"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?"
Sep 28, 2023
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Jul 19, 2021
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.
Jun 20, 2020
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.
Dec 10, 2019
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.
May 02, 2019
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)
Apr 29, 2019
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.)
Feb 20, 2019
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!
Jan 08, 2019
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.
Apr 18, 2017
Carpe Datum! Paragraphs from "Galileo's Middle Finger"
Alice Dreger's "Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science," is one of the most refreshing books I have read recently. Dreger is a clinical medical humanities and bioethics professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Nearly twenty years ago, Dreger became an activist for the rights of intersex persons. She fought to change the prevailing practice of surgically altering babies to "rectify" ambiguous genitalia, which science suggested was too risky relative to the outcomes, raising many ethical questions. Motivated by varying convictions, surgeons were ignoring science. But before long, Dreger found herself advocating for scientists against activists on another intersex issue. The activists ignored science and attacked scientists when research potentially contradicted activists' strongly held convictions. This book is Dreger's reflections on what she learned from these experiences. I expect to publish a review of the book shortly. For now, I want to post three power sections from the book. (All emphases in the original.)
This quote comes as she is reflecting on her experience talking with researchers at the University of Missouri who had been targeted because of controversial research findings.
The story I had been told about Mike Bailey and Craig Palmer and so many other white straight male scientists accused of producing bad and dangerous findings, the story I had willingly heard as an academic feminist in the humanities, was that these guys were just soldiers of the oppressive establishment against which we good guys had come to fight. They came from old dogma about human nature; we came from progress and social justice, and we had to win. But here I was faced with the fact that not only were these scientists politically progressive when it came to things like the rights of transgender people and rape victims, they were also willing to look for facts that might get them in hot water. They very much cared about progress in social justice, but they cared first about know what was true.
That didn't mean that these scientists (or I, or anyone else) existed without bias. It didn't mean their work wasn't shaped and sometimes tainted by politics, ideologies, and loyalties. But it did mean they tried to adhere to an intellectual agenda that wasn't first and only political. They believed that good science couldn't be done by just Ouija-boarding your answers. Good scholarship had to put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second.
In Missouri [University of Missouri, Columbia], I realized that there's a practical reason for this order: Sustainable justice couldn't be achieved if we didn't know what's true about the world. (You can't effectively prosecute and prevent rape if you don't understand why, where, and how rape happens.) But there was also a more essential reason for putting the quest for truth first: it was who we scholars were supposed to be. As the little prop plane flew from Columbia, Missouri, toward the sunrise, of this I was sure: We scholars had to put the search for evidence before everything else, even when the evidence pointed to facts we did not want to see. The world needed that from us, to maintain – by our example, by our very existence – a world that would keep learning and questioning, that would remain free in thought, inquiry, and word.
Nevertheless I knew many of my colleagues in the humanities would disagree. I could practically hear them arguing against me, as if they were seated all around me in those cramped fake-leather seats, yelling to be heard above the churning propellers. We have to use our privilege to advance the rights of the marginalized. We can't let people like Bailey and Palmer say what is true about the world. We have to give voice and power to the oppressed and let them say what is true. Science is as biased as all human endeavors, and so we have to empower the disempowered, and speak always with them.
Involuntarily shaking my head, I argued back: "Justice cannot be determined merely by social position. Justice cannot be advanced by letting 'truth' be determined by political goals. Only people like us, with insane amounts of privilege, could ever think it was a good idea to decide what is right before we even know what it true. Only insanely privileged people like us, who never fear the knock of a corrupt police, could think guilt or innocence should be determined by identity rather than facts. It isn't perfect, but look what it has gotten us: antibiotics, an explanation and a treatment for AIDS, reliable histories of the Holocaust, DNA-based exonerations of those falsely accused of crimes, spaceships on the surface of Mars – hell, the plane we're flying in now.
Where would we be, I wondered, if the pope had ultimately won out over Galileo, if he succeeded in using his self-serving Catholic identity politics to forever quash Galileo's evidence that the ancients and the Bible were wrong about the Earth? Power plays as morality plays, whether by popes or feminists, are just that – plays. I longed for the real world, longed to pick apart each history to know what's true, to have my work judged by others, to find evidence that an idea is right or wrong. (136-138)
This passage comes from the end of the last chapter.
I want to say to activists: If you want justice, support the search for truth. Engage in searches for the truth. If you really want meaningful progress and not just temporary self-righteousness, carpe datum. You can begin with principles, yes, but to pursue a principle effectively, you have to know if your route will lead to your destination. If you must criticize scholars whose work challenges yours, do so on the evidence, not by poisoning the land on which we all live.
To scholars I want to say more: Our fellow human beings can't afford to have us act like cattle in an industrial farming system. If we take seriously the importance of truth to justice and recognize the many forces now acting against the pursuit of knowledge – if we really get why our role in democracy is like no other – then we really ought to feel that we must do more to protect each other and the public from misinformation and disinformation. Doing so means taking on more responsibility to police ourselves and everybody else for accuracy and great objectivity – taking on with renewed vigor the pursuit of accurate knowledge and putting ourselves second to that pursuit.
I know that a lot of people who met me along the way in this work thought I'd end up on one side of the war between activists and scholars. The deeper I went, however, the more obvious it became that the best activists and the best scholars actually long for the same kind of world – a free one.
Here's the one thing I now know for sure after this every long trip: Evidence really is an ethical issue, the most important ethical issue in a modern democracy. If you want justice, you must work for truth. And if you want to work for truth, you must do a little more than wish for justice. (261-262)
These two paragraphs are near the end of the epilogue.
The problem is an old one: People don't really get that good intentions can't save you from hell. So long as we believe that bad acts are committed only by evil people and that good people do only good, we will fail to see, believe, or prevent these kinds of travesties. Nowadays I feel as though 90 percent of my time talking to academics and activists is spent trying to convince them of this: The people who are against you are not necessarily evil, and your own acts are not necessarily good. That's why we still need scholars and activists. It's not easy to see what's what in the heat of the moment, and we need people pushing for the truth and justice if we're going to get both right.
But most people I run into aren't like us humans. Most people I meet seem convinced that the goodness of their souls will keep them from committing bad acts. When they look back at history, they don't see what we historians see – dumb tragedies. They see simple moral dramas, with predictable characters enacting easy stories of good and evil. They don't understand that the Nazis probably didn't think they were "Nazis." (275-276)
Powerful food for thought.
Mar 09, 2017
Were Slaves Immigrants?
Were Slaves Immigrants? Yes. If that answer troubles you, please hear me out.
This week, Ben Carson touched off a firestorm when he referred to slaves as immigrants. (Barak Obama has done the same several times.) The uproar has been that equating slavery and immigration minimizes the horrors of slavery. I have engaged in several social media discussions on this topic. At the crux of the matter is volition. Are people brought to a place against their will immigrants? Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Immigrant - “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.”
Volition is not part of the definition. As any demographer will tell you, populations grow (or decline) via three factors: births, deaths, and migration. When looking at a particular locale, people who come to that locale are immigrants. People who go from that locale to another are emigrants. Births and immigration grow the population. Deaths and emigration shrink it. It is a closed system. Volition is not part of the equation.
I agree with concerns about minimizing slavery, and I worry that statements by Carson and Obama risk doing that. As Jemar Tisby writes, a generous reading of Carson’s characterization is that “African slaves endured unimaginable hardship to carve out a life for themselves and their descendants.” I think that was indeed the intent, but it is challenging. Framing slaves as rough equivalents of people who bought a ticket on a boat to come to America in search of a better life minimizes slavery. Both were immigrants but with very very different stories. The desire to present African Americans as other than simply victims while embracing the horrors of slavery is a tough needle to thread in the space of a few words, as both these men were trying to do.
Dec 23, 2016
Don't Forget the Good Stuff
It is easy to become obsessed with the challenges and threats we see before us today. It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and not see the tremendous good happening in the world. Here are six social indicators pointing to improving the quality of life for billions around the globe. Setbacks and brief reversals are inevitable, but increasingly, the challenges we face are of our own making, like tribalism and authoritarianism. Let us be vigilant in addressing our challenges without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Nov 17, 2016
History Doesn't Repeat Itself ...
... but sometimes it rhymes.
Nov 01, 2016
Polarity Management Versus Problem Solving
Question. When it comes to breathing, do you prefer inhaling or exhaling?
I have asked this question many times, and it always elicits a chuckle. Clearly, if you choose one over the other, you end up dead. And if your body decided that this ongoing struggle between inhaling and exhaling was a problem to be solved, you would end up dead. Breathing is not a problem to be solved. It is a polarity to be managed.
Polarity management has a much wider application than biology. It applies to a wide range of features in human systems. Economist John McMillian (Stanford) wrote an insightful book called, "Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets." McMillian makes the case that the never-ending struggle in political economy has been to find the right mix of centralization and decentralization. If power becomes too centralized, then it will become oppressive and destructive. Yet, without centralized power, local tyrants emerge, injustice proliferates, and warring factions square off, sending society into chaos. In this sense, political economy is a polarity to be managed, not a problem to be solved.
Writing in the Atlantic, Eric Liu makes an important observation (emphasis mine):
"We don’t need fewer arguments today; we need less stupid ones.
The arguments in American politics today are stupid in many ways: They’re stuck in a decaying two-party institutional framework; they fail to challenge foundational assumptions about capitalism or government; they center on symbolic proxy skirmishes instead of naming the underlying change; they focus excessively on style and surface.
Americans can do better. Remember: America doesn’t just have arguments; America is an argument—between Federalist and Anti-Federalist world views, strong national government and local control, liberty and equality, individual rights and collective responsibility, color-blindness and color-consciousness, Pluribus and Unum.
The point of civic life in this country is not to avoid such tensions. Nor is it for one side to achieve “final” victory. It is for us all to wrestle perpetually with these differences, to fashion hybrid solutions that work for the times until they don’t, and then to start again.
"America is an Argument." Bingo! You will find the same is true in all human structures, including church and family. Part of facilitating better discussion and arguments is appreciating we are often wrestling more with polarities and less with virtue and vice.
Oct 29, 2016
Politics 2016 and Christian Mission
The Kruse Kronicle byline is, "Contemplating the intersection of work, the global economy, and Christian Mission." While politics is not the primary focus of this blog, it is impossible to escape how this presidential election is reshaping Christian Mission for substantial segments of American Christianity. In short, we ask how our discipleship should shape our political participation.
Before you read further, you should know that I have opposed Donald Trump since he announced his campaign in June 2015. My take on policy and priorities lean center-right, which should make me lean toward Republicans. While I have considerable policy disagreements with Trump, it does not drive my opposition. My conviction stems from being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I posted a link about Independent Conservative candidate Evan McMullin two days ago on Facebook. He is launching a bid to regain control of the heart and soul of conservatism. I commented, "And the battle for the center-right begins." A Trump-backing Facebook friend asked:
“Why would anyone vote for a Mormon (non-Christian) candidate [McMullin] while citing the immaturity of Trump's (maturing) Christian faith as a reason not to vote for him?”
I used the occasion of that question to unpack my views. Some friends have encouraged me to post this response in a more accessible forum. So here it is with some light editing and a couple of additional comments.
Response
I think the question [quoted above] misunderstands the issue for Christian Never Trumpers. Having no standing to speak on their behalf as a group, I'll speak for myself.
My primary concern is not who wins this election, what happens to the Supreme Court, etc. My concern is the witness of the Church. We are called to be ambassadors for God's coming reign, exhibit love and compassion, and speak up about injustice. We are resident aliens in this world, not full citizens. Highlighting the intensity of that commitment, Jesus says in Luke 14:26 that the Kingdom even takes precedence over family ties. Ties that compromise that witness are idolatry.
There are no perfect candidates unless Jesus is on the ballot. Every candidate will have shortcomings. We are not looking for perfection. A candidate need not be Christian. The question concerns general moral character, not the candidate's religious doctrinal beliefs. The Church stays independent, whoever is elected, lifting that which is good and offering critique for what is not, but first and foremost, living as a community that exhibits the marks of the Kingdom.
As each of us votes, we must decide about which of the candidates, if any, offers sufficient merit to receive our vote. Some conservative voters see Clinton as unacceptable. Fine. Let's take her off the table. This being the case, some feel they must vote for Trump. Fine. I think that is misguided, but let's grant that.
The issue is not that someone might vote for Trump. The issue is the attempt by the Christian Right to characterize Trump as basically a good guy, a baby Christian, basically "one of us," who is just a little rough around the edges. Trump is not a little rough around the edges.
Have you read Art of the Deal? Have you watched his life unfold? At the core of Trump's life is the very antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount. He brags that he never needs to apologize or repent about anything. [His recent apology about leaked videotapes was noteworthy for its novelty but also for NOT being an apology to the people he had wronged. It was to the voters who can withhold something he wants.] He has been the apostle for win at all costs. You don't just defeat opponents. You destroy and humiliate anyone who gets in your way. He advocated seducing the wives of rivals to humiliate them and bragged about having done so himself. He made his fortune exploiting human frailty in the area of gambling. You are unflinchingly loyal to him, or you are an absolute loser. I can go on. Everything about him exudes an unstable vindictive predatory character. His "unfortunate" statements are not the product of an unpolished public figure. They are the product of a calculating, manipulative, pathological personality.
Democracy runs on the basis that there are competing views in society. When someone wins an election, the loser concedes, and the winner leaves the loser standing, the loser living to fight another day. The understanding that no victory or loss is ever final keeps society moving along, even with disagreement. Trump routinely demonstrates he cannot tolerate the presence of opposition, period! Not even from beauty queens. From the beginning of the campaign to the present, it has all been about what HE is going to do. He will fix everything by sheer force of his personality and will, and without any clear understanding of the basics of governance and a demonstrated unwillingness to learn them. This is World Wrestling Entertainment bravado, not leadership. This grandiosity, coupled with a vindictive predatory temperament, is the recipe for authoritarianism.
Too many Christian Right Trumpers are not simply voting for the lesser of two evils. They are serving as his apologists, legitimizing his profound evils. It is an act of hypocrisy, considering all the criticism leveled at the moral failings of candidates in the past. When their agenda is at stake, all concern about character goes out the window. You think Trump is the better candidate? Fine. But do not insult us by minimizing who this man is.
[As one Facebook friend posted: "You cannot support Ahab because you think he is somehow better than Jezebel and call it righteous."--Dennis Bills]
Let's assume that by not voting for Trump, a Clinton presidency leads to some very unfriendly policies toward Christian Right people. So be it! The Church's mission is not to win elections but to give witness to the coming Kingdom. That witness can be given through martyrdom if necessary. Christ does not need the help of hateful authoritarian demagogues to achieve his purposes.
I am not that familiar with McMullin. From what I hear to date, he seems to be a principled man with admirable ethical standards, wanting to build a more civil society with aspiration and persuasion. To the degree that turns out to be true, he is a welcomed, refreshing voice. I don't care what his specific doctrines are.
Final Thoughts
In the end, I am sure I was not persuasive. For many on the Christian Right, this election is visceral. Social psychologists write about "motivated perception," where what we see gets shaped by what we feel is at stake. For so many, legitimate or not, Hillary Clinton embodies the "other side" in the culture wars of the past forty years. Letting her win, much less voting for her, is nihilistic and apocalyptic. One is forced to choose between letting loose the apocalypse or voting for a candidate who is the antithesis to all you have previously advocated as morally necessary.
The motivation to legitimize and rationalize Trump is powerful. According to survey research comparing 2011 to 2016, White Evangelical Protestants went from being the religious segment least likely to believe that someone who commits immoral acts in private life can govern ethically (2011 = 30%) to the most likely (2016 = 71%). (Source) Jeff Jacoby compares statements by leaders before 2011 with statements after in his piece How the religious right embraced Trump and lost its moral authority. When holding a moral standard means substantial loss, they embraced moral relativity, the cardinal sin of "secular progressives" they so despise. Again, my point is not that someone will vote for Trump. My concern is that those who decide they will vote for Trump should not minimize and trivialize who the man shows himself to be.
In closing, I will say that our present circumstances in the American Church are not purely the problem of the Christian Right. Across the political spectrum, much of the American Church is not formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. A great many progressive Christians have concluded that the answer to the Christian Right is the emergence of the Christian Left. They participate in the same hyperbolic "othering" that the right has done and call it "prophetic" and "social justice advocacy." And what we learn now is that when you have for years embraced characterizations of your opponents as wanting to kill women, equating them to holocaust deniers, and declared them to be functionally no different than the Taliban, you lose the words to name genuine authoritarianism when it appears. (See Crying Wolf, Then Confronting Trump) The answer is not a more progressive church. The answer is a loving community of resident aliens seeking the "welfare of the city" and truth, no matter the implications for our host culture's political agendas. Right, left, or whatever, precious little of the American Church owns that vision.
Apr 25, 2016
Why So Much Outrage? Thinking About My Discipleship
Bloomberg had an excellent piece by science journalist Faye Flam titled It's an Outrage! See? Look How Outraged I Am! Her lead is "Science is starting to shed some light on the curiously continuous cycle of moral outrages." Expressions of collective outrage are not particularly new, but it does seem to me that the frequency of expressed outrage, and outrage over more trivial events, has increased. Why? Psychologists offer this thought:
Psychologists say it all starts to make sense if you think of outrage as a form of display. Expressing it advertises a person's views and allegiances to potential allies. And the more popular a victim's cause, the less risky it is to join in displaying your umbrage.
Psychologist Jillian Jordan, who led the Yale experiment, said she wasn't trying to suggest that people were faking outrage for the purpose of looking good. She believes people genuinely feel the outrage. The point was to explain the urge to share it so ostentatiously.
In real-world cases, most people unconsciously tally costs and benefits, said Harvard psychologist Max Krasnow. There is a cost to outrage, in terms of social risk. The cost shrinks when there are more and more people expressing it in solidarity. If you're the only person lobbing yogurt at the Icelandic Parliament, you might well get arrested. But if you're part of a teeming mob, your collective display of outrage can lead to the ousting of the prime minister.
So what triggers outrage?
Why do some incidents provoke almost universal outrage and others set off only those in certain age groups or of particular political leanings? One of the most universal sources of outrage is stealing or hoarding resources, said psychologist Eric Pederson. The theory is that this is ingrained in humans because our ancestors' foraging cultures survived by sharing; if Joe helped himself to what others hunted and gathered, but then did not share his good fortune when he found berries or killed a wildebeest, he'd get in deep trouble.
Humanity's deeply rooted antipathy for cheaters helps explain the outrage over the tax evaders revealed by the Panama Papers. But in other cases, said psychologist Robert Boyd, the definition of what's outrageous is dictated by less objectively obvious cultural norms. Humans are wired to pick up cultural rules and norms, and to aim outrage at violators, he said. Cultural norms vary by political leanings, geography and other factors. Often there's a large generation gap.
Harvard's Krasnow said it all comes back to the fact that displays are aimed at potential allies. An outraged person may have no personal tie to a given issue, but outrage can signal sympathy with those who do. This can be quite noble and selfless, not entirely self-serving; the two blur together in ways that allow human civilization to work to the extent that it does.
According to an anthropologist I read, human reason evolved in the context of communal survival. People observed patterns in events around them and developed heuristic models for survival. They fashioned stories to make sense of events and their place in them. Reason developed as a way to reinforce stories and strengthen societal cohesion. This is also to say reason that challenged societal narratives and cohesion was a threat. We are not naturally wired for objectivity.It seems to me that expression of outrage serves a similar function. Narrowly, outrage is about calling out destructive behavior, but more broadly, it is about expressing social solidarity. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the driving motivator.
I have long suspected that the rising waves of outrage may have more and more to do with a need for social solidarity than moral indignation. In a post-modern era, identity is much harder to define and solidify, making us feel more insecure. That insecurity leads us to seek out opportunities for solidarity. Expressing outrage is just such an opportunity, particularly if the offending party/parties are of a "tribe" whom we jointly find disagreeable. The person(s) at the center of the outrage may become completely objectified, serving as a prop in the solidarity-building exercise. Exaggerations, misrepresentations, and apocryphal stories will often be added to heighten the outrage and amplify the endorphin-releasing satisfaction from intensely felt "outrage" solidarity.
The problem is that in our rush to solidarity, we can dehumanize others and make poor decisions. Applying a little objectivity will often show more complex circumstances than our outrage will allow. Over the years, I can't possibly recall how many times I have calmly pointed out some exaggeration or misinformation in a charged conversation. It doesn't matter that I may even be sympathetic to those outraged. The reaction is predictable. I am a traitor. I am at least being dismissive of people's suffering. When I point out there is no change in the number of police officers killed on duty in the face of claims of increasing murderous violence against police officers because of Black Lives Matter, I am insensitive to police officers. When I point out that extreme global extreme poverty has halved over the past thirty years and global inequality is declining in the face of claims that "neoliberal capitalism" is making the poor poorer and driving up inequality, I am insensitive to people suffering in poverty. Objective input is not welcome because, ultimately the conversation is about subjective commitments, not objective discernment.
Flam closes the article with the following:
"It's a complicated game we're playing," Krasnow said, "and sometimes the best strategy is to say nothing."
I agree, but the operative word is "sometimes." How about the other times? How are we to conduct ourselves, then? I do not write this as someone who has achieved objectivity and never participates in outrage. Not every expression of outrage is inappropriate. Hardly! And yet, I am self-aware enough to see the dehumanizing, exaggerating, hyperbolic demon lurking at the edge of consciousness when I am outraged. I know how good it feels to be in solidarity with a tribe that feels my intense outrage. As a Christian, I know discipleship has political consequences but does following Jesus really look like an endless rolling wave of outrage? What does it mean when we are so quick to misrepresent facts and dehumanize our opponents when the one we say we follow said:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors [and the Republicans, and the Democrats, and the ...] doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt 5:43-48)
It is almost as if Jesus says love should be our solidifying value, not outrage. I do not know. I am still working on it. Let me know if you figure it out.
Mar 18, 2016
Socialism. You Keep Using That Word …
Many Americans, especially progressives, are now "socialists." The rise of Bernie Sanders has had much to do with it. Yet, when I hear them talk, I keep hearing Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
According to Marxian theory, socialism is a transitional economic system between capitalism and communism. Capitalism (i.e., private property ownership and the distribution of goods and services through market exchange) will run its course. One day, a classless society with no private property will evolve. The workers will hold things in common, and goods will be distributed according to need.
Some Marxists believed they could accelerate this evolution through violent revolution and the imposition of communist principles. We saw that tactic attempted several times in the last century. Others believed economic evolution should run its course. People could work for greater social justice within the system as they methodically brought every aspect of the economy under the control of the government, eventually ending private ownership of the means of production. From there, it would be just a few more steps to communist utopia. This transitional system is socialism.
Socialists called themselves "social democrats" or "democratic socialists," advocating "social democracy." The emphasis here is democracy. Since communism is inevitable, there is no need to short-circuit the process through violent revolution. People will choose their way into communism.
During the last century, it certainly became clear that relying on markets and philanthropy alone was not an optimal strategy for a just and flourishing society. Government has assumed control of some functions to ensure the broader welfare of citizens in all of today's capitalist societies. These functions have been "socialized." But the broader context is still private property and market systems. "Socializing" selected functions is not a tactical progression toward communism. This is welfare capitalism.
However, a funny thing happened to socialism along the way through the last century. It was mugged by reality. It has become clear that socialism is fatally flawed. Market systems provide a real-time information feedback loop, matching ever-changing demands with an ever-changing supply. Markets empower countless strangers to benefit each other through specialization and exchange. There is simply no way a centralized entity can manage the production of goods and services. Assuming those with sufficient information could be trusted to have the wisdom and ethical courage to make optimal decisions, the endless churn of supply and demand makes sufficient information utterly impossible. (Other insurmountable barriers exist, but that is for another day.) The "inevitable" road to communism was wrong.
Most political parties, variously named "democratic socialists" or "social democrats," have become advocates for expanding welfare capitalism. For precisely this reason, the word "socialist" has fallen out of favor in many regions. So, in short, we have learned that neither pure libertarianism nor socialism is workable. We are all welfare capitalists now: We rely primarily on private ownership and market exchange and quibble about what societal functions might be better if socialized.
So let us look for a minute at Bernie Sanders, the "socialist" icon for hipster intellectuals. Sanders talks of making America more like Denmark – or the Nordic economic model. Are Nordic countries socialist? Finnish-American journalist Anu Partanen, author of The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, recently noted:
The problem is the way Sanders has talked about it [Nordic economic model.] The way he’s embraced the term socialist has reinforced the American misunderstanding that universal social policies always require sacrifice for the good of others, and that such policies are anathema to the entrepreneurial, individualistic American spirit. It’s actually the other way around. For people to support a Nordic-style approach is not an act of altruism but of self-promotion. It’s also the future.
In an age when more and more people are working as entrepreneurs or on short-term projects, and when global competition is requiring all citizens to be better prepared to handle economic turbulence, every nation needs to ensure that its people have the education, health care, and other support structures they need to take risks, start businesses, and build a better future for themselves and for their country. It’s simply a matter of keeping up with the times.
In a recent address at Harvard University, Denmark's prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, made this observation:
I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. … The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.
Are you getting that? A robust welfare system is a means to a robust market economy! And that raises another issue: markets.
Paraphrasing Partanen, progressive Americans see Nordic social policies as anathema to market capitalism. They argue that allowing corporations to rig the system in favor of a few, allegedly an inherent feature of capitalism, is social injustice. It makes no sense. If corporations are rigging the system, then it is not truly a market! The socialist answer would be for the government to assume ownership of corporations. If you just want to end inordinate privilege for big business, then what you are advocating is – wait for it – freer markets!
In reality, there is no such thing as "free markets." Market economies are based on the premise that absent fraud, misinformation, and externalities, people will make the best and most efficient decisions about what to consume and produce for their own needs, mediated through price information generated by supply and demand. Producers who produce well will be rewarded, and those that do not will eventually fold. The reality is that there is always incomplete information, and there are nearly always some externalities inherent in trade. Taxes and regulations are also necessary. But generally speaking, trade unencumbered by planners or by gamers of the system leads to higher living standards.
Big-business capitalists use political power to block competition and preserve economic power. They constrain markets. Writing 240 years ago, Adam Smith wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Free markets are the answer to powerful economic players conspiring with the government to choke off competition and preserve their privileged status through subsidies, tariffs, and onerous legislation.
Socializing some aspects of society is not antithetical to market economics. We cannot deliver some social goods through markets, or at least not deliver them well. But we must have a robust market economy to generate tax revenue and sustain socialized services. Denmark is the top-rated country in the world for business and trade. The other Nordic countries are right behind them. This is not the Sanders model.
Sanders wants to institute protectionist policies, raise taxes on corporations (the USA is already on the high side), set a minimum wage 50% higher than other developed countries, and do a host of other trade-unfriendly measures. Meanwhile, taxes for all but the wealthiest will stay low (taxes in Nordic countries are high for everyone.) He wants to expand the safety net golden egg while strangling off the goose that lays it. He thrives on populist anti-market and anti-business sentiment. Curiously, Clinton is probably closer to the Nordic model, embracing an expanded and smarter welfare model while championing (at least in the past) trade and business. Yet she dismisses Denmark as contrary to this vision. Partanen speculates Clinton knows her plans are more like Denmark than are Sanders' but avoids association with the Nordic model because of public misconceptions. I think that is true.
So why are so many supposedly well-educated people now calling themselves socialists? One big reason is surely economic illiteracy. Going back to at least the 1930s, conservatives warned of "socialism" with the advent of Social Security. Same with Great Society programs in the 1960s - now with ACA and talk of single-payer healthcare. To some degree, left leaners just decided to own the moniker. Simultaneously, enough libertarian-leaning folks falsely used free markets to rationalize away ANY government involvement in anything; so many lefties just owned this misconception of "free market." They want a more robust version of welfare capitalism and less big-business domination. Economic illiteracy is my generous reading of why people call themselves socialist. But I have a less generous reading as well.
Partanen writes:
Americans are not wrong to abhor the specters of socialism and big government. In fact, as a proud Finn, I often like to remind my American friends that my countrymen in Finland fought two brutal wars against the Soviet Union to preserve Finland’s freedom and independence against socialism. No one wants to live in a society that doesn’t support individual liberty, entrepreneurship, and open markets. But the truth is that free-market capitalism and universal social policies go well together—this isn’t about big government, it’s about smart government. …
Like the Finns, countless Americans fought to free America from the totalitarian ideologies that emerged in the last century. They largely won. They considered it a legacy to pass on to future generations of America and the world. Rightfully so. So why would people seeking a more robust welfare state and less big-business domination call themselves socialists?
Inigo Montoya is wrong about many of the new "socialists." They know exactly what the word means! They know the emotion it stirs. The misuse is intentional. Calling yourself "socialist" is the left's version of Trumpist politics: Stir up tribal rivalry with incendiary language. Raise your verbal middle finger to your opponents. When they call you on it, roll your eyes incredulously that people would accuse you of advocating totalitarianism. "After all, we just want to improve the safety net and end rein in corporate greed like any good social democrat." So, to my "socialist" friends who cannot fathom the origins of anger in Trump voters, part of the answer is staring at you in the mirror. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
If your sole concern is fomenting tribal political battles, then the above is mostly irrelevant to you. Calling yourself a socialist is effective for your purposes. If you care about clarifying the truth to pursue a greater good for humanity, you will use language faithful to what is being described. Whether through illiteracy or insolence, "socialism" fails that standard. You really need to stop using that word.
Mar 01, 2016
Rosling Univeristy (How to be smarter than a chimp)
Are you smarter than a chimp? There is a good chance you are not when it comes to knowledge about global socioeconomic trends. For years, Swedish global health expert, Hans Rosling, has been giving Ted talks and making presentations about global trends. One of his favorite teaching tools is to ask people a question like this:
Globally, over the past 20 years, the rate of extreme poverty has:
- Doubled.
- Stayed the same.
- Decreased by more than half.
Now chimps will randomly select, giving each answer a 33% chance. Yet when Rosling asks audiences, at least half will say A, a sizable percentage will say B, while a few will say C. Yet C is the correct answer! This is the case with one variable after another. Audiences routinely score worse than chimps, choosing the most negative option.
An old adage states, "It isn't what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know that ain't so." That we routinely pick the wrong answer more often than chimps shows that we have bias.
In the Ted talk, How not to be ignorant about the world, Hans' son Rosling notes that part of the problem is our education system. Teachers go to college at a particular point in time and learn the state of the world at that time. But they tend not to learn about ongoing developments. The data has often been hard to come by and hard to interpret. So teachers are biased by what they learned years ago. (Reporters have the same problem.) But there are other factors.
During our evolutionary history, our brains became wired to notice threats. Hunters walking through the brush who were attentive to the possibility of tigers lying in wait likely survived those who went about carelessly enjoying a beautiful day. So when we reflect on broad human trends, we fixate on perceived threats. What was useful for us in the wild is counterproductive as we try to interpret socioeconomic trends. If you want to outscore a chimp on an exam about global well-being, Ola Rosling suggests that you must drop your predispositions and adopt these four rules of thumb:
1. Assume most things are improving.
2. Assume most people are in the middle of a distribution, not a binary of rich and poor.
3. Assume social development precedes becoming wealthy. (Don't assume that a population must be rich before meeting basic social needs.)
4. Assume you are exaggerating the threat if the topic is something you personally fear.
Additionally, Hans, Ola, and others have been working to build the Gapminder website to provide you with data that can be presented in meaningful ways. But one of the most important contributions the Roslings have made is their collection of entertaining and informative videos. In this post, I include every video I can find with a brief annotation. (I'll add more as I find any.) Many videos overlap or cover similar data but are all well worth viewing. So here is your resource for becoming smarter than a chimp. Don't say I never gave you anything.
(This link also has links to most of these videos, including some shorts not listed here: Gapminder Video)
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes (2010)
If you are just getting acquainted with Rosling, I'd begin here. This four-minute presentation gives you a quick sense of what he is talking about.
Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world. TED June 2014
This is the second video to watch. The front half is Hans making his case that the world is improving, and the back half is Ola explaining, as I recounted above, why we are so disinclined to see positive change.
Hans Rosling: The magic washing machine. TED December 2010
This is the third one to watch. This is one of my favorites. While fully embracing the concern about the environmental impacts of economic growth, Rosling shows the importance of economic growth through the story of the washing machine.
THE REST ARE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen. TED February 2006
The TED presentation that kicked it all off. He focuses on the positive changes underway in the world. He points to his efforts to liberate, integrate, and animate data and to find ways to present data the public finds understandable.
Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty. TED March 2007
Rosling shows that social development tends to precede economic development. He addresses the issue that, unfortunately, economic development has always been based on fossil fuels. Higher yields, technology, and markets are key to ending poverty, but more dimensions like human rights, environment, governance, economic growth, education, health, and culture need our attention. The ending has a great surprise!
Human Rights and Democracy Statistics- Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling describes why human rights are so hard to describe and evaluate.
Yes they can! - Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling explains that poor nations will one day become prosperous, and we should welcome that.
Poor Beats Rich in MDG Race - Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling shows that countries that have developed from poverty to well-being have done so faster than Western nations. Poor countries today can make the transition much quicker because of what previous countries have learned.
What stops population growth? - Gapminder c. 2008
Small families are the key to ending population growth, and the key to small families is childhood survival.
Hans Rosling: Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals. TED February 2009
Uses Gapminder data to show nuances in how AIDS has spread and what it takes to defeat it.
Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset. TED June 2009
This is the third video you should watch. Rosling deconstructs the dichotomy of wealthy and developing nations and challenges the idea of thinking in sweeping terms like "Africa."
The Joy of Stats with Professor Hans Rosling - Gapminder c. 2010
Rosling shows how making data available and animating empowers people to make better decisions, sometimes without realizing they are using statistics.
Hans Rosling: Asia's rise -- how and when. TED Nov 2009
Rosling forecasts when China and India will catch up with the USA and UK.
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box. TED June 2010
Rosling says that child survival is the new green. This video explains why.
Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade? We're winning the war against child mortality. TED September 2010
Rosling breaks down the remarkable trends in child mortality. Education of women accounts for at least 50% of the drop.
Hans Rosling: Religions and babies. TED April 2012
Religion is not a factor in family size. There is no significant difference between Islamic and Christian countries regarding births per woman. The defining difference is economic well-being.
DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population. BBC November 2013
A one-hour investigation into the dynamics of population growth using stories about real live families interspersed with Rosling's entertaining presentation of data.
Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years. BBC September 2015
No embed is available.
Here is a link to a series of short videos on how to use development data visually.
An introduction to visualising development data
Dec 11, 2015
Minimum Wage, Nativism, and the Illiberal Roots of Progressivism
Virginia Postrel has an interesting article at Bloomberg, "Progressive and Racist. Woodrow Wilson Wasn't Alone," a book review of Thomas Lenoard's Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Here are a few key quotes:
The progressives believed, first and foremost, in the importance of science and scientific experts in guiding the economy, government, and society. Against the selfishness, disorder, corruption, ignorance, conflict and wastefulness of free markets or mass democracy, they advanced the ideal of disinterested, public-spirited social control by well-educated elites. The progressives were technocrats who, Leonard observes, "agreed that expert public administrators do not merely serve the common good, they also identify the common good." Schools of public administration, including the one that since 1948 has borne Woodrow Wilson's name, still enshrine that conviction.
Later, she writes:
Advocates similarly didn't deny that imposing a minimum wage might throw some people out of work. That wasn't a bug; it was a feature -- a way to deter undesirable workers and keep them out of the marketplace and ideally out of the country. Progressives feared that, faced with competition from blacks, Jews, Chinese, or other immigrants, native-stock workingmen would try to keep up living standards by having fewer kids and sending their wives to work. Voilà: “race suicide.” Better to let a minimum wage identify inferior workers, who might be shunted into institutions and sterilized, thereby improving the breed in future generations. ...
... Clark's theory is now a foundation of mainstream labor economics. In his day, however, it was highly unpopular. "A key element of resistance," writes Leonard, "was that many progressives were reluctant to treat wages as a price," rather than a right of citizenship and social standing. Informed by their beliefs in scientific racism, most progressives preferred wages to favor some groups over others: men over women, whites over blacks, and most prominently, native stock over immigrants.
Although they generally assumed black inferiority, progressives outside the South didn't worry much about the "Negro question." They were instead obsessed with the racial, economic, and social threats posed by immigrants. MIT president Francis Amasa Walker called for "protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe," whom he described in Darwinian language as "representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence."
So restricting immigration was as central to the progressive agenda as regulating railroads. Indeed, in his five-volume History of the American People, Wilson lumped together in one long paragraph the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act as "the first fruits of radical economic changes and the rapid developments of trade, industry, and transportation" -- equal harbingers of the modern administrative state. With a literacy test and ban on most other Asian immigrants enacted in 1917 and national quotas established in 1924, the progressives bequeathed to America the concept of illegal immigration.
The first paragraph is the preface for what follows. It relates to why I eschew the label "progressive" despite sympathizing with some aspects of what today's progressives espouse. In my estimation, "progressivism," then and now, contains substantial hubris - believing that we are justified in moving heaven and earth to bring about a brave new world through dispassionate logic, science, and a superior moral locus. Institutions and practices that have emerged through time as practical ways of making the world work be damned! I believe most change should be modest reform, not revolution. It is in this sense that I would claim the term conservative. We want to conserve the good as we seek improvement. We aren't that smart, and we aren't that noble when it comes to redesigning the world.
The minimum wage piece is particularly interesting. While the impact of minimum wage increases is notoriously complex and difficult to summarize with precision, most economists agree that substantial increases in the minimum wage dampen job growth over time. Some studies show, just as the early progressives logically surmised, that increased minimum wages negatively impact the employment of minorities, particularly young black men.
I am going to read this book!
Oct 20, 2015
Double-Edged Denmark: What we Should Learn
Denmark became a central topic during the Democrats' debate last week. Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. Hillary Clinton loves Denmark but dismisses the idea that America can be Denmark. This inspired several articles by various commentators about the truth behind Denmark's economic model (or the Nordic model more generally.) Progressives like the high taxes, low inequality, and high government spending. Conservatives counter by noting that the Nordic countries rank among the countries highest in free trade and low corporate taxes. I've been linking articles on Facebook, but I thought this piece in Niskanen was the best. Double-Edged Denmark
Right-leaning arguments about the free-market marvel that is Denmark cut both ways. Denmark shows us that a much larger public sector and a much more robust social-insurance system need not come at the expense of a dynamic market economy. In other words, Denmark shows us that capitalism and a large welfare state are perfectly compatible and possibly complementary.
The lesson Bernie Sanders needs to learn is that you cannot finance a Danish-style welfare state without free markets and large tax increases on the middle class. If you want Danish levels of social spending, you need Danish middle-class tax rates and a relatively unfettered capitalist economy. The fact that he's unwilling to come out in favor of either half of the Danish formula for a viable social-democratic welfare state is the best evidence that Bernie Sanders is not actually very interested in what it takes to make social democracy work. The great irony of post-1989 political economy is that capitalism has proven itself the most reliable means to socialist ends. Bernie seems not to have gotten the memo. But Bernie Sanders isn't the only one failing to come to terms with the implications of Danish social-democratic capitalism.
The lesson free-marketeers need to learn is that Denmark may be beating the U.S. in terms of economic freedom because it's easier to get people to buy in to capitalism when they're well-insured against its downside risks. That's the flipside irony of free-market "socialism. ...
... the reason the U.S. is lagging so far behind big-government Denmark on free trade, corporate taxation, ease of doing business, and more may very well be that the American safety net isn't good enough, and economic insecurity at the bottom and middle makes free-market policies a tough sell to anxious American voters.
I don't know that this is true. But, then again, libertarians and free-market conservatives don't know that it's not. Mostly, ideological American capitalists really badly want to believe it's not true that we're falling behind Denmark as capitalists because we're not redistributive enough. (I mean, the previous paragraph made me feel like I was channeling E.J. Dionne, which was … unsettling. But let us put away childish things.) Because if it is true, and social insurance and capitalism are complementary in this way, then champions of economic liberty will be forced to face up to the possibility that attacking the welfare state undermines support for laissez faire economic policy. Some of us might even be forced to choose between our love of capitalism and dislike of the welfare state. Awkward. ..."
Economic development always includes, in some broad sense, an embrace of trade and freedom from arbitrary interference in market activity. Yet when you look at the various nations that rose to affluence in the last century, diverse paths were taken to get there. The particular way toward trade and freedom seems less important than the stability issue. When the various players in the economy and society behave in predictable patterns, they can better predict and coordinate their behavior, even if the patterns are not optimal regarding trade and freedom. The imposition of trade and freedom that generates too much instability may be worse than simply staying with less effective economic models in the short run and letting things evolve.
This need for security and stability is a piece that most libertarians frequently undervalue at both the macro and micro levels. Economic historians will tell you that one of the pivotal developments in history (among several) was the emergence of limited liability. People could pool their resources and form joint ventures without risking their entire assets. Bad choices or unforeseen developments would not leave you destitute.
If the aim is a dynamic, risk-taking economy leading to high productivity and economic growth, then we need security and stability for citizens. With a basic safety net in place (here, I'm thinking mostly of a guaranteed minimum income as opposed to our wasteful welfare industry), people would become less risk-averse, knowing that trying new stuff doesn't lead to destitution if you fail.
But if libertarian conservatives are blind to security issues, progressives are blind to productivity and economic growth. Take the living wage debate. It is said that Walmart's low wages are possible because taxpayers subsidize the workers through the welfare system. Nonsense. Welfare support drives up wages. If the wages aren't at least comparable to welfare options, then why work?
Furthermore, while each business should have the aim of helping their employees flourish (improving their skills and providing opportunities to gain more responsibility in a safe environment), businesses are neither benefactors nor aid agencies. They are the institutions responsible for transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful forms to more useful forms on a sustainable basis. Sustainability means creating more value than the value of resources being used. Wages artificially set above the economic value contributed by labor are unfavorable to productivity and sustainability.
I know of no country, including the Nordic countries, which presumes that every job in every circumstance should provide a "livable" income "unsubsidized" by the government. The minimum wage is a temporary introductory wage people earn as they develop skills and experience. Few earn it for more than a period of a few months. Excessively high introductory wages compel businesses to adapt in ways that reduce the amount of this labor they use and decrease the opportunities for the least-skilled to find an on-ramp into the economy.
So while precisely replicating the Danish or Nordic model in a large, diverse nation like the United States may not be feasible, there are lessons here. To the degree the Nordic models have worked, they have done so because they have successfully married security and growth. This is a managed polarity for them, like breathing embraces both inhaling and exhaling. In America, our partisan factions grasp one polarity pole and demonize the other. To the degree they succeed, we are in deep trouble. That is the lesson I learn from double-edged Denmark.
Apr 24, 2015
Americans, Led by Democrats, Get Friendlier With Free Trade
Conversable Economist: Americans, Led by Democrats, Get Friendlier With Free Trade
" ... I welcome the overall shift toward a more positive view of foreign trade among Americans. As I've argued on this blog before, the next few decades seem likely to be a time when the most rapid economic growth is happening outside the high-income countries of the world, and finding ways for the US economy to connect with and participate in that rapid growth could be an important driver of US economic growth in the decades ahead. In a broad sense, US attitudes over foreign trade mirror the behavior of the US trade deficit: that is, when the US trade deficit was getting worse in the early 2000s, the share of those viewing trade as a "threat" was rising, but at about the same time that the US trade deficit started declining, the share of those viewing trade as an "opportunity" started to rise.
However, I feel considerable uncertainty over how to interpret these findings. For example, it's not clear to me why Democrats and Independents are shifting their opinions about trade more strongly than Republicans. This shift doesn't seem to reflect the political divisions in Congress, where it seems that Republicans are more often the ones to be pushing for agreements to reduce trade barriers and Democrats are more likely to be opposing them."
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Economics Links
1. Huffington Post: Financially Speaking -- Are We an Illiterate Nation?
... Champlain College's Center for Financial Literacy released its '2013 National Report Card,' which quantifies what states are doing to promote financial literacy in the classroom. Only seven of 50 states surveyed came away from the study with an "A" rating. That's right, a paltry seven states! Of these seven states, only four have a standalone course -- Utah, Tennessee, Missouri and Louisiana.
Thirteen states received a "B" rating, and the remaining 30 states received a "C," "D," or "F" rating. In fact, eight states received an "F" rating. Ask yourself, as a parent, would you be content to have your children bring home similar grades? ...
2. Huffington Post: 40 Financial Things You Should Know by 40
3. Carpe Diem: World market cap reached record high in March, and is $2.4T above pre-recession, pre-crisis level
4. Businessweek: Why Factory Jobs Are Shrinking Everywhere
... But the U.S. jobs slide began well before China’s rise as a manufacturing power. And manufacturing employment is falling almost everywhere, including in China. The phenomenon is driven by technology, and there’s reason to think developing countries are going to follow a different path to wealth than the U.S. did—one that involves a lot more jobs in the services sector.
Pretty much every economy around the world has a low or declining share of manufacturing jobs. According to OECD data, the U.K. and Australia have seen their share of manufacturing drop by around two-thirds since 1971. Germany’s share halved, and manufacturing’s contribution to gross domestic product there fell from 30 percent in 1980 to 22 percent today. In South Korea, a late industrializer and exemplar of miracle growth, the manufacturing share of employment rose from 13 percent in 1970 to 28 percent in 1991; it’s fallen to 17 percent today. ...
5. Forbes: High Tech And Robots Can Create More Low Skilled Jobs, Not Just Destroy Them
As we all wait anxiously for the robots to come and steal all our jobs an interesting finding in a study on the effect of ever higher technology on the demand for low skilled labour. Contrary to what everyone seems to be assuming it is possible for that higher tech to actually increase the demand for that low skilled labour. For the higher tech enables that lower skilled labour to perform tasks that could only previously be done by highly skilled labour. And as the costs associated with whatever the task is fall then we quite naturally demand more of that task to be done. Thus, in certain cases at least, higher tech increases the number of jobs, not reduces them. ...
6. Business Insider: Why Food Prices Are Surging
... In a new report, Morgan Stanley commodities analysts led by Adam Longson attribute the surge in prices to a number of factors, "from weather (in the case of sugar, soybeans and coffee) to disease (in the case of hogs) to geopolitics (wheat and corn)."
The Morgan Stanley analysts don't believe this will continue. ...
7. Atlantic: How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong
8. House of Debt: Measuring Wealth Inequality
9. Conversable Economist: An Inequality Chartbook: Long-Run Patterns in 25 Countries
This is an interesting chart from chartbook of income inequality.
10. Brookings: Income Growth and Income Inequality: The Facts May Surprise You
... The broadest and most accurate measures of household income are published by the CBO. CBO’s newest estimates confirm the long-term trend toward greater inequality, driven mainly by turbo-charged gains in market income at the very top of the distribution. The market incomes of the top 1% are extraordinarily cyclical, however. They soar in economic expansions and plunge in recessions. Income changes since 2007 fit this pattern. What many observers miss, however, is the success of the nation’s tax and transfer systems in protecting low- and middle-income Americans against the full effects of a depressed economy. As a result of these programs, the spendable incomes of poor and middle class families have been better insulated against recession-driven losses than the incomes of Americans in the top 1%. As the CBO statistics demonstrate, incomes in the middle and at the bottom of the distribution have fared better since 2000 than incomes at the very top.
11. Wall Street Journal: Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families
Intellectuals fretting about income disparity are oddly silent regarding the decline of the two-parent family. ...
12. Mother Jones: What If Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong?
... A sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, Edin is one of the nation's preeminent poverty researchers. She has spent much of the past several decades studying some of the country's most dangerous, impoverished neighborhoods. But unlike academics who draw conclusions about poverty from the ivory tower, Edin has gotten up close and personal with the people she studies—and in the process has shattered many myths about the poor, rocking sociology and public-policy circles. ...
13. Forbes: Thank Goodness We Have Walmart If American Shoppers Are This Poor
... The economic background is that sure, WalMart makes good profits out of what it does. Yes, this includes minimising costs such as the wages they pay out, what they’ll let suppliers charge them. It even includes desiring to put other less efficient retailers out of business, those Mon and Pop stores, and to make those that remain more efficient through that competition with them. But there’s another effect of course: consumers save money through those lower prices.
We call this saving the consumer surplus. It’s not something that ever appears in the normal economic statistics, one good reason being that it’s rather hard to calculate. ...
... A 25% reduction in food expenditures just from the existence of WalMart is an amazingly large sum. It’s also considerably larger than the profits that WalMart makes out of its actions. And that’s from a decade ago recall (the paper is from 2005, the data up to 2003) and it is only recording the consumer surplus from WalMart’s move into food retailing, leaving the impact of the other parts of the company aside. ...
14. Atlantic: How the Rich and Poor Spend Money Today—and 30 Years Ago
15. AEI - James Pethokoukis: No, Walmart isn’t ripping off taxpayers
... I think I’m supposed to be outraged that Walmart isn’t paying some employees enough that they don’t need government anti-poverty benefits. But businesses generally aren’t going to pay workers more than they are worth. If a worker can only generate $8 in value to a company, then the firm isn’t going to pay them $10. Nor should they for some humanitarian reason. If American society thinks some of their fellow Americans deserve higher living standards than their skill set currently warrants, then society should pitch in and subsidize their wages through the Earned Income Tax Credit or even a new, broader direct wage subsidy. ...
16. PBS: How nonprofit workers get squeezed when minimum wages increase
Not everyone who supports raising the minimum wage is in a position to pay their employees more. Nowhere is that more true than in the nonprofit sector. ...
17. NPR: Subminimum Wages For The Disabled: Godsend Or Exploitation?
... Executive Director Gus van den Brink says the Sertoma Centre and other agencies do work to find jobs for disabled people in the community, but the focus should not be on shutting down all sheltered workshops. He says it would be nearly impossible for some people with severe intellectual disabilities to get a job at all. It's sheltered workshops, he says, that give them a chance to work and earn a paycheck.
"Some of the individuals may not even completely understand what the value of that paycheck is," van den Brink says. "But they know they are receiving a paycheck, so they are getting a lot of self-esteem. They are very proud of it."
Even so, Assistant Attorney General Samuels says the Justice Department will work with other states to make sure some workers with disabilities have the opportunity to do their work, as she puts it, at "real jobs for real wages."
18. PBS: What’s the welfare initiative uniting liberals and conservatives?
Some conservatives and liberals are uniting around the idea of a basic income because the current welfare system, they say, is an ineffective bureaucracy that doesn’t respect poor people’s ability to make their own decisions. ...
19. Atlantic: Women's Wages Are Rising: Why Are So Many Families Getting Poorer?
Start by looking at what's happening with men's wages. ...
20. Huffington Post: Gender Inequality in the Labor Market: Don't Call It a Wage Gap
When President Obama announced the Paycheck Fairness Act on Equal Pay Day this week, we applauded his efforts to address the so-called "gender wage gap" but, from a data point of view, mourn the fact that he, like many others before him, is building his case around a flawed number. The oft-quoted statistic that women only earn 77 cents for each dollar earned by a man, is not actually very accurate and distracts legislators and the public at large from coming up with solutions to the real problem -- the gender jobs gap. ...
21. Fortune: Corporate America's foreign cash machine: Signs it may be slowing
As governments coordinate to fix international tax laws on overseas earnings, companies may have to pay more taxes. ...
22. Forbes: How The Wealthiest Families Make And Lose Their Money -- Part 5
... Well-accepted research shows that about one-third of companies in the United States make it to the second generation. Only around 10% reach the third generation. If wealth were preserved during this movement away from the privately held business into the publicly traded markets, we would expect to see a greater portion of overall wealth being inherited. But, the numbers tell us that only about 5% of wealth in the U.S. is inherited. On the other hand, the wealthiest families of Europe hold two-thirds of their wealth in private companies and only one-third in publicly traded securities. When we then look at inherited wealth, approximately 85% of European wealth is in its third or older generation. One-third of European wealth is in its fifth or older generation. This is an astounding result. ...
Apr 17, 2014
Religion Links
1. Huffington Post: Understanding Why Americans Seem More Religious Than Other Western Powers
Many Western Europeans think of Americans as hopelessly, bafflingly, and dangerously, religious. Many Americans think of Western Europeans as distressingly, inexplicably, and unrelentingly, secular. In 2009, the German sociologist Hans Joas observed that “it is widely accepted that the United States is far more religious than practically any comparable European state.” And he noted Western European puzzlement: “The more secularized large parts of Europe became, the more exotic the religiosity of the United States seemed to European observers.” So why are Americans, compared with Western Europeans, seemingly so religious? And are we as religious as we seem? ...
2. Business Insider: Countries With More Money Tend To Be More Godless
3. Pew Research: Global Religious Diversity
4. The Atlantic: The Changing Face of Christian Politics
... Christian political engagement is changing in this country as believers seek to untangle their faith from the worldliness of partisan politics and ideology. The melding of Christianity and partisan politics has been 40 years in the making, but the costs of that entanglement have only become clear to Christians over the last decade. ...
... A Christianity that seeks to unilaterally impose itself on the nation is unlikely be fruitful, but it is similarly unrealistic and unproductive to force a secular morality on believers. ...
5. Christian Century: Religious nones may not be who you think they are
... But they may not be who you think they are. Today, nones include many more unbranded believers than atheists, and they show an increasingly diverse racial and ethnic mix.
Researchers say this is already making nones’ attitudes and opinions less predictably liberal on social issues.
A survey of Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute found 21 percent are “unaffiliated” (PRRI’s umbrella term for a diverse group including atheists, seculars, and people who say they still believe in God); 20 percent are Catholic; and 19 percent are white evangelical.
“Nones are dancing on the razor’s edge of leading,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI. ...
6. Huff Post: American Bible Reading Statistics Reveal Who Is Studying The Good Book And Why
... According to a study, “The Bible in American Life," conducted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, 50% of Americans read some form of scripture in the past year, and 48% of those read the Bible. Four in 5 read it at least once a month, and 9% of Americans say they read the Bible daily. ...
7. Religion News Service: Bible study: More people say the Good Book isn’t a God book
The study, conducted annually by Barna Research, finds:
- The most “engaged” readers — who read the Bible almost daily and see it as sacred — are now matched by “skeptics” who say it’s just a book of stories and advice. Both groups measured 19 percent.
- While the engaged stayed steady since 2011, skeptics grew by 10 percentage points — since the same survey was conducted in 2011.
- Skeptics cut into the number of folks Barna calls “Bible friendly,” those who read the Bible occasionally and see it as inspired by God. The “friendly” demographic fell to 37 percent, down from 45 percent in 2011.
- The percentage of people who view the Bible as sacred has dropped to 79 percent, down from 86 percent in 2011.
8. Faith & Leadership: Disruption and leadership development in mainline Protestantism
Mainline Protestantism has been slow to create new models of clergy leadership development that take into account the disruptive forces acting in congregations and the culture. ...
9. Boston Globe: Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples?
A new wave of thinkers says yes — and is looking to Scripture for support. ...
10. Cannon & Culture: An Antidote for ADHD Activism
Review by Jordan J. Ballor of Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, The World is Not Ours to Save: Finding the Freedom to Do Good (IVP, 2012)
Writing as a lifelong activist against nuclear weapons, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson is uniquely placed to criticize a brand of evangelical social activism that emphasizes energy and enthusiasm over patience and perseverance. Christian obedience requires all these at various times and in various manifestations, but Wigg-Stephenson detects an imbalance at the heart of contemporary Christian cultural engagement that threatens to wither the roots of the entire enterprise. He is greatly concerned about the “cause fatigue” that he commonly, and increasingly, sees among younger Christians. ...
11. Christianity Today: Aged Out of Church
Ask anyone who's hit midlife, and they'll tell you: this stage is no joke for us.
The emotional, spiritual, physical, and relational shifts that occur at midlife can lead to disconnection from old social networks and a profound sense of loneliness, which brings with it serious health risks. At this point, many also feel drained by the increasingly common occurrence of death, disease, divorce, and the changes that redefine old friendships.
And yet, rather than engage these important but uncomfortable issues that come with aging, our culture—including, at times, the church—would rather laugh it off....
12. Religion News Service: Survey finds growth, vitality in multisite church model
(RNS) The vast majority of multisite churches are growing, according to a new study, and they are seeing more involvement from lay people and newcomers after they open an additional location.
Nearly one in 10 U.S. Protestants attends a congregation with multiple campuses, according to findings released Tuesday (March 11) in the “Leadership Network/Generis Multisite Church Scorecard.” ...
13. Atlantic: Greed Is Good: A 300-Year History of a Dangerous Idea
Not long ago, the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled. How did we come to accept it? ...
14. Huff Post: Why Do People Go to Church?
... What are we doing in worship? We are sorting through our mixed motives and mysterious desires. We are learning God's story again. We are returning home so that we can go with power into the everyday world.
15. Library of Economics and Liberty: You're Not Pushing Paper Across A Desk. You're Saving the World.
In my profession as an economics professor and through churches I have attended, I've been around a lot of people who want to "make a difference." They almost inevitably equate "making a difference" with "working for a government or a non-profit organization like a church that is dedicated, at least in part, to helping poor people." Rarely do I hear anyone say "I want to work in accounts receivable for a company that makes faucets--or worse, a company that just sells faucets and other sundries."
But here's the irony: I suspect that you will probably make a bigger, albeit harder to see, difference in the lives of many by working in accounts receivable for Amalgamated Faucets than you will on your two-week summer mission trip or in your career as a relief worker. ...
16. Christian Century: TV Protestants
An episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead features a scene in a Baptist church that has a Catholic-looking crucifix. HBO’s new series True Detective includes a scene in which a fundamentalist preacher crosses himself. These are two isolated examples of how the people involved in making television shows and movies don’t know or don’t care about the differences between different forms of Christianity. ...
Apr 08, 2014
Economic Development Links
1. You Decide: Save the People or Save the Planet #StopTheMyth
2. New York Times: The End of the ‘Developing World’
BILL GATES, in his foundation’s annual letter, declared that “the terms ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed countries’ have outlived their usefulness.” He’s right. If we want to understand the modern global economy, we need a better vocabulary.
Mr. Gates was making a point about improvements in income and gross domestic product; unfortunately, these formal measures generate categories that tend to obscure obvious distinctions. Only when employing a crude “development” binary could anyone lump Mozambique and Mexico together.
It’s tough to pick a satisfying replacement. Talk of first, second and third worlds is passé, and it’s hard to bear the Dickensian awkwardness of “industrialized nations.” Forget, too, the more recent jargon about the “global south” and “global north.” It makes little sense to counterpose poor countries with “the West” when many of the biggest economic success stories in the past few decades have come from the East.
All of these antiquated terms imply that any given country is “developing” toward something, and that there is only one way to get there.
It’s time that we start describing the world as “fat” or “lean.” ...
3. Huffington Post: The Paradox of Africa's Growth
... So why is Africa's job growth so weak while its economic growth outlook is just fine, even robust? The reasons are structural in nature and three-fold.
First, much of that 'robust' economic growth in the past decade in Africa has been driven by export of commodities or natural resources. ...
... Second, while Africa needs investments in sectors such as infrastructure, technology and education, much of its finances keep leaking out to the rest of the world. ...
... Third, there is no industrialization, not even in agricultural production, taking place when it should. ...
4. The World Post: Amartya Sen: What India Can Learn From China
The implication of your most recent book is that while democracy, as in India, prevents the worst man-made famine such as we've seen in China during the Great Leap Forward, it does not do well at all in building "human capability" -- literacy, rights of women, basic health care or effective public services and infrastructure.
Both China and India are characterized by rapid GDP growth, widespread corruption, inequality and the princeling problem -- 30 percent of India's parliament members are "princelings"
Yet, as you point out, "China made enormous progress -- even before market reforms -- towards universal access to elementary education, health care and social security." After dismantling and then starting to rebuild its safety net, 95 percent of Chinese today are covered by a publicly funded health care system."
And none of this is to speak of physical infrastructure -- the energy grid, bullet trains, roads, Internet access, sewage systems, etc.
You conclude quite decisively that "Indian democratic practice has failed."
What is the key differentiating factor between India and China with respect to building "human capability?" ...
5. BBC: India's family firms modernise to stay in business
... The family is integral to Indian culture and business. Nearly 85% of all companies in the country are family businesses - and these include big conglomerates such as Tata, Reliance and the Wadia Group.
"In other businesses, what is important is competence and profit. That is the measure of success. But in family businesses it's different," says Mr Bahl.
"What is important is that you are together, that you're working together and living together.
"You care for the reputation, you care for the principles of your forefathers and success or profit or that kind of yardstick is not paramount." ...
6. NewJersey.com: Opinion: Muhammad Yunus reaveals social business as powerful weapon against poverty
Muhammad Yunus pioneered microcredit loans to the poor without requiring collateral, empowered poor women worldwide and won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition. Through his newest innovation, social business, Yunus has declared all-out war on the nefarious blight that is poverty.
The objective of social business is to augment healthcare, housing and financial services for the poor, education and nutrition for malnourished children and safe drinking water for all, and introduce renewable energy, such as solar power, to the poor.
Yunus realized that, like cancer, poverty is a multi-layered systemic malady whose cure requires a holistic approach. Microcredit loans alone are not the panacea. To obliterate poverty, microcredit must be bolstered with multi-pronged assaults against all of its components.
Existing business models focus on making a profit and have failed to mitigate poverty. Free-market capitalism is thriving worldwide, yet half of the world’s population lives on $2 a day or less. Centuries of experience have demonstrated that government alone cannot eliminate poverty. Trickle-down economics practiced by charities administered through aid agencies and non-governmental organizations fails when the money supply dries up. International agencies, such as the World Bank, set up to assist developing nations, focus solely on economic growth as the antidote for poverty.
Mixed models that conflate a non-profit model with some profit are inherently antithetical. To those who say, “Why can’t social business investors take some profit, such as a 1 percent dividend?” Yunus’ response is: This is like someone trying to quit smoking asking, ‘Can I take just one puff occasionally?’” Yunus argues that someone willing to take a small profit can be persuaded to take zero profit.
Yunus concluded that poverty cannot be eliminated through economic growth or philanthropy; it has to be targeted exclusively. ...
7. Bloomberg: The Best Way to Spread Democracy Abroad? Welcome Foreign Students
... As it turns out, soft power may be far more effective. In particular, educating future leaders here in the U.S. could be one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to spread democracy that we have. In 2008, about one in five of the 3.3 million foreign students enrolled worldwide were studying in the U.S., and while that’s still a tiny share of the planet’s 7 billion population, foreign-educated students have an outsize impact on their home countries. Not least, a lot of them end up in very important positions. As many as two-thirds of developing country leaders in the middle of the last decade had studied abroad. A few years ago, a State Department list of senior government officials worldwide who had studied in the U.S. included more than 40 presidents and about 30 prime ministers. The full total may be more than 200. ...
8. Business Insider: Two Simple Charts Show Why China Is Losing Business To Its Emerging Market Neighbors
9. Conversable Economist: Latin America: Modest Progress on Inequality
10. Associated Press: Mexico to Trump Japan as NO. 2 Car Exporter to US
CELAYA, Mexico (AP) — Mexico is on track to become the United States' No. 1 source of imported cars by the end of next year, overtaking Japan and Canada in a manufacturing boom that's turning the auto industry into a bigger source of dollars than money sent home by migrants. ...
11. "Immigration Myths Debunked" | LearnLiberty
12. Matt Ridley: William Easterly's new book explores the aid industry's autocratic instincts
... This book is not an attack on aid from rich to poor. It is an attack on the unthinking philosophy that guides so much of that aid from poor taxpayers in rich countries to rich leaders in poor countries, via outsiders with supposed expertise. Easterly is a distinguished economist and he insists there is another way, a path not taken, in development economics, based on liberation and the encouragement of spontaneous development through exchange. Most development economists do not even know they are taking the technocratic, planning route, just as most fish do not know they swim in a sea. ...
13. Mashable: 5 Organizations to Support on World Water Day
In honor of this year’s World Water Day, a number of organizations are working on forward-looking clean-water initiatives.
These initiatives are helping protect our planet's water supply in a variety of ways, from providing water-filtration systems to inventing dynamic clean-water technology. ...
14. Atlantic Cities: Air Pollution Now Linked to 1 out of Every 8 Deaths in the World
According to a new report by the World Health Organization, air pollution is the cause of 7 million deaths a year worldwide, and is the single largest environmental health risk in the world today.
The staggering number — one in eight of all deaths, globally — is more than double previous WHO estimates of those killed by air pollution. WHO says that there is a stronger link between pollution and cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart disease, and between air pollution and cancer, than previously thought. ...
15. USA Today: Blindness rates plummet in developed countries
Blindness is not a thing of the past, but rates have plummeted in developed countries in the past two decades, thanks largely to the spread of cataract surgery, a new study shows.
Visual impairment that falls short of blindness also has become less common in places such as the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan, says the report published Monday by the British medical journal BMJ.
The international research review, which includes Eastern and Central
Europe, shows rates of blindness dropped 50%, and rates of moderate to severe visual impairment fell 38% overall from 1990 to 2010 in 50 countries. Declines in the USA and Canada have not been that big, but rates already were low by international standards in 1990, the analysis shows. ...
16. Huffington Post: This Invention That Uses Aquarium Pumps Could Save 178,000 Babies Each Year
A new invention uses fish tank aquarium pumps to save the lives of babies in the developing world.
In an effort to battle the high cost of medical equipment, a group of Rice University students developed an affordable machine to help premature babies breathe. Machines called bubble Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (bCPAP) devices help struggling babies born prematurely by breathing for them, but the machines cost thousands of dollars and are, therefore, too expensive for many hospitals in developing countries, according to Rice News.
The design team at Rice invented new bCPAP machines by using affordable aquarium pumps -- making them a fraction of the cost and easier to maintain than the traditional machines. The device costs about $350 to make, while the cost of traditional bCPAP machines used throughout hospitals today is about $6,000, according to CNN. ...
17. BBC: World now 80% polio free, World Health Organization says
The World Health Organization has declared its South East Asia region polio-free.
The certification is being hailed a "historic milestone" in the global fight to eradicate the deadly virus.
It comes after India officially recorded three years without a new case of polio.
The announcement means 80% of the world is now officially free of polio, although the disease is still endemic in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. ...
18. Business Insider: Bill And Melinda Gates Think These Are The Most Important Charts In The World
19. Applied Methodology: Thoughts About Norm Borlaug on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth
Norman Borlaug would have been 100 years old today. He has been called "The Man Who Fed The World," and "The Father of The Green Revolution." Norm Borlaug was the first plant pathologist to be awarded a Nobel Prize (1970) - for contributions to world peace. For all of use who are fellow plant pathologists, his work has been particularly inspiring. ...
Mar 31, 2014
Social Science and Culture Links
1. Atlantic Cities: How Different Generations of Americans Budget Their Time
Example
2. Business Insider: How Women Spend Their Time Vs. How Men Spend Their Time
3. USA Today: Millennial doesn't mean liberal: Column
Bad news for Democrats: It seems Millennials are special little snowflakes after all.
A new report by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way highlights the political complexity of a generation raised to believe they were utterly unique. When it comes to politics, they do it their way. Which could make the cohort that turned out en masse for President Obama unpredictable as voters.
Third Way focused on how Millennials' experience as the first generation raised in an information-on-demand culture has shaped them. They are not "adaptors." They have only known a world full of endless choices, not a life where you make do with what is available. ...
4. Forbes: Why Millennials Annoy Their Elders
... Anyone who frets over the idea that millennials aren’t drinking the kool-aid should stop and ask “What good has the kool-aid done me?” We raised our kids to be smart and to pay attention to the world around them. Are we going to castigate them now for doing that so well that they end up rejecting the deal-with-the-devil “Just put your career in our hands, focus on pleasing your employer, and everything will be fine!”?
I hope we trust our kids to make good choices, since they’ll be running the world in another few years.
I think we can put our trust in millennials. They have a better sense of priorities than many of their status-and-income-drunk elders do.
5. Atlantic: Study: Millennials Deeply Confused About Their Politics, Finances, and Culture
Or at least deeply contradictory: They're always connected but distrustful. They're selfish yet accepting of minorities. They're "independents" who mostly vote Democratic and love Obama while hating Obamacare....
6. PBS: How should the U.S. improve opportunity for young men of color?
7. Slate: “Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material”
... But what if such a cautionary sermon is exactly what some teenagers need? What if encouraging students to take a shot at the college track—despite very long odds of crossing its finish line—does them more harm than good? What if our own hyper-credentialed life experiences and ideologies are blinding us to alternative pathways to the middle class? Including some that might be a lot more viable for a great many young people? What if we should be following the lead of countries like Germany, where “tracking” isn’t a dirty word but a common-sense way to prepare teenagers for respected, well-paid work? ...
8. Atlantic: The Geography of Small Talk
How you start a conversation with a stranger depends on where you live. We survey the diverse geography of American greetings—from Honolulu to Hays, Kansas, from Anchorage to Appleton, Wisconsin, from New Orleans to New York. ...
9. Forbes: 'Where Are You From?' And Other Big Networking Racial Faux Pas
... So what’s the best way to approach ethnicity? If you’re dying to figure out if someone is of Korean, Vietnamese or Chinese heritage, is it ok to ask the first time you meet them? This topic is incredibly nuanced. There’s no right way to ask, though there are plenty of wrong ways. ...
10. Conversable Economist: How Academics Learn to Write Badly
Most of my days are spent editing articles by academic economists. So when I saw a book called Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences, the author Michael Billig had me at the title. The book is a careful dissection of the rhetorical habits of social scientists, and in particular their tendency to banish actual people from their writing, and instead to turn everything into a string of nouns (often ending in -icity or -ization) linked with passive verbs to other strings of nouns. (If that sentence sounded ugly to you, welcome to my work life!)
I found especially thought-provoking Billig's argument early in the book about how the necessity for continual publications is relatively recent innovation in academic life, and how it has altered the incentives for quantity and quality of academic writing. ...
11. Gallup: Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated
12. Gallup: Americans 'Level of Worrry About National Problems
13. Atlantic Cities: The Reason Songs Have Choruses
The secret lies in how your brain processes sound: People love repetition.
It is not hard to estrange the idea of the chorus. Why should songs have some parts that are repeated and others that are not? Imagine other works of art in which a quarter or half of the work is repeated: a movie that shows the same 10-minute sequence every 20 minutes, or a book that repeats every other chapter.
Yet, in popular music, the chorus seems necessary. It is, in many cases, the point of the song.
And now, in a wonderful essay on Aeon, Elizabeth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, argues that repetition is the point of music. The chorus is merely our culture's embodiment of a deeper human desire to play it again. ...
14. Atlantic Cities: Watch Your Name Grow and Shrink in Popularity Across the U.S.
Loved this one. The Matrix effect.
15. PBS: Note-takers volunteer to help the elderly during doctor visits
... Wolozin is a volunteer for the Northwest Neighbors Village in Washington, D.C., one of the more than 200 “villages” across the United States. These neighborhood membership organizations provide volunteers and other resources to help with everything from transportation and snow shoveling to hanging curtains and solving computer glitches. ...
16. Carpe Diem: Today’s new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, and the living space per person has doubled over last 40 years
17. NPR: With Sobering Science, Doctor Debunks 12-Step Recovery
Since its founding in the 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous has become part of the fabric of American society. AA and the many 12-step groups it inspired have become the country's go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These recovery programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors and widely praised by reformed addicts.
Dr. Lance Dodes sees a big problem with that. The psychiatrist has spent more than 20 years studying and treating addiction. His latest book on the subject is The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry.
Dodes tells NPR's Arun Rath that 12-step recovery simply doesn't work, despite anecdotes about success. ...
18. Atlantic: Americans: Republicans in General, Democrats in Particular
When Americans think about government in the big picture, they can seem like a nation of Ayn Rands. People want to lay waste to the Leviathan. But when Americans consider specific aspects of government, a curious thing happens. People rediscover their love of Washington. On issue after issue, Republicans are winning the argument in general, whereas Democrats are winning the argument in particular. ...
19. Huffington Post: Native Americans' Ancestors Got Stuck On Land Bridge On Way To Americas, New Research Suggests
Native Americans along the Pacific Coast and aboriginal Siberians may have both originated from populations living on the land bridge now submerged under the Bering Strait, a new language analysis suggests.
The language analysis, detailed today (March 12) in the journal PLOS ONE, is consistent with the notion that ancestors to modern-day Native Americans were stuck in the region of the Bering Strait before making their way into North America.
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