We can't get out of this mess at the next election.

Consider this choice facing a smart, capable, motivated young person:

     (a)     Enter the corporate world and rise to a prominent position of power and wealth;

     or

     (b)     Take additional education and enter the respected and secure world of the professions.

     or

     (c)     Enter the world of politics and rise to a prominent position in the government.

For most young people, this is a no-brainer.  Corporate executives can command people and resources to accomplish corporate objectives.  Successful professionals have high civic status and a decent annual income, leading to a secure retirement.  But politicians are widely hated, constantly abused, and obsessed with the task of raising enough contributions to get through the next elections.  Instead of working for the public good, they are forced to focus on political survival.

One result is the lack of outstanding people willing to enter politics.Their real world career decisions mean that many elections, both primary and general, are uncontested (de facto or literally).  This condition has been exaggerated by the partisan gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

The electoral process no longer provides the people a check on government -- you can throw out the incumbent bastard, it's true, but only to install the bastard from the opposite party.  The public can't succeed in getting good people to elect unless those good people are on the ballot.

And by and large, they're not.

We need to  overhaul our federal government.  An awesome task, but the consequences of political deadlock on our children and grandchildren  are unacceptable.

More on consumption payments

The consumption payment program (see previous post) would also:

     Reduce or eliminate ordinary welfare, also SSDI (ultimately)
Since welfare is administered by the states, while consumption payments would be administered by SSA, this would tend to reduce the impact and variance of the state welfare bureaucracies.  [States could continue welfare programs with state funds]
Consumption payments would be figured in in determining need for programs such as food stamps or other welfare programs.
Would provide low wage laborers a place to deposit paychecks (the bank required for direct deposit by SSA)
Would be avoided by illegal immigrants (because to be eligible, the recipient must apply for a SSAN, which includes info relative to citizenship, thereby favoring citizens at the expense of immigrants).  Thus the payday loan companies would not be completely out of business.
Fraud in applying for an SSAN would carry penalties, including deportation; however the fraud would have to be proved in law (or admitted.)

Consumption payments

This post proposes the payment, in the United States, of a certain amount - for example $200 a month, to every individual, for the purposes of maintaining minimum levels of economic consumption.  Payments would be made through the Social Security System.

Consumption payments would not be welfare, as they would be distributed equally to rich and poor.

Consumption payments would encourage every individual to enroll early in the Social Security System and to obtain a bank account, as the Social Security System prefers to make direct deposits.

With the guaranteed monthly deposits, banks would be motivated to open deposit accounts for all persons with a Social Security number.

Although not intended as welfare payments, consumption payments would nevertheless serve as an economic force to reduce poverty.

Consumption payments would be taxable as ordinary income, thereby requiring all persons receiving consumption payments to file tax returns.

With automation gradually taking away employment in the production sector, and the resulting unemployment maintaining downward pressure on wages in the service sector, consumption payments would reduce the effects of unemployment on reducing consumption in the United States, thereby benefiting landlords and retail businesses.

As enrollment in the Social Security System is a form of documentation, requiring the applicant to provide a domicile address, the consumption payment program would reduce the number of undocumented persons in the United States, thereby assisting the immigration program.

Citizen Attorney General

Consider the effect of the following amendment to the Constitution:

Any citizen of the United States shall have the right to bring an action in federal court against any person, or organization, public or private, to enforce the constitution or laws of the United States.  Any federal court of general jurisdiction may hear such a case, and any officer or governmental agency in the United States is required to carry out the orders of the court.

Working people need an association

My wife and I are retired - haven't worked since 2000.  The AARP looks out for the interests of retired people.

But who looks out for the interests of working people?

Working people include full time workers, part time workers, those who work at home, piecework workers, public sector workers, independent contractors, entrepreneurs, even bankers and elected officials.

In theory, working people are the bedrock foundation of the United States of America.  But who looks out for the interests of working people?

What are the interests of working people?  Primarily, to make a living.  But even more, to get ahead.  That's the story that made the United States great.  People worked hard and got ahead.  While some people will want to work several jobs, that shouldn't be a requirement.  A person who works full time, that is 40 hours a week or more, should definitely make a living.

Second, working people should be protected.  Accidents do happen, and if a person is unable to work for a while - or forever - due to sickness or injury, that person should be insured against loss of income until he or she can get back to work.  Workers should have access to health care to keep them fit to work.

Finally, working people ought to benefit from some form of retirement pension, so that a person who works from the end of school to retirement is provided enough income and health care through the rest of life.

There are other things that might be nice, but those three major items - adequate compensation, protection against sickness or injury, and retirement benefits at the end of a working career - can be thought of as the working person's bill of rights.

But who looks out for the interests of working people?

We need an AAWP - an American Association of Working People - to look out for the interests of working people in America.

What do you think?

A Rising Tide

A rising tide floats the megayachts of the billionaires, the cabin cruisers of the merely wealthy, the warships of the powerful, the outboards of the plain successful, the kayaks of the up-and-coming yuppies.

But a rising tide just drowns the poverty-stricken, for they have no boat at all.

Whither Academia?

Universities began as small communities of scholars, coming together to share the results of their study.  Senior scholars became faculty; junior scholars were students.

Perhaps from the very beginnings the seeds of downfall were present: as soon as students were certificated for completion of prescribed courses of study, universities became credentialing organizations as well as centers of learning.

Whatever the history, the reality of today's universities is deplorable.  Despite the immense expansion of scholarly work, there is no agreement on the need to seek truth.  In fact universities sacrifice truth on the altar of power.

Universities (like other large organizations) have grown top-heavy, with ponderous committees and myriad deans, provosts, directors, and chancellors, together with assistants and associates thereof.  Salaries have ballooned at the top, and the quest for money occupies the time of the leaders.  Besides grants and titled chairs, universities have become professional sports empires.  The search for truth is lost in the noise of power.

Students are not well-served by expensive institutions that do little to help graduates find employment commensurate with their education.

All the sadder is that politicians and businesses may buy the support of universities.  Every crackpot theory of science or psychology or biology or economics can find both supporters and detractors within the halls of academe.  The message to the public is -- there is no truth, just what you pay to have "supported by scientific research".

Meanwhile, human society continues to be plagued by the rampant illiteracy and innumeracy of the general public; the leading scholars of the world are incapable of seeing to the successful education of the masses.

Finally, universities, which ought to be bastions of open inquiry, do little to stand up to the predations of governments and other large  and powerful organizations, which obscure the truth behind the twin veils of censorship and secrecy.

It's not the numbers, it's the people.

We are all one species, homo sapiens, all of us are people.  We're not 47% and we're not $5.3 trillion.  We're flesh and blood; we live and breathe, work and play, talk and listen, marry and have children, get sick, grow old and die.  All of us.

Our governments, it seems, insist on thinking of us as numbers.  And our leaders often appear to deny their relationship to the rest of us people.

We can't escape from one another, although some of us try.  We ride first class and drive luxury cars and live on the right side of the tracks, in gated and guarded communities, with all the amenities of success.  We make reservations in restaurants and hire publicists and trainers and bodyguards.

A genealogist knows the truth - we are all related, with common ancestors revealed by public records and DNA.  Perhaps some of us think of others of us as black sheep, but we're still kinfolk.

We can't be codified - we insist on being considered on a case-by-case basis.  Rules are meant to be broken, not people.

The root of the word 'democracy' means 'power to the people.'  To live up to its promise, democracy must be accountable to the people.  Elections merely enable politicians to compete for the favor of the electorate; accountability means the grievances of all individuals must be heard and adjudicated.  But we deny equal justice to all, and thereby we deny democracy.  "And how much justice can you afford?" is not just the caption of a New Yorker cartoon, it is a shocking revelation of the truth.

We all owe an obligation to humanity; we can't escape it by shielding ourselves behind the trappings of power.  We may never have visited a prison or a slum but our fellow humans are there.  It's all very well for the powerful to assert the blessings of rugged individualism; but if those blessings end up accruing merely to the few, it's not democracy, it's aristocracy, or brahminism, or outright tyranny.

Government is not about jobs or schools or taxes or deficits or laws or security or farms or filibusters or banks or markets.  It's about people.

The next time you read something filled with numbers ask yourself if those numbers merely serve to obscure the faces of unsuccessful humans.  Ask yourself how those numbers relate, not just to you (whoever you may be) but to everybody else.

On Robots and Work

In regard to the books and articles about "the way robots are taking our jobs away from us."

Thinking about the huge number of jobs that used to be performed by humans that can now be performed better and perhaps cheaper by robots, we should have a wide-ranging discussion.

At least one of the threads which should be explored should be, "well, maybe humans should work less."  But instead, the typical book or article on the subject goes right into "well, what other kinds of jobs might humans do?"

I've been trying to understand the reasons for this myopia and I've come up with at least two:  (1) Calvinism is not dead; and (2) economic models have enthralled us.

For the first, I guess people (even Chomsky seems to go this way) assume people want to "work" although Chomsky thinks they shouldn't do slave labor for wages or salary.  But Chomsky doesn't seem to think about people playing instead of working.  Not that play can't be serious, but one suspects that Chomsky himself is too much caught up in Calvinist philosophy; he himself has been "working" harder than ever since his wife died.

Leaving aside the need to make money, I guess the Calvinism implies that the kind of "work" people "ought" to do consists of activities that will benefit others, activities that are not selfish, and that "play" is "frivolous" and not of use or value to society.  What about art - is it work or play?  But of course if there are lots of robots to do things, people might be free to play a great deal of the time.

For the second reason, the mystique of economic models, I guess that most people assume that if we didn't work for money then we wouldn't have any money.  But manifestly this is not so.  One has only to look at a country like Kuwait which plows a lot of oil money back into various social welfare projects (I'm not advocating moving to Kuwait).  Money can be channeled (and is channeled) to people who don't work via government grants (viz., unemployment, welfare) and private charity.  The problem here, of course, is that recipients of charity are DEEMED TO BE insufficient citizens because of their failure to work.

To a mathematician, all of this is so much balderdash.  If 90% of the work could be done by robots, people could "work" 10% of the time in return for 100% of the salary (so there was enough money flowing to keep the economy flowing).  Alternatively, if money was made equivalent to the labor of robots and it was made illegal to hire people to work for money, then human work, as we know it, would cease to exist, and we would rely on volunteer human activities to keep the robots busy.

The real issue is, how highly do we value having rich and poor people?

I think the rich value it a lot, because what they really want is implicit power over the poor, not just nice things for themselves.  Status counts for a lot of power.  So I think the rich will push for Calvinism and push for the existing economic model and force the poor to earn less and less and at the same time damn the poor for accepting welfare or charity, and struggle to get even richer and to help their children be rich, too.

That last paragraph delineates the problem that must be solved first, before we worry about the effects of smart machines.  It is of course, a moral problem, and it is defined in human terms, not in dollars.