The Politics of Survival: Putting Yourself in a Box
Farmer protesting the New Deal relief program in 1940. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons
I have several relatives who daily consume one of the same seven or eight meals they’ve been eating their entire lives. These meals usually consist of grilled or fried beef, a starch side dish, and an occasional salad. When they eat out, they will order what they eat at home. Once every two weeks or so, they will have an “Italian night” where baked ziti, lasagna, or spaghetti topped with Ragu sauce is served. Then, it’s back to meat and starch.
When I asked a family member about this cult phenomenon, they explained they had read a scientific article about something called “food caution” and it being hereditary. I suppose if some scientist posits this is an inherited trait I should believe them. But I am still prone to wonder how my ancestors decided what made for good eating.
Scotland, 2000 BCE: Och, laddy, do yah nae ken we should rip out this dead sheep’s lungs, chop them up, shove them into the beastie’s stomach and boil it? Aye, it’d be a wee cost and huge flavor: a right frugal approach.
Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing what you like and sticking with what works, but I have always looked at something new and thought, “I’d try that.” I’d be that ancient guy wandering down the beach, see a clam, and think, I wonder what’s inside these weird rocks? Let’s eat it.
The Venn diagram of people I know who have drastically restricted diets shows a major overlap with those who also eschew travel through either circumstances or choice. I have two older family members who refuse to travel by air because they candidly explain they don’t want to die in a fiery crash. This concern is far from unusual and was mainstreamed by celebrities like famous football coach and sports announcer John Madden. Coach Madden was renowned for his fear of flying and traveled to all his broadcasting events in a chauffeur-driven motor coach.
For a fun mental exercise, I used to have my graduate students run a calculation of Madden’s risk of death from commercial air travel versus bus travel using the locations, routes, and dates of his assignments. The mathematical consensus was that Coach Madden was over 250 TIMES as likely to die in an accident on the highway as he was from a crashing airliner. The lesson the students learned was our human perception of risk is most often colored by our emotions and not our intellect.
Beyond the issue of risk control lies the innate desire to seek out safety and assurance in a cruel and capricious world. We have been programmed from time immemorial to be conscious of our survival. Our early ancestors developed a higher sensitivity to the color green because they inhabited a landscape of grasses, plants and trees. The subtle changes in the color green helped them identify imminent threats as well as possible prey. To this day, humans have more color sensitivity to shades of green than any other hue. Survival is programmed directly into our DNA.
Most of the choices of our lives are centered on our survival. We make plans about our education, families, and careers with an eye toward security for us physically, emotionally, and financially. We end up defining our environment by how we evaluate and react to risk. We build a safe space for us to grow, but it can also become a cage that keeps us confined within our perceptions of risk.
Much of the recent political conversation has focused on promises made by those who want our vote in exchange for one or more elements of our perceived survival. Think about it. A guaranteed “living wage”, Social Security, healthcare insurance, climate change, universal basic income, immigration, and most every major issue can be traced to our primal need to control the world around us. We want to shield our self and family from illness and want. We want to leverage our vote to enhance our safety. This perceived tradeoff has resulted in a two-party system of pandering to different aspects of our safety and survival.
What I find oddly surprising is the abject lack of traction for a platform of freedom from an overweening, heavy-handed government. There are countless pronouncements and articles about “greedy” people, yet nary a mention of a greedy, self-serving government. When the national dialog is consistently focused on celebrity politicians, noisome legislators, and opinionated judges, we have ample evidence our government has far too much influence on our individual lives. Of course, asking any elected representative to curtail their own powers to benefit society is an obvious conflict of self-interest that needs to be addressed.
The structures and rules you seek to impose on your fellow citizens will necessarily become the confines in which you yourself must also live. When we seek to limit freedoms in exchange for security, we are often not aware of what ultimate effect it will make on our life. The walls and chains we accept in an effort to limit our risk become our little cages.
I will never condemn anyone else for their safety and survival choices, for we are all unique. If you choose to avoid a strange food or an adventurous trip in the name of safety, you are making a tradeoff. Adventurer and author Jack London once said, “The proper function of man is to live. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” In Jack’s case, this was probably a sage guidepost. He lived a life of adventure and travel, and was found dead on his sleeping porch at his home in California. He was 40 years old. Perhaps he should have tried that lamb vindaloo — just once.
“The structures and rules you seek to impose on your fellow citizens will necessarily become the confines in which you yourself must also live” Unless you’re part of the in group or the elite. Then often those structures can be avoided, you can be partially exempt, or your wealth/status can be used to mitigate some/all of the impact.
“I will never condemn anyone else for their safety and survival choices, for we are all unique.” I will…when those choices negatively impact MY choices.Report
Well, there’s the fact that unregulated persons and businesses don’t have a good history of doing the communal right thing. Pick any area of human endeavour you like, and the libertarian utopia of everyone working in their own self interest with maximal freedom resulting a functional society turns into dust. We didn’t need the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act until it became maddeningly clear that businesses would pollute everything in a race to the bottom to create maximal profit. We didn’t need a Voting Rights Act until it became maddeningly clear that Black Americans were still (in the era of Jim Crow) being actively denied their right to vote by White Americans. We didn’t need minimum wages (which have to raised periodically) until it became maddeningly clear that businesses wouldn’t actually pay workers what they were worth in a given enterprise. And I guess in your construct we don’t need immigration reform (another government intrusion) even though 11 Million or so undocumented migrants underpin major sectors of our economy because they need jobs and we have jobs they are willing to do.
You know where we DON”T need government intrusion? Women’s uteruses. Marriage ceremonies. Bathrooms. Gender affirmation treatment. So if the true goal is more freedom, how about joining us pesky progressives and looney lefties in addressing those?Report
Sigh… I’ll just say it, if the lefties would stop wanting to enact whatever nutty gun ban is all the fad this week…
There, that’s out of the way.Report
The current “communal” problem is some people are too successful.
As of 2013, Nine countries with no minimum wage are: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland.
These countries are often held up by the Left as social models we should copy.
It is not “maddeningly clear” that business won’t pay workers “what they are worth”. The issue is more that politicians and people who don’t create jobs need to virtue signal by meddling in the economy.Report
What incentives do businesses have to pay more? I honestly don’t know, but perhaps those countries have tax structures that reward companies to pay more, rather than just demanding it.
How much are we still dealing with the impacts of FDR trying to stifle wage growth?Report
It’s a supply vs demand thing. My boss was just shocked and outraged that his minion changed jobs over “a few dollars” (it was $5) and I pointed out exactly what percentage she was getting more and asked if he’d do the same for the same percent.
The Great Depression went on until WW2 forced FDR to stop messing with the economy. That’s kind of a harsh lesson.Report
Hold on a sec. It can’t be just S&D. There has to be something else going on. Either business has an incentive to pay more, or employees have a much greater degree of freedom of movement from job to job.
Might have something to do with those countries having medical care systems not even remotely tied to employment?Report
Since the covid started, some of the horror stories I’ve been hearing about insurance has gotten me wondering if the insurance companies aren’t thinking that there will be more money to be made in a post-Medicaid-for-All world.Report
I’m going to change jobs, probably this month but certainly within the next 6 weeks. I won’t lose HC because it will just be from one team to another.
It’s the first time I’m doing so without getting paid more.
Yes, delinking them from employment would help, but there’s a ton of other things I’d do first (like have and enforce published prices).
Big picture it basically is. S&D is why we can or can’t hire people. Long term people leave or die so hiring people is a thing.
There are other things in addition, but people nailed to their chair because they have cancer or something is uncommon.Report
Still, what incentive do those companies have to pay high wages, assuming they are not at full employment?
Or is that it, they are at full employment?Report
One thing that I thought was *EXCEPTIONALLY* telling was Amazon going all the way to the Supreme Court to defend not paying employees for the time they were forced to stand in line and wait to be wanded before going home.
I mean, above and beyond the whole “using piss bottles instead of a urinal to keep high productivity numbers” thing.
This is a company owned by the richest guy in the world. (Or 2nd, I guess?)
We’re no longer talking about a mom and pop only giving employees a 10 minute break instead of a 15 minute one. We’re talking about the policies of a company owned by the richest guy in the world.Report
They have incentives to pay less, and the only incentives we seem to have to get wages to go up is Hostile Unions and Wage controls?Report
What happens if a company decides to pay less than the market value of their employees?
They get punished by the market.
They lose people, they’ll have problems hiring people, they get a bad rep, if they have other problems they’ll end up fighting a union.
Ultimately they’ll raise their rates or they’ll do without those people. If “those people” are “smart people”, then they’ll have to live with not doing smart things.
This sort of thing tends to pop up with companies that have other serious structural problems. Their industry is dying, they have seriously bad management, they have lost their product line, or whatever. At some point the employees flee the sinking ship.Report
Sure, I get all that.
So why are US wages stagnant, and in many industries very low, but not so in the countries you listed?
You’ve offered a counter example, but not explained why it is a counter example.Report
Whether wages are stagnant is seriously disputed and you can get whatever story you want by mythology choices.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/10/are-wages-rising-falling-or-stagnating/
That link just starts to go over the flaws with the “pro stagnant” side. Family Mix has changed a lot, fewer children, more divorce. Not counting benefits matters a lot when so many of us get our HC via our employment.
Picking the year when you start counting matters a LOT as well. Other countries suffered through WW2 and had to rebuild. The US didn’t so we had our golden era of labor where wages were artificially increased. Competing with bombed out factories and graveyards filled with young men is easy and profitable. That peaked then started unwinding in the 70’s and we had a few decades of adjustment afterwards.Report
This conversation is absolutely bizarre.
When I have conversations with Philip and Oscar, I always assume (benefit of the doubt?) that they are people who understand and grasp basic economics. This conversation makes it clear that they are completely and totally clueless on how economics works.
May I sincerely suggest that people first become educated on how markets and other complex adaptive systems work, and then give their opinion on how to fix them? Or at least do like Oscar admirably did and ask a genuine question.
And don’t even get me started on the myth of stagnated wages. (And thanks for the link, DM). Certainly this is a complex subject, with different eras having different growth rates, but 2019 saw extremely large increases in US wages for explainable reasons, and the last 200 years has seen an approximately 30X increase in average incomes. With approximately none of that explained via minimum wage mandates.
I am not expecting everyone to have a degree in economics like James. But what is it about economics that allows people who are absolutely clueless to think they can solve something they don’t grasp?
Said another way, if Philip is really unable to explain why businesses would increase wages and if he is unaware that they have voluntarily increased wages for 200 plus years, then he is not able to add to the conversation until he first learns a bit about the topic.Report
Part of understanding economics is to grasp that not everyone experiences the same economy. Comparing aggregate this to aggregate that only tells us what the national economy is doing, not what individual lives are doing.
For example, in 1955 a manufacturing worker, retail worker, and plumber earned comparable incomes, lived in the same neighborhoods, etc.
Nowadays, the first two job descriptions have in fact either declined or stagnated while the third has remained the same or increased.
We don’t see unemployed manufacturing workers on the streetcorner so we can’t point to them and factor in their ($0.00) income as evidence of decline.
But we do have large numbers of people who are in Amazon warehouses or equivalent jobs where the pay scale and benefits package is less than it would have been then.
Second, regions change and go in different directions; The lives of people and communities in coal country and the Rust Belt are worse than it was, while other regions have seen economic booms.
In addition, the aggregate CPI is unreliable since some aspects of it (electronics and clothing) have seen dramatic drops, while other (education housing and healthcare) have seen dramatic increases. If all you need is electronics, great; If you need healthcare, too bad.
Finally, the health of an economy depends on what people want to buy or sell.
If a man wants to work as a coal miner but the only jobs available are for health care aides paying the same wage, he is dissatisfied. If you doubt this, ask a Trumpist.
Likewise, if someone wants to buy a house but can only afford an apartment it doesn’t matter if his household is smaller or the apartment has amenities only dreamed of before.
Economics is at its base, the study of human behavior. In order to grasp one, you need to understand the other.Report
Well said, Chip.
I will just add that the market is a complex adaptive system where prices (and wages) work as signals and incentives. If wages in some industries, occupations or locales are dropping on absolute or relative terms, the system is signaling and incentivizing that individuals make the move to the new fields and leave the old. The harder the transition and the more the need for change, the greater the disparity (incentive) rises.
The trouble with creative destruction is that it isn’t just abstract. Real human lives and families are affected, and not just positively. That is probably one reason successful higher growth economies (the Nordic countries, North American etc) tend to supplement their free markets with rational safety nets.Report
We don’t see them because they go get other jobs, so they shouldn’t be factored in at $0.
Also we live in an era where all of society’s information is available to everyone, so you can find whatever you want to see. That’s why we should be trusting aggregate data and not how someone specific, or even some specific group, is doing.Report
That’s my point, that a guy whose father worked as a unionized manufacturing worker in the 1960s now works as a service worker or Amazon warehouse worker.
A side to side comparison of their lives and purchasing power shows stagnation which isn’t captured by quick hits on Wikipedia.
Like, the father owned a home and supported a family on one income; The son needs a working wife and a college degree and can only rent.
The father had the assurance of a lifetime position and a defined benefit pension while the son hops from gig to gig and has a 401K, maybe.
The lifestyle, the experience of their wages can bring them life is not equal.
To be fair, its easy to see the past with rose tinted glasses and think it was all wonderful, and it wasn’t.
For some people, lets say women or people of color, their lives in many ways are better and have much more opportunity than before. Or people whose jobs can’t be offshored , like a plumber, are able to earn 1st World wages while buying at 3rd World prices.
Which is why I say we don’t all experience the economy the same way, and a rising tide doesn’t lift all boats.
The economic changes of the past 40 years have benefited some people, and hurt others.Report
Your example needs to compare someone who was doing much better than average in the 1960’s to someone who is doing worse than average now. Your median job back in 1960 wasn’t a unionized manufacturing worker and a median job now isn’t an Amazon warehouse worker.
Adjusted for taxes and inflation, median family income in 1960 was something like $25k and is now something like $40k. http://johnstonsarchive.net/policy/famincome.html
Even those numbers, which don’t adjust for things like divorce and smaller families, show the ocean has risen a lot.
I don’t see how your men are related in your example. You might as well compare someone from the 1% in 1960 to his homeless son now.
Yes, the father was better off but his rung in society was a lot higher. If you compare equal rungs then almost all of them are a lot higher, especially if we adjust for technology.Report
So one worker earning 25K; Now two workers earning 20K each, is improvement?
As a family unit, they are working twice as hard for less than twice the reward.
Suppose we canvassed all the millions of unionized manufacturing workers from the 1960s, and compared them to their children today.
And even better, compared them to the prospects for their grandchildren.
Would we see an improvement?
Suppose we compared the manufacturing communities of the 1960s to those same communities today.
Would we see improvement?Report
Individual worker earning is also going up, not down. You are (again) comparing someone who was extremely successful in past decades to people who are not right now.
Meidan family income in 1960 was $5,600. If it sounds like that sucked, in 1947 the median was $3k. (census.gov). Your one person earning $25k would probably be in the 1% but I don’t care enough to check.
As for family status issues, in 1960 the woman probably would have been forced to live in an unhappy marriage, now days she has the fiscal ability to divorce. I’m hard pressed to argue the old way was better.
If you’re going to compare someone from the 1% in 1960 to the average person today, there would be advantages and disadvantages. Your social status would have gone down and many relative-to-everyone-else factors are going to be not good.
On the other hand there’s a ton of stuff we have now that we didn’t have then and couldn’t get no matter what the price. I take a few drugs that probably didn’t exist then. My life would suck and be short back in 1960 even if I were in the 1%. So I wouldn’t go back no matter what the money/status but others might.
Now if we start talking about median person in 1960 compared to today it gets silly. If you were black, gay, trans, or female there were serious issues with the general functioning of society. The level of technology is seriously lower. The job I do right now wouldn’t exist. Your ability to purchase stuff would be vastly greater. The things you could point to and say the median person can’t purchase nowdays mostly didn’t exist at all back in 1960.Report
And you were probably re-using my $25k/$40k where I adjusted for inflation and taxes. So comparing the $25k to the 1% doesn’t work well.
On the other hand the benefits we get from the gov have also gone up a lot (that should be included in the time difference compare because these were after tax numbers) and my statement largely holds together without the 1% misdirect.Report
Oh, I get it alright, it’s that DM had a conflict he needed to square up, and I was trying to get him to do that. Rufus finally provided the answer I was looking for.
As for the link DM posted, it very much says that the story depends on what you are looking at and when and how, so don’t be quite so dismissive. From my personal experience, I’ve had two employers in the past 20 years pushing profits into growth/expansion, share buybacks, shareholder service, and executive wage growth, but very little (< 3%/yr) getting sent to low level management and below. So yeah, it depends.Report
Rufus didn’t explain anything. Sadly he obfuscated the issue. The point is that economists can explain increased wages without minimum wage laws OR UNIONS. What the Nordic countries did or did not do is irrelevant to the underlying truth that rising marginal productivity tends to increase wages over time in open markets (capitalist). That is the explanation.
The larger picture and timeframe reveals approximately a 3000% increase in wages over 200 years in the US, from around $3 per day (current prices) to around $100 today. The controversy today is why PRODUCTIVITY is growing at slower rates. And yes, slower productivity growth certainly translates into slower wage growth. But if that is the question, then the problem is looking for what we can do to increase productivity, not to try to push string and raise wages by fiat.
And to take your own example, a wage growth of even two percent a year (ignoring benefit costs which tend to increase even faster and are a part of compensation) means your wages will double in 36 years. If the globe is lucky enough to continue to see these types of rates, then global average incomes will be eight times higher than today in a century.
The historic increase in wages from the year 10,000 BC until 1775 AD was 0% per year, as global wages started and ended at about $3 per cap per day (subsistence).
IOW, your example of stagnating wages is actually an example of amazingly high growth rates.
This really isn’t a screed against minimum wages. That is another argument. Nor is it a screed against unions. It is a factual statement that in a relatively free and open market that rising marginal productivity tends to lead to rising wages. Thus businesses, in a reasonably free market tend to pay workers higher wages over time, whether they want to or not, if marginal productivity is increasing. And historically it has risen since 1776 in nations influenced directly or indirectly by Adam Smith’s insights.Report
Here is what DM said:
The issue I was driving at is that those examples are not the examples I would choose, precisely because there are wage controls in place in all of them. Those wage controls are not in the form of a “Minimum Wage” like we have in the US, but through expansive collective bargaining agreements, etc.
Now, as to your point about productivity, that is, by and large, a crap argument. Automation is driving productivity to ever greater heights. I should know, it is LITERALLY my job to help people automate things. I write software specifically to increase engineering productivity by massive amounts (the tool I am currently wrapping up can do in less than an hour the tasks which would take an engineer weeks to do by hand, and I eliminate a lot of the simple errors that creep into such work). When I worked at the Lazy B, I automated a number of my regular tasks, making them go many times faster and improving accuracy. My productivity jumped, yet my pay did not.
So the whole productivity is lagging argument… how, exactly is it lagging? By what metric? Because everywhere I look, it’s expanding by leaps and bounds.Report
@oscar — A lot of people think “automation” just means manufacturing machines, but nowadays automation covers a lot of things. For example, can you imagine what someone like Poincare would have done with Mathematica?
In his day, the question, “I wonder what would happen if…” would be followed by hours, even weeks, of tedious computation. Nowadays we follow that question with ten minutes of coding and perhaps thirty minutes of compute time.Report
Exactly. I see the stuff done with just MatLab and I get blown away, and I know what our flagship software can do.
My larger point, however, is that I think productivity keeps getting it’s metric re-zeroed whenever it’s convenient to avoid ensuring wages keep pace.Report
When I first got into IT, we had a team of four guys who sometimes visited the people in the UX support team. These guys were The Webmasters. (The UX support team sat next to the Backup Team and they sat near the Account Management team.)
UX support had, I dunno… 30 people on it? Backup had a dozen. Account Management had 20. Those people sat next to the relatively puny 10-man Print Spool team.
Now there is one team that does all of that work. It has about 10 people on it now. The rest of it is done by scripts. Automated ones.
Yay. Productivity.Report
And that one team has not seen their pay increase 7 fold. Probably hasn’t even doubled.
IMHO, that’s because wages are not linked to productivity, but to perceived effort.
Except for executives. If the teams under an executive become more productive, the executive gets a bonus or pay bump, but the people who actually did the work to increase productivity get whatever the corporation is offering that year for increases.Report
The argument is not that pay for an individual or team or company is based on productivity.
The argument is that pay is set by supply and demand, and that in an economy of rising marginal productivity, the forces of supply and demand will gravitate toward lead to higher wages. Again, that is what every open economy has seen over the long haul for two centuries
As to the productivity, Google trends in TFP. Here is an example.
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15116.pdfReport
If aggregate productivity was the primary driver, we would not be seeing such wage growth at the top.
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/whose-wages-are-rising-and-why/
I get the whole economics in theory, that productivity drives wages, etc. But, as Chip said, economics involves a lot of human behavior, and that behavior does not map nicely to theory. Lets be honest here, if aggregate productivity in the US is in such decline, then we should be seeing management wages stagnating, because ultimately such things are the responsibility of management, yet their wages continue to grow faster than anywhere else.
And this is the crux, that management is accruing what growth is available to themselves wherever possible.Report
I expect the issue is more complex than that.
“One group is greedy” is more political slogan than reality because everyone is greedy and always has been. We’re talking about impersonal market behavior. Humanizing what happens is a mistake.
If my management could pay me $1/hour then they would. They can’t. Not don’t want to, not refuse to, they literally can’t.Report
If the bulk of your management sees their overall compensation grow faster than yours, then they have the funding to pay you more. If there is something stopping them from paying you more, then it’s a policy issue, not an economic one.
So your first question is, if your management hierarchy is getting salary growth and/or bonuses, why can’t they pay you more?Report
This is not an economic argument. This is “they have more money ergo I should too”.
Nor have you shown that the issue is mostly a “management” issue. Your link talked about the upper 10%. If the issue is “Doctors, Lawyers, and a few other professions are making more money”, then “management” is a red herring.
It’s a “policy issue” if we’re talking about one company. If most companies everywhere are doing this, to the point where we end up talking about the bulk of the population and the data shows up in serious economic indicators, then it’s an economic issue.
And at the moment we haven’t even defined the problem, much less narrowed it to “management policy”.
There is room for this to be a statistical illusion. That pay at that top looks like it’s growing faster because the growth in their pay is reflected as cash while the growth in middle is reflected as benefits.Report
This is starting to feel like a bit of a Motte and Bailey between business and economic arguments. I’m saying that the economic argument is insufficient to explain things.
Not that it explains nothing. For example, there is this. Tight labor markets have workers getting pay bumps, so that’s awesome. But it’s also very recent.
More to my point is this.
In short, management is spending money returning value to shareholders, (or to themselves) rather than to employees. Now there are cases where companies regularly award stock to employees and thus those employees get some of that value back, but not every company hands out stock awards (or the ones that do hand out awards hand out very small awards – getting 100 shares is great if you work for Amazon, but not much if you work for GM).
Part of this is a belief in sticky wages. Some folks swear by that theory, but many just see it as an excuse to avoid dealing with pay, because our pay system is out of date.
Regarding your point about compensation as benefits, note that last line. Having the company move from a Cadillac health plan to a gold plated Cadillac health plan only really adds to my compensation if I can’t make use of it. Or if they include the price of a gym membership to a gym I’ll never use, etc. Reporting the overall compensation package as including expensive items A-E that I’ll never use, or use very rarely, isn’t something that actually increases my compensation, but it does allow them to report that it does, without shelling out the actual cash to all employees (what were you saying about statistical illusions?).Report
When the economic argument is insufficient to explain economics, we need to dig deeper. I’m not saying the issues we’re talking about can’t be the result of management greed, but that feels like a handwave. Previous generations of management weren’t greedy? Previous generations of management had to obey the market for employee wages and the current ones don’t?
There’s probably more to gain in terms of solutions by asking “What has changed”?
So management got less greedy recently?
In theory, the market for labor has little to nothing to do with any specific management’s decisions because none of them are large enough to move the market.
It depends. The company makes an expensive gym membership free (value $1000), only 10% of the employees use it, that should be a $100 benefit because that’s the impact on the cost-of-labor. If it’s reported as $1000, then that’s an abuse of stats. That $100 benefit should be regardless of whether you use it or not.
The number of S&P 500 CEOs is 500. Their average pay is about $14 Million. Their total is something like $7 Billion.
Median worker pay full time is something like $40k a year and there are 131 Million Full time workers. That’s about 5.2 Trillion ($5,200 Billion). That’s also a serious undercount since it’s “median” rather than average and doesn’t include part time jobs but whatever.
If the argument is that CEOs are paying themselves rather than workers, they’re not doing a good job. We could hand all that CEO pay to the workers and they’d get a 0.13% pay increase.
More likely worker pay and CEO pay are unrelated to each other.Report
I’m not saying it’s necessarily greed either, but a de-emphasis on improving take home pay, because of the idea that once pay goes up, it can’t come down very easily. Whereas if there is an issue with costs, it’s easy to trim back benefits.
No, markets are forcing the issue in some areas, as markets will do. But we’ve seen employers resisting that pressure beyond reason.
Re: CEO Pay – Is that accounting for total C suite compensation, or just CEO salary? If the CEO of a company has a salary of $7M, plus how much in annual bonuses, plus how much in stock/stock options? And then there is the CFO, the CIO, the CTO, the COO, plus all the board members. Then lets look at all the Presidents and Vice-Presidents and all their forms of compensation?
Then look at, in a given year, if the employees get a basic COL increase, or maybe a bit more, but all of senior management gets increases* far above that; or if senior management (who all have healthy stock portfolios of company stock) spends the bulk of annual profit doing stock buy backs or paying out dividends…
As I said, a de-emphasis on making sure the workforce is well paid. I think bigger companies, with tens of thousands of employees, can do this a lot longer than smaller firms can, because name recognition and perceived stability does a lot to tamp down the pressure of employees job hopping. And if the bigger companies are not raising wages, they skew the market signals.
*I especially love this when the workforce is told that raises are basic COL because the company isn’t doing well/failed to hit targets, but all of senior management gets raises/bonuses. The optics are just terrible.Report
I got those numbers from the AFL-CIO so I’m hoping that’s compensation but I don’t actually know.
Average pay for the board of directories is $25k. That’s too many zeros away for it to matter.
We could bring in the VPs and so on but they don’t get paid as the President and there aren’t 100 officers. Even getting 10x seems hard and that’s no where close to where we need.
I could be off by 100x and it still wouldn’t be enough to explain what we’re seeing.
Normally when someone is trying to prove this is what is happening they use Wealth (vs Income) as the big distorting factor to prove these numbers match up. If we don’t do that (we shouldn’t), then I think it’s trying to use a very small thing to explain a very large thing.
Clearly something is going on. I think we don’t have a good understanding on what. It might be something as basic as not measuring productivity increases correctly in the context of computers.Report
Oh, wait, Jaybird brings up another, strict immigration controls for people outside the EU.Report
See also: Language Laws.Report
WW2 forced FDR to stop messing with the economy.
He stopped.
Messing with the economy.
During World War II.
FDR did.
Really?Report
Poorly phrased on my part. It turns out that messing with the economy to fight inequality has one set of problems while fighting a war has others.Report
Here in Europe, also in Scandinavia, the EU has brought about the freedom of movement for work force between EU countries. This creates pressure for any high salary countries to bring wages down of especially manual, low education level work.
Here’s where it gets schizophrenic:
The European Union, which some call Communist, for it’s assumed reign over Union countries, has actually forced the labour unions to think more about the overall competitiveness of a country’s export business.
Also through adoption of the single currency Euro, devaluing your domestic currency for export benefits became impossible.
Obviously this does not go down very well for a lot of people, and EU & Euro is seen as the ones causing their woes. For some the EU represents a dystopia where every aspect of life is controlled by this “behemoth.”
So in marches the right-wing populist, amplifying the inherent fears of people, fears of losing control, fear of the behemoth intruding into their lives, claiming that this “faceless beast” is COMMUNIST and allegedly nothing but useless bureaucracy.
It isn’t. The goal is to actually reduce useless red tape, and to streamline commerce, and to also create a more unified political power in dealing with for example, trade negotiations.
This is why you should be cautious in your exceptionalism and hard-line individualism in America. In the end, much of your fears are unfounded. You have light years to go, if you ever even reach the level of “communism” in individual European countries.
—————
In Finland there is no minimum wage, but if the pay is considered absolutely too low, companies will face some charges. In some cases this system has lead to foreign workers being exploited. All the companies get is a slap on the wrist and maybe public shame on social media. So it’s not all fun. Those who stick to the rules are losing, and criminals get richer.
Of course, at this point, the populist marches in again and shouts: “EU DID THIS!”Report
First, welcome!
Second, this misunderstands what’s going on in the US in some very important ways. The EU has stringent ascension standards before admitting member states and a process easing countries into the freedom of movement and currency union. The US on the other hand is dealing with an influx of illegal low skill labor from much poorer countries with far lower standards of living. The disparity is enormous and the EU has balked at allowing in counties with arguably even less of a gulf. Note the decades long line drawn on Turkey joining the union.
Equally as important in all of this, is the huge difference between welfare states and public services. EU member states have the tools to soften the blow and the state has proven itself more capable at taking the sting out of these decisions. America on the other hand has a creaky, cracked web of systems and employer run benefits that can’t be relied upon. Put simply people here are allowed to fall through the cracks in a way that would not be tolerated in most EU member states, and certainly not in any Scandinavian country.
You could write a books on why that is but this is not populist paranoia. It’s based in real differences in the countries, people, and governments involved. If it was easy our politics wouldn’t have spent the last 4 years in a state of crisis stemming from these issues that probably still isn’t over.Report
Europe has a structural advantage because they are willing to take care of their people, while we Americans refuse to.
You can see how this makes it impossible for America to take care of its people, because as I said, we really don’t want to.
Another structural advantage is that Europe is willing to raise the required revenue to take care of its people, and Americans prefer to give away revenue in tax breaks.
It should be obvious how this places a structural impediment to taking care of our people, since we really, really don’t want to.
We would definitely take care of our people, really we would, if only we wanted to, but as you can see, we simply don’t.
I know that a lot of naive people who don’t understand complex economics think that the richest nation that humanity has ever known should have no trouble taking care of its people, but what they fail to understand is that we really don’t want to.Report
There are certainly political choices involved. There are also major historical and cultural differences that put us on different paths. Some prefer to attack it as a policy problem. Others to endlessly ruminate on some unanswerable moral assessment and a bunch of unfalsifiable assertions about them and us. We’ve gone round and round about it here before and I see no need to revisit.Report
I know stuff like health care is hard for any nation.
I just react when I see them presented as some structural problem that is uniquely American, like the Netherlands is flat so they can do trains whereas we have the Rocky Mountains so we can’t or something.
Right now I see America as the guy drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette bumming nickels “for food”.
We have chosen our priorities.Report
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Imagine someone suggesting that the FDA be more like the EMA in an effort to allow more competition in the medicine market. (More approved epi-pens, something like that.)
If you can imagine thinking “I don’t want to risk us having an FDA that is so haphazard that they only use standards acceptable to Germans”, then you see what part of the problem is.Report
Yes, as Obama once noted, our budgets reflect our choices and tradeoffs between them.
The nice part is that we are forced to make those budget choices every single year and so we can make a different choice this year.Report
Hell, I agree. Now that we have a different executive, I hope that he puts someone in charge of the FDA that has a more European attitude towards risk.
(I also suspect that the FDA has been captured by Big Pharma and that’s another problem entirely. But a new broom sweeps clean, as they say.)Report
Google claims that the EU spends about 19% of their GDP on “social protection” while we “only” spend about 17%.
Since our PPP is higher than theirs, I’d be surprised if we’re not spending more per person than they are on our safety net.Report
After thinking about this for a bit, this implies our willingness to be taxed is about the same. We just pay different taxes.
If the level of benefits is different, then that implies
1) We’re not as good at focusing money on people who really need it. This would reflect that whole different cultures with different levels of productivity and/or different levels of cultural pressure to not abuse the net that I was talking about earlier.
2) We’re not as efficient at supplying benefits. Likely our medical system delivers less bang for the buck.
That last point suggests if we could improve the efficiency of our medical system, we’d have more money for other benefits.Report
Also on point: That link should be “1.1 Trillion Welfare System” and not “11 Trillion”.
https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/understanding-the-hidden-11-trillion-welfare-system-and-how-reform-itReport
I hear you. Even in my more libertarian leaning days I never bought the idea that we just couldn’t figure this out or that some sort of comprehensive approach to healthcare was an affront to freedom.
Maybe my failing is taking the moral case for granted. Now I’m more interested in how we could structure a system that would get the critical mass of political support it needs and not blow up the economy in unpredictable ways or totally screw over people relying on what we have now.Report
Europe also doesn’t pretend to have a one size fits all solution across every state. Insisting that Italy, Sweden, Germany, and Poland all need the same social welfare system would break the union.Report
Thanks.
I’m sort of trying to put my finger on what it is that people want in America. What do they see as the greatly feared socialism. What does it mean to them?
Granted, our system here is far more “socialist,” sometimes to the point of being annoying, but I’d say it’s just that: Annoying, not a big deal really. At least there are clear rules on how to run your business.
Looking at the video clips of some activist people in America, they genuinely seem frightened of some sort of communism..?Report
They want exactly what they have now, only cheaper. No trade-offs.
The whole Obamacare thing where “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” is what they wanted. They wanted to keep their doctor.
Exactly what they have right now, only paying less for it. (You also see this with the University Experience. They want exactly what the University provides right now, they just don’t want to pay quite so much for it.)
They want what they have.
Only less expensive.
No trade-offs.Report
There are many reasons. I think the biggest drivers are loss aversion principle and distrust of the government to make a difficult situation better. Public services in the US vary greatly in quality and often have a bad reputation. People are divided into different sub-systems of healthcare paid for by employers, private insurance, states, and the federal government, not a single coherent system. Many, especially in the middle class, are afraid they will end up paying more and getting less.Report
*two guys arguing*
“Let’s have a minimum wage!”
“No, that’s socialism! Besides, Norway doesn’t have a minimum wage, instead they have a social welfare scheme and heavy business regulation.”
“Fine, let’s have a social welfare scheme and heavy business regulation.”
“That’s socialism!”
*throws chair*Report
Wow, the chair so quick?Report
Norway pays for there social welfare scheme by not having lots of people and having lots of oil.
Most of the others pay for their social welfare schemes by that and/or NOT having heavy business regulation. They have high taxes, they have serious mono-cultural social pressure to not abuse the social safety net, they have serious economic freedom.
OK, are you intending to turn the US into a mono-cultural place, if so how?
Are you intending to make oil extraction a HUGE part of the economy as a percentage and damn global warming?
And “heavy business regulation”? What exactly does that mean and who are you copying because it’s certainly not Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, etc because they’re even more free than we are.
Or are we in “true socialism has never been tried” territory?Report
I keep hearing this stuff about “monoculture”- How does that work to make social welfare schemes easier?Report
There’s this weird “tribalist” thing where people don’t mind giving money to the ingroup but resent giving money to the outgroup.
Through imposition of monoculture, they can convert the outgroup to the ingroup and cause the resentment of charity given to the outgroup to evaporate.
Having buy-in on the part of the electorate for government policy is important in ostensible democracies.Report
“Through imposition of monoculture, they can convert the outgroup to the ingroup and cause the resentment of charity given to the outgroup to evaporate.”
Or they can identify a particular group, declare it The New Outgroup, and then say “since there are only two groups, the Ingroup and the Outgroup, then anyone not part of The New Outgroup must necessarily be part of the Ingroup, and therefore is an acceptable recipient of social capital redistribution”.Report
Sub-culture A values education, marriage, saving, and independence (i.e. not using the social welfare scheme unless there’s no other alternative).
Sub-culture B is the reverse on all of those things.
Members of sub-culture A are (in general) a lot more productive, well paid, and use social welfare scheme a lot less than B.
A generous social welfare scheme will result in member of B using it lots more than A. At the extreme, most members of B will be better off using the scheme than working.
Members of “A” will see this and decide that they’re being taken advantage of, and there will be problems.
These issues don’t exist if sub-culture B simply doesn’t exist, if everyone is an “A”.Report
Is there any way that a nation can become a one out of many, an unum out of pluribus?
To be blunt (and politically incorrect) is there any way that the uneducated bitter clingers in ruralia can be made into type A hardworking strivers like Mexican immigrants?
Or do we follow Kevin Williamson’s advice and just cut them free to find their own way out?Report
Is there any way that a nation can become a one out of many, an unum out of pluribus?
With, like, a monoculture? Something like that?Report
No n****rs in Sweden. Of course, they have more hifalutin’ ways of putting it.Report
Here’s an essay from Brookings that talks about what’s going on in Sweden.
So if you’re wondering “what would happen with the introduction of a vibrant diversity to Sweden?”, the paper talks about what is happening in Sweden after a vibrant diversity is being added to it.Report
Why wonder? Why don’t we we apply this theory to America circa 1910-1940, when there was a large wave of immigrants, followed by a massive social welfare scheme.
What does the theory say should have happened?
What actually did happen?
For extra credit: What were some of the similarities of reaction in America in the 1920s to what is happening in Sweden currently? How did America ameliorate those reactions?
For extra-extra double secret probation credit: Apply the theory to the large wave of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s, at the peak of lavish welfare programs in America, and discuss the reactions of domestic tribal groups to the newcomers. How did this all work out?Report
It was a response to CJ about Sweden’s lack of diversity.
If he was wondering what would happen if there was an influx of diversity into Sweden, there have been papers written about what is currently happening in Sweden.
How did this all work out?
Predictably?Report
The Swedish government is dumb and should feel dumb. They aren’t even members of NATO and are out there sweeping up the mess from us, the UK, and France.
Whoever thought importing a bunch of culturally hostile foreigners from sectarian war zones was good policy should be relegated to the ministry of meatballs or death metal or whatever they do with disgraced officials over there.Report
But enough about the Okie influx to California!
No, I’m being serious here. Okies were a despised group of culturally hostile foreigners in the Depression era, and Los Angeles police erected a “Bum Blockade” to keep them out.Report
Heh, but it was the Californians who were hostile to the Okies right? And the Okies actually wanted to be Californians, and what with their common language and cultural heritage they figured out how to be pretty easily. Take a tour of a French banlieue to see how this is going to go.
Anyway America is different and I actually think we are way better at assimilating people. But that comes at a cost of not being as good at some of the things Sweden is good at.Report
Why do you say the Okies wanted to be Californians?
Look at an electoral map of California and tell me how it went. The map of “Trump voters” aligns perfectly with the map of “Where Okies landed”.
I keep harping on this because all this talk of the dangers of multiculturalism is being spoken by the very same people who admonish us to be more sensitive to the culture of rural Trumpists.
The same people who despair about how a Somali Muslim will ever adapt to modern America, are the same people who feverishly pass around pictures of Jesus and Santa Claus laying hands on Donald Trump.Report
The comparison of red parts of California to immigrant ghettos in Europe strikes me as apples to blue whales. My state is ultra blue based on a single city and around a quarter of the counties depending on election cycle. The rest is pretty red. I know, I visit it all the time. And yet we have plenty in common.
Also I think a Somali Muslim can do great in America. I just think we should filter for the ones who are already highly skilled and who don’t have any ties to the various militias slaughtering people over their insane religious beliefs. Being a victim of such militias is unfortunate but fails the criteria. It’s a perfectly rational stance.Report
After 1/6, I think we should be a lot more careful about tossing out phrases like “filter for the ones who are already highly skilled and who don’t have any ties to the various militias slaughtering people over their insane religious beliefs.”
Because what the Trump era has taught us is that the most dangerous and insane groups are not ignorant 3rd World villagers or gap toothed hillbillies, but people with Harvard degrees and who run large businesses.
The Trump administration, and the howling mob that stormed the Capitol were chock full of Ivy degreed and high powered lawyers, surrounded by doctors, engineers, professionals, all well educated and prosperous people from the elite class.
And yet they were every bit as deranged and dangerous as the 9-11 hijackers (who were themselves also from the educated elite class).
We can’t “filter” these people out because they form the warp and woof of the American fabric.Report
I’m not “talking about the dangers of multiculturalism” any more than I talk about “the dangers of gravity”. Multiculturalism exists. It’s a force of society and close to a force of nature. Pointing to mono-cultural solutions is like pointing to gravity free space structures and proclaiming we should build those here.
As for being “more sensitive to the culture of rural Trumpists”, you have the habit of viewing all cultures other than yours from the standpoint of race and racism. “Do X or you’re a racist!” is a strong argument in your world but not in theirs. Similarly using gun control to reduce murder rates is nonsense if the local murder rate is zero and a gun is a tool.
Some idea on when you’re being reasonable and unreasonable (from their point of view) is probably helpful if you’re going to try policy solutions that involve them.Report
What “massive”?
By modern standards these programs didn’t exist back then. In 1940 the average SS check of someone who retired after paying into the system for decades was $22.
Vietnamese immigration was 231k in 1980. That’s less than 0.1% of the total population per year, so it effectively it doesn’t exist.
Now we did find out that these “lavish welfare programs” had nasty side effects on various sub-cultures. That’s where we get ‘paying women to not get married means they don’t get married absent huge social pressure’.Report
First, the New Deal welfare benefits WERE massive, when you figure in the CCC, WPA, TVA, and various other make-work and subsidy programs. Yet somehow they didn’t provoke a wave of freeloading immigrants.
Second, we have fewer foreign born immigrants today than we did in 1915.
Have you read any of the hysterical anti-immigrant writings of those times, which assured us we were on a path to cultural genocide?
How come that didn’t happen?
And isn’t the greatest cultural tension between two groups of native-born Americans? One of the staple complaints of the conservatives is that people like Chip are more comfortable around a Somali Muslim than a Texas Trumper.
Your writing suggests a sort of cultural essentialism, like an Irishman or Somali is forever an Irishman or Somali, and that cultural differences can never be bridged.
But the history of America flatly contradicts this. Throughout our history, even during the periods of greatest social welfare programs, we have been a multicultural nation, the most diverse in the world, and none of the predicted calamities ever occurred.Report
The cost of the New Deal was 40% of the nation’s 1929 output… spread over 7 years. That’s 5.7% per year, roughly the same as SS now (I have other numbers in front of me claiming it was more like 30% but whatever). That’s Social Security by itself, we also have Medicare+Medicaid (together larger than SS), and various other programs.
Our current spending is every year, not just for 7 years, and we’re 2-3 times the New Deal. You can’t claim what we have now isn’t huge but what we had then was.
7 years is not enough time for this to happen in the 1930’s, nor would most people immigrate because of a few years worth of benefits.
You’re confusing our “cultural genocide” with the hysteria of the same. We do have a lot of problems with illegal immigration, a lot of it is economic in origin. We also have problems with xenophobia.
Pointing to serious xenophobia is not a way to claim that serious xenophobia is not a problem. Nor is it a way to claim we’re not really multi-cultural.
Narrowing the world to two groups probably obscures more than it enlightens. Each of the big parties is a grand coalition, for the GOP that comes to “God, Guns, Moats, and Money”.
Bridging cultural differences is not the same thing as establishing vast social programs that only seem to exist without problems in mono-cultural places.
We are not an especially high trust country. For example you don’t seem to be very trusting or respectful of the Trumpists. Are you trying to insist that you can trust them or are you trying to insist that you can’t? I’ve lost track here.Report
If, as you say, our social welfare net has grown larger over time, and we are also at the same time a large multicultural society, wouldn’t that falsify the
“social welfare doesn’t work with monoculture” argument?
And while liberals don’t especially trust the Trumpers, notice how there isn’t any movement to cut off their Social Security or Medicare benefits?
In fact, aren’t the liberals trying desperately to deliver expanded social benefits to the Trumpers?
How is it that in a multicultural environment, the tribe in power is trying very hard to deliver benefits to the distrusted minority?Report
If you’re going to limit it to a binary thing, then sure.
However that’s moving the goal posts, earlier you seemed to be arguing that we could have extremely high taxes compared to what we have now and an extremely richer social net compared to what we have now.
Further, Social Security is not perceived as redistribution. The perception is that you pay into it, you get that money back. The bedrock of SS support is everyone is taxed, pretty much equally. The rich are eventually priced out of paying taxes but only because they also don’t get benefits.
I don’t think that’s the kind of program you want (feel free to correct me).Report
Its your theory that keeps moving.
Multiculturalism doesn’t work except where it obviously has.
The “multiculturalism doesn’t work with social welfare” theory presented in this thread draws on examples of Sweden and France, and presents itself as a universal truism.
Except- the linchpin of the theory is people’s attitudes and feelings towards other people.
Feelings and attitudes and human relationships are the most fickle and complex and changing things in the world.
American attitudes towards our various cultural groups is the perfect example. Country people are the beloved salt of the earth, except when they are ignorant hillbillies. Educated city people are the admired sophisticates, except when they are smug elitists.
Lower income working people are the True Americans, deserving of public benefits, except when they trigger too many negative markers or fail to conform to our expectations of norms in which case they suddenly become lazy loafers.
In other words, the theory has no predictive value since it relies on a variable that is malleable and unpredictable.Report
In other words, the theory has no predictive value since it relies on a variable that is malleable and unpredictable.
What, exactly, is the prediction?
A million years ago, we discussed the inconsistent triad of:
1. Generous Welfare State
2. Multiculturalism
3. Open Immigration
The argument was that you couldn’t have all three. If you had two of them, attempts to add the third would result in one of the other two constricting.
That’s the predictive power.
(Now, of course, we can argue over “what does multiculturalism mean?” and a go to would be something like “well, are there language laws?” and, using that definition alone, we can define the US as more multicultural than the Nordic ones.)
My attempt to define “multiculturalism” was this:
A lot of people use Epcot as their definition of multiculturalism.
For me, I just see a monoculture with a lot of restaurants.Report
Except…we have had all three.
In the post WWII era the welfare state was generous, immigration was easy, and America was a multicultural nation.
If you want to litigate definitions, then the theory needs to reflect those qualifiers and caveats.Report
A welfare state similar to that of the 1950’s, multiple cultures similar to the ones in the 1950’s, and immigration levels similar to the 1950’s?
I imagine that those things would be easily voted for.
Yes, even in the current year.Report
You should read some libertarian theory, describing the Leviathan of welfare statism in the 50s.
It wasn’t just one program, it was woven into everything.
As they point out, minimum wage laws work together with unionization which works with government contracting which works together with food subsidies and other programs to guarantee effective high wages;
The GI Bill provided free education along with free medical care together with low interest government backed home loans.
The sons and daughters of the massive wave of immigrants in the 1910s didn’t assimilate instantly; In the 1950s most large cities still had entire neighborhoods where all the signs were in Hebrew or Italian or Polish. American in the 1950s was indeed every bit as multicultural as it is right now.
And there was a large number of illegal immigrant farmworkers who were temporary, voluntarily returning to Mexico to rejoin their families. According to the theory, they should have surged here to take advantage of the welfare state, but they chose not to.
The theory doesn’t explain any of this.Report
One quibble – The GI Bill as originally done was quite racist.Report
Does it explain “Operation Wetback“?
The sons and daughters of the massive wave of immigrants in the 1910s didn’t assimilate instantly; In the 1950s most large cities still had entire neighborhoods where all the signs were in Hebrew or Italian or Polish. American in the 1950s was indeed every bit as multicultural as it is right now.
Multiculturalism consisting of White Europeans (no matter what part of Europe they’re from!) is not how I understand Multiculturalism.
I defined “Multiculturalism” above and it’s not Epcot.
Though if you use Epcot as your definition of what Multiculturalism is, allow me to say that I am also a full-throated supporter of Multiculturalism.
(Additionally, Minimum Wage laws, at the time, were racist as hell. They were intended to keep the underclasses out of the workforce. This is something that people used to know about the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act. Maybe things are better now. I suppose it’s a good thing we’ve got that caravan coming up from Latin America to help provide downward pressure on wages for the lowest-paid Americans… it helps out the people at the top of the K as well.)Report
If your definition of multiculturalism only includes White Europeans, you are just verifying that the theory really does just mean “We refuse to accept Those People”, or as CJ put it, “No n****rs in Sweden”.
Which are also exemplified by your examples. Operation Wetback had nothing to do with blocking immigrants from taking advantage of welfare, it was white people panicked by the presence of too many brown people.
There isn’t any iron law or universal reason multiculturalism can’t work, except that some people don’t want it to.Report
Chip, I wasn’t the one explaining that the 1950’s were the era we want to emulate a second time.Report
A welfare state similar to that of the 1950’s…
Try running seriously on ending Medicare and Medicaid. Because everyone is going to figure out that means Grandma will be coming to live upstairs, someone will have to change her diaper, and we’ll be giving up cable TV to pay for her medications. (Keep in mind that half of all Medicaid spending is nursing home care for the elderly.)Report
We have a social welfare net that is huge.
Its coverage of health care is spotty at best. People point to places that have better health care out-of-pocket costs and say that the health care systems that have these out-of-pocket costs are better health care systems.
Are they right?
I mean, our FDA is more restrictive than the EMA. Some think that that’s evidence that the FDA is better.
Are they right?
As for multiculturalism, there are definitions of “multiculture” that have Wisconsin as being a different culture than Michigan.
There are definitions that say that they’re the same goddamn culture.
There are definitions that make distinctions between the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula in Michigan, and distinctions between the Thumb in the LP and the rest of the glove.
What definition of culture are we using?
How is it that in a multicultural environment, the tribe in power is trying very hard to deliver benefits to the distrusted minority?
If the distrusted minority can be counted upon to deliver votes without imposing on the school districts of the tribe in power, the tribe in power is usually delighted to redistribute goods from the opposition party to the distrusted minority.Report
In this case the distrusted minority can be counted on to NEVER vote for the tribe in power.
So once again the theory doesn’t match empirical evidence.Report
You use toggles where I would use gradients.Report
Oops. That’s going by “percentage of GDP”. However inflation adjusted GDP itself has grown by about 15x since 1929.
The size of our social spending is something like 30x-50x larger than in 1929.
It just seemed larger at the time because everyone was poorer.Report
There are certainly ways to commit cultural genocide. We’re pretty deep into “evil” territory, historically they’re extremely ugly.
The Spanish Inquisition was an attempt at that.
You need mass murder to make the threat of murder realistic. Torture is often involved as well.
To fix marriage rates (and prevent unwed sex) we could HARSHLY punish unmarried mothers. We could also set up communist-style “reeducation” camps.
You’re assuming that people will be changed to match your tastes. Let’s reverse that question, are you willing to compromise on your cultural values, and if not, what would it take?
Mechanically this is suggesting… what… another Trail of Tears?
There are historical examples; India had a kick-the-muslims/hindus out to create modern India/Pakistan. Lots of people died in that btw.Report
Norway doesn’t have a minimum wage law, no. They do have minimum wages set in specific industries by collective bargaining, which are enforced by law. So, you know, if you’re in construction, agriculture, working in a hotel, shipping goods, electrical work, cleaning, a restaurant, driving a tour bus, or cleaning fish (which is so Norwegian), there’s a legally enforced minimum you must be paid. But, 70% of workers in Norway have some terms of their employment set by collective agreement.Report
Similarly, the majority of Swedish workers belong to a trade union or employers’ organization and wages there are set by each sector through collective bargaining. The minimum wage tends to be around 60 to 70% of the average wage for a Swedish worker. Swedish law doesn’t set a single minimum wage, although it does mandate 25 paid vacation days and 16 holidays and limits the week to 40 hours, like in the US. Judging by Ingmar Bergman movies, most of the Swedes are fairly depressed nonetheless.Report
In Denmark, the trade unions set the minimum wages through, you guessed it, collective bargaining. The average minimum wage is thus about $20 US/ hour.
In Iceland, it’s interesting, because if you are employed, you are automatically enrolled in a trade union who negotiates the base salary. It’s also one of the happiest countries on earth, which seems at odds with its cold weather.Report
In Italy, wages are required to be enough to sustain a family, but the minimums are set by, yep, collective bargaining. However, only half of Italian workers are in trade unions. The other half, no doubt, are mafia.
Austria’s interesting because the majority of wage earners are covered by collective bargaining through the social partnership. By the current agreement, no workers will receive less than 1500 euros/ $1821 US per month. The social partnership system is… fairly complicated to my mind.
http://countrystudies.us/austria/91.htmReport
Germany passed a national minimum wage law in Jan, 2015, which has been adjusted up every two years. Right now, it’s around $11.35 US. It was controversial, but outcomes seem to have been mixed- less unemployment in some sectors, fewer hours elsewhere.Report
Switzerland, indeed, rejected a national minimum wage, although on the plus side, the canton of Geneva just passed the highest minimum wage in the world at approx. $25/hour. Plus, they have fondue for every meal.Report
That’s what I was looking for! There are wage controls.
Thank you.Report
Well, soon the immigration release valve for wages will be wide open again.
And we can discuss such things as whether there is any evidence whatsoever immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country.Report
For high skilled workers, they’re going to create more jobs than they’ll destroy.
For low skilled workers, yep, we’ve seen evidence of downward pressure. That’s why I view it as part of my job as parent to make sure my girls aren’t low-skilled. Thankfully that’s pretty easy.Report
really enjoyed this. Thanks for writing it.Report
+1Report
People don’t see the libertarian platform as offering freedom or the welfare state as being from a heavy-handed government. What people see the libertarian platform as offering is life as a tight rope with no safety net. One wrong move is fatal and you are on your own plus any help that you could either afford or that people are willing to give. It turns out that in a very autonomous society where most people aren’t living in deeply rooted families and communities, taking this sort of chance isn’t that attractive to most people.Report
Shorter version. The damn dogs won’t eat it.Report
People love exactly half of the Libertarian thing. The “Don’t Tell Me What To Do!” half.
It’s the “And I Don’t Get To Tell You What To Do” half that they hate.Report
People also like the “You are obliged to defend my rights” part, I think.Report
Eh, if it turns into “I have met my obligations to you, you still have unmet obligations to me”, they’ll find that they’re on the wrong end of The Ultimatum Game.Report
No it’s the “wait we can’t have these obviously useful gov services…wtf…well that’s stupid.”Report
Part of the problem that I realize that the libertarians have with the progressives is that one side is arguing pragmatics (and not morality) and the other is arguing morality (and not pragmatics).
“X won’t work.”
“Why are you opposed to X?”
“I’m not opposed to the idea of X. I’m saying that your implementation of X won’t work.”
“Not with that attitude it won’t!”
“It has nothing to do with my attitude. It has to do with what works.”
“A better world is possible and people like you are holding it back.”
Two entirely different conversations.
“These obviously useful gov services” have stuff pointed out about them and it becomes discussions of whether we support the *IDEA* of what the government service would be doing in a perfect system rather than what actually happens.
The D.C. Public Schools debacle from a few years back provides a great example. The graduation rate ending up in the low 40’s and the school graduating functionally illiterate people bubbled up and bubbled back down. What could fix it? Well, something else entirely *MIGHT* fix it. And then it becomes a conversation about how Charter Schools are just the nose of the camel for destroying public schools. The intentions of the people who support public schools are put up against the intentions of the people who want to destroy them.
And the low-40’s stops mattering.
So, too, with other obviously useful government services.Report
(That was this case, by the way.)Report
Some gov services work just fine, some don’t. ( yeah i know mind blown) It’s simple easy and pointless to pick one convenient example of a gov services or market solution that has failed as if that proves anything. No one solution/theory works for everything or never fails. Your obsession with morality might be clouding your thinking but who knows. Some gov/market/business solutions work great/fail. How are you matching the solution to the problem. One size fits all theory. Welp you gonna be hella wrong in a bunch of situations but at least you’ll always know the direction of your error. Just won’t ever change since you allready got the perfect theory.
Any fancy theory that isn’t concerned with nuts and bolts pragmatics is a waste of air/pixels.Report
Well, we get into issues like “my school was awesome”.
You know what? My high schools *WERE* awesome. Public schools.
If I wanted to give an example of a school that worked and worked well, I’d point to the ones in Westchester county and School District 20 here in Colorado Springs.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But then we look at the school in the story again. It’s broke. Well, what about charter schools? What about vouchers for private schools? What about firing bad teachers?
Well, at that point we get into Public School Theory and the importance of not undercutting it. Education is important!Report
ahh yeah….umm…okay…whatever, i guess that means something.Report
There are places where the deal works as advertised.
There are places where the deal does not work as advertised.
People defend not changing the way it’s done where the deal does not work by appealing to theory as well as explaining how well it works (in the places it works well).
This is bad.Report
Great! Terrible! I don’t really know. Change is inevitable and something we always need to be working on. Ditch what doesn’t work and find what does.Report
Ditch what doesn’t work and find what does.
I agree 100% with this!
The problem comes when stuff like Charter Schools (among other solutions) gets floated and the counter-argument is that, well, we shouldn’t do *THAT*. We should instead *FIX* what doesn’t work.
And the argument about finding what does evolves into “don’t change things”.
And the eventual solution generally ends up being a new coat of paint and a handful of ways to game the numbers and show improvement on paper without, you know, making things better.
See, for example, the story that got linked to. (It was heralded as a *SUCCESS*, believe it or not, before it came out that, no, it wasn’t.)Report
Specific to charter schools, you must define “works”.
Do charter schools “work” for the system? Or only for the attendees?
Purely hypothetical, but imagine a system with a 40% graduation rate. Charter schools come in and half the kids attend and those schools see a graduation rate of 70%. Wahoo! SUCCESS!
But… wait… 50% of kids are still in those other schools. And now their graduation rate is 10%. Now we’ve got (quick math) a combined graduation rate of… 40%.
Now, I obviously goosed those numbers a bit. But… still… are the charter schools “working”?Report
What frustrates the ideologues is that public schools produce some of the very best outcomes, and also the worst.
Charter and private schools for that matter, also produce the best and worst outcomes.
Come to think of it, quasi-public, unionized entities like the Postal Service provide about the same level of quality and price as private, non union entities like Fed Ex.
Ideology often assumes that political structures operate like algorithms or machines; You input this data or condition at one end, and it spits out a predictable outcome at the other end, varied only by the rules and mechanisms in between.
But they don’t, really.Report
I would say that the schools that suddenly hit a graduation rate of 10% are schools that need to be destroyed and probably have their earth salted.
I’d like to hear why they shouldn’t be.Report
1) Is the system more important than the attendees? Is it equally as important?
2) Graduation rates are not the only metric we can or should use.
When we look at that 40% that didn’t graduate, we have to look at how we could possibly achieve any gains from that 40% versus what negative impacts we impose upon the other 60%. As Dark Matter often says, if the PS his daughter attends has a crop of disruptive kids who impact her ability to succeed, but who the PS can not or will not expel, or even if there is a large population that demands a great deal of resources from the school such that her education is lessened, then there is a problem.
There is, in fact, an externality at play whose cost is imposed upon other children.Report
Well, I was referring to the system of attendees. If all a charter does is serve as a shell game, then I don’t think it’s working.
I’m not OPPOSED to charters. In fact, I support them. But if all you do is look at the charter’s impacts on its own students as opposed to the broader impacts it has on a very tangled system, you aren’t really looking at the totality of impact.
Most data I’ve seem (though I haven’t dug deep) shows charters to be pretty neutral, especially once you account for the built in advantages they have (namely, a degree of control over student population… not as much as an IS but more than a PS).
They may be hugely beneficial for individuals and as such, I support them. But most research shows the kids who succeed in charters would have succeeded where ever and all the charter did was pick them off. They may soar higher — and that matters!!! But they rarely help the system.
Pointing at successful charters and saying, “See?” is like pointing at successful PSs and saying, “See?” Bully for the kids there but meaningless beyond.
But my real point wasn’t about charters, only about using a very narrow and limited metric to measure success (e.g., grad rates).Report
Alright, glad to know we agree!
Let’s hit the bar, who’s buying?Report
My treat! Stimulus check hit last week.Report
only about using a very narrow and limited metric to measure success
I would love to talk about the other metrics we might use instead of graduation rates.
Here’s a paragraph from the NPR story (linked above):
Test scores, I understand, are also an imperfect metric.
But I don’t know what measure to use.
The school is in zip code 20032. Here are the stats for 20032 according to zipwho.
What metrics do we want to use?Report
I don’t have a strong policy-based opinion on charter schools, as that would require me to research, which would cut into my sitting around time. That said, there is something about the discourse surrounding charter schools that makes me very uncomfortable. Allow me to explain.
The selling point of things like charter schools and voucher programs, and many similar approaches, is that some families will be able to take advantage of the system and get a better education for their kids.
Okay fine. Let’s suppose that is true.
There is a hidden assumption, specifically what about all the other families, who for whatever reason cannot take advantage of the system? What about their kids?
I’m very suspicious of programs built to lift a few but leave the remainder behind.
I think it ties into the “anyone can make it” argument. Even if that is true, what about everyone else?
The notion of public healthcare, public education, worker rights, and similar regulations are built on the idea that most people are average — that’s what the word means — and that they deserve a baseline decent life.Report
Veronica,
I don’t know if it is in this mini thread or above or below but I touched on a similar dynamic with regards to the individual versus the system. Charters and vouchers can be good for individuals. And they can be bad for the system. Who is the whole thing intended for… individuals or the system? The system is made up of individuals so everything gets very tangled very fast.
But your discomfort is one I share and when it is simply glossed off or handwaved away, the discomfort becomes disgust.Report
I interpret this as saying something similar to “there is nothing that can be done at the administrative or teaching levels to improve the outcomes for these children… the only things that will improve the outcomes for these students is an influx of high-quality peers”.
Why is this not an abdication of responsibility on the part of the administration/teachers?Report
Veronica,
This is like saying the police shouldn’t stop a rape-in-progress because that’s not helping everyone equally.
My local PS did a great job for daughters #1, #2 & #4. They also failed with #3 to the point where we left the entire system.
Charters are for “what happens when the system fails”. It’s unacceptable to tell a victim that she needs to take one for the team because average people don’t need help.Report
Your hidden assumption is, in itself, an assumption.
Why any given kid is failing at any given school could have a single, or a tangle of reasons. It could be home life, it could be crap peers, it could be crap teachers, it could just be a bad fit of curriculum or pedagogy. It could a legacy of issues all compounded in a really bad way.
Moving a kid from one school to another can, quite often, remove one or more of those issues, and let the kid have a chance.
I grew up in a town of about 10K people, with a large school district. The district was a pretty damn good school for a rural WI school. Lots of funding, lots of programs.
Lots of bullies and not a lot of willingness to do shite about them.
I’ve mentioned before that I got bullied a lot from elementary school up to HS. Like, regularly coming home with black eyes and bruised ribs kinda beatings. That impacted my ability to succeed in those schools.
Between freshman and sophomore year, my folks bought a house in the next district over. My sister finished her Senior year at the old school, but I got a fresh start at a much smaller, much poorer school, but one that lacked the legacy of bullying I had endured. I did much better there, and not just because the classes were smaller.
Sometimes you just need to upend the apple cart.
Also, getting back to the discussion Kazzy and were having, we probably really should be allowing for teenagers to have multiple paths for success through high school, and not just one that is geared towards college. And if we don’t want to pay for public schools to offer such paths, that is something charters could be really good for, especially in areas with things like magnet schools, etc.Report
Look, I’m glad you got out of a bad situation, and I’m sorry you were ever in a bad situation. All I’m saying is that shouldn’t be enough. Because after you left, there is a good chance those kids just started bullying someone else who couldn’t get out.
I certainly wouldn’t want to trap you in that school. I like you and want you to prosper. However, none of us should be satisfied that one kid can get out of a bad situation. I want most kids, and in fact nearly all kids to be able to get out.
I escaped pretty extensive bullying when I began lifting weights and started running with the punker kids. It worked. People stopped bullying me. However, it’s not a solution that would work for everyone. I had friends who were small-framed and mildly autistic. Getting buff and becoming more socially adept weren’t really “in the cards” for them. They needed help.Report
This is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
My kid’s root problem was her birthday was in the wrong month. She just made the dividing breakpoint. Ergo she was the youngest kid in the class.
As it turned out, she was too young.
Everything after that was adults arguing on whether an exception to the rules should be made and what happened after that.Report
Public schools are, for the most part, in a tight spot, they have to serve everyone, which means getting rid of disruptive kids is often not an option until those kids cross a pretty high bar for bad behavior. Which means dealing with the disruptive kids is often difficult, if not impossible, so the only choice left to those who can not handle the disruptions is to exit.
And they should be allowed to!
Or, we need to empower districts to remove disruptive kids* immediately, before they impact others.
I mean, this is very much a case of why Positive rights are exceptionally difficult. If kid A has a right to a good taxpayer funded education, and kid B has the same right, but behaves in such a way that kid A’s right is diminished, how to do you square that circle? And if Kid B is impacting not just Kid A, but Kids A2-A200, at what point does their collective right to a good education preclude B’s?
One way or the other, someone needs to exit that school. Pick your poison.
* Or teachers, or staff, or admins, etc.Report
There are people for whom the system doesn’t work. One size doesn’t fit all.
My local schools are great. They still failed my #3 girl and we went charter for two years.
It was GREAT having that as an option. Then the schools did the right thing (i.e. what I wanted) to get us back two years later. A little competition makes the system a lot more responsive.Report
One size, indeed, does not fit all.
Let’s say that “one size fits most” should be good enough.
We’re still talking about a (hypothetical) school with a 10% graduation rate.Report
I think you’re missing my point.
Is the charter school turning non-graduate into graduates?
Or is the charter school simply drawing from a population that is more likely to graduate?
From the (limited) research I’ve looked at, it tends to be more of the latter. Selection bias, if you will.
Which doesn’t mean the charter school is a problem. But it probably means it isn’t the solution that the graduation rate suggests it is.
As an educator, my preference is always to look at growth over time. Test the kids on Day 1. And day 100. And day 300. How did their results change?
If the charter kids go from a 90 to a 92 in 300 days and the other kids go from a 20 to a 30 in 300 days… which school was more successful?Report
So if we have a school with 90% of kids that won’t graduate and everybody agrees won’t graduate and that can’t be changed…
We’re stuck between putting all of those kids in one school and spreading them across all of the schools.
I can see the benefits to putting all of them in one school.
I mean, assuming that the assumption that they can’t be educated to the point where they’d graduate is a good assumption, of course.
(I’d wonder if there isn’t something better to do with them than put them all in one place, a place we posit won’t particularly help them, though.)Report
Not quite.
If PS can’t turn non-graduates into graduates and CS can’t turn non-graduates into graduates… the answer is neither more PS or more CS… it’s a better approach.
Charters have not demonstrably proven themselves to have a better approach.
That’s my point. If a system is failing 60% of kids, do better. Don’t just play a shell game.Report
Perhaps part of the problem is what “graduation” looks like these days.Report
Likely an adjacent problem to one-size-fits-all thinking: one definition of what a successful K-12 education is.Report
Even when I was graduating HS in the early 90s, my very small, very rural, school was moving more and more towards an academic future track.
Even then, kids were getting left behind.Report
You are always going to have kids who get left behind or who are failed or who fail.
I’ve always said I imagine a system wherein a given geographic area has a variety of schools (or, maybe, schools within schools… or simply programs within schools) and students/families work together with educational leaders to help kids find the right school/program for them. Like, man, this kid is a high flyer… he’s Ivy league material and he is interested in being a lawyer; we should get him into the AP/college prep track. This kid is insanely creative with real potential as an artist. Have you seen her paintings? Let’s get her to the arts collaborative building. This kid probably isn’t going to goto a 4-year-college and would be saddled with immense debt even if he did. He wants to start making money for himself. Let’s see if he can find a trade in our vocational programs.
Leave ultimate decision making to families to avoid kids being pigeonholed and hopefully the schools put the right people in place to offer thoughtful and appropriate guidance.
It’s not a perfect plan. What plan is? But if executed well (IFFFFFF!!!!) I think it’d achieve more success in ways we’d all agree on.Report
As much as I like the plan, I wander back to the particular school in question:
Your plan sounds like a perfect plan for a school with an 80ish-percent graduation rate.
It’s a plan that would have worked perfectly in the high schools that I went to.Report
I agree, no system is 100%, but there are places where it can be a lot better but not forcing the one true path.
So yeah, this is where I think vouchers and charters/private schools can make a difference. Could we/should we apply more oversight to schools getting vouchers? Sure, I’m open to the argument, as long as it doesn’t venture into oversight to turn every private school into another public school in all but name.
I think, if you had vouchers everywhere, you’d see small charter/private schools popping up even in the rural areas, if the local PS could not meet the needs of everyone.Report
What measurement are we using if not graduation or standardized testing?Report
Concentrated, this problem feeds on itself and will result in very substandard outcomes for these specific kids. The ideal outcome is they have absurd amounts of money (and preventing the money from being mis-used is non-trivially hard), and should be surrounded by kids like mine. If we had one kid like that in the classroom, probably social pressure would stop him from being much of a problem and I wouldn’t notice.
The big benefit to “one school” is my kids don’t have to deal with them, and if we structure the taxes right the money that could go to help them can instead enrich my kids.
And as much as we pay lip service to the ideal solution, in practice we vote with our feet and do the second.
Big picture we should be structuring society so most of these kids don’t exist. Implanted birth control at the age of 13. Strong fiscal incentives to get married and/or have fiscal stability before having kids.
It might be possible to do this sort of thing without crossing the “evil” line but we’re going to have problems with “help this person even if it means encouraging bad behavior” policy making.Report
Who said it’s one size fits all? Most libertarians are fine with looking at each problem on it’s own merits.
Take public schools! Most libertarians are fine with public schools as an option, what they despise is PS as a monopoly. Vouchers are a great way to deal with the issues surrounding said schools. It is a ‘light touch’, because the government is not telling people what to do beyond, “your children must be educated to this standard”.
Got a great PS? Awesome, it’ll get the bulk of the vouchers.
Got a crap PS? Then everyone has the ability to try something else.
Got a great PS where the teachers union is keeping it shut down over baseless Covid fears? Options abound!
Yes, yes, I know all the counter arguments. They are all special pleading or edge cases.Report
I have no problem in general with that. Well there are some libertarians who are very down on “gubmint skools indoctrinating my kids” but you are not one of them. Vouchers can be done in an effective way or just a way to shovel money to church schools.
I’m all about finding what solutions work in each situation. Theory people always predictably end up with the solution they started with. Sometimes markets/gov/private-public partnerships are best.Report
This is the thing that irks me, that I feel like it’s an all or nothing deal. If I think we should have a safety net, then the only safety net I can agree to is the ones the progressives put forth, or we get the conflict Jaybird outlines upthread.Report
“…because the government is not telling people what to do beyond, “your children must be educated to this standard”.”
Well, not necessarily. In most states (maybe all?), independent schools are not subjected to state standards. So, unless accepting vouchers changes that, the government isn’t actually requiring anything.
That doesn’t go to the broader point of your argument, but unless you’ve seen something I haven’t, voucher systems are never attached to increased oversight.Report
Which standards are we talking about? Graduation requirements, or something else?Report
I dunno. I was quoting you. What standard did you mean?
A voucher allows Family X to take the money that would have gone to PS1 and use it at Independent Academy. PS1 us subject to state standards. IA is not. IA could be using those dollars to teach Underwater Basketweaving.
Which is fine… but it doesn’t requirw what you say it does. There is no government hand.Report
If there is no standard, there is no standard. I stand corrected.Report
Yea, it’s a little known fact that independent schools are pretty much unregulated. We have private accreditation and there is a major player (and its regional subsidiaries) that are worthwhile… but they’re voluntary.Report
I trust parents to do the right thing for their kids more than I trust gov.
I held my #3 girl back a year in the 2nd grade. (One of my better parenting moves btw, totally the thing to do).
I got a huge amount of pushback from the local principal and the teacher and school shrink (i.e. the school’s minions).
They’d seen this happen before. Step one is hold the kid back a year, step two is transfer schools so she’s not seeing all her class mates who advanced.
We transfer schools and the money that goes with her leaves this school. So our interests weren’t aligned. I wanted to do good things for my kid at the expense of the school and they didn’t.
The school has it’s personal skin in the game to keep even failing kids in there. Or bullied kids. Or kids that would just be better off somewhere else.Report
Dark Matter,
To start, I wasn’t weighing in pro or con on vouchers or charters. I was weighing in on certain aspects of the arguments being presented, using my experience in the world of education.
I agree that, generally speaking, most parents have a good sense of what is best for their kids. And I’d say, except in the extreme cases, even parents who maybe don’t know best for their kids should still have their ability to make decisions in their kids’ interest respected.
I don’t think any parent/family owes it to “the system” to keep their kid in a situation that is less ideal if they have the means or opportunity for something better. Full stop. So I would never criticize or judge your actions. As a parent, your primary obligation is to your child.
However, that puts the school in the necessary position of HAVING to think of “the system.” Because if no one thinks of “the system,” eventually “the system” goes belly up.
Of course the school is going to try to convince a family like yours to stay. Your family’s presence likely makes the school better. Now, ideally they do that by better meeting your child’s needs. Sounds like they couldn’t and since you had the means, opportunity, and wherewithal to walk, you did.
I’m not convinced that vouchers will make the system better. But I do believe they can make individual kids’ situation better. So, as an educator with an eye towards both the system and the kid but who always leans towards the latter*, I support vouchers. But I think they are an imperfect solution to a very real problem.
I think The Powers That Be, who are deeply entrenched in the well-being of the system, see the potential for vouchers to belly up the system and they resist them aggressively. Which I think is foolish. But it makes sense if you think of TPTB being focused on The System as opposed to the system. They don’t see the potential for another system to evolve, one which includes vouchers AND other reforms that can be a rising tide lifting all boats. They’re too deep into The System so they resist any and all change. Which, ultimately, fails kids and may eventually belly up the system anyway.
Parents ought to focus on their children first as individuals. And school leaders ought to focus on the long-term health of their school. And properly balanced, they can be mutually supportive in most cases. Unfortunately, they aren’t properly balanced and there are too many tripping points currently to allow for that in too many cases.
To summarize, I make no criticism of your decision. In fact, I applaud it; I’m a child advocate above all else and you aptly advocate for your child. I wish you didn’t have to take the steps you did but am glad they were available to you. My hope is that we can create a system where the need to take such steps is few and far between.
* This is why I made a bad administrator and quickly returned to the classroom.Report
What I find oddly surprising is the abject lack of traction for a platform of freedom from an overweening, heavy-handed government.
Odd, really?
Who here feel the heavy hand of an overweening government? Seriously in your everyday life, where are you being weighed down? What is it that you wish to do that you aren’t, or what are you compelled to do that you would wish not?
I hear people often say stuff like this, and it just passes unchallenged like “those clown in Congress”, one of the tropes that everyone says without thinking.Report
“Seriously in your everyday life, where are you being weighed down? ”
lol
“you say that you worry about the government banning things we ought to be able to do, and to that I reply, have you tried simply no longer wanting to do those things?”Report
Seems like there are THOUSANDS of people who would really like to be able to recreationally take drugs who feel the weight of government.
Anyone who has found themselves crosswise with the police feel the heavy weight of government, even if they were just naked in their home and the police burst in on a bad tip.
Maybe I could just link to the IJ website and we could go over their list of current cases?Report
Or to put it another way:
Chip sowing at 6PM on May 29: “Ha ha, eff yeah! DEFUND THE COPS!”
Chip reaping later that night facing a raging mob outside his building: “What the eff. This effing sucks. Where are the cops?”
Trying to discuss government in terms of size or “heaviness” gets us nowhere, because the two poles form a false dichotomy.
It isn’t a slide between “Cops rampaging with impunity” and “Mobs burning with impunity”.
Governments, good and bad, are simultaneously heavy in one area and light in others.Report
Chuck Schumer is calling for the legalization of marijuana. Whether he gets it on a 50-50 Senate is to be seen. You can be for the legalization of drug laws and also support a robust welfare state and safety net. This is not a contradiction. Anti-state libertarians do not hold aximoatic monopolies on how to define freedom and liberty.Report
That wasn’t what was being asked, now, was it?Report
The current offer that I’ve seen is a descheduling of it (very good!) and a new tax scheme for it (this strikes me as more likely to result in a grey/black market than significantly increased revenues but if this is the price, it’s still worth paying… I mean, it’s not like you won’t be able to still get the good stuff on the grey/black market, right?) as well as loosening regulations for banks and funding going toward expunging criminal records.
It’s not as good as I might hope but it’s better than I could have feared.
Now my main point of curiosity is if it’ll go through.Report
Here in the People’s Republic of California, marijuana is legal and sold in stores like candy.
Somehow, the same overweening and heavyhanded government that bans the sale of unpasteurized milk, somehow allows the sale of marijuana.
The editors of Reason are diligently at work to explain this paradox.Report
They’d probably write something like this, at a guess.
You know, focusing on the legislation that results in grey/black markets for this legal substance. It would point out the licensing problems.
They’d probably talk about police raids as well.
If I had to guess what they think about the paradoxes involved with this legal substance sold in stores like candy.Report
Why, exactly, is raw milk banned?
Is it a labelling issue? Are people trying to pass off raw milk as processed milk?
Is it an serious information disparity? Are the potential risks of raw milk poorly understood?Report
Yes the potential risks are poorly understood.
The greater issue, as with so many things, is an entrenched economic sector that would rather spend millions to enforce continuance of the existing system then adapt.Report
I disagree that the risks are poorly understood. I think people who enjoy raw milk very much understand the risks.
I do agree on the entrenched interests, which are often a significant driver of heavy handed government.Report
“marijuana is legal and sold in stores like candy.”
…huh?
I mean…where are you going with this? Because A) no it isn’t, and B) I’m not really seeing how “you’re allowed to do some things” means “therefore the government isn’t restricting your freedoms”.Report
Part of this is also the whole issue of things that young people dig versus things that old people dig.
Imagine: A small town where very little changes from year to year, there are two parades every year at the 4th of July and at Christmas time, the weekly big event is the Wednesday night spaghetti dinner at the VFW, and nothing ever happens.
If I were 17, this would sound hellish.
In my late 40’s, this sounds pretty sweet.Report
And the heavy hand of government affects the parades and VFW spaghetti dinners — for those who want them — how?Report
The extent to which we can dismiss another’s concerns as “that’s not a particularly heavy hand” enters into the conversation at this point.Report
Well then, enter it.Report
The problem ties into the knowledge problem of not knowing how much weight to put on someone feeling something very strongly and at what point them feeling it that strongly puts an obligation on someone else.Report
Let me try to make this simple: How does the Big Bad Government get in the way of small-town 4th of July parades and VFW spaghetti suppers? Back when I was able to travel, I saw them all over the place, participated in some, and enjoyed them greatly. (Well, being Italian, I usually avoided spaghetti suppers in places where Italians were a curiosity, but there were plenty of pancake breakfasts, chicken barbeques, and ox roasts.) As far as I can tell, the Big Bad Government didn’t mess with them.
If you don’t want to address your own examples, don’t bring them up.Report
CJColucci,
If you did more than your cultural tourism visits to REAL AMERICA, you’d quickly see how those parades are only. made possible by BRAVE PATRIOTS who resist attempts of government to require July 4 Paradegoers from being forced to convert to homosexualISlam.Report
“homosexualISlam”
ISWYDTReport
Took me a minute but I got there.Report
Oh, it doesn’t. If anything, the Big Bad Government is involved in propping such things up!
And when young people who live in small towns where these things are propped up by the Big Bad Government feel like these small towns are oppressive… well, how much weight ought we put on that feeling?
When calls are made for the VFW to have its tax exempt status removed and for Big Bad Government to stop supporting this racist organization, is that something that deserves a special hearing or can it be waved away?
If we have the hearing, to what extent are the strong feelings of the people at the VFW relevant?
To what extent does feeling something strongly create a positive obligation on the part of the government?
If we want to say that there are some things that are okay and part of the marketplace of ideas and not a moral issue at all and shouldn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the government… then what?
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that a lot of the small towny things seem to be falling away. Some ideas don’t sell as well as they used to, I guess.Report
WTF?
Big Bad Government props up the church potluck and the Kiwanis Club ox roast and the small-town 4th of July parade? Nowhere I’ve been or seen. Unless you mean that the small town itself is propped up by Big Bad Government after it has lost its economic rationale and would not otherwise exist at all.
If young people find their small towns oppressive and leave, why do we have to put “weight” on that feeling? It’s not for us, either “us” as just folks or “us” as the government, to decide whether they should leave or not. And if they would rather stay and try to make the small town less oppressive, again, that’s not for us to decide. Nothing for us to weigh. For what it’s worth, I’ve seen formerly oppressive small towns prosper precisely because they have loosened up. Whether that’s scalable is another question.
Tax breaks? Now that’s exactly the kind of thing we have government for. And government is composed of politicians, who answer to voters. They are in the business of weighing the feelings of the folks who profit from the tax breaks and the people who oppose the tax breaks. That’s what we hire them for. We’re not always happy with the job they do, and we can fire them.Report
No good, no bad, just democracy in action? (Including the ability of the young to vote with their feet?)
As much as I am a fan of that sort of thing, I’m not sure it scales at all (and I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t want to apply it in a different year than the current one).Report
Why ask me? We’re trying to figure out what you’re talking about, and how it relates, if at all, to the original post. If you don’t want to tell us, that’s fine. We’re probably not missing much.Report
Well, the original post opened with people (presumably) from one of the small towns.
You know the people who only eat one of 7 or 8 meals? Have an Italian night?
That sort of thing.
The food caution of the somewhat older can be compared to the desire to experience everything that, presumably, adolescents want to do. Indian food tonight! Thai tomorrow! Chinese/Mexican fusion the day after that!
Chili’s? Who in the hell eats at *CHILI’S*?
And, believe it or not, I’ve seen people turn the discussion of desire to experience new and exotic things discussed not as a matter of taste but as a matter of something to be praised vs. shamed.
Something we want more of versus something we want less of.
And it is through that lens that I read about the people who put themselves in boxes and take comfort in stuff that adolescents find oppressive.
And noticing that it’s not more than merely a matter of taste.Report
OK, so we weren’t missing much. Glad to have cleared that up.Report
“The structures and rules you seek to impose on your fellow citizens will necessarily become the confines in which you yourself must also live.”
Unless, of course, those structures and rules are imposed by a private company, in which case it’s just someone defining the limits of behavior on their own property, and it’s just private citizens deciding who they want to associate with.Report
That seems to be a defining tenant of modern capitalism.Report
Heavy…meh. There are some things governments can do and are effective at. Some things markets and businesses can do and are effective at. Matching each to the correct task is hard but seems like the best course. There will never be complete agreement on that obviously. What is heavy government. Same deal, always disagreement.
Framing the discussing as a vague “limit freedom vs security” is giving the game away. That framing is built to make Americans start screaming “wolverine” and beat their chests. What are the specifics? What limits? What are the benefits? This is just to vague and undefined. Bad government…yeah that’s bad.Report
Didn’t Tod have a saying… it is rarely a battle between freedom and tyranny but instead somethingsomethingsomething?Report
ED Kain used to say that libertarians would do a lot better if they backburnered attacking the crutches for a generation and spent that time building positive rep for themselves by attacking the chains.
In reality, of course, libertarians verbally do both but the monied interests whos support lets them punch over their miniscule voting weight, prefers that they go after the crutches and is indifferent or hostile to their attempts to go after the chains.Report
One thing to be careful of is when ones crutch becomes another’s chain.Report
Yes, well he was primarily referring to safety nets as crutches rather than barriers to entry or business subsidies and while the taxation is theft crowd does see safety nets as chains that isn’t the view of the voting masses.Report
Translation: Free Money is popular.
However, they’re not wrong, and not just for social programs. The guys who wrote “The Millionaire Next Door” did a bunch of research on the whole “Shirt-sleeves to Shirt-sleeves” effect.
They concluded the very rich giving money to their children taught them dependency and resulted in them being less likely to advance and more likely to spend all their money and fall in class ranks.Report
That is the thing about any welfare program, you want it to be enough to satisfy needs, but not so much that it also satisfies wants, to avoid the risk of dependency. Thing is, of course, that needs and wants are not fixed, they vary from person to person, so one person can be quite happy on the dole and not working, and another chafes on it.
For many, the very idea that a person is quite happy living on the dole is just so offensive to them…
Personally, I’d suggest getting over it and not worrying about it. There is always going to be a free rider issue, and I’d rather the free riders be at the bottom of the SES, than at the top (where we have a lot of them), because even though the ones at the bottom are more numerous, overall they probably cost less than the people rent seeking from the top.Report
Yup, I’m a market liberal so, of course, I recognize the lessons liberals had to learn painfully after the 70’s when Reagan and Thatcher came in and kicked their butts.
But, and I may be misrepresenting E.D. Kain here, his core point was basically that, even if one made the huge leap of conceding that libertarians are right about the crutches and chains as an economic and sociological matter, the political reality is that very few people in the voting electorate trusts or believes libertarians. One way libertarians could try to fix this problem would be to remove widely popular crutch programs from their target list and focus only on generally less popular chain policies instead for a long time. If libertarians were successful in doing away with those they might be able to change their image from “that right wing kook who wants to make Gramma move in with us and privatize the fire department” to “that helpful ideology that ended the war on drugs, killed subsidies for fat cat corporations and reformed the prison system.” His point was that maybe, with their reputations rehabilitated, libertarians might actually be able to get a more open hearing from the masses on their ideas about reforming/abolishing popular safety net crutches at that point.
Personally I think he was overgenerous to libertarianism; I don’t think it’s actually functional or implementable as a governing theory but I think it makes an incredibly useful null hypothesis and is something that all well meaning liberals should always keep as a devil on one of their shoulders.Report
Libertarianism as Moral Argument turned out to be a dud. Negative Rights vs. Positive Rights as a discussion does not work in a lush economy. Like, at all.
Libertarianism as a warning about Unintended Consequences and pointing out the dynamics that follow from centralized control versus the ones that follow from localized control tends to hit it out of the park (most recently: New York’s throwing unused vaccines away) but that could be Confirmation Bias. (The problem is that nobody can agree how to measure stuff before the fact so we can confirm whether it’s Confirmation Bias.)Report
That was the “left libertarian” argument and you are describing in correctly. That got no purchase with “real” libertarians who tend to have a strong conservative bias. But it does actually make some sense and has never remotely been tried.Report
Well yeah, it’s true. The weight and energy in the movement lies with the right libertarians because that’s who pays their salaries.Report
yep those poor multi-millionaires and billionaires who hate paying for the safety net. Won’t someone think of the billionaires? They might be able to get an extra yacht but for the taxes.Report
Four of my pregnant relatives have NOT gotten married in order to min/max gov benefits. Each has been very open to the family about what they were doing and why. Three eventually got married to their partners, often because of social pressure.
The most recent one is as much of a numbers guy as I am.Report
Even if you hit the Billionaires with 90% tax rates, the bulk of any welfare program falls on the middle class because Billionaires don’t have billions sitting in a bank somewhere. It’s a valuation, not the last line of a bank statement.Report
Heavy meh as well and what LeeEsq stated. Libertarians seem extremely unwilling to contemplate that the majority of people might just disagree with their notions of what “liberty” means and what “freedom” means. Essays like this pop up frequently enough and they always remind me of Principal Skinner in the Simpsons having a moment of self-doubt before deciding “no it is other others who are wrong.”
To be somewhat fair, I think it is fairly common as a human trait. I know lots of artsy types who imagine that people will want to live like they do but people are not given a chance and this is equally wrong. The Bohemian life is not for everyone.
Lee’s analogy to the tightrope is the correct one. There are other ways to frame concept s of freedom. There is freedom from want for example. I’ve been laid off from jobs and on unemployment. I have used the ACA for healthcare. I would rather live in a world where unemployment insurance exists and the ACA exists than not. I do not feel less free or oppressed by the existence of such things. They helped me avoid more dire fates like eviction and food insecurity. I’m also Jewish. I know Jews from not too long ago who lost jobs because they were Jewish. A world where there is a legal consequence for making decisions like this better than one where there is not.Report
Here’s a thought:
Government can have both a light touch AND a heavy hand. Sometimes, a heavy hand is called for. We would not, for instance, want the government to take a light touch approach to the investigation and prosecution of murder (although we may want a better approach to rehabilitation and redemption). We would not, for instance, want a light touch when it comes to Ponzi schemes.
Do we really want a heavy hand for kids lemonade stands?
Criticizing the heavy hand of government is not a dismissal of any and all social goods government may provide.
You are disingenuous for suggesting that it is.Report
One thing the many failures of socialism has shown, is there is no escape from want. Survival must be earned. Voting on ‘Society’ to catch you has a limited shelf life.
The bleakness of sovietism was never reaveled to this country enough, and the sirens call from the church of needs will never cease. Ignorance will collect her faithful dead and the brutal teacher will continue to teach.Report
The living standards of the average Russian citizen increased massively between 1918 and 1988.
By the time of Gorbachev, most Soviet citizens lived longer, healthier lives in greater consumer comfort than many people in the capitalist countries.
Using the same standards we use for “global free trade”, Communism lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and therefore is proven to be a success.Report
Show your work on what you are calling “lifted out of poverty”.Report
That 90 mile boat ride to Cuba is still available to all the faithful. Yet here yall are.Report
Below I’m going to post links to graphs of the life expectancy for a Russian Male and a US Male, from about 1850 to modern.
From 1918 to about 1965, the USSR did very well if we exclude the wars and that it starts from a very low base. From 1965 on basically things suck.
For the US it’s basically a linear line up since 1880.
Russia:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/
US:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/
Here we have US per cap growth with USSR per cap. The USSR is poorer, catching up is easier than forging new ground after you get industrialization… and the gap between the two countries was always getting larger. That’s not unique to the US either, Western Europe’s gap with the USSR was also getting larger, as was Japan’s, Spain’s, etc. The USSR was pretty flat.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per_capita.png
And this is with serious cherry picking. The USSR was the most successful of the Communistic countries. China’s communists burned down the entire economy to a crazy degree. Taking one point and expanding that to “success” of the system isn’t the best of ideas.
Go with Communism and if you’re lucky you’ll get the USSR which was great compared to the Zar but sucked compared to everything else. If you’re unlucky you’ll get China or some other burn the economy down experience. If you’re very unlucky you’ll get North Korea or Cambodian’s Khmer Rouge.Report
Right in the middle of the 1918-1965 timeline there needs to be a accounting for the lend lease supplies, and various other resources that are not accounted for. Without considerable support communism is a negative from start to end.Report
This may be true. Certainly we need to have multiple “you need to understand” handwaves in there for the wars (which may obscure just how bad Communism is) and the non-Communist countries in that area of the world did much better.
However given how low the starting level was I’m not sure we can prove it from this chart. The Czar system was really bad… although we could have “you need to understand” handwaves there too.
I expect it would have turned out better for them long term if they’d gone down the “constitutional monarchy” road, but I can’t prove that.Report
Well yeah, but it was the Czar’s who refused and punished the idea of a constitutional monarchy. They had the option sitting their for years and tripled down on royal power to the point of revolution.
It seems undenabile the situation of the regular Ivan improved greatly over the course of the mid 20th century. Life still also sucked for them in many ways. It is most likely that industrialization was the cause of the improvement. That the commies pushed industrialization like mad helped but likely anything would have helped. There were certainly many better options to drag the SU into the 20th century.Report
Constitutions haven’t proven to be operational in anything but a free state. Standing armies in socialist/democratic states have proven the most likely to violate them.Report
Ummm huh??? Does this mean something?Report
It’s a complete mystery.Report