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Politics and Economics
If word get around, posts on social media may eventually impact one’s employability. A 2017 Harris Poll of more than 2,300 US human resource professionals found that 70% of employers used social media to screen job candidates and 37% specifically looked for what other people were posting about them. And employers weren't just looking at social media – 69% used online search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing to research candidates as well.
The timeline of online punishment is inherently uncertain. When does an individual have the right for the shaming to stop, and how is this even possible when the shaming is recorded on the internet? If the shaming does not stop, how can the shamed ever repair their reputations and relationships? Convicted criminals do their time and pay their dues - but there are no parallel concepts in the world of online shaming. Even if the online chatter subsides for a while, there’s no telling when it might come roaring back.
“And what we find in the archeology record is that wherever there is civilization, it starts with temples, or at least the record begins with temples. And the reason, I believe, we always start with temples is that humanity’s great trick, our evolutionary trick over the last half-million or so years, I’d say, is we evolved a psychology of sacredness; we evolved to be religious and that means if we circle around something, we then make that thing sacred and then we can trust each other…So what is sacred at a university? I mean, what do we circle around?” - Jonathan Haidt, How two incompatible sacred values are driving conflict and confusion in American universities. A talk given at SUNY New Paltz.
There would also be multiple levels of subsidized housing available for the formerly homeless - each level a bit more appealing than the one below but none so attractive as to disincentivize transitioning to unsubsidized housing for those who are able to afford market-rate rents on their own. What I’m proposing uses an incremental reward structure to nudge the initially resistant into permanent housing. And because the progression in housing quality requires just a bit more effort and money, the progression feels doable: a moderate challenge but within reach with effort and assistance. Here’s what the first few levels might look like: …
“…Humility, so that each of society’s competing factions might comprehend that it will not always hold power. Tolerance, so that the habitual reaction to a difference of opinion is the shrug rather than the bayonet. And forbearance, so that the immediate rush of victory can be subordinated to longer-term ambition. Little by little, we are losing all three…”
I’m going to assume an annual budget of $2 trillion (inflation-adjusted) of additional federal spending to tackle five problem areas: healthcare, poverty, social mobility, housing, and threats to the biosphere. Let’s start with healthcare. The challenge is to come up with a high-quality, affordable universal healthcare system that doesn’t eat up my budget. Easy - the The Urban Institute has done most of the work already…Per the Urban Institute’s analysis, just $108 Billion in additional revenue is needed for their proposed reform: a drop in the $2 trillion bucket. But even this reform option leaves a lot of waste in the US healthcare system.
With more stimulus spending on the way, the federal debt is going to grow a bit more before the long drift downward to a manageable size - a process that will take many years. In the meantime, the Bold Centrist has a major challenge: how to fund Big Ideas without adding to the public debt.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all ideal tax system but here are a few tips. Tax systems should:
Provide a relatively stable revenue stream.
Generate enough revenue to meet policy goals without incurring excessive debt.
Be sufficiently predictable for taxpayers to make long-term spending and investment decisions.
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…”Once you’ve selected your policy approach, seek out examples that already exist of similar models – either from other jurisdictions or similar local laws applied to different contexts. You may also wish to work with officials from other jurisdictions or agencies to understand what has worked well for them and what can be improved.”
While the general mission hasn’t changed much since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what that mission means in practice certainly has changed. For example, securing the right to life implies a duty to protect from harm - but only to the extent that is doable given current resources and capabilities, which change over time. It would have made little sense in the early 1800s for the federal government to mandate and subsidize universal access to healthcare services when such services were rather risky propositions and the government was near-broke. Today’s a different story. The medical field has evolved and the resources are there. We could have an affordable universal healthcare system in the US. All we need is the political will and a way to do it responsibly.
There’s that word again: responsibly. What does that mean? …
Political centrists favor a flexible, pragmatic and non-ideological approach to government policy. They tend to occupy the middle-ground of political opinion but are rarely attached to particular policies. This is not because centrists lack conviction or ideas but because they appreciate the utter difficulty of predicting policy effects over time. Like scientists, centrists appreciate their own limitations and the need to keep an open mind.
Ok, so government’s job is to secure the people’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The policy challenge is to secure each right without losing sight of the others, e.g., to protect life but not to the point of smothering liberty or undermining the pursuit of happiness. A tall order - one which calls for a mix of boldness and caution..
The BMJ is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association. A week ago, it published Covid-19: Russia admits to understating deaths by more than two thirds. An extended excerpt:…
Policies and laws are very complex: drafting them requires a degree of expertise. Lobbyists are invaluable to legislators because they provide a lot of useful technical information - and yes, sometimes they play a major role in writing the legislation (whether they're lobbyists for the Teamsters or the Mining and Extraction Industry Council). The issue is not to eliminate their input but to make sure other perspectives and data are also considered.
Per Terner Center’s “Cost of Building Housing" Series”., the outrageously high cost of housing in California’s urban areas include construction labor costs rising much faster than inflation, high development fees, incredibly long permit and development timelines, burdensome regulatory requirements, zoning restrictions (especially on apartment buildings), and chronic labor shortages.
This headline seems to be saying that just a quarter of Republicans accept that Biden won the election. That’s pretty amazing, assuming it’s true. But it isn’t true, at least not according to the poll in question. The first hint that something was amiss in the NPR article was this sentence…
All the above countries have been hit hard by Covid, especially as colder weather set in, but Spain, Belgium, the UK, France, and Italy are managing to turn things around. Why not the US? What did the European countries do differently? Well, for one thing…
Most formerly incarcerated people in the US are arrested within three years of release from prison. What can be done to prevent them from returning to their old ways? Here’s an idea…
This post provides the median earnings by major for California State University graduates ten years after they’ve graduated. The figures apply only to graduates working in California, and so are likely a bit higher than the earnings of comparable graduates in other states. However, I’m assuming the overall pattern remains the same, i.e., some majors have a much greater payoff than others, no matter where you live. I chose ten years post-graduation, because that allows enough time for most graduates to pursue further studies, explore various starter jobs, and land in a career-type occupation.
Before anyone assumes that remote workers moving from Blue to Red areas will change the politics of their new home, consider the opposite possibility: their new home may change the Blue transplants even more. That’s because political views aren’t fixed for life and where one lives can have a big effect on how one thinks about politics. At least that’s according to Jeffrey Lyons, a political scientist who studies why people change their political views over time. The rest of this post summarizes Lyons’ findings on factors that make some people more likely to change their politics than others.