – because there are none. As a result, people who use this term in their writing are basically announcing, up front, that their intended audience is the left-wing academic echo chamber. After all, if they wanted to engage with people outside that chamber, they would have to address one or more of the ideologies that are actually, and self-consciously, held by people outside that chamber. (In this respect, people who criticize neoliberalism are the cowardly lions of academia. If you think you've got what it takes, why not go out and find an actual right-winger to argue with?)

The fact that there are no self-identified neoliberals in the world does, however, have one desired consequence. Use of the term limits one's audience to those who share the underlying normative judgment, allowing academics to feel completely unanimous in their belief that neoliberalism is a bad thing. As a result, no one ever feels obliged to say what is so bad about it."

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Socialism Is A Freighted Word According To David Bentley Hart. So Why Is He Defending It?

Theologian David Bentley Hart wrote an op-ed Can We Please Relax About 'Socialism'. The byline says, "Only in America is the word freighted with so much perceived menace." As he frames it, socialism is simply about creating a more equitable economy, not about recreating the Soviet Union or Venezuela. This is what people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are promoting.

What Hart is describing is social democracy, not socialism. Democratic socialism is the systematic transformation of capitalism (private ownership and market exchange) into socialism (state ownership and control of the economy), while social democrats embrace capitalism, looking for ways to make it more equitable. Social democrats and democratic socialists may dovetail on some incremental policies, but they have divergent missions.

Let's assume Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and others want a more equitable market system of government. Let's go further and agree with Hart's questionable protest that this is all socialism means. Hart acknowledges that "socialism" is a freighted word. Why are they using a freighted word to describe their position? People promote similar policies all over the world without using this language and have done it for generations in the United States. They choose the word precisely because it is inflammatory. They are populist demagogues.

Trump and the Freedom Caucus go out of their way to frame things to maximize enemy outrage while communicating to the base that they are the reasonable ones at war with the crazies. That is why Sanders, AOC, and Hart say "socialism." In their communication strategy, the hyperbolic Fox News response to "socialism" is not a bug. It is the objective. It maximizes their enemies' ire and stokes their base's commitment. As with Trump, the specific policy prescriptions are not serious but serve to antagonize enemies and keep a base, giving them power from which to accomplish other agendas.

Hart is wrong about Europe. While there are cadres of democratic socialists throughout Europe, there are no democratic socialist governments. There are a great many social democracies. "Socialism" is not a widely embraced term. Sweden experimented with democratic socialism from the 1970s to the 1990s before returning to their present social democratic capitalism.

Furthermore, Scandinavian countries are among the most free-market countries in the world. Their generous social safety net is oriented around capitalist self-interest, not a sense of altruism. They designed their nets to maximize the productivity of people in their capitalist economy. This is not Democratic Socialism.

The Democratic Socialists of America, to which Sanders and OAC give allegiance, has as their stated aim not to create a more equitable capitalism but the incremental and systematic replacement of capitalism with socialism. So, while I have no doubt the Fox family goes to hyperbolic lengths to stoke fears, their base criticism is legitimate. This is the Left's Tea Party/Freedom Caucus moment. The answer to our problems is a winsome person who can mobilize a sizeable majority to embrace prudent solutions, not another populist fringe to counter the right's populist fringe. Unfortunately, all I read of Hart is an audition to be a Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell, Jr., in the Left's version of the Freedom Caucus.

(If you want to be more informed about comparative economic systems, I recommend this excellent piece by economist Timothy Taylor, Capitalism with Scandinavian characteristics. This Finnish-American offers insights into the role of the welfare system in Nordic countries, What Americans Don't Get About Nordic Countries. And from Denmark prime minister, Denmark's prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country socialist.)

Extreme Poverty is Vanishing. What Does That Mean in Practical Terms?

Throughout human history, 90% of people have lived at a subsistence level - at or under what economists today call the extreme poverty line. Between 1820 and 1980, that percentage shrank by half to 44%. Between 1980 and 2005, it halved again to about 22%. During the next ten years, it has more than halved to less than 10%. Remember that while these percentages were shrinking, the global population grew from one billion to more than seven billion.

That is all good, but most people don't relate well to statistics. Is there some way to visually capture what this means in concrete terms?

Gapminder has an excellent graph that gives a sense of what it means to move from extreme poverty. The left column indicates how the extremely poor live relative to the features listed on the left. The second column is indicative of the life to which they emerged. 

The graph is also instructive in dividing living standards into four levels. Many of us who went to school in the 1960s to 1990s have tended to see a binary world - developed and undeveloped, first world and third world, rich and poor, the West and the rest. That has ceased to be the case. It has been on a trajectory away from a binary world all during our lifetimes. At the bottom of the graph, you will see seven yellow human figures. Each stand for one billion people. Most of the world is now concentrated in the middle and moving upward or to the right in this chart. The percentage of people in level one is now well below one billion and shrinking rapidly.

Gapminder Dollar Street has visited 264 families worldwide and taken photos of their homes and belongings. The links to photos of the households are arranged in columns like the chart, allowing you to walk through the houses and get a sense of what it means to live at various living standards. It is an excellent resource.

European (Scandinavian) Capitalism is not Democratic Socialism (But is that what matters?)

Mall of Scandinavia. Wikimedia: Arild Vågen

I continue to reflect on the hype in the U.S. about "democratic socialism." I think most people who use the term are saying they want a market economy with a greater emphasis on social justice (open to varying definitions) and promoting basic human well-being. When pressed to give an example, they typically point to Scandinavian economies. Yet these countries do not consider themselves socialist in the least. In fact, Sweden embraced a move toward true democratic socialism from the 1970s until the mid-1990s. Living standards dropped, debt increased, and the overall economy fared poorly. They have now embraced market economics while providing a carefully crafted welfare system. People truly committed to democratic socialism, while appreciating some features of Scandinavian economies, find them an unsuitable compromise. These countries might be characterized as social democracies, but they are not democratic socialist. As the Democratic Socialists of America party makes clear, they seek the eventual elimination of capitalism (market exchange and private ownership) through democratic means over time. These Scandinavian economies are, at best, a step along a progression to an ultimate socialist end. Being clear about our terms is important, but my concern runs deeper.

I just came across an excellent piece about comparative economic systems, Capitalism with Scandinavian characteristics. Economist Timothy Taylor writes it. You may know him from the Great Courses class on economics. Taylor tackles some of the issues I just raised and more. But I particularly resonate with the closing paragraph of his piece.

"It seems inaccurate to me to label the Scandinavian model of capitalism as "socialism," but arguing over definitions of imprecise and emotionally charged terms is a waste of breath. What does bother me is when the "socialist" label becomes a substitute for actually studying the details of how different varieties of capitalism have functioned and malfunctioned, with an eye to what concrete lessons can be learned."

Bingo! My concern with the "democratic socialist" label is not a predilection toward etymology. We need to be clear about what we mean. If your vision is something akin to Nordic capitalism (aspects of which I find very positive), using terms like "socialism" and "democratic socialism" does not advance productive discussion.

Please read Taylor's piece. Good stuff!

Five Hidden Ways That Globalization is Changing

Interesting infographic from McKinsey Global Institute. For details read Globalization in transition: The future of trade and value chains.

Democratic Socialism IS Socialism

This article, Here's the difference between a 'socialist' and a 'Democratic socialist' has been circulating as an explainer as to why "democratic socialism" is different from socialism. Democratic socialists merely believe the government should provide a range of services – like health care and education. People circulate this article as evidence that people who suggest that democratic socialists want to end private property and usher in a state-run economy are either fearmongers or ill-informed. Did they read the article?

As the economist author notes (and as any standard dictionary will tell you), socialism at its core is state control of the economy and the virtual elimination of private property. Democratic socialism is committed to the ultimate socialist ideal but works to achieve it incrementally through democratic processes. I want to point out two quotes from the article, highlighting a key word in caps:

"In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given Democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should IMMEDIATELY take control of all aspects of the economy."

"As the DSA's website states: "At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. As we are unlikely to see an IMMEDIATE end to capitalism [i.e., market exchange and private ownership] tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.""

Immediate means not now but eventually. Democratic socialism has state control of the economy and the abolition of private property as its endgame. Democratic Socialists of America say so in their own words! And fully-realized socialism inescapably leads to totalitarianism, not democracy.

Despite sympathizing with the notion of a greater state role in meeting basic needs, I will adamantly contest socialism. Market exchange is paramount to generating and sustaining human well-being. It has led to the "great divergence" from a world where the overwhelming majority had a subsistent existence during short difficult lives into a world where extreme poverty is on the verge of elimination. Life expectancy has more than doubled recently, and well-being indicators are improving on nearly every front. Furthermore, I'll say that the freedom to own property, truck and trade, partner with others in productive enterprises, and reap the rewards is a basic human right. Not absolute, but a right, nonetheless.

Advocating for a social safety net that cares for the most vulnerable is a matter of social justice. Advocating for private stewardship of property and market exchange is as well.

World Social Indicators: Global Per Capita Income

We have seen that life expectancy has been improving all across the planet. It is one of the most important measures of well-being. Yet most people think of income when they think of prosperity. Rightly so. Income is correlated with other factors that allow us to move beyond surviving to thriving.

Today's common refrain is "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." It is widely repeated. It is a sentiment that often finds its way into the unison prayers of confession in congregations of my tradition. N. T. Wright, a theologian whose work I've found very helpful, writes:

And now we have the new global evils: rampant, uncaring, and irresponsible materialism and capitalism on the one hand; raging unthinking religious fundamentalism on the other. As one famous book puts it, we have ‘Jihad versus McWorld.” (Whether there is such a thing as caring capitalism, or for that matter thoughtful fundamentalism, isn’t the point at the moment.) …. It doesn’t take a Ph.D in macroeconomics to know that if the rich are getting richer by the minute, and the poor poorer, there is something badly wrong. (Simply Christian, 8)

It also doesn't take a Ph.D. in macroeconomics to verify such claims either. ;-) The truth is much more complicated than this declaration and certainly is not true if we take the long view of multiple generations. What can we say about per capita income on a historical basis?

Comparing income across eras is difficult. Inflation and other variables make direct comparison impossible. Furthermore, comparing contemporary currency-based economies to barter economies will not do. Economic historians have developed a concept called "purchasing power parity" (PPP) to aid this process. The value of a dollar at a fixed point in time is chosen, and the value of income at all other points is pegged to the purchasing power of the fixed dollar. We will use a PPP measure of "2011 International Dollars" (I$) for our purposes. Annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a given country in a given period, usually a year) will be used as a proxy for income.

Not all economists agree on how to achieve parity between the present and more distant eras. Angus Maddison, one of the foremost authorities on this topic, suggested that about I$1,000 per capita (using 2011 dollars) is a subsistence income level and was typical of subsistence living before the industrial revolution. However, economist Brad Delong, who has done his own analysis, claims:

“A large proportion of our high standard of living today derives not just from our ability to more cheaply and productively manufacture the commodities of 1800, but from our ability to manufacture whole new types of commodities, some of which do a better job of meeting needs that we knew we had back in 1800, and some of which meet needs that were unimagined back in 1800.” (Brad DeLong)

Therefore, DeLong puts historic subsistence living at a lower level, but both scholars end up with similar income estimates in recent eras. Here is the change over the last 2,000 years using Maddison's estimates.

 

The following chart shows their estimates between 1700 and 2015:

You can see that the growth accelerates beginning in the early nineteenth century. Many have suggested that the industrial revolution began not long after 1750, and many inventions indeed came into being not long after that time. However, there was a lag time of a few decades between the advent of various technologies and their placement into productive use. Maddison argues for a beginning point of 1820 (as do other economic historians.) Regardless, keep in mind that the world population grew more than sixfold from less than 1 billion to more than 6.6 billion from 1750 to 2000 during this explosion in per capita income.

So in the aggregate, we can see that growth in worldwide per capita income is astounding. But how broadly spread is the economic expansion?

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