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Politics and Economics
You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand correctly. And you can’t begin to understand a problem unless you see it as a problem. And you won’t perceive it as a problem unless it conflicts with some ideal of what you want the world to look like: a vision of the good (not just a vision of a fixed bad). In that spirit, here’s an outline of my ideal society...
Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right. Wait and see? Try something? Try something else? All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds.
Ideology is not a collection of beliefs and opinions. Ideology is a system of beliefs and opinions. The parts (beliefs and opinions) are interconnected and form a complex whole. The whole is organized according to some core principles or themes.
The Ideological Square:
1. Exaggerate Our Good Things: Our vision is good and true
2. Exaggerate Their Bad Things: Their vision is evil and false
3. Minimize Our Bad Things: Our vision has no serious downside
4. Minimize Their Good Things: Their vision has no merit
“Rather than talking about the 1% and the 99% as if they were forever fixed, it would make much more sense to talk about the fact that Americans are likely to be exposed to both prosperity and poverty during their lives & to shape our policies accordingly.” - Mark R. Rank, “From Rags to Riches to Rags” New York Times, April 18, 2014
Relative affluence or poverty is less a matter of fixed groups than of lifespan. The young are poor, the middle-aged are gaining traction, the near-retired have peaked, and old age is a long decline - in wealth and income as well as health. When we're young, we're getting educated and sampling jobs - a process that can extend into our 30s.
Inequality is correlated with all sorts of bad things (at least if you look at subsets of the international data, which often includes different countries and time periods and doesn't control for outliers, mediators, moderators, and confounding variables). But we all know correlation is not causation...
I've often suspected that one of the appeals of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is the idea that in the ideal society, people would only do what they feel like doing and that people shouldn't feel compelled to do something they didn't feel like doing (a teenage boy utopia). Some think this ideal is about to be realized because work is going the way of the dinosaurs, thanks to robots.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2011, gross median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose from $59,400 to $75,200, or 26.5%. However, once adjusted for household size and looking at taxes from an after-tax perspective, real median household income grew 46%.
The problem with providing grants, low-interest loans, tuition waivers, and free tuition is that they exert no pressure on educational institutions to increase efficiencies, productivity, or otherwise keep costs down.
I’ve written a lot about the Basic Income Guarantee, aka BIG, which is a proposal that all adults get some non-means-tested check from the federal government every month. Arguments for the BIG come from both the left and the right. Progressives consider it a compassionate way to eliminate poverty. Libertarians see it as an efficient way to provide a safety net.
The main dictionary definition of "conservative" is "holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion." In European and Latin American history, "conservative" usually referred to supporters of the Church (and sometimes landed gentry), which was opposed to business interests. A strong strain of paternalism runs through the history of the European/Latin brand of conservatives. Pro-business advocates were (and still are) called "liberals" in Europe ...
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics News Release (March 30, 2016), the total number employed in the US for All Occupations was 137,896,660. ...administrative support jobs are by far the biggest occupational group. And yet for decades, prognosticators have been saying the computer will make office work near obsolete. So why are there more office jobs than ever?
According to the ICI Fact Book, an estimated 90 million individual investors owned mutual funds in 2014. These investors held 89 percent of total mutual fund assets, directly or through retirement plans. About 53.2 million households (43% of all households) owned mutual funds.
Affluence is mostly a matter of age and education in the US. The median net worth (2011) of young adults (less than 35 years) is $6,676; for 65 to 69 year-olds, it’s $194,226; for 75 and older: $155,714. Basically, people start accumulating wealth in their late 30s and then slowly deplete it after retirement.
Denmark’s generous safety net is made possible by high taxes – and not particularly progressive taxes at that. Kicking in at incomes of roughly $6300/year, the lowest tax rate is 37.5%. The highest rate is 59%, starting at about $50,400/year. Counting all sources of taxation, taxes comprise 49% of GDP – the highest in Europe.
Denmark draws the lines differently. Pro-union doesn’t mean anti-business. Having a strong safety net doesn’t mean squeeze the rich. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the lines are not there to begin with- that the ideal of ending poverty, facilitating economic mobility, and making sure everyone has access to the basics – healthcare, education, and family services – doesn’t have to pit Most of Us against a Despised Other (or at least an Undeserving Other).
This is a continuation of the Denmark explorations. This time around, we’ll be checking out Denmark’s pension system.
Summary so far: Denmark has an extensive safety net and high taxes. As per usual, the situation is a lot more complicated than the buzz. Last time we looked at the health care system. Now we’re going to take a closer look at unemployment benefits.
Denmark has an extensive safety net and high taxes. As per usual, the situation is a lot more complicated than the buzz. So we’re going to take a closer look, starting with the health care system. As previously advertised, Denmark provides “universal health care”. What does this mean?