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.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
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?
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?
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
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.
But a rising tide just drowns the poverty-stricken, for they have no boat at all.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
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.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
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.
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 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.
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