Envy and Resentment Often Lurk Just Below the Surface

October 28, 2012 by

Envy is one of the most pervasive human emotions, yet it’s rare that you find someone who admits to it. But someone just did. In a WSJ article the author, Lee Siegel, compares the rise of Asian-Americans with that of Jewish-Americans. He writes,

Some of the more vehement attacks on Amy Chua’s deliberately provocative 2011 memoir of child rearing, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” were perhaps fueled by resentment of Asian-American ascendancy, especially in the context of raising “perfect” children. Confession: I was one of the book’s more vocal detractors. Was I, a Jewish-American writer, driven to pique, in part, by a member of a group that threatens Jewish-American cultural domination, just as American Jews once threatened the WASP mandarinate? Well, maybe.

Wow. Thank you Mr. Siegel for your honesty in admitting that your earlier criticism of Amy Chua’s style of child-rearing was partly fueled by a resentment (i.e. envy) of Asian-American ascendancy. (And it’s a bit ironic that this is coming from someone who’s part of a group that often itself is a target of envy and resentment.)

This is so revealing – and not just in Siegel’s case. One extrapolates that many opinions and observations that one comes across in the media and elsewhere actually derive from selfish and petty human foibles, rather than from substance. It shows that everything should be taken with a grain of salt. The next time one comes across a scathing criticism of Mitt Romney or whoever, one should ask whether the person doing the criticizing has too much envy running through his or her veins.

* * * *

On another but related subject, the article points out that Asian-Americans, to their credit, enjoy the highest incomes of any racial group in the United States. And as well they should, thanks to their admirable focus on education and hard work. (One example is that, in my local area and I’m sure elsewhere, Asian-Americans far more than Americans of other extractions send their children to academics-focused summer school. And that makes perfect  sense. Three months of summer vacation is an anachronism – based on the desire to let children work on the farms back when we primarily were an agricultural society. America never fixed that, and now it’s practically impossible because the teachers unions would be so resistant. Even though they mostly enjoy good salaries for working only nine months of the year — like Chicago where they earn $75K — were we to propose a 10 or 11 month school year, the unions would of course demand a big salary increase to compensate for it. And that would be too expensive so it’s unlikely that it ever would fly.)

The statistic in the article that Asian-Americans enjoy the highest incomes reminded me of a class-warfare-laden “infographic” about a year ago in LiveScience focusing on the top 1 percent (yes, it was class warfare in what should be a science-focused publication), which I wrote about previously. It included a bar graph of average incomes of racial groups in America: white, black, and Hispanic. It showed that whites had the highest incomes – and the tone of the graphs did not put people with high incomes in a favorable light. But it conspicuously left out average incomes of Asian-Americans.

That no doubt was because the writers and editors of the publication wanted to convey the impression that the inequality and other ills of America stem from the actions of upper-income white Americans. In the context of that infographic, it would have been very politically incorrect to show that a minority group actually has higher average incomes than those of European extraction. So they simply left out that inconvenient fact. It was one of the most blatant examples of journalist malpractice I had ever seen.

Filed Under: Envy, Inequality/Top 1% Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

Vehicles of Human Consciousness

October 18, 2012 by

“The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed.”

Stirring words from Dr. Eben Alexander, M.D., a neurosurgeon who contracted a rare bacterial meningitis four years ago and was in a coma for a week, with a non-functioning neocortex. Medically, he knew that there’s no way a person can experience consciousness when the neurons of one’s cortex are reduced to complete inactivity. Prior to his experience he was like most other scientists, who just think that science, not faith, is the road to truth. “Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself,” he writes. Yet during that coma he experienced consciousness – a consciousness so profound that it completely changed his outlook on life. Read about his account here.

It’s ironic that the number of atheists are swelling. Because they’re bumping up against more and more compelling accounts of persons who’ve experienced what it’s like on the other side. I suspect that such accounts are going to slow the march of atheism in America.

Meantime, all I can say is you’d better be good. Because there’s probably someone watching your every move.

Filed Under: Religion Leave a Comment

The Internet is Bad News for Tax Raisers

October 17, 2012 by

Bad news for tax-and-spenders. The Internet is making it harder to raise tax revenue.

Governments can still raise taxes, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to raise revenue they had hoped to raise. And for leftists, it doesn’t mean they’re going to inflict the punishment on the rich that they had hoped to inflict.

That’s because thanks to the Internet and the information economy, many businesses can be run from anywhere. Business owners can simply set up shop in another country or jurisdiction whenever the government wants to take more of their money.

A case in point is France. The new president there jacked up the top tax rate from a whopping 48 percent to a whopping 75 percent.

A recent article reports that “Start-up entrepreneurs (are) looking to move their headquarters out of France and taking their families with them.”

With the Internet “it is now possible to work in any corner of the world and come and spend one week a month in France,” said Thibault de Saint Vincent, president of Barnes France, the principal competitor to Daniel Feau.

You can tax people more, but you can’t make them stick around.

It’s yet another reason why cutting the budget deficit calls for spending cuts, not tax increases.

Filed Under: Taxation Leave a Comment

Romney/Ryan the “True Progressives”?

October 17, 2012 by

The Economist magazine has an article on how to reduce inequality while maintaining economic growth. They call it “True Progressivism”. Among their prescriptions are:

* Eliminating tax subsidies for the wealthy like the mortgage interest deduction
* Means testing of entitlements, which Republicans always propose but Democrats always shoot down
* Cracking down on teachers unions
* Ending government bailouts of big companies

Wow – who would have thought Romney/Ryan are the “True Progressives”?

Not unexpectedly, in the article The Economist doesn’t t admit that the above prescriptions are much closer to the Romney agenda than the Obama agenda – in fact they’re anathema to the Obama agenda.

What’s wrong Economist? Can’t you bring yourself to say that in order for these things to have a shot at happening, Romney/Ryan are the way to go?

Waiting with baited breath to find out who The Economist endorses this time.
Update: Wouldn’t ya have guessed it: they endorsed Obama.

Filed Under: Economic Growth, Inequality/Top 1% Leave a Comment

Don’t Sweat the Red-Blue Switch

October 5, 2012 by

There was a WSJ op-ed where the author laments the media’s labeling of all things Republican with red and Democrats with blue:

“Perhaps the most brazen language diktat has been the mischievous switch of political colors. … The change came in 2000 courtesy of MSNBC and NBC’s “Today” show. …Saddling your political rivals with a symbol to which they have been historically opposed is an even better and naughtier joke. Either it was that or numbing cluelessness.”

The red-blue switch used to somewhat bother me but not anymore. Want to know why the use of “red” and “blue” is so much more common now than it was pre-2000? Because the Dems must have hated the “red” label due to its association with communism. They were insecure with that, and didn’t want people to think they were that far to the left. Now that Repubs have been annointed with the “red” label, no one’s going to associate Republicans with communism.

So let the pundits have their fun. The switch has freed the media (who of course lean left) from that insecurity. Using the terms “Democrat” and “Republican” all the time can get boring, so why not liven things up a bit – add some color to the conversation – by throwing “red” and “blue” into the mix?

 

Filed Under: General Leave a Comment

Any Economists at The Economist?

October 5, 2012 by

I wonder who The Economist magazine is going to endorse for president this time. Four years ago they endorsed Barack Obama. Puzzlingly, The Economist thought Obama would be good for The Economy. If makes one wonder if there are  any economists on staff at The Economist. Now, four years later, I wouldn’t be surprised if they endorse Obama again, because from what I gather, that publication has become decidedly left-leaning. (Though you never know – they went for Bush in 2000.) Compared with other left-of-center publications they can occasionally say a sensible thing or two when it comes to economics, but overall they usually seem to be colder toward U.S. candidates that lean free-market and warmer toward those who lean otherwise.

Case in point was yesterday. In the aftermath of the first Obama-Romney debate, everyone seems to think Romney eviscerated Obama – which may be so but I think Romney could have presented even better arguments. In any event, The Economist’s “Lexington” columnist put in his or her (their columnists go unnamed) two cents on the issue. It prompted me to write this:

It’s noteworthy that the writer of The Economist article points to Romney’s “repeated false claims about Mr. Obama cutting hundreds of billions from Medicare programmes for the elderly”. The writer seems to think that because the $716 billion is to be cut from providers rather than beneficiaries, that it’s not a cut. Try getting treatment from someone if they’re not being paid. Even Obama didn’t dispute the $716 billion transfer from Medicare to Obamacare.

Meanwhile Obama repeated the patently false claim that Romney plans to raise taxes on the middle class, basing that on some “study” where the authors think Romney should raise such taxes in order to fund his promises. That’s a far cry from Romney proposing to raise those taxes, which is what the Obama people want everyone to believe. It’s the biggest, most outrageous falsehood of this campaign and gets repeated over and over, which should make anyone think twice about the integrity of the Obama people. Not to bring up that falsehood in The Economist article is journalistic malpractice.

Filed Under: Media Bias Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

Steve Pearlstein’s Straw-Men On Steroids

September 30, 2012 by

President Obama is notorious for frequently making  straw-man arguments – i.e. saying or implying that your political opponents make a certain argument or think a certain way, when in fact they do no such thing.

Is there an award for Straw-Man Columnist of the Year? If so, then the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein should take top honors.

His column today was one insult after another to job creators. Yes, the disdain for job creators, of all people, is even explicit in the column’s title: “I am a Job Creator: A Manifesto for the Entitled”.  Huh? Such an anti-business person writing a column in the Post’s business section? That’s like having a creationist write a column for the Science & Evolution section.

He says job creators feel “entitled” to all sorts of things such as:

I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.
I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.
I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends — and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.
I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.

He lists dozens of wacky notions like that, providing absolutely no evidence of such attitudes. Not only do his targets of criticism not feel entitled to those things, but the assumptions behind all of those things are wrong as well. One often finds writers such as Pearlstein who try to overwhelm their critics by making accusation after accusation but never backing any of them up, hoping that their critics will be drowned out in all the noise. In opinion articles, you’re supposed to state a thesis and use evidence to prove that thesis. But he has dozens of little bite-sized theses, with no proof for any of them, because if you tried doing that you’d quickly realize they’re full of holes.

It’s impossible to rebut all of his accusations without writing a 10,000-word paper, so let me just focus on a few (which I shared in the comments section of his article):

Pearlstein is demonizing job creators again. Steve have you ever considered how hard it is to start a business and figure out how to bring in enough revenue to even pay one employee let alone pay yourself? It’s damn hard – which is why 99 percent of the people – presumably including yourself – never even bother trying.

You see, business owners and the other private-sector people you speak of get their money through wealth creation. They create something of value provided to other people who voluntarily exchange their money for it. The only private-sector folks who get their money by wealth coercion – not creation – are trial lawyers, who you probably never demonize. And of course, the people who get actual entitlements from the government obtained that money through wealth coercion as well. (If people financing those entitlements don’t pay their taxes, law enforcement will come a calling, with the use of force if necessary).

You speak of poor quality of private sector service versus government sector services. Steve when you have to sell something and lose your shirt if you don’t, you’re highly motivated to provide good service. In the government, by contrast, if you provide subpar quality service, the coerced money keeps a coming, so little motivation there. Just compare the lines at the post office with the lines at FedEx. Or just ask the former Soviet Union.

You speak of government-provided services like transportation infrastructure and education that business people use. The irony, Steve, is that government-provided entitlements are crowding out those traditional government services. Entitlements now make up two-thirds of the federal budget, up from one-third a few decades ago. They’re on track to reach 75 percent of the federal budget in a decade or so, squeezing out funding for roads and bridges and education and the like. When, Steve, was the last time you sounded the alarm about that? In fact, you’re probably among those who support every new entitlement program that comes along, in addition to resisting any “cut” (actually decrease in the rate of growth) in entitlements. You’re part of the problem of entitlements crowding out traditional government services, Steve, not the solution.

Moreover most business owners aren’t bigwig executives that you caricature. They’re small business owners trying to make ends meet and trying to pay their taxes. You know what happens when they’re a little late in their taxes? The penalties are enormous – the feds milk small business owners big time when that happens. Often makes one not even want to be in business.

Ever wondered why unemployment has been so high for the past four years? Because of people like you in and out of government, demonizing business owners.

Filed Under: Corporations Tagged With: 1 Comment

Why the Status-Conscious Would Want to Tax the Rich

September 23, 2012 by

Three common reasons for wanting to raise taxes on the rich include: 1) that’s where the money is, 2) envy, and 3) envy-avoidance.

A fourth reason for wanting to raise taxes on the rich: to boost one’s social status. Or more accurately, to mitigate one’s (perceived) inferior social status.

Lots of people are status-conscious. They strive for more and better material goods (and services) and/or higher pay in an effort to gain more respect and feel good about where they stand in relation to others. “Money often translates into the respect of others and high social status, and so even those who don’t want many worldly goods may want a high income for the respect it brings,” write Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener in their book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.

In a study, Harvard economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick asked respondents if they would rather earn $50,000 a year in a society where others are making $25,000, or earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000. Fifty-six percent chose the former – i.e. being relatively poorer at $50,000 a year, only because of the higher social status that would entail.

This implies that lots of people no doubt hate it when other people earn more than them, not necessarily because of envy, but because it means they feel less respected than the person earning more. It’s a type of inferiority complex. In order to gain more respect – or more accurately, in order to feel less disrespected – they’d really like to bring those wealthier persons down a notch or two.

What better way to do that than to – you guessed it – raise taxes on the rich?

My hypothesis is that this is another reason why you find a lot of wealthy Democrats: because even though they’re wealthy or upper-middle class, there are still a lot of folks wealthier than them. And they may desire higher taxes on the rich particularly if their taxes would stay the same or wouldn’t rise as much. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all wealthy Democrats, but it likely applies to some of them. They’re just like the people in they study who wouldn’t like to be earning $100k while others are earning $200k.

Another implication: while the left would have you believe that left-leaning people don’t care as much about wealth or materialism or staying ahead of the Joneses, a lot of them surely do. The more you care about such things, the more likely you are to be status-conscious, and therefore the more likely you are to want to reduce the higher status of others in order to gain more (perceived) respect for yourself.

Of course, in addition to wanting to raise taxes on the rich because of envy, this “status inferiority complex” as I call it would be a selfish, shallow, and immature reason for wanting to do so. That’s why I suspect that testing this hypothesis would be difficult: few people would admit to it. But it still could be possible, perhaps by surveying psychologists based on what they’ve gleaned in therapy sessions, or by surveying people themselves with the hope that some of them would be brutally honest in their answers. This is a long shot but hey reader, if you’ve ever felt that way, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

On the flip side, if the above is true, then it’s plausible that some wealthy folks resist higher taxes on them due to a status superiority complex, a.k.a. snobbery. And they likely would harbor both a status superiority complex and a status inferiority complex simultaneously, assuming there are still people richer than them. But if raising taxes on the rich is bad policy anyway – which it usually is because it disincentivizes production thereby harming economic growth and thus harming everyone – then the societal consequences of a status superiority complex aren’t near as harmful as a status inferiority complex.

Meanwhile, in the first paragraph of this article you’ll note that I didn’t include “reducing inequality” in the list as to why people want to raise taxes on the rich. This is because it’s implied in the other items in the list.

Surely inequality would be bad if we lived in a zero-sum society where the rich get richer through wealth coercion – i.e. stealing from the poor and middle class and thereby making the poor poorer. But we live in a positive-sum society where the vast majority of those who are rich got that way through wealth creation, not wealth coercion. The history of America is the story of the rich getting richer and the poor and middle class getting richer. (Of course there have been some years where the poor have gotten poorer, like now during the Obama years, but it’s certainly not because of wealth coercion by the rich, but because of a relative lack of wealth creation.)

So regarding inequality, who cares if the rich get richer as long as everyone else gets richer as well?

I’ll tell you who cares: the envious, the envy-avoiders, and the status-conscious.

Filed Under: Envy, Inequality/Top 1%, Psychology 1 Comment

The Ironies of Elizabeth Warren

September 18, 2012 by

Apart from initially wiping out any mention of “God” from the party platform, one of the biggest manifestations of the Democratic Party’s lurch leftward is the elevation of the “wealth-is-theft” school of thought.

The notion that the wealthy got their money through institutionalized theft used to be championed just by people on the far-left fringe, like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. But at their national convention earlier this month, Democrats not only featured a speaker championing this school of thought, but gave her a coveted, prime-time slot – right before Bill Clinton.

Folks, it’s not your mom and dad’s Democratic Party anymore.

The speaker was Elizabeth Warren, who’s running for Senate in Massachusetts (and infamous for her claims of being part Cherokee Indian).

For more on the demagoguery, click here.

The ultimate irony? That Ms. Warren and her cohorts on the left are protectors of actual wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. As explained in the post below, the 15.3 percent payroll tax on the working poor, perversely, helps fund Social Security and Medicare payouts to middle- and high-income retirees. Whenever Congressional Republicans propose “means-testing” so that transfer payments don’t go to the rich, Democrats balk.

Yet another irony: Awhile back, lefties swooned over Ms. Warren’s comment along the lines that job creators should pay more taxes because of the government services provided to them like roads, police, education, etc.

But as explained in an earlier blog post, we’re getting less of those essential government services because of people like Elizabeth Warren!

The left is fueling the biggest crisis in government: the crowding out of things like law enforcement, fire protection, transportation infrastructure, education, environmental protection, etc. by wealth redistribution. Fully two-thirds of federal government spending goes toward entitlements and other redistribution programs – up from about 25 percent several decades ago. And with Obamacare, it’s on track for 70 percent in a few years. For a short video on the subject, click here.

Basic government services are getting squeezed out. Yet Ms. Warren and her allies relentlessly call for more wealth redistribution, tightening the squeeze.

Filed Under: Demagoguery, Entitlement Crowd-Out, Envy Tagged With: Leave a Comment

Yale Grad Shocked that Dems Take from Poor and Give to Rich

September 11, 2012 by

There was a commentary in HuffPo focusing on the 15.3 percent Social Security and Medicare tax that the working poor have to pay.

I commented that this 15.3 percent tax on low-income earners originally was meant to be put in a lockbox or savings fund for their use after they retire, but it just gets immediately spent on current government programs – and perversely, helps fund the Social Security and Medicare payouts to middle- and high-income retirees.

That means we need to put that 15.3 percent in an actual savings fund for the worker’s own use when he or she retires, and also stop transferring payroll tax money from the poor to middle- and upper-income retirees.

Guess who’s standing in the way of that? Dems. Whenever the Repubs try to enact personal savings accounts, the Dems quash the idea, and whenever the Repubs propose means-testing so that transfer payments don’t go to the rich, the Dems kill that as well. The latter aren’t just for welfare for the poor, but for all.

Later I got a reply from “NOTSUPERMOM” whose tagline is “A waste of a perfectly good Yale education,” who’s a “HUFFPOST SUPER USER” and who has 151 fans. She wrote, “I’m surprised and disappointed to hear that Democrats are not in favor of wealth-based social security payouts. It seems completely in line with party policy to direct the payouts to those who actually need them. Can you give me a citation for that vote? Thank you!”

I replied to her, sure. Google “means-testing” and you’ll find lots of material indicating Repub support for it but not Dem support. A case in point is here.

Well, so much for that perfectly good Yale education.

Filed Under: Welfare State Tagged With: 1 Comment

Get Your News from Right and Left

September 6, 2012 by

You shouldn’t just patronize news outlets with political bents similar to your own, while always ignoring outlets with a different ideological bent. If you do that, you’re denying yourself crucial information.

A good example was yesterday, vis-a-vis the Democrats’ national convention. A political hot potato was brewing: it was being reported that Democrats had taken “God” out of its platform, as well as language saying Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel.

But no stories of the kind showed up on the go-to publication for lefties, The Huffington Post – at least none that I saw. (And if there was any story on it, it was well hidden.) The publication has an unabashedly leftist bent, and it’s reluctant to publish stories that are embarrassing to or reflect negatively on the Left – unless such a story gets so hot that it has no choice but to feature it.

It was only when chaos erupted at the DNC, when they took a voice vote to reinstate the language – the chairman ruled “yes” even though it was generally agreed that the “no” voices were louder – that The Huffington Post went to press on the issue.

Readers of The Huffington Post were blindsided. If you’re accustomed to only reading that publication, then you would have had no idea that that issue was brewing. The Huffington Post did its readers a big disservice by ignoring the issue until it came to a head.

Poor Woody Allen. He only has two buttons on his iPhone he can touch – the weather and The Huffington Post, he told the Wall Street Journal. He must have been blindsided too.

I recall a similar thing happening in The Washington Post eight years ago vis-a-vis the swift boat issue involving then-presidential candidate John Kerry. The Post ignored the story (at least on its front page) – until information came out on it that put Kerry in a positive light. It reminded me of someone getting repeated legitimate criticism for something, and just sitting there staying silent all along, taking it in and fuming, unable to rebut. And then when information finally comes out that’s useful for that person, the person finally speaks up.

There’s also the well-known example of ABC newsman Charlie Gibson, during a radio show, getting blindsided regarding the scandal in which video of an ACORN worker advises a couple pretending to be a pimp and prostitute. That ACORN story had been all over right-leaning news outlets. It’s a good bet that Charlie Gibson wasn’t a regular reader of them. That’s extremely risky when you’re a national media professional.

And yes, right-leaning news outlets ignore stories that may be embarrassing to the Right. I recall seeing noteworthy things in The Huffington Post that I didn’t see on Foxnews.com. Of course the editors probably would argue that they don’t consider something as significant news, and so don’t report it. But sometimes it blows up in their face.

So the moral of the story is to read publications on both sides of the political spectrum. If you don’t, you’re denying yourself significant news.

Filed Under: Media Bias Leave a Comment

Rightie Incivility Alert

August 31, 2012 by

You’d expect to come across uncivil and immature language among certain segments of the population, especially uncouth and uneducated people. But in an alarming sign of the coarsening of American society, such language has appeared in an article in a popular online media outlet. It’s by one John Nolte, writing at Breitbart.com. He ruined what at first seemed like a decent read – on the media’s unloading on Clint Eastwood’s great speech at the RNC. Near the end the writer includes this piece of verbal trash: “Go to hell you Obama-shilling crybabies.”

I couldn’t believe such low-class nastiness appeared in an article like that. What kind of editor at Breitbart.com would leave something like that in? Is there no decency in writing and editing anymore? To top it off, The Drudge Report linked to it, supercharging the article’s readership. What happened to the standards of The Drudge Report?

Mr. Nolte should apologize for writing it, Breitbart.com should apologize for publishing the article without editing that part out, and The Drudge Report should apologize for linking to it.

* * *

Of course, this sort of thing is standard practice for some lefties. For example, Bill Maher just called Clint Eastwood an a**hole only because he disagrees with his politics.

Filed Under: Coarsening of American Society Leave a Comment

A Silly Graph

August 29, 2012 by

The graph in question, highlighted by Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, purports to depict current and future public debt. (“Tax Cuts, Wars Account for Nearly Half of Public Debt by 2019″) But the graph is silly. In fact, I would have thought that Klein grabbed it from The Onion.

The graph tries to show that most of the debt comes from tax cuts and the military. Yet it doesn’t mention anything about entitlement spending, which comprises about two-thirds of government spending – and which is by far the biggest factor driving the debt. The military, by contrast, comprises one-fifth of government spending. (Click here for the source, table 6.1.) Again, the graph makes no mention of entitlement programs – a tremendous omission, perhaps done deliberately.

Tax cuts? That’s like blaming your massive credit card debt on the raise you didn’t get. Or put it this way. If Ezra Klein were a spendaholic and came and told me his credit card debt is massive because his raises weren’t high enough, I’d take a few steps back, thinking he must be batty. Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t think he’s batty because he’s thinks the same thing vis-a-vis government debt. I just think he needs to re-take or take (if he’s never taken it before) Economics 101.

One other thing. After the Bush tax cuts, tax revenues…went up! Way up – from $1.8 trillion in 2003 to $2.6 trillion in 2007. So even with the tax cuts, we got a mega-raise.

Filed Under: National Debt/Deficit Leave a Comment

The Righteous Mind Isn’t Totally Right About the Right

August 17, 2012 by

I’m half-way through a book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. He attempts to explain what drives righties and lefties. He admits being on the left, although I get the impression that as his research progressed over the years he’s become less of a died-in-the-wool leftie and more understanding of righties.

He has a fondness for contrasting lefties and righties by pointing out bumper-stickers on cars – although discerning anything from bumper stickers hardly seems scientific. Nevertheless, in an effort to demonstrate that lefties supposedly care more about innocent victims around the world while we righties are mainly just concerned about protecting our own, he displays snapshots of bumper stickers he found around Charlottesville, Va. where he lives (or lived). He contrasted a leftie bumper sticker that said “Save Darfur” with a rightie sticker that said “Support Our Wounded”.

It’s puzzling that the author didn’t pull from the tremendous number of bumper stickers on righties’ cars exhorting people to protect innocent unborn victims. Go to any Catholic church parking lot during Mass and you’d have had tons of such bumper stickers to choose from.

As for why one may find more “Save Darfur”  bumper stickers on lefties’ cars than on righties, perhaps it’s because the latter think more realistically. They know that such stickers aren’t going to have one iota of influence on the tyrants perpetuating the sad state of affairs in that part of Africa, even if the tyrants were here to view the stickers. An anti-abortion sticker, meanwhile, is far more likely to be seen by those who have a direct say on whether an innocent human fetus lives or dies.

We righties seem to care a helluva lot more about the innocent victims suffering in North Korean concentration camps (in addition to the people of North Korea as a whole) than lefties, yet “Free North Korea” bumper stickers are scarce. Ya think the North Korean leadership would ever take it to heart, even if they saw one?

Another whopper: “Conservatives, in contrast, are more concerned about their groups, rather than all of humanity.”  And another: “They don’t want their nation to devote itself primarily to the care of victims and the pursuit of social justice.”

Total bunk! Concern about humanity, victims, and the pursuit of social justice is the whole reason I abandoned leftism long ago. I found out that leftist policies actually harm humanity, create more victims, and exacerbate and perpetuate the very problems that society needs to solve. The phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” is all too descriptive of the left.

There are many broad subject areas that can prompt a leftie to move to the right (such as the late Christopher Hitchens vis-a-vis terrorism) but one of the most powerful subject areas – which  prompted me to realize that leftism did little or nothing to promote the well-being of humanity – is economics.

I just pulled from my shelf the textbook, and zeroed in on the page therein, that sparked my epiphany long ago. The book is Economics of Development (by Gillis, Perkins, Roemer and Snodgrass), which I read for a course I took in graduate school. We’re talking about third-world development here. Key passage:

All these policies promote the welfare of one relatively small group at the expense of a much larger group. Minimum-wage laws and similar measures … make wages and working conditions better for those (third world) workers fortunate enough to get jobs in modern-sector firms. But by raising the cost of labor, minimum-wage laws limit the ability of existing firms to absorb more workers and inhibit the creation of more enterprises like them. In other words, minimum wages improve the well-being of the relatively small group of modern-sector employees at the cost of the much larger group that is either unemployed or working in the informal and rural sectors.

It was then when I started to recognize that to help all of humanity (as opposed to the special interests) and especially the poor, you have to move right. Other examples of the same abound, such as those highlighted throughout this blog.

The classic Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt sheds light on what makes us righties tick. And believe me: it ain’t out of indifference to out-groups.

* * *

The author says certain “foundations” motivate righties and lefties; righties are more driven by the foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity, and lefties more about care and fairness. But so far in the book, he hasn’t said anything about the millions of people who move from the left to the right or vice-versa. Are such people also changing their “foundations”? Of course not. I know from personal experience that in the case of lefties becoming righties, they’re still very much motivated by the care and fairness foundations, and come to realize that right-leaning policies are better at achieving those objectives.

As I said, I’m still only half-way through the book. If the author addresses the above issues in the second half, I’ll duly report it.

* * *

A Wall Street Journal interview with the author had a revealing tidbit. It illustrated something that is rarely discussed and that people rarely admit, but that is all-too prevalent in society: people refuse to change their political beliefs, or at least refuse to openly criticize or question policies associated with their own side of the political spectrum, because they’re afraid of what their friends and associates will think. Here’s the key quote, in reference to Haidt: “Why is his language so much less hedged when discussing Republicans? ‘Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world,’ he concedes.” At least give him credit for honesty.

Concern about what one’s friends, colleagues, or significant others will think is a key factor preventing people from reassessing their political beliefs. I say go ahead and think what you want to think, or abandon any hedging in your language, regardless of what others will think. In addition to being the morally right thing to do, it will tell you who your real friends are. If someone abandons you after speaking out, then they weren’t a genuine friend anyway. So you’re better off all-around.

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Dave Terry, Rest Peacefully

July 27, 2012 by

Most Americans would consider running to be a form of masochism. I run, and especially when I’m really pushing myself, that’s what I often think. But curiously, others really love it. They say that it releases endorphins to produce a “runner’s high” – although I’ve never been so fortunate as to experience that. People actually can get addicted to running. But it’s a healthy addiction, right? Nope, not necessarily.

I just found out that running addiction killed a college friend of mine: Dave Terry, who was my fraternity pledge dad. I remember him as cheerful, helpful, kind, funny, generous, and one of the nicest guys in the frat. Plus I had a special affinity for Dave because he was a ski racer. So was I up through high school. He was on the Colorado College ski team – and to make that cut you had to be damn good.

I think I never had the heart to tell him that upon my return from junior year abroad, I deactivated. (When you first join a frat you’re a pledge, and if you decide to drop you de-pledge. After you go through the initiation you’re an active. And then if you decide to quit you deactivate.)

We didn’t keep in touch after college, but I learned that he went to medical school and became a radiologist. Lived in Portland.

Then a couple of years ago I read in the CC alumni bulletin that he passed away. A friend of mine thought it was because of an aneurism, but wasn’t sure. I did some digging on the Internet and found tributes to him, mostly by his running buddies. Turned out that he was an ultrarunner. He ran ultramarathons – 100 mile races. At least two dozen of them.

Prior to knowing the cause of death, I assumed that too much exercise may have killed him – especially after I read about a recent study that ultrarunning can actually be bad for your heart. (According to another study, the optimal amount of running is just 1 to 2.5 hours per week, and not too fast.)

The other day, though, I finally found out the exact cause of Dave’s death: suicide.

Since the initial reports of his death on the Internet, which never mentioned the cause of death, people have opened up about that. And from what I gather, it seems an injury made him cut back on his running. Apparently he couldn’t handle it and took his own life.

I find it bizarre that one can be driven to suicide by not being able to run, but apparently it’s true.  Who knows – maybe there were other factors involved. I’m sure there are a lot more details that I’m missing.

I did some research on running addiction and found that “Intense, high-achieving perfectionist individuals are particularly vulnerable to this addiction.”  That no doubt described Dave. May he rest in peace.

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