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.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Middle class politics
Consider a broad central spectrum of the middle class - say the middle 60% of the people, or from the 20th to 80th percentile. According to census data for 2011, these are families with annual household income from $20,262 to $101,582.
My wife and I base our observations of the middle class on the people we meet in our travels around the United States. We seldom meet the rich or the poor; our contacts are generally with middle America. To us it seems as if there are some very strong political trends among these middle class people.
They are enormous advocates of economic freedom. Whenever their family arrived in America, they came primarily for the economic opportunity, which was so much better than the country they left. They are certain that they can prosper in America by virtue of hard work.
At the same time, they are worried about their security in old age. They understand that these household income levels - roughly $20,000 to $100,000 a year - are insufficient to allow them to save for retirement. They know they will live a long time, they know that social security will not pay them enough to retire, and so they must rely on some retirement plan or package, and they know that they won't make as much in retirement as they do while working.
So this central middle class in America is motivated by both income opportunity and income insecurity. They want to do it themselves, but they are worried about being able to afford to retire.
As a result, this middle class strongly favors lower taxes, to enable them to stretch their current income and to save for retirement. And they are strongly opposed to public welfare, which they see as taking away their hard-earned money and giving it to the lower 20%. They believe they can advance their position economically and grow into the upper 20% through hard work and savings, so they are not opposed to getting rich - in fact they hope for that to happen. In short, the American middle class tend to be quite conservative economically.
In many Western European countries, on the other hand, there is a strong economic safety net for retirement; there the central middle class feels that public pensions are adequate, and that they only need to accumulate modest savings to have an enjoyable retirement. In other words, there is much less income insecurity than in America. As a result, the middle class in Western Europe is more liberal.
In the 1960s and 1970s American politicians made an effort to provide greater economic security for the middle class: the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was conceived during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and passed into law during the Nixon and Ford administrations. The intent was to provide a reliable network of private pensions which would adequately fund the retirement of the middle class.
But we all know that the promise of private pension plans in America is illusory. Towards the lower end of the economic spectrum, many employers simply do not offer private pension plans. Also, many Americans in the lower middle class rely on part time jobs with no fringe benefits. ERISA did not require companies to use independent financial firms to finance their retirement plans, so when a company fails, the retirement plan may also fail. ERISA did not require companies to contribute significant amounts to 401(k) plans, so the amounts accumulated towards retirement are usually insufficient. Finally, ERISA did not prevent Americans from withdrawing funds from their retirement plans, so frequently the retirement package never grows large enough to support a secure retirement. As a result, the retirement insecurity persists in the new millenium.
Social Security is frequently an unloved program for no other reason than its social insecurity - it fails to provide an adequate retirement for the middle class.
The simple economic realities described above, namely the strong motivation in favor of economic freedom and opportunity, coupled with the feeling of economic insecurity as retirement age approaches, leads to an American middle class that will continue to support a conservative economic political agenda, with low taxes and low welfare payments.
My wife and I base our observations of the middle class on the people we meet in our travels around the United States. We seldom meet the rich or the poor; our contacts are generally with middle America. To us it seems as if there are some very strong political trends among these middle class people.
They are enormous advocates of economic freedom. Whenever their family arrived in America, they came primarily for the economic opportunity, which was so much better than the country they left. They are certain that they can prosper in America by virtue of hard work.
At the same time, they are worried about their security in old age. They understand that these household income levels - roughly $20,000 to $100,000 a year - are insufficient to allow them to save for retirement. They know they will live a long time, they know that social security will not pay them enough to retire, and so they must rely on some retirement plan or package, and they know that they won't make as much in retirement as they do while working.
So this central middle class in America is motivated by both income opportunity and income insecurity. They want to do it themselves, but they are worried about being able to afford to retire.
As a result, this middle class strongly favors lower taxes, to enable them to stretch their current income and to save for retirement. And they are strongly opposed to public welfare, which they see as taking away their hard-earned money and giving it to the lower 20%. They believe they can advance their position economically and grow into the upper 20% through hard work and savings, so they are not opposed to getting rich - in fact they hope for that to happen. In short, the American middle class tend to be quite conservative economically.
In many Western European countries, on the other hand, there is a strong economic safety net for retirement; there the central middle class feels that public pensions are adequate, and that they only need to accumulate modest savings to have an enjoyable retirement. In other words, there is much less income insecurity than in America. As a result, the middle class in Western Europe is more liberal.
In the 1960s and 1970s American politicians made an effort to provide greater economic security for the middle class: the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was conceived during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and passed into law during the Nixon and Ford administrations. The intent was to provide a reliable network of private pensions which would adequately fund the retirement of the middle class.
But we all know that the promise of private pension plans in America is illusory. Towards the lower end of the economic spectrum, many employers simply do not offer private pension plans. Also, many Americans in the lower middle class rely on part time jobs with no fringe benefits. ERISA did not require companies to use independent financial firms to finance their retirement plans, so when a company fails, the retirement plan may also fail. ERISA did not require companies to contribute significant amounts to 401(k) plans, so the amounts accumulated towards retirement are usually insufficient. Finally, ERISA did not prevent Americans from withdrawing funds from their retirement plans, so frequently the retirement package never grows large enough to support a secure retirement. As a result, the retirement insecurity persists in the new millenium.
Social Security is frequently an unloved program for no other reason than its social insecurity - it fails to provide an adequate retirement for the middle class.
The simple economic realities described above, namely the strong motivation in favor of economic freedom and opportunity, coupled with the feeling of economic insecurity as retirement age approaches, leads to an American middle class that will continue to support a conservative economic political agenda, with low taxes and low welfare payments.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Wrong debate
I think the media is presenting the wrong post-election debate. They're
going on and on about electoral constituencies according to race,
religion, ethnicity, etc. I don't think a successful presidential
candidate needs to win the Hispanic vote or the Catholic vote or the
Asian vote or whatever.
Instead, I think the issue really is economic class. I think Obama won because a lot of lower and lower-middle class voters voted for him because they absolutely could not identify with Romney. It's true that Romney was seen as other, but not primarily because he was white male. People are accustomed to being ruled by white males, and are perfectly willing to vote for white males (arguably Obama himself is a white male). Romney lost, I think, because he lost too much of the lower economic spectrum.
So I think the problem for the Republican party is this: They have built an enormous platform about one key issue: lowering taxes. But for a lot of Americans, lowering taxes isn't the issue - it's having enough money to worry about taxes - it's having a job - it's getting a living wage - it's getting off unemployment, getting off the dole, and not being afraid of ever going back on the dole again.
And Romney (with his infamous 47% remark) told all those out-of-work or part-time-work people that HE DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THEM. Moreover, the Republican party is telling the bottom economic classes that THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THEM.
And because of the rising INCOME INEQUALITY, the lower economic classes are becoming MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT POLITICALLY.
The Republican Party has put itself in the untenable position of TRYING TO KEEP POOR PEOPLE AWAY FROM THE VOTING BOOTH.
And that, I believe, rather than the Hispanic or whatever vote, is what is going to kill the party.
The Tea Party members are all middle class people. They have jobs and they think they're well paid. But they mistakenly think that most Americans are like them - regard themselves as solidly in the middle class WITH NO FEAR OF FALLING INTO A LOWER ECONOMIC CLASS.
The people with this fear will choose to vote for the party they perceive will allay that fear. Right now that's the Democrats.
Put another way, the Republicans have failed to demonstrate that cutting taxes will create jobs.
Instead, I think the issue really is economic class. I think Obama won because a lot of lower and lower-middle class voters voted for him because they absolutely could not identify with Romney. It's true that Romney was seen as other, but not primarily because he was white male. People are accustomed to being ruled by white males, and are perfectly willing to vote for white males (arguably Obama himself is a white male). Romney lost, I think, because he lost too much of the lower economic spectrum.
So I think the problem for the Republican party is this: They have built an enormous platform about one key issue: lowering taxes. But for a lot of Americans, lowering taxes isn't the issue - it's having enough money to worry about taxes - it's having a job - it's getting a living wage - it's getting off unemployment, getting off the dole, and not being afraid of ever going back on the dole again.
And Romney (with his infamous 47% remark) told all those out-of-work or part-time-work people that HE DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THEM. Moreover, the Republican party is telling the bottom economic classes that THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THEM.
And because of the rising INCOME INEQUALITY, the lower economic classes are becoming MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT POLITICALLY.
The Republican Party has put itself in the untenable position of TRYING TO KEEP POOR PEOPLE AWAY FROM THE VOTING BOOTH.
And that, I believe, rather than the Hispanic or whatever vote, is what is going to kill the party.
The Tea Party members are all middle class people. They have jobs and they think they're well paid. But they mistakenly think that most Americans are like them - regard themselves as solidly in the middle class WITH NO FEAR OF FALLING INTO A LOWER ECONOMIC CLASS.
The people with this fear will choose to vote for the party they perceive will allay that fear. Right now that's the Democrats.
Put another way, the Republicans have failed to demonstrate that cutting taxes will create jobs.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Learning
American students are doing poorly in schools; test scores are low relative to other developed nations. Although we spend more per capita on education than other countries, we're not getting the results.
At the same time access to knowledge has never been easier: the internet is loaded with facts and information - Wikipedia is the main example, but far from the only one. It would seem that education should be thriving with all this free learning at hand.
The problem, I learned fifty years ago as a new teacher, is a disagreement about the goals of education. "The knowledge," I said, "is free. You pay for the credential."
I find it disturbing that employers put so much stake in credentials and so little stake in knowledge. Years ago, many individuals practiced professions with no formal training at all. They were self-taught. Today a self-taught professional is a museum piece.
Yet the primary characteristic of a credential is that the holder has submitted to the rules, regulations, and requirements and, yes, paid the bills, to obtain the credential.
In seeking the social causes of poverty in America we need look no further than lack of education - both in terms of credentials and knowledge.
Through hundreds of years of institutionalized schooling, most of us have lost our regard for learning. We have given our decision making into the hands of experts, and the average citizen cannot readily be heard, no matter how much he or she knows.
As ordinary citizens we could do little better than encouraging everyone to study and seek the truth. Besides helping us adapt to a complex modern society, we might encourage a more cooperative approach to our politics.
At the same time access to knowledge has never been easier: the internet is loaded with facts and information - Wikipedia is the main example, but far from the only one. It would seem that education should be thriving with all this free learning at hand.
The problem, I learned fifty years ago as a new teacher, is a disagreement about the goals of education. "The knowledge," I said, "is free. You pay for the credential."
I find it disturbing that employers put so much stake in credentials and so little stake in knowledge. Years ago, many individuals practiced professions with no formal training at all. They were self-taught. Today a self-taught professional is a museum piece.
Yet the primary characteristic of a credential is that the holder has submitted to the rules, regulations, and requirements and, yes, paid the bills, to obtain the credential.
In seeking the social causes of poverty in America we need look no further than lack of education - both in terms of credentials and knowledge.
Through hundreds of years of institutionalized schooling, most of us have lost our regard for learning. We have given our decision making into the hands of experts, and the average citizen cannot readily be heard, no matter how much he or she knows.
As ordinary citizens we could do little better than encouraging everyone to study and seek the truth. Besides helping us adapt to a complex modern society, we might encourage a more cooperative approach to our politics.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Powerful People
Despite sensational news coverage, we should understand that powerful people have always worked hard to keep their power. It was true last year, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, and in prehistoric times. Whether by force or persuasion or bribery or extortion or campaigning and advertising for elections, the "ins" want to stay "in." And usually they do.
So we should reserve our surprise for those rare occasions when a powerful person willingly leaves the corridors of power for a peaceful quiet retirement. That would be news!
So we should reserve our surprise for those rare occasions when a powerful person willingly leaves the corridors of power for a peaceful quiet retirement. That would be news!
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