Category Archives: Politics and Economics

What would an Ideal Society Look Like? The Question Phase – Part II: Safe Living Conditions

Explorations Outside the Box, Politics and Economics

Ideal # 2: Everyone has a right to safe and sanitary living conditions

Questions (focusing on ‘safety’ only):

  1. Re-wording ‘safety’ as protection from danger, what types of dangers should we be protected from?
  2. What types of dangers should be tolerated?
  3. How much danger should be tolerated within each category of danger?
  4. Should more vulnerable individuals have greater protections For instance, children or mentally ill persons?
  5. What at are the principles involved in affording vulnerable individuals greater protections?
  6. At what point in the vulnerability continuum does a person no longer qualify for extra protection? Why there?
  7. Where does choice enter the equation of dangers everyone should have the right to be protected from? For instance, should people be physically prevented from exercising their choice to enter a dangerous area, say, an abandoned building with rotting floors?
  8. What would be reasonable measures to physically prevent a person from acting on their choices to endanger themselves?
  9. What would be sufficient warning of danger? What physical barriers would be sufficient? What makes something sufficient?
  10. How much probability of harm is needed to label something as unsafe?

Well, it’s a beginning. As always, the devil’s in the details.

What would an Ideal Society Look Like? Questions/Part I: Housing

Politics and Economics

Ideal #1: Everyone has access to affordable housing

Let the questions begin!

  1. What does ‘access’ mean?  Does it mean everyone can be housed if they so choose to be housed?   What if they so choose not to be housed?   What if they choose to be housed in a way that violated other ideals, like the right of everyone else to live in safe and sanitary conditions?
  2. What does ‘access’ mean?   Does it mean housing is guaranteed in certain metro area?   Or that it’s available somewhere in the country, but you might have to move to redeem your access?   Or that everyone also has a right to not have to commute more than a certain amount to work (combination time/money)?
  3. Is a certain housing size or number of bedrooms per person also a right?
  4. Does this mean subsidized housing?
  5. How would the housing materialize?   Will the housing become available through expansion in the housing stock?   What if adding housing in an area reduces the quality of life in an area?  What is ‘quality of life’? How much quality should be guaranteed to existing residents?   Who gets to decide?  Should existing residents has a say in how much housing development there is in their neighborhood? Why? Why Not? How much?
  6. How does one keep a stock of affordable housing available when housing supply and demand is constantly changing?   Does it need to be available everywhere?   If not, where does it have to be available?
  7. Should assistance to low-income households be specific to housing or simply general income/tax credit assistance so that they can afford housing?   If income assistance, what happens if individuals spend their money unwisely and still don’t have enough for housing?
  8. Since housing stock is mostly privately developed and owned, how does one incentivize property developers and owners to provide affordable housing?
  9. How does one guarantee the right to affordable housing without overbuilding affordable units that are then left vacant and create blight?
  10. Does the right to affordable housing mean not having to live with unrelated persons, i.e., roommates? Should families have the right not to have to take in boarders?

Those are top-of-the-head questions. Moral: the devil’s in the details.

 

What would an Ideal Society Look Like?

Explorations Outside the Box, Politics and Economics

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand correctly. And you can’t begin to understand a problem unless you see it as a problem. And you won’t perceive it as a problem unless it conflicts with some ideal of what you want the world to look like: a vision of the good (not just a vision of a fixed bad).

In that spirit, here’s an outline of my ideal society – at least today’s version. Individual guarantees are first, followed by general characteristics:

  1. Everyone has access to affordable housing
  2. Everyone has a right to safe and sanitary living conditions
  3. Everyone has a right to healthcare
  4. Everyone has a right to 16 years of education
  5. Everyone has access to sufficient nutrition and calories
  6. Everyone has access to affordable childcare
  7. Everyone has sufficient discretionary income to clothe themselves adequately and be digitally connected.
  8. Everyone has ample opportunity to improve their socio-economic status during their working life (individual social mobility)
  9. No one has to work more than full-time to support their family
  10. Democratic, accountable and responsive government
  11. Strong environmental standards and protections
  12. Healthy labor market: low unemployment rate
  13. Engaged citizenry: widespread public involvement in government decision-making
  14. Ample opportunities for social belonging/support/relationships
  15. Effective crime control and offender rehabilitation

Each of the above ideals map onto the OECD’s “Better Life” categories: housing (1, 2), jobs (8, 12), education (4), civic engagement (13), life satisfaction (all), work-life balance (9), income/purchasing power (1-9, 12), community (13, 14), environment (2, 11), health (2, 3, 5), and safety (2, 15).

Next up: we’re going to unpack each of these ideals – see what hidden puzzles they contain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think like a scientist, Act like a Doctor

Politics and Economics, Scientific Encounters

Think like a scientist, act like a doctor. That’s how I try to approach politics and economics. It’s my standard, by which I measure the good and the true and which provides a point of reference for self-correction.

Without ideals, there is no progress towards the good and the true. Of course, ideals are also a source of great harm and suffering, what with their affinity for the bad and the false. But, then, to truly think like a scientist counteracts the excesses of idealism.

The dark side of idealism is often the result of arrogance and certainty: I know what will fix the world. I have the answer. It’s self-evident. It’s obvious. Only fools and villains think otherwise.

In contrast, the spirit of science is that of humility. You don’t know for sure. You could be wrong.. What seems to be the case may not be the case at all. And yet the scientific project is predicated on hope: you can get closer to the truth through careful application of the Method: come up with testable hypotheses, make sure they’re falsifiable, and systematically test each one. Be transparent about your data and procedures, so others can critique your approach or try to replicate your findings.

Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right.  Wait and see? Try something? Try something else?  All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds. Because the health of the patient is what’s important – not a foolish consistency with past opinions.

So it should be when the body politic is the patient.

Ideology, Politics, and Religion

Explorations Outside the Box, Politics and Economics

Ideology is not a collection of beliefs and opinions. Ideology is a system of beliefs and opinions. The parts (beliefs and opinions) are interconnected and form a complex whole. The whole is organized according to some core principles or themes.  The sine qua non of ideological discourse is the “ideological square”, an elaboration of Us versus Them thinking:

  1. Exaggerate Our Good Things: Our vision is good and true.
  2. Exaggerate Their Bad Things: Their vision is evil and false.
  3. Minimize Our Bad Things: Our vision has no serious downside.
  4. Minimize Their Good Things: Their vision has no merit.

Political coalitions are more or less ideological.  On the less ideological side, they may be held together by alliances of convenience, whose common cause may be more dislike of the other side than broad agreement on a range of issues. Or their members may share a key sentiment, like ‘keep government small’ but for different reasons, e.g., pro-business, anti-bureaucracy, pragmatism, efficiency, separation of church and state, distrust of do-gooders, freedom from coercion or interference, etc. As allies in a cause, they may become sympathetic to other points of view within their coalition, but that is different than embracing an ideology.

Ideologies are like secular religions – the essence of religion not being belief in supernatural entities or alternative worlds like heaven, but a “…system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz 1993)

Within every political party, there are factions that are more ideological than others. That is, they have developed a system of ideas about the general order, ideas held with such confidence and fervor that they are clothed with an aura of factuality.

The problem with systems is their vulnerability to disintegration. With systems, everything’s connected: break a few links and the whole thing comes tumbling down. This vulnerability fosters a sense of threat. Hence, ideologues are often paranoid. Conspiracies and enemies abound. You get Us and Them and the Ideological Square.

References:

Geertz, C. (1993) Religion as a cultural system. The interpretation of cultures: selected essays, Geertz, Clifford, pp.87-125. Fontana Press.

Van Dijk, Teun A. (2005) Politics, ideology and discourse. Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Volume on Politics and Language (Ruth Wodak, Ed.), pp. 728-740.

Ideology and US Politics

Politics and Economics

According to Teun A. Van Dijk, the following “ideological square” has been found to be pervasive in ideological discourse:

  1. Emphasize Our good things
  2. Emphasize Their bad things
  3. De-emphasize Our bad things
  4. De-emphasize Their good things

Here’s my take on the Ideological Square:

  1. Exaggerate Our Good Things: Our vision is good and true
  2. Exaggerate Their Bad Things: Their vision is evil and false
  3. Minimize Our Bad Things: Our vision has no serious downside
  4. Minimize Their Good Things: Their vision has no merit

The Square constitutes the essence of ideology.  Political leanings are more or less ideological, according to how well they align with the Square. Applying this metric to political groupings in the US,  I would say progressives are the most ideological, followed by libertarians, followed by Republicans.

Say what?!

More to follow.

Reference:

Van Dijk, Teun A. Politics, ideology and discourse. Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Volume on Politics and Language (Ruth Wodak, Ed.), pp. 728-740. 2005.

The Inequality Series, Part III: Churn in the Ranks

Politics and Economics

“Rather than talking about the 1% and the 99% as if they were forever fixed, it would make much more sense to talk about the fact that Americans are likely to be exposed to both prosperity and poverty during their lives & to shape our policies accordingly.”

– Mark R. Rank, “From Rags to Riches to Rags” New York Times, April 18, 2014

Churn rate is a measure of the number of individuals moving out of a collective group over a specific period of time. Relative household income in the US is subject to lots of churn. For instance, the top 400 US taxpayers changes a lot from year to year: over 70 % (2,909) made the list only one year during the period of 1999-2009.  Here are more examples:

  • 12%of US population will reach the top 1 % of income earners at least once.
  • 39 % of Americans will spend time in the top 5 % of earners
  • 56 % will make it to the top 10 %
  • 73 % will spend at least a year in the top 20 %
  • 50% who earned over $1 million a year did so just one year over and  15 % managed just two years (1999-2007)
  • 54 % of Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at least once between the ages of 25 and 60

In the US, persistence within an income category is the exception, not the rule.  On the premise that you can’t fix a problem you don’t understand, we need to keep this essential fact in mind when attempting to solve the problem of inequality.

References:

http://taxfoundation.org/article/income-mobility-and-persistence-millionaires-1999-2007

Auten, Gerald, Geoffrey Gee, and Nicholas Turner. 2013. “Income Inequality, Mobility, and Turnover at the Top in the US, 1987-2010.” American Economic Review, 103(3): 168-72.

Rank,Mark R.  “From Rags to Riches to Rags” New York Times, April 18, 2014

The Inequality Series, Part II: Inequality and Age

Politics and Economics

Relative affluence or poverty is less a matter of fixed groups than of lifespan. The young are poor, the middle-aged are gaining traction, the near-retired have peaked, and old age is a long decline – in wealth and income as well as health. When we’re young, we’re getting educated and sampling jobs – a process that can extend into our 30s. Eventually we settle on some career trajectory and start accumulating skills and money. Most of us will be home owners by age 40.

Since the biggest source of wealth in the US is home equity,  the longer we own homes, the wealthier we’re likely to be.  Over half of us will also invest in stocks and mutual funds – the value of which peaks when we reach our late 60s.  Hence, the association between age and wealth.

As for the association between age and income, this chart pretty much says it all:

Income and Age

Of course, there are plenty of people who are chronically poor. Not everyone is able to improve their circumstances as they get older. The less fortunate and vulnerable need help – especially single moms. But most of us will reach at least the middle class at some point in our lives.

Next: How many?

References:

http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/

Investment Company Institute/2013 Investment Company Fact Book

US Census Bureau: Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2008 Panel

The Inequality Series, Part I: Correlation, Causation, and Bad Data

Politics and Economics

Inequality is correlated with all sorts of bad things (at least if you look at subsets of the international data , which often includes different countries and time periods and doesn’t control for outliers, mediators, moderators, and confounding variables).

But we all know correlation is not causation (even if we’re looking at good, truly comparable data).

Did you know that in the US, increasing inequality is correlated with decreasing crime rates? Or that, internationally, divorce and suicide rates are higher in more equal societies? Check out these charts:

Inequality and Bad Things

Inequality and Bad Things II

No – I’m  not saying  inequality is a good thing. Nor am I saying that graphs lie. The above graphs reflect accurate data. The point is that correlation is not causation – and this principle applies whether or not you’re sympathetic to the point.

The Romantic Appeal of a Basic Income Guarantee

Explorations Outside the Box, Politics and Economics

I’ve often suspected that one of the appeals of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is the idea that in the ideal society, people would only do what they feel like doing and that people shouldn’t feel compelled to do something they didn’t feel like doing (a teenage boy utopia). For some, this ideal is about to be realized because work is about to go the way of the dinosaurs, thanks to robots.

Leaving aside the issue of whether work is actually facing extinction (which it isn’t – see, e.g., http://www.economist….­), think about what work is: an exchange relationship, in which both sides feel what they get is worth more than what they give. There are lots of things people wouldn’t do unless they got something in return (e.g., praise, respect, sex, the joy of complying with a cultural norm) and there is the myth of self-originating autonomous action, unfolding out of pure ebullience: a traditionalist view of things, steeped in the Old Europe of Rousseau and his fellow Romantics.