Religion, Ideology and Mindfulness, Part I

Ideology and religion are somewhat contested and fuzzy terms and their meanings vary depending on whom you’re talking to. The definition of ideology I will be using borrows from Robert Jay Lifton and Willard S. Mullins: an ideology is a relatively comprehensive and coherent set of convictions (a “vision”) about how humans and the world works, which is powerful enough to influence one’s thinking, feelings, evaluations, and actions. In this sense, I consider mindfulness as an ideological movement.

As for “religion”, William James and Clifford Geertz will be my guides. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (Electronic Classics Series, 2002-2013), James defines religion as:

“…the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.” (p. 38)

And what is the ‘divine’? Per James:

“The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.” (p. 45)

Now to Geertz’s definition of religion.  In The Interpretation of Cultures (Fontana Press, 1993) Geertz defines religion as:

“(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (p. 90)

Geertz identifies suffering as a specific religious problem:

“As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others’ agony something bearable, supportable—something, as we say, sufferable.” p.104

Geertz further describes a “religious” perspective as:

“… [moving] beyond the realities of everyday life to wider ones which correct and complete them, and its defining concern is not action upon those wider realities but acceptance of them, faith in them. It differs from the scientific perspective in that it questions the realities of everyday life not out of an institutionalized skepticism which dissolves the world’s givenness into a swirl of probabilistic hypotheses, but in terms of what it takes to be wider, nonhypothetical truths. Rather than detachment, its watchword is commitment; rather than analysis, encounter. …it deepens the concern with fact and seeks to create an aura of utter actuality. It is this sense of the “really real” upon which the religious perspective rests…” (p 112)

According to James and Geertz, the essence of religion has nothing to do with god(s) or doctrine. At its core, religion is about experience and a conviction about the really real. And it is in this sense that mindfulness is a religious movement.

Debate 2: Should the government require employers to pay a living wage?

A living wage is the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support their family, if they are the sole provider and are working full-time (2080 hours per year). As adopted in the US, living wages are often set so that a full-time worker with a family of four earns more than some measure of poverty (usually the official federal poverty line). According to MIT researchers, more than a third of American families are headed by individuals earning less than a living wage.

Support for the principle of a living wage seems to be gathering momentum. The City of Baltimore enacted the first living wage law in the US in 1994. Currently, more than 140 American cities have living wage laws. Bernie Sanders is firmly behind a living wage for the entire country, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next few years, as recently done by the City of Los Angeles. Robert Reich is strongly in favor of a national living wage, arguing that any wage ought to be enough to “get Americans out of poverty and off government programs” and that we the taxpayer shouldn’t be subsidizing billion dollar corporations who refuse to pay decent wages. Reich further argues that a mandated living wage will reduce employee absenteeism and turnover, as well as improve worker morale and productivity, hence neutralizing or even reducing employer costs. Increased worker productivity and spending will then lead to economic growth and expanded job creation.

Opponents of a living wage argue that although a mandated living wage sounds great in principle, it can actually harm the very workers it seeks to help. Both economic theory and evidence suggest that living wage ordinances create distortions in the labor market that have a negative impact on employment. When governments mandate a wage above the prevailing market rate, a typical result is that fewer jobs and hours become available. One of the problems is that living wage ordinances often involve a large jump in the minimum wage, which has consequences that are different than incremental minimum wage increases. Also, employers of low-wage workers tend to have low profit margins and so have to cut costs or increase prices in order to afford the higher wages. In addition, employers respond to living wage laws by hiring more qualified workers at the expense of those with fewer skills in order to offset some of the higher wage costs. Living wages therefore reduce the opportunity for less-skilled workers to participate in the labor market. This is a highly perverse outcome since less-skilled workers are presumably among the very people the policy is intended help.

So what do you think? Would a living wage law be a net good, lifting millions out of poverty? Or might it have unintended consequences, ultimately hurting more people than it helps?

Environmentally Friendly? Think Again. Part II

This is a continuation of a series on how certain sensibilities within the environmental movement could lead to policies that, if applied on a broad scale, would result in net environmental harm.

Anti-GM foods: Although research has failed again and again to substantiate any harm from GM crops, the anti-GM activists just won’t stop, creating impossible conditions to satisfy their concerns. And GM foods are such a godsend! (see, for instance: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2014-11-08) Just think: more crops that are resistant to extreme weather, including drought, that require less pesticide and fertilizer, and that are more nutritious and require less land to grow. Remember: we need to reduce agricultural land, so more is available for wild habitat and forest.

Anti-Large Farms: This is in part a romanticization of small farms and part a knee-jerk demonization of large businesses. So we have “Big Ag” and “corporate agriculture”. Actually, the vast majority of US farms are family-owned, including the biggest farms . And most of corporate farms are small-to-moderate size. Just check out the USDA Economic Research Services for the latest numbers on this. (Note, though, I don’t have a problem with corporate ownership per se – for me, “corporate” is not a synonym for evil).

The problem with this “small is beautiful” mentality is that small landholders tend to          operate on very small margins and are the least likely to afford sustainable practices like    letting a portion of their land fallow every year and to allow some bordering forests to       remain intact. In poorer countries, when times are hard, the trees are chopped down to   sell the wood and whatever can be planted will be planted.

Pro-Integrated Agriculture. This is the idea that farming should be integrated with non-cultivated areas to preserve biodiversity as much as possible. Research, however, does not bear this out. First, agriculture of any type is disruptive of biodiversity. Second, farms need access to more land to produce the same output if they have to “share” the farm plots with non-farm areas. Third, “sharing” the land in this way has been found to be less conducive to biodiversity than simply leaving more land (e.g., forests) alone and concentrating farmland (so-called “sparing” the land). See, for instance: Ben Phalan et al (2011) Reconciling Food Production and Biodiversity Conservation: Land Sharing and Land Sparing Compared, Science, Vol 333, 2 September 2011

Evaluating Research Quality

Every once in a while, I’ll be posting excerpts from  Evaluating Research Quality: Evaluating Research Quality – Guidelines for Scholarship (2012) by Todd Litman; Victoria Transport Policy Institute

This clearly written, concise and accessible document “discusses the importance of good research, discusses common causes of bias, provides guidelines for evaluating research and data quality, and describes examples of bad research.” It should be required reading for anyone wanting to be a more discerning consumer of scientific evidence and arguments, especially as found in opinion pieces claiming solid scientific backing. Check it out – the pdf is available online.

One of my favorite parts is Litman’s list of “methodological potholes” frequently encountered in science writing. These are based mostly on Huron (2000)* and include:

Hypocrisy: Holding others to a higher methodological standard than oneself.

Ad hominem argument: Criticizing the person rather than their argument.

Discovery fallacy: Criticizing an idea because of its origin (e.g., from a religious text).

Ipse dixit: Appealing to authority figures  (e.g., “Research increasingly shows that…”).

Confirmation bias: The tendency to see events as confirming a theory while viewing falsifying events as “exceptions”.

Ad-hoc hypothesis: Proposing a supplementary hypothesis to explain why a favorite theory or interpretation failed a test.

Data neglect: Tendency to ignore available information when assessing theories or hypotheses.

Anti-operationalizing: The tendency to raise perpetual objections to all operational definitions.

Presumptive representation: The practice of representing others to themselves.

Magnitude blindness: Preoccupation with statistically significant results that have small magnitude effects.

Regression artifacts: The tendency to interpret regression toward the mean as an experimental phenomenon.

Demand characteristics: Any aspect of an experiment that might inform subjects of the purpose of the study.

Placebo effect: Positive or negative response arising from the subject’s expectations of an effect.

Litman also identifies the pothole of “Know-nothing, which implies that “because some issues are unknown, nothing is known”, to which I would add: “Predict-Nothing”: implies that since we can’t know the future for sure, we shouldn’t put any stock in any predicted scenarios.

*David Huron (2000), Sixty Methodological Potholes, Ohio State University (http://dactyl.som.ohio-state.edu/Music829C/methodological.potholes.html)

 

Mindfulness and the Realm of the Falsifiable

These posts will also be part critique of the mindfulness movement. Per Wikipedia, a critique “is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse…. and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt.” A critique is not just descriptive but implies evaluation of merit. The questions of merit I’m most interested in relate to the truth-value of assertions made in the name of mindfulness as well as possible effects of mindfulness discourse and practice.

Some assertions cannot be proven by argument or evidence; that is, they are unfalsifiable. Variations on “I just know” are unfalsifiable. These include: it’s a matter of experience, higher understanding, wisdom, essential truths, deeply felt emotion, being, higher consciousness or faith. There certainly is room for unfalsifiable convictions, but if a conviction is about something that can clearly be evaluated according to the rules of logic or evidence, then “I just know” or any of its variants is not enough. For example, “I know in my heart that, deep down, people are good” would be hard to confirm one way or another, but “I know in my heart that John never hit that woman” refers to something that potentially could be shown to be true or false.

Even though many mindfulness advocates welcome scientific support for mindfulness practice, such support may not considered essential because, ultimately, the “truth” of mindfulness is not subject to impersonal rules of logic or evidence. As Jon Kabat-Zinn put it:

“And if a science of mindfulness had never emerged, meditation would still be just as important to me. Such meditative practices stand on their own. They have their own compelling logic, their own empirical validity, their own wisdom which can be known only from the inside….” 280 Full Catastrophe Living (Kindle pagination – my bold)

Maybe, maybe not. If an assertion includes falsifiable elements, that assertion is fair game for logical and/or empirical critique.

Mindfulness and Either/Or Thinking

Approaching the mindfulness movement as a form of discourse reflecting a broad array of influences (cultural, historical, ideological, religious) and employing various rhetorical strategies to boost its appeal is not to say that the insights or wisdom associated with mindfulness are without merit or foundation in reality. A lot of things constrain and influence how we see the world and how we see the world may still reflect, more or less accurately, what is the case. An example: to paraphrase Steven Pinker , our neurobiology, upbringing and linguistic conventions enable us to experience and label something as “red” and “redness” corresponds to something real, e.g. a wavelength of light from approximately 620–740 nm on the electromagnetic spectrum.

To claim otherwise is to engage in either/or thinking, or “rathering” – a wonderful term coined by Daniel Dennett. Cultural (or, for that matter, psychological) reductionism is a form of “rathering”: rather than seeing the world as it is, we see through our cultural (or psychological) lenses. Such reductionism is often applied to those with whom we disagree: Their way of thinking is a product of influences or self-interest; my way of thinking is the result of close observation of reality.

There’s no need to choose between analyzing discourse as such and also considering its truth-value. I intend to do both. I want to understand mindfulness as a form of discourse and I want to know how well the assumptions, beliefs and practices associated with the mindfulness movement comport with the current scientific understanding of how people and the world works.

The Basic Income Guarantee – Part III: What would be So Great About It?

So I’ve shown that it’s relatively doable to provide a modest BIG that goes to about 72 million people who belong to households in the two bottom income quintiles. Now let me sing the praises of such a BIG.

My BIG won’t be so generous to incentivize long periods of unemployment. Plus, you can still work and receive a full BIG until your household hits $20,000 in annual income and a partial BIG until you hit $40,000. I imagine that the vast majority of BIG recipients will work at least part-time. BIG will work especially well with the “on-demand” economy, where people choose to work as they need to and when they want to.

But as young adults get older and start thinking about career advancement and earning enough for mortgages and nest eggs, they will be more than motivated than embrace the work ethic – which is pretty much how it is now.  A lot of teenagers and twenty-somethings already work only occasionally or part-time, often because their priorities are elsewhere (school, creative projects, fun, adventure). Eventually, they buckle down for a few decades to do what they must. This life trajectory isn’t likely to change with BIG. What will change, for the better, will be the standard of living for the young and minimally skilled.

Parents will be in a better position to take time off from work, or work just part-time, when their kids are really young. Not all parents would take advantage of this option but it’s still very nice to have, especially for young unskilled parents, where even one full-time employed partner may not earn enough to put the household above the bottom quintile.

A BIG could also strengthen committed relationships. Since poverty destabilizes relationships, the additional income could help poor couples stay together. Yes, there would be some disincentive to combine households through marriage (potentially pushing up household income to a disqualifying level) but most people by their 30s will earn too much to qualify for BIG anyway and at that point the marriage penalty disappears.

The BIG would also make it easier to leave dysfunctional relationships. Abused women in particular would have another source of income to help them move out and start over.

BIG would be great for students, who could still work part-time to help meet those steep tuition bills. (Note: Part-time employment is not a risk factor for dropping out of college).

And if you become suddenly unemployed, no need to apply for unemployment compensation, which BIG will replace. Sure, BIG isn’t as generous as unemployment and people who were high earners will receive a lot less than under the current system. But at least BIG is guaranteed and predictable.   And, again, there will be forms of means-tested assistance available, like food stamps.

Sure, some people will never get on the work wagon, or will only sporadically do so. Just like today. At least they will be guaranteed some income, without having to put on a show to prove they’re unable to work or are looking for work. And since their BIG won’t be jeopardized by occasional work (up to at least $20,000 a year per household), they will be less tempted to make a few extra bucks through the informal, untaxed economy (i.e., under the table or criminal) – but will take “real” jobs as they are able and so choose.

 

The Basic Income Guarantee – Part II: Who would get it?

In the last post, I found $450 billion in the state and federal budgets to pay for a modest Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) benefit. Who would qualify to receive these funds?

BIG is usually conceived as a benefit that goes to all adults, with the hefty BIG bill paid through taxes on the affluent. But to balance the books, this would require those in higher income brackets to give any BIG they received back to the government in the form of taxes. This seems wasteful – why would the government give money to a group of taxpayers only to take back the entire amount from the same taxpayers?

At first I’d thought I’d address this problem by giving the BIG only to the poor and near-poor. But then it just becomes another means-tested program. Part of the attraction of BIG is that it doesn’t require jumping through bureaucratic hoops to receive. The check just comes. On a regular basis. No long lines and endless waiting.

Then again, the middle-class and affluent are not those a BIG is intended to help. The point of BIG is to provide a basic income for low-income people without making them sing and dance for it. No having to prove they are the truly deserving – that they’re unable to work or looking really hard for a job. The immediate benefits include the security of an income guarantee, less destitution, less being on the brink of destitution, less gaming of the system, lower administrative costs, and a smaller, less complicated bureaucracy. I’ll discuss other benefits later.

So it looks like a BIG would have to be sent to all adults not otherwise receiving a similar benefit, like Social Security,  government pensions, or Veterans disability benefits. Then a lot of the money sent out would be returned to the government in the form of taxes paid by the middle class and above.  Ideally, this can mostly be done electronically to reduce administrative costs.

As mentioned before, BIG would have to be designed in such a way that it would not create a huge disincentive to work. You don’t want to shrink the pool of tax payers, at least not by a lot. Ultimately, it would be the taxpayers who pay for BIG, not to mention all those other things governments do. And you don’t want the tax base too narrowly focused on the affluent, because the income of the rich is more volatile than that of other income classes. A stable BIG needs a stable source of funding, which means a pretty broad tax base. The 1% can’t pay for everything.

So BIG has to be generous enough to be meaningful but not so generous that a significant chunk of the population is tempted to sleep in and forget about the whole job thing. Where might that sweet spot be?

Let’s explore.

Who needs BIG the most? Poor or near-poor people, which I’ll define as qualifying adults in the bottom two household income quintiles. That would be about 72 million people. Although BIG would be sent to adults in all income quintiles, those in the top three quintiles would receive no net BIG after taxes, so in my calculations I will ignore them.

Here’s where the 72 million figure came from: there are about 24 million US households in each income quintile. Each household has an average of 1.5 adults, not counting adults who receive Social Security, public sector pensions or veterans’ benefits (who would not receive BIG). That adds up to about 36 million individuals per quintile, times 2 equals 72 million. Admittedly, the figuring is rough – but good enough for the purpose at hand.

The upper household income limit for the first quintile is about $20,000 a year. For the second quintile, it is about $40,000. What would be a reasonable amount of money to send to these folks? Enough to move them away from the brink of destitution but not so much to discourage work.

I’m thinking $700 a month ($8400/year) per qualifying adult. That’s enough to really help with core expenses but not enough to live on without working at least part-time (except, perhaps, for very frugal singles not living in San Francisco who don’t mind having a bunch of roommates – and more power to them). And remember: other means-tested benefits are still available, like food stamps, housing assistance, childcare assistance, and healthcare. So BIG will not be the only source of assistance with living expenses.

Unfortunately, given a $450 billion budget, a BIG of $700/month would pay for just 53 million people – fewer people than there are in the bottom two income quintiles. But that’s ok – because the BIG should get smaller as income increases, where it is more likely to be a wage supplement than the main source of income.

Adults in households belonging to the first quintile (maximum $20,000/year) are barely getting by. It would make sense for them to receive the full BIG allotment of $700/month. Second quintile adults living in households earning $20-$40,000 would taxed on the BIG, averaging $350/month in additional taxes (minimally taxed at the lower end of the income range and reaching $700/month in taxes at the top end). Combining the first and second quintiles, qualifying adults would receive, on average, a net BIG of $525 a month.

That would be 72 million people receiving a net BIG benefit  averaging $525 per month, costing the feds and state governments about $453 billion a year. Close enough to my budget of $450 billion to meet the doability test.

So it looks like there’s enough money to move around funds in the existing state/federal budgets to implement a modest BIG along the lines described. The incremental decreases of BIG within the 2nd income quintile will be sufficiently small to be unlikely to disincentivize work or ambition.

Pretty good so far. Of course, things will go wrong. There will be unforeseen and unintended consequences. I imagine the BIG program will need to be tweaked a lot as it is rolled out. BIG legislation will need to include self-corrective mechanisms that are automatically triggered when problems arise, without requiring politicians to hazard the wrath of the voters, to keep the BIG within certain budget and policy parameters (e.g., if the economy tanks, or labor market participation drops precipitously). It won’t be perfect. It won’t eliminate all suffering. But it sure will be better than what we have now.

The Basic Income Guarantee – Part I: Is it Doable?

The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a form of government benefit in which all citizens or legal residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money.  Some libertarians like the BIG, because it would provide a simple alternative to the morass of means-tested government programs that are associated with dependency, gaming the system, and work avoidance. Liberals like the BIG as a way to combat inequality and eliminate poverty. Needless to say, liberal versions of the BIG tend to be much more generous than those suggested by libertarians.

I initially opposed the BIG as too expensive and damaging to the economy, putting into play all sorts of incentives and disincentives that would have the effect of reducing labor market participation while imposing an excessive tax burden on the shrinking pool of taxpayers. Crunching the numbers, it just didn’t seem doable. But I’ve come around – at least to a modest BIG that meets two conditions: 1) a BIG shouldn’t cost more than the safety net programs it replaces – therefore, it would not add to the overall burden of taxpayers; and,  2) it should not disincentivize work so much that the tax base shrinks any more than is already projected (due to the aging of the population)

First order of business: how much money would be available for the BIG budget and where would it come from?

Note: The following figures and calculations are approximations only. The point here is to show that some sort of BIG is doable, not to work out the exact costs.

The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) would be paid through federal and state taxes. Since one of the conditions of this modest BIG is that the overall government tax burden does not increase to fund it, let’s look at where government spending currently stands.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in fiscal year 2014, the federal government spent $3.5 trillion, of which over $3.0 trillion was financed by federal revenues and the remaining financed by borrowing. Here’s the rough breakdown of where that money went:

– 24 percent to Social Security

– 24 percent to 4 health insurance programs — Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and ACA subsidies.

– 18 percent to defense and security-related international activities.

– 11 percent to safety net programs that provide aid to individuals and families facing hardship.

– 7 percent to interest payments on the national debt.

– 8 percent to federal retirees and veterans.

– 3 percent to transportation and infrastructure

– 2 percent to education

– 2 percent to science and medical research

– 1 percent to non-security international

– 2 percent to all other

(Due to rounding, the total is more than 100%).

BIG would be funded through the portion of government budgets devoted to safety net programs (about 11% of the federal budget, with states contributing matching funds). Let’s see if we can cobble together a decent BIG budget through the elimination of the programs that BIG would replace, plus selective reductions in other programs.

BIG would replace many of the big ticket programs, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, and unemployment compensation. Per Federal Safety Net, TANF, EITC, and SSI cost about $150 billion annually. Move $150 billion to BIG.

In the last decade, the combined federal/state budget for unemployment benefits has ranged from $50-$150 billion a year, depending on the unemployment rate and allowed duration of the benefit. We’ll assume an annual average of $100 billion and move it to the BIG budget.

Most other means-tested safety net programs would stay in place, such as SNAP (food stamps), Pell grants, housing assistance, school lunches, and childcare assistance. However, because BIG counts as income, the budget for some of these other programs will go down if a substantial number of people receive BIG (because they will qualify for lower/fewer benefits due to higher income). I’ll estimate these programs will get about 10% smaller, freeing up another $25 billion for the BIG budget.

In addition, some federal programs would be eliminated to reduce agency overlap and duplication of services, a pervasive problem according to the US Government Accountability Office. Let’s say elimination of these unneeded programs saves $25 billion. Those funds can be applied to BIG.

The states also contribute matching funds to many of the federal welfare programs. A portion of these funds – $150 billion – will go into the BIG budget.

Ok, based on the above, this is what we have to pay for the BIG:

$150b – existing safety net programs that will be replaced by BIG

$25b – budget reductions in some remaining programs

$25b – elimination of redundant programs

$100b – unemployment compensation, to be replaced by BIG

$150b – state matching funds

So we have about $450 billion to pay for a BIG. It’s a start.