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Politics and Economics
Azarian wrote a Psychology Today piece titled, “Fear and Anxiety Drive Conservatives' Political Attitudes” …he supported his claims with evidence from four studies. Luckily I was able to locate most of the original studies to see if his conclusions were reasonable. Here’s what I found…
“…industry, self-reliance, frugality, self restraint or control, modesty, temperance, fortitude, cheerfulness, civility, compassion, and respect for the property of other persons.” Jean M. Yarbrough, author of American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People.
What would be the opposite of these virtues?
The preliminary report doesn’t discuss why over two-thirds of those contacted did not complete interviews. Nor does it address potential differences between individuals who did complete interviews and those who did not.
Why would Amazon refuse to remain neutral if employees tried to unionize? I’m thinking it wasn’t so much about wages. After all, Amazon employees at the NYC headquarters were expected to earn an average of $150,000 a year...
So the question, “was the Amazon deal worth it?” is partly answered by “What was the alternative”? Were there other businesses in the wings that wanted the same location and could provide greater benefit at less cost?
When people say that political differences boil down to differences in values, they’re often implying an unbridgeable gulf between their side and the other side. And so we have the increasing polarization and breakdown of communication between Democrats and Republicans. After all, if you don’t care about the same things, what’s the point in talking to each other?
…the point of income and wealth is what you can get with them. Besides status and influence, that would be stuff you can buy, now or later: housing, food, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, education, clothing, security, experiences, etc. One would think that inequality in buying power would translate to a similar level of inequality in the value of the stuff bought. One would be wrong.
The idea of a federal jobs guarantee is that anyone who wants a job gets a job and the job pays enough to support a family. Per Bernie Sanders, that would be a full-time public-sector job paying at least $15 an hour with healthcare and other benefits.
For instance, in one Pew research survey, just 53% of those under 30 who initially identified as Republicans or leaned Republican consistently remained with the party over four subsequent surveys.
I’ll start with political spending by “business interests”, a convenient category that includes rich people, corporations, non-corporate businesses, business associations, and industry groups. If spending by business interests influenced US elections and legislation in a major way, one would expect the US to do well in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings. And it does okay - but not as well as Denmark and Norway.
We typically talk about inequality in terms of income and wealth. But what are income and wealth good for? They’re good for their exchange value, i.e., what you can get with them. Another way of saying this is that income and wealth are proxies for current or future spending. So let’s look at how Americans have been spending…
To be bankrupt is to owe more than you can possibly pay. Which translates to irredeemable, as in rotten to the core. In politics, that translates to “I refuse to engage the other side, because they have the wrong values.” In other words, the Other Side cares about the wrong things.
Fraud and waste is why US healthcare is so damn expensive. An estimated 10% of Medicare/Medicaid is lost to fraud. As for waste, at least 20% of US healthcare spending is unnecessary due to…Imagine if the US cut healthcare spending by a quarter. That would shave off almost a trillion dollars - enough to fund a healthcare system where everyone is covered and everyone’s paying less. All it takes is political will, including a willingness to face down the AMA.
The other countries [like Denmark] have broad-based tax systems. Not only does the bottom 90% pay more income tax, they also pay higher consumption taxes, which tend to be regressive...Broad-based tax systems operate on the principle that everyone contributes to the common good. We’re all in this together. Sure, those at the top should pay more, but the idea is that everybody pitches in. That attitude encourages a collective problem-solving approach to government policy. More pragmatism, less ideology. More “us”, less “us versus them”.
As far as government policy goes, whatever works is fine with me. I don’t care if the boosters for a particular policy are in it only for the money, that they’re solely motivated by self-interest, greed, political advancement, salvation, selfless devotion to the common good, or pure compassion. Good people have bad ideas. Bad people have good ideas. The proof is in the pudding.
But how do the Europeans do it? They’re not squeezing the rich much more than we do - and yet they have generous social benefits and universal healthcare! The answer’s pretty obvious…
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently floated a marginal tax rate of 70 percent on income over $10 million. The idea is to reduce inequality via redistribution via higher tax revenue….This chart actually explains why there is such income volatility among richest US households: much of their income comes from selling capital assets, such as a business or shares in a mutual fund. These are often one-off affairs and not a steady source of revenue. Thus it’s no surprise that roughly half the households that manage to earn at least a million only do so for a year. In other words, there’s a lot of churn at the top.
Elizabeth Warren recently unveiled a plan to impose a 2% tax on households with net assets worth more than $50 million and a 3% tax on households with assets worth more than $1 billion…Numerous commentators have noted that wealth taxes have fallen out of favor over the last few decades. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, and Sweden have all abolished their wealth tax since 1990. The main reason is that the tax was hard to administer and failed to generate much money. As a recent OECD report put it…
Industry: “Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.” Ben Franklin Self-Reliance: “Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.” Thomas Jefferson
…in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert Sapolsky concludes a discussion of MFT with the claim that “…conservatives heavily value loyalty, authority, and sanctity.”