It took some doing to figure out what to title this thought. After a while of thinking it through, though, I realized that a repeating theme through this post is going to be the "slippery slope". I am going to say some things, and people are probably going to initially react in horror. That's because of "slippery slopes" that are etched in our own brain. You use certain words - liberals like to call them 'code words' - and people who don't understand you are going to slide right into a set of well-worn tracks and assume your meaning based on the continued motion of well-trodden path. I'd like my readers to take a moment to shake themselves loose of the well-trodden paths, and not assume the meaning of my statements until I explain them.
First statement: The more I deal with liberals and children, the more I understand why not everybody is going to Heaven.
Yeah, I started out with the inflammatory-looking one on purpose, just to wake everybody up. I want to make it excruciatingly clear that I am not talking about sin. I am not making any particular person out to be evil. I could already hear the cries of "I work a job and I am nice to people and how dare you say I don't deserve" or whatnot. Yeah, cut that out, ok? I don't deserve Heaven. It isn't because I'm some sort of rotten and mean person who is worse than you. It's because I could be better than you and still not deserve it. This has nothing to do with whether you are a nice person, or even a good person. It has to do with heart and will.
Here's a second statement to add to the first one. Both Christianity and American Conservatism require by their very nature enough hearts and minds willing to follow it from their own free will.
The reason for this is that you can't force someone to follow a philosophy except by means of an oppressive authoritarian dictatorship. This is something liberals do understand all too well; it is why virtually every implementation of socialism thus far has been authoritarian. I'm about to hear the "Social Democrats" fuss at me over certain European countries that do not meet some sort of mystical requirement for being full-out Communist. Knock it off. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must know that "Social Democrat" is a form of socialism that is only halfway implemented, and that the areas in which it is implemented do indeed easily meet the definition of "Communist". I'm going to get back to that thought in a moment.
Now I mentioned Christianity and American Conservatism for a reason. Both of them spring from the same root. To be more clear, Conservatism sprang from a period of reformation of Christianity, and Christianity sprang from the root of the One God, previously known by the world as the Hebrew God, and now known to be open to all takers. This is important, because this is the source of my point: To truly grasp and follow either, you have to be willing to do so.
You may have noticed - I certainly have - that a great many political topics have seemed to become needlessly complicated. So many of the minutiae being argued about nowadays seems blindly simple to the uninvolved. So many easy solutions lie by the wayside. This is because liberals are trying to rules-lawyer their way to forcing us to acknowledge that they have some sort of right to what they want. This in turn forces people to go on the defensive and enact laws meant to prevent authoritarianism, but ironically increase it themselves, pushing the government into places where it shouldn't have had to go. The only way you can force someone to follow a philosophy is by means of an oppressive authoritarian dictatorship.
I've mentioned in a previous post that I believe there to have been two Civil Rights movements. In the first, Democrat governments tried to get the government involved in "race" by Jim Crow laws in the South. In the second, Democrat politicians tried to gain power and get the government involved in "race" by Reverse Discrimination laws on the Federal level. Though you will never hear me disparage the overthrow of a single Jim Crow law, I must say that the true winners of the entire era were the Democrats. Considering disparate levels of fatherlessness, joblessness, jail population, poverty etc. we can hardly say that the true winners were actually the blacks. Like I said, liberals understand that the only way to force a philosophy on someone is by authoritarian dictatorship; their goal was to get the government involved in race, which is why the leadership was able to so quickly switch their allegiances from one race to another.
I believe that this is a very important point to make because there are elements in the Republican Party who have taken on that liberal point, muddying the actual definition of Conservatism. Their ardent support of President Trump, whom I do not oppose - this is not anti-Trump sentiment being expressed here - has confused people, especially since he ran as a Conservative. That is at the heart of why I, in a "safely" blue state, voted Johnson. (Before anybody jumps on me for this, the election results bore out what I had suspected; all of Johnson's votes in my state would not have defeated Hillary had they been Trump's votes instead. Sad to say, that's the way it was.) I'd also like to specifically call out Dominionism, which is at times conflated with Conservatism. Dominionism - trust me, I know what I am talking about here - is not a Conservative philosophy. It harkens back to pre-Reformation Christianity, in which unwise people violated the spirit of God's Laws and the message of Salvation by falling back upon that bastion of liberalism: oppressive authoritarian dictatorship. (Granted, even so, they were gentler than most... the more Biblical you get, the more you are protected against it, hence the rise of the Reformation in the first place.)
Back to my core point, to make sure it is understood. At the core of Conservatism is an understanding that we should hold to principles of guarded liberty, personal responsibility, and a very real sense of our government as something that must be under our control: not only for the people, but also of the people and by the people in a very real sense. We must be active individuals in our homes, in our workplaces, in our communities as well as in our government (as voters, for most of us), careful, and self-disciplined, because a government of an undisciplined people will never fail to establish its own discipline over them, and that is how the authoritarian dictatorship starts.
I do believe that the "silent majority", found in every corner of the country from the much-discussed 'heartland' to the simple New England farmer types from which I partly descended to the grateful Cuban refugees to the black families who still remember the pre-Reverse Discrimination mandate to be articulate, clean, and responsible, are willing and able to return to a time when our salvation depended more on our personal lives than our Federal laws.
Now I said I was going to get back to a point about the Social Democrats, and I'd like to close with it. I've been linking Conservatism and Christianity throughout this post. I do not want to make the same mistake as the Dominionists. I do not believe Conservatism to be especially blessed by God in the same way as God blessed the Nation of Israel or anointed King Saul, whom later-King David refused to cut down even when Saul was corrupt and oppressive in his later years. I do not believe Conservatism to be the only Christian-derived form of government, nor do I believe it to be necessary in any way to be a Christian, though I confess I suspect that Christians will find themselves living it in their personal lives no matter what their political affiliations. Conservatism is a derivation, a lesser production, a philosophy meant to address the here-and-now, and it is not especially favored by God aside from the natural benefits of working alongside the laws of nature rather than against.
I could picture some sort of unusually eloquent and gentle-thinking Social Democrat asking me, "Perhaps you might think the same thing of this philosophy as well? You do want to make it clear that Conservatism can be derived from Christianity without leading to an oppressive authoritarian theocracy. Think of Social Democracy in the same way; it is derived from socialism, but it is not going to lead to full-on Communism." To that, I would like to return to the concept of the slippery slope. You start at a point and fall into well-worn tracks that take you off the very edge of the precipice. In Conservatism, particularly American Constitutional Conservatism, there are a set of Human Rights very clearly enumerated. These are stops, barriers between us and an authoritarian theocracy. How firm are they? Whether any given Conservative personally believes in God or not, those who set up the barriers understood them to have been fixed by a Supreme Authority, quite out of their hands and well beyond their 'pay grade', and so the philosophy demands that they be treated that way whether you are a Christian or not. This, then, is the question to ask the Social Democrats: Where are your stops? What are your stops? Who laid them down, who keeps them steady, and under what circumstances could you violate them? In the area of health care, as we have seen with cases like Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, the part of the country that follows Communism does so to the point where that particular country's government has the power of life and death over innocent citizens. So what *can't* Social Democrats allow the government to do, and why?
Or are the stops nothing more and nothing less than the current will of the people in charge, to be kept, discarded, violated, or worshiped at their desire?
Monday, August 13, 2018
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Immigration and Health Care - what can we afford?
This is, as usual with me, kind of a sideways look at the issues that people have been bringing up lately, mostly in liberal forums and among liberal friends' facebook posts. The issues might seem only tangentially related, but, when I look at them together, I find an interesting set of connections. These issues are illegal immigration (specifically, open borders), and single-payer health care.
What connected the two for me was a series of articles (isn't it funny how each day seems to have a 'theme', in which articles show up in multiple disparate feeds and sources?) about the struggle that much of Western Europe is having with their health care systems, and the effect that an increased flow of refugees has had upon them. In parts of Sweden, overcrowding and a lack of funding has actually led health care groups to start giving rural families lessons on how to deliver a baby by themselves.
Now, Western Europe is learning a lesson that I learned in childhood. I did not grow up in a wealthy family. Actually, I grew up in a family that bounced back and forth between working poor and lower-middle class. At some times, we were actually quite poor by U.S. standards. We never lacked food, shelter, clothing, or medical care, however, and we actually had a fair number of nice toys. How did we do it? My mother prioritized, and she passed down that skill to us. In fact, I learned to prioritize, myself, as a child, for the toys that I wanted. I knew for a fact that I could not have all of the toys I wanted. I taught myself to think about what I wanted, check the prices, consider our family situation, and place all of my energies towards begging specifically for the subset of toys where "they can afford it" crossed with "I want it most". I found that, if I did that, I would pretty reliably wind up with what I wanted most on my birthday and Christmas, and I could build up my toybox over time on these principles. This served me well when I started earning my own money.
What happens when we look at the issues of immigration and single-payer together? Actually, I was able to come up with a chart that gave me an interesting view of the political philosophies and their response to these two issues. It is doubly interesting when I view these two issues as mutually exclusive in that we simply cannot, as a country and a society, afford both of them.
Conservatives oppose both open borders and single-payer health care. Why choose between two burdens upon the society?
Libertarians (large-L on purpose, as libertarians differ widely and overlap with conservatives) are in favor of open borders, but oppose single-payer health care. This is generally on principle, though some have tried to explain how it would still work when reality is applied.
Moderates want to kind of half-do both things; open up immigration further without inadvertently letting in the gang members and human traffickers, and have government-paid/government-involved health care without making it an actual universal social welfare program. As is usual for treading the very line of a fence without falling to either side, it's a very delicate balancing point with a very narrow margin for error.
Liberals want to do both, Western Europe be hanged (unless they're using it as an example that is, at this point, largely imaginary).
Now here's the interesting part. From what I've seen and read, there's a new (tiny) faction to consider, the one that actually deserves the badly misapplied label "Alt Right". And their stance is distinct from the rest. They seem to approve single-payer, but oppose open borders; in fact, they seem to oppose all immigration and all citizenship by people who are not white. Ironically, the system they desire is like the one that is breaking down in Sweden. Conservatives have oft celebrated the fact that our system works best in our country because of the great diversity of peoples and cultures; the Alt Right would sacrifice diversity in favor of socialism, while the Liberals seem determined against all notions of reality to force both to happen.
What connected the two for me was a series of articles (isn't it funny how each day seems to have a 'theme', in which articles show up in multiple disparate feeds and sources?) about the struggle that much of Western Europe is having with their health care systems, and the effect that an increased flow of refugees has had upon them. In parts of Sweden, overcrowding and a lack of funding has actually led health care groups to start giving rural families lessons on how to deliver a baby by themselves.
Now, Western Europe is learning a lesson that I learned in childhood. I did not grow up in a wealthy family. Actually, I grew up in a family that bounced back and forth between working poor and lower-middle class. At some times, we were actually quite poor by U.S. standards. We never lacked food, shelter, clothing, or medical care, however, and we actually had a fair number of nice toys. How did we do it? My mother prioritized, and she passed down that skill to us. In fact, I learned to prioritize, myself, as a child, for the toys that I wanted. I knew for a fact that I could not have all of the toys I wanted. I taught myself to think about what I wanted, check the prices, consider our family situation, and place all of my energies towards begging specifically for the subset of toys where "they can afford it" crossed with "I want it most". I found that, if I did that, I would pretty reliably wind up with what I wanted most on my birthday and Christmas, and I could build up my toybox over time on these principles. This served me well when I started earning my own money.
What happens when we look at the issues of immigration and single-payer together? Actually, I was able to come up with a chart that gave me an interesting view of the political philosophies and their response to these two issues. It is doubly interesting when I view these two issues as mutually exclusive in that we simply cannot, as a country and a society, afford both of them.
Conservatives oppose both open borders and single-payer health care. Why choose between two burdens upon the society?
Libertarians (large-L on purpose, as libertarians differ widely and overlap with conservatives) are in favor of open borders, but oppose single-payer health care. This is generally on principle, though some have tried to explain how it would still work when reality is applied.
Moderates want to kind of half-do both things; open up immigration further without inadvertently letting in the gang members and human traffickers, and have government-paid/government-involved health care without making it an actual universal social welfare program. As is usual for treading the very line of a fence without falling to either side, it's a very delicate balancing point with a very narrow margin for error.
Liberals want to do both, Western Europe be hanged (unless they're using it as an example that is, at this point, largely imaginary).
Now here's the interesting part. From what I've seen and read, there's a new (tiny) faction to consider, the one that actually deserves the badly misapplied label "Alt Right". And their stance is distinct from the rest. They seem to approve single-payer, but oppose open borders; in fact, they seem to oppose all immigration and all citizenship by people who are not white. Ironically, the system they desire is like the one that is breaking down in Sweden. Conservatives have oft celebrated the fact that our system works best in our country because of the great diversity of peoples and cultures; the Alt Right would sacrifice diversity in favor of socialism, while the Liberals seem determined against all notions of reality to force both to happen.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
The Other Path to a Living Wage
Living Wage.
This seems to be the new socialist bugaboo. I do call it socialist, even though its implementation may be more fascist in appearance. I have said this before: Fascism and Communism are two fingers on the same hand of Socialism, though one may be purer than the other. In the former, the government controls the people through the companies, while in the latter, the government forbids the companies and controls the people directly. There is very little difference; in Fascism, the government forbears the existence of the companies for the time being, while in a free market economy, the government is limited in the ways that it is allowed to control them.
Economics lesson aside, let's break into the actual thought. The usual suspects are now calling for a government-enforced "living wage", the ability of any job to support a spouse and family. They like to claim that this was quite possible and expected back "before all this deregulation", as if the 1950's may as well have been lived under the hammer and sickle or something. Frankly, I'm pretty sure they don't know what they're talking about. But let's take a moment and ask the question: Why are so many jobs no longer offering "a living wage"? There are a few reasons that we can note before stepping into this one. In the 1950's, a "living wage" supported a smaller home with fewer amenities, fewer electronic devices with monthly plans, fewer restaurant meals, and smaller wardrobes. If you were to study the time period and attempt to live only with the amount of stuff and amenities that they had, eating what they ate and owning the clothing that they owned, you might find that a minimum wage job would in fact provide your needs. But let's set that, also, aside for a moment and ask this question:
Are corporations not offering a "living wage" because they are already subsidizing it via government fiat?
A worker costs an employer a great deal. Government-required taxes and benefits alone may increase the cost of an employee a minimum of 25% and maximum (more common in larger businesses, which have additional mandates that small businesses do not) of 40% above the employee's base salary. Many of these 'benefits', like 'health insurance' (itself becoming increasingly expensive and useless), would have been paid by the worker back in the days of the Living Wage.
On the other side, we have corporate and personal income taxes. Why did I say "corporate and personal"? Many companies nowadays are taking advantage of the S-Corp filing status, and filing as if they are persons. That lowers the bewildering complexity of the process and may lower the tax rate. On the other hand, someone who makes $35K/year may be paying taxes on his company's $120K/year profits instead. When we talk about government income from employers, we need to include them. All in all, the top 1% of income earners pay nearly half of personal income taxes, the top 20% pay 85% (the bottom 60% pay 2%), and many, perhaps even most, of those are S-Corps rather than individuals like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. The average S-Corp tax rate is 31%, with a range of 19-35%. (Note: That information is pre-Trump and so is at least slightly out-of-date. But hopefully it gets some thoughts stirring.)
Including all Federal spending, over half goes to social welfare programs, and state spending further adds to the bundle. A cursory look 'round state budget pie charts shows that welfare spending seems to run about the 20-40% range in general. Where am I going with this?
The average low-paying job is indeed already paying a Living Wage.
How can this be? Well, in the 1950's, he would do it by giving you a paycheck with which you could purchase all that you need. Nowadays, he does it the same way the government does for nonworking families. He pays for your health insurance, pays for a fair bit of your tax burden (did you know he pays half your Social Security tax? Try to work for yourself and you'll quickly find that out!), and pays the government to give you food stamps, heating assistance, rent assistance, free school lunches for your children, possibly free medical care for your children as well (CHIP/SCHIP), and, as your salary, a small cash allowance with which to obtain that which he and the government through his taxes have not provided.
Indeed, we see that this provision is sufficient, as there are workers in California under an increased minimum wage who have asked for fewer hours in order to preserve the same Living Wage.
Now's the part where everyone starts accusing me of saying that the poor have it easy, that they are freeloaders, that I don't care if babies starve, yadda yadda. Let's see who can continue to keep an open mind and listen to what I have to say about that. This is not by any means an ideal situation, and the poor do struggle. The reason they struggle, however, is not due to lack of funding. It is because the method of that funding is almost the least efficient and least effective manner possible. I say "almost" only because full-on Communism exists in the world, and it is by far the least useful way to handle wealth.
Raising children has helped me to remember and think about what it was like to be a child. People look back to that time period fondly, thinking of it as being idyllic, because "the world was less complicated and more safe". Indeed, when an adult controls your life, you have less responsibility and you don't have to worry as much about the dangers that still surround you. You still have a chance of being hungry, of being homeless, but in that event the adult will tell you what to do. What people forget is the loss of freedom. Sure, there's a measure of it if you live in a suburban area and own a bicycle. Other than that, though... You still have to ask if you can go to a friend's house. You have to ask if you want to visit a museum. You have to accept the food they give you; your parents determine your diet. You are severely restricted in how you can earn income and how much money you will have. And, of course, your school takes up much more of your life than you would have ever remembered; your precious memories of freedom and fun were most likely snipped out of a plethora of weekends and holidays (the parts that don't involve mandatory visits and customs) and stitched together out of a pair of decades.
Well, the current method of providing a Living Wage is much like being a child. Someone else controls how often/much your house receives to heat, how much you spend on food, which doctors you see, and what your child eats for lunch every school day. This is great, if you live the exact lifestyle that these social programs were optimized for. The problem is that it does narrow you down into a specific form of lifestyle; a purely cash form of a Living Wage allows you to spend more on your housing and less on your cell phone, or more on your clothing and less on your groceries. It can be very, very frustrating to need money for one budget category and be blocked by the Government from simply doing what the middle class takes for granted and transferring it from another category.
What is the answer?
The obvious answer to me is to reduce and reform the welfare system, and with it the tax system. Every reduction in welfare spending must be paired with an equal reduction in employer taxes. I was hesitant to suggest this before, because there must be a time period, I thought, in which wages were still low and people would be hurting. However, the quick responses of businesses in handing out bonuses as they began to raise wages after Trump's tax cut surprised and emboldened me in saying this: As they spend less on the employees through the government, they will spend more on the employees through regular wages.
On top of that, market competition will come into play, this time with a strong emphasis on employee demands rather than employer offers. When you can get a job as a cashier at Walmart and have the government spend tens of thousands of dollars on welfare to make up your Living Wage, you will not have to insist that your employer pays you that wage or you will fight for one of the jobs that pays it. The employment market is indeed a market with customers and 'sellers', and companies that do not offer that wage will have difficult finding people qualified to do the work.
If we do this, I think we will find that the effect of "wages not rising with national wealth", an argument that Liberals tend to use to try to justify actions that depress wages further, will correct itself, and workers will receive their Living Wage as cash instead of an unholy mixture of cash, government-mandated employer spending, and government-mandated welfare spending.
This seems to be the new socialist bugaboo. I do call it socialist, even though its implementation may be more fascist in appearance. I have said this before: Fascism and Communism are two fingers on the same hand of Socialism, though one may be purer than the other. In the former, the government controls the people through the companies, while in the latter, the government forbids the companies and controls the people directly. There is very little difference; in Fascism, the government forbears the existence of the companies for the time being, while in a free market economy, the government is limited in the ways that it is allowed to control them.
Economics lesson aside, let's break into the actual thought. The usual suspects are now calling for a government-enforced "living wage", the ability of any job to support a spouse and family. They like to claim that this was quite possible and expected back "before all this deregulation", as if the 1950's may as well have been lived under the hammer and sickle or something. Frankly, I'm pretty sure they don't know what they're talking about. But let's take a moment and ask the question: Why are so many jobs no longer offering "a living wage"? There are a few reasons that we can note before stepping into this one. In the 1950's, a "living wage" supported a smaller home with fewer amenities, fewer electronic devices with monthly plans, fewer restaurant meals, and smaller wardrobes. If you were to study the time period and attempt to live only with the amount of stuff and amenities that they had, eating what they ate and owning the clothing that they owned, you might find that a minimum wage job would in fact provide your needs. But let's set that, also, aside for a moment and ask this question:
Are corporations not offering a "living wage" because they are already subsidizing it via government fiat?
A worker costs an employer a great deal. Government-required taxes and benefits alone may increase the cost of an employee a minimum of 25% and maximum (more common in larger businesses, which have additional mandates that small businesses do not) of 40% above the employee's base salary. Many of these 'benefits', like 'health insurance' (itself becoming increasingly expensive and useless), would have been paid by the worker back in the days of the Living Wage.
On the other side, we have corporate and personal income taxes. Why did I say "corporate and personal"? Many companies nowadays are taking advantage of the S-Corp filing status, and filing as if they are persons. That lowers the bewildering complexity of the process and may lower the tax rate. On the other hand, someone who makes $35K/year may be paying taxes on his company's $120K/year profits instead. When we talk about government income from employers, we need to include them. All in all, the top 1% of income earners pay nearly half of personal income taxes, the top 20% pay 85% (the bottom 60% pay 2%), and many, perhaps even most, of those are S-Corps rather than individuals like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. The average S-Corp tax rate is 31%, with a range of 19-35%. (Note: That information is pre-Trump and so is at least slightly out-of-date. But hopefully it gets some thoughts stirring.)
Including all Federal spending, over half goes to social welfare programs, and state spending further adds to the bundle. A cursory look 'round state budget pie charts shows that welfare spending seems to run about the 20-40% range in general. Where am I going with this?
The average low-paying job is indeed already paying a Living Wage.
How can this be? Well, in the 1950's, he would do it by giving you a paycheck with which you could purchase all that you need. Nowadays, he does it the same way the government does for nonworking families. He pays for your health insurance, pays for a fair bit of your tax burden (did you know he pays half your Social Security tax? Try to work for yourself and you'll quickly find that out!), and pays the government to give you food stamps, heating assistance, rent assistance, free school lunches for your children, possibly free medical care for your children as well (CHIP/SCHIP), and, as your salary, a small cash allowance with which to obtain that which he and the government through his taxes have not provided.
Indeed, we see that this provision is sufficient, as there are workers in California under an increased minimum wage who have asked for fewer hours in order to preserve the same Living Wage.
Now's the part where everyone starts accusing me of saying that the poor have it easy, that they are freeloaders, that I don't care if babies starve, yadda yadda. Let's see who can continue to keep an open mind and listen to what I have to say about that. This is not by any means an ideal situation, and the poor do struggle. The reason they struggle, however, is not due to lack of funding. It is because the method of that funding is almost the least efficient and least effective manner possible. I say "almost" only because full-on Communism exists in the world, and it is by far the least useful way to handle wealth.
Raising children has helped me to remember and think about what it was like to be a child. People look back to that time period fondly, thinking of it as being idyllic, because "the world was less complicated and more safe". Indeed, when an adult controls your life, you have less responsibility and you don't have to worry as much about the dangers that still surround you. You still have a chance of being hungry, of being homeless, but in that event the adult will tell you what to do. What people forget is the loss of freedom. Sure, there's a measure of it if you live in a suburban area and own a bicycle. Other than that, though... You still have to ask if you can go to a friend's house. You have to ask if you want to visit a museum. You have to accept the food they give you; your parents determine your diet. You are severely restricted in how you can earn income and how much money you will have. And, of course, your school takes up much more of your life than you would have ever remembered; your precious memories of freedom and fun were most likely snipped out of a plethora of weekends and holidays (the parts that don't involve mandatory visits and customs) and stitched together out of a pair of decades.
Well, the current method of providing a Living Wage is much like being a child. Someone else controls how often/much your house receives to heat, how much you spend on food, which doctors you see, and what your child eats for lunch every school day. This is great, if you live the exact lifestyle that these social programs were optimized for. The problem is that it does narrow you down into a specific form of lifestyle; a purely cash form of a Living Wage allows you to spend more on your housing and less on your cell phone, or more on your clothing and less on your groceries. It can be very, very frustrating to need money for one budget category and be blocked by the Government from simply doing what the middle class takes for granted and transferring it from another category.
What is the answer?
The obvious answer to me is to reduce and reform the welfare system, and with it the tax system. Every reduction in welfare spending must be paired with an equal reduction in employer taxes. I was hesitant to suggest this before, because there must be a time period, I thought, in which wages were still low and people would be hurting. However, the quick responses of businesses in handing out bonuses as they began to raise wages after Trump's tax cut surprised and emboldened me in saying this: As they spend less on the employees through the government, they will spend more on the employees through regular wages.
On top of that, market competition will come into play, this time with a strong emphasis on employee demands rather than employer offers. When you can get a job as a cashier at Walmart and have the government spend tens of thousands of dollars on welfare to make up your Living Wage, you will not have to insist that your employer pays you that wage or you will fight for one of the jobs that pays it. The employment market is indeed a market with customers and 'sellers', and companies that do not offer that wage will have difficult finding people qualified to do the work.
If we do this, I think we will find that the effect of "wages not rising with national wealth", an argument that Liberals tend to use to try to justify actions that depress wages further, will correct itself, and workers will receive their Living Wage as cash instead of an unholy mixture of cash, government-mandated employer spending, and government-mandated welfare spending.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Does "Trickle-Down" exist?
I wrote this up as a comment on another board, and have been asked to make it available as a blog post for easy linking. Someone noted that other people have been arguing that "Trickle Down" doesn't work, leading to the question: "Just what is 'trickle down' and how do we know if it's working?"
This was my answer:
There is a specific economic example of "trickle-down" that basically says that companies under a smaller government-levied financial burden will be more likely to hire new people (provide more jobs) and have a ladder by which people can improve their socio-economic status over time. There are people who seize upon this specific definition, try to find examples where it didn't happen exactly that way, and claim that "it fails" or "it doesn't exist" as a theory *at all* because of it.
But it isn't always going to work exactly like their rigid definition says it should, because, in a free market, companies don't all go on a huge growth stint. In a free market, companies are what they need to be. They go lean when they need to be lean, fat when they need to be fat, and they grow at a natural pace. This rigid definition of "trickle down" happens most obviously when the government is deliberately stunting economic growth (whether intentionally or not) through government policies, in which case removing the artificial limiting factor will result in growth.
The other mistake that they make when insisting that it doesn't work is in looking at living standards compared to the rich, instead of compared to the previous poor. Here's an example. Let's say you have a gym class. Billy starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 50 pushups. Bob starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 5. So they start a new exercise program. In next year's class, Jason starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 100. Jon starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 10. People claiming that "trickle down doesn't work", by the *same logic*, would claim that the new exercise program has failed in its goal to improve the physical fitness of the lower-performing students.
You guys with me? :) Trying to untwist corkscrews here and lay out their contents clearly!
* * * * * * * * *
Now that's the rigid definition of "trickle down" used to "prove" that "it doesn't work". If you actually look at it as a basic concept being "when the rich are *allowed* to be richer, the poor and middle class do receive the benefits of that", you'll find it all through a free market, profoundly affecting all levels of society. Trickle-down may happen directly, when a rich person can afford a private jet and therefore needs to hire a pilot making $70K/year. Bam, wealth created a job. It may happen the way the rigid definition claims, in which a company has record profits and opens ten new locations in rural markets where they may not have had the infrastructure to serve before, thus opening up a couple hundred new jobs throughout the nation.
It may happen, not through jobs, but through goods and services. Richer people get new furniture and have the old stuff hauled off to Salvation Army to be purchased by lower-class folk. I've seen slightly richer and less 'humble' people who buy a Walmart couch because they refuse to 'take rich people's cast-offs' have to replace a broken couch within a few years; a good quality piece of furniture, even bought used, can last the lifetime of its new owner. As Scott pointed out, the used car market is a prime example of trickle-down. Cash for Clunkers damaged it by focusing mostly on the fairly economical cars that the poorer people buy to replace their gas guzzlers instead of the gas guzzlers themselves, and not rebating enough for the poorer folk to replace their vehicle, thus basically breaking the chain in the middle instead of trimming off the end and arguably causing *more* pollution than if they'd just let the guy making $30K/year junk his '92 Chevy for $200 and buy a '98 Civic for $6K instead.
(A further note on goods: A lot of lower-class families practically depend upon a big circulating wardrobe of free and discounted used clothing, especially for young children, who grow into new sizes very quickly. Toys, books, DVD's... if you can find it sold used and discounted, that means a person who could afford it at its original price bought it new. If they couldn't afford it due to heavier taxes and regulations, they wouldn't have bought it, and you would not have the opportunity to afford it afterwards.)
It may happen through charity. Richer people who aren't hounded into "repaying society" through heavier taxes do often feel a desire to help other people out. Even if they aren't being altruistic, they will still like the good PR and having their names or the names of loved ones on hospital wings and park benches. Food kitchens aren't stocked by the hungry. Our Boy Scout troop and our church periodically have auctions or gift baskets as fundraisers for charities. To get these items, they go to local businesses and ask for, basically, free goodies to 'sell'. That business has to be able to afford to give away a free pedicure, a free pair of movie tickets, a free box of gourmet popcorn, etc.
And finally, it may happen totally indirectly/unconsciously. Have you ever wondered why you can go to Walmart and buy a 55" HDTV for under $500? I learned how it works when I was working at a defense contractor (long story) and listening to the higher-ups complain. Any new fancy appliance or entertainment item (or, for that matter, medical equipment or advancement) has a development cost. Factories also have to spend money to retool for the new item. That cost is factored into the initial price of these items. The only reason why HDTV's aren't still curiosities costing $3000 in the back of Best Buy is because a bunch of rich people bought $3000 HDTV's in the back of Best Buy and basically *paid the cost* of their research and development. Once that's paid off, prices drop sharply, unless another factor intervenes, like scarcity due to other factors. (DVD players are cheaper than VHS players now.)
* * * * * * * * *
Remember back up a few paragraphs where I was talking about opponents/skeptics comparing the rich to the poor over time and claiming that trickle down doesn't happen because of it? The analogy of the kids and the pushups? Part of the reason why I am so content with my own situation is because I compare myself to myself, and I compare my economic status to my economic status. I don't keep up "with the Joneses", and I don't measure success by whether I am richer compared to rich people now than I was compared to rich people then. I do what any *good* school does with classes like Phys Ed and compare myself to myself. As an aside, and to stick with the analogy, my public elementary school was considered to have a poor PE program, in part because the teacher graded students by ability compared to each other; my highschool was considered to have a good program, in part because the teacher graded students by their own improvement. In athletic ability and in economics, that really is the only proper way to do it. And doing so, I come up with this:
My grandparents raised three kids in a 960sqft house. They had one car, one refrigerator, one stove with oven, one washing machine, one television. They saved up and went out for ice cream once a year.
My parents raised five kids (now raising a sixth, adopted) in a 1500(roughly) sqft house. They had two cars, one refrigerator, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, a washer, a dryer, one television, one VCR, one video game console, one personal computer, and we managed to go out for pizza once every few months or so.
I'm raising three in a 1600sqft house. We had, at the same economic position as parents and grandparents, two cars, one refrigerator with icemaker, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, washer, dryer, dishwasher, (quality) electric mixer, bread machine, window A/C, two televisions, VCR, DVD player, Blu-Ray player, three video game consoles (Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3), two personal computers, two laptops, three tablets, and one cell phone. We also have a monthly eating-out budget.
Am I to believe, then, that I never benefit from the rich being allowed to be rich?
* * * * * * * * *
I'm not going to get into this in detail, but let me offer this thought.
When the government streamlines regulations, lowers regulatory fees, lowers taxes, and doesn't punish wealth accumulation, the poor and middle class benefits in one more way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the rich do with their money or if they even exist: they are more free to start their own businesses and make their own opportunities, and the social mobility in the country becomes much more fluid. So even if you can't thank the rich for your "new" car, your affordable new market-midrange TV, your kid's scholarship, or your job, you can thank the lower regulatory burden for your ability to afford to start a new business and keep what you earn.
However, this would not actually be part of the specific concept of "trickle down".
This was my answer:
There is a specific economic example of "trickle-down" that basically says that companies under a smaller government-levied financial burden will be more likely to hire new people (provide more jobs) and have a ladder by which people can improve their socio-economic status over time. There are people who seize upon this specific definition, try to find examples where it didn't happen exactly that way, and claim that "it fails" or "it doesn't exist" as a theory *at all* because of it.
But it isn't always going to work exactly like their rigid definition says it should, because, in a free market, companies don't all go on a huge growth stint. In a free market, companies are what they need to be. They go lean when they need to be lean, fat when they need to be fat, and they grow at a natural pace. This rigid definition of "trickle down" happens most obviously when the government is deliberately stunting economic growth (whether intentionally or not) through government policies, in which case removing the artificial limiting factor will result in growth.
The other mistake that they make when insisting that it doesn't work is in looking at living standards compared to the rich, instead of compared to the previous poor. Here's an example. Let's say you have a gym class. Billy starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 50 pushups. Bob starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 5. So they start a new exercise program. In next year's class, Jason starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 100. Jon starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 10. People claiming that "trickle down doesn't work", by the *same logic*, would claim that the new exercise program has failed in its goal to improve the physical fitness of the lower-performing students.
You guys with me? :) Trying to untwist corkscrews here and lay out their contents clearly!
* * * * * * * * *
Now that's the rigid definition of "trickle down" used to "prove" that "it doesn't work". If you actually look at it as a basic concept being "when the rich are *allowed* to be richer, the poor and middle class do receive the benefits of that", you'll find it all through a free market, profoundly affecting all levels of society. Trickle-down may happen directly, when a rich person can afford a private jet and therefore needs to hire a pilot making $70K/year. Bam, wealth created a job. It may happen the way the rigid definition claims, in which a company has record profits and opens ten new locations in rural markets where they may not have had the infrastructure to serve before, thus opening up a couple hundred new jobs throughout the nation.
It may happen, not through jobs, but through goods and services. Richer people get new furniture and have the old stuff hauled off to Salvation Army to be purchased by lower-class folk. I've seen slightly richer and less 'humble' people who buy a Walmart couch because they refuse to 'take rich people's cast-offs' have to replace a broken couch within a few years; a good quality piece of furniture, even bought used, can last the lifetime of its new owner. As Scott pointed out, the used car market is a prime example of trickle-down. Cash for Clunkers damaged it by focusing mostly on the fairly economical cars that the poorer people buy to replace their gas guzzlers instead of the gas guzzlers themselves, and not rebating enough for the poorer folk to replace their vehicle, thus basically breaking the chain in the middle instead of trimming off the end and arguably causing *more* pollution than if they'd just let the guy making $30K/year junk his '92 Chevy for $200 and buy a '98 Civic for $6K instead.
(A further note on goods: A lot of lower-class families practically depend upon a big circulating wardrobe of free and discounted used clothing, especially for young children, who grow into new sizes very quickly. Toys, books, DVD's... if you can find it sold used and discounted, that means a person who could afford it at its original price bought it new. If they couldn't afford it due to heavier taxes and regulations, they wouldn't have bought it, and you would not have the opportunity to afford it afterwards.)
It may happen through charity. Richer people who aren't hounded into "repaying society" through heavier taxes do often feel a desire to help other people out. Even if they aren't being altruistic, they will still like the good PR and having their names or the names of loved ones on hospital wings and park benches. Food kitchens aren't stocked by the hungry. Our Boy Scout troop and our church periodically have auctions or gift baskets as fundraisers for charities. To get these items, they go to local businesses and ask for, basically, free goodies to 'sell'. That business has to be able to afford to give away a free pedicure, a free pair of movie tickets, a free box of gourmet popcorn, etc.
And finally, it may happen totally indirectly/unconsciously. Have you ever wondered why you can go to Walmart and buy a 55" HDTV for under $500? I learned how it works when I was working at a defense contractor (long story) and listening to the higher-ups complain. Any new fancy appliance or entertainment item (or, for that matter, medical equipment or advancement) has a development cost. Factories also have to spend money to retool for the new item. That cost is factored into the initial price of these items. The only reason why HDTV's aren't still curiosities costing $3000 in the back of Best Buy is because a bunch of rich people bought $3000 HDTV's in the back of Best Buy and basically *paid the cost* of their research and development. Once that's paid off, prices drop sharply, unless another factor intervenes, like scarcity due to other factors. (DVD players are cheaper than VHS players now.)
* * * * * * * * *
Remember back up a few paragraphs where I was talking about opponents/skeptics comparing the rich to the poor over time and claiming that trickle down doesn't happen because of it? The analogy of the kids and the pushups? Part of the reason why I am so content with my own situation is because I compare myself to myself, and I compare my economic status to my economic status. I don't keep up "with the Joneses", and I don't measure success by whether I am richer compared to rich people now than I was compared to rich people then. I do what any *good* school does with classes like Phys Ed and compare myself to myself. As an aside, and to stick with the analogy, my public elementary school was considered to have a poor PE program, in part because the teacher graded students by ability compared to each other; my highschool was considered to have a good program, in part because the teacher graded students by their own improvement. In athletic ability and in economics, that really is the only proper way to do it. And doing so, I come up with this:
My grandparents raised three kids in a 960sqft house. They had one car, one refrigerator, one stove with oven, one washing machine, one television. They saved up and went out for ice cream once a year.
My parents raised five kids (now raising a sixth, adopted) in a 1500(roughly) sqft house. They had two cars, one refrigerator, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, a washer, a dryer, one television, one VCR, one video game console, one personal computer, and we managed to go out for pizza once every few months or so.
I'm raising three in a 1600sqft house. We had, at the same economic position as parents and grandparents, two cars, one refrigerator with icemaker, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, washer, dryer, dishwasher, (quality) electric mixer, bread machine, window A/C, two televisions, VCR, DVD player, Blu-Ray player, three video game consoles (Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3), two personal computers, two laptops, three tablets, and one cell phone. We also have a monthly eating-out budget.
Am I to believe, then, that I never benefit from the rich being allowed to be rich?
* * * * * * * * *
I'm not going to get into this in detail, but let me offer this thought.
When the government streamlines regulations, lowers regulatory fees, lowers taxes, and doesn't punish wealth accumulation, the poor and middle class benefits in one more way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the rich do with their money or if they even exist: they are more free to start their own businesses and make their own opportunities, and the social mobility in the country becomes much more fluid. So even if you can't thank the rich for your "new" car, your affordable new market-midrange TV, your kid's scholarship, or your job, you can thank the lower regulatory burden for your ability to afford to start a new business and keep what you earn.
However, this would not actually be part of the specific concept of "trickle down".
Monday, August 14, 2017
What I am not
Back in the 1950's and 1960's, there were two Civil Rights eras.
There are many different epoch's along the path that brought us here. Different people argue about which ones were most important, about which ones "started it", about which moments of history should be focused upon. I am choosing to focus here for several reasons, many of which should become apparent by the end of this post if they were not already.
In the 1950's, Republicans tore down "Jim Crow", series of laws that Democrats had enacted in local areas with the purpose of using the government to keep blacks down. In the 1960's, the Democrats succeeded in beating the Republicans with promises (which were fulfilled) of using the government to advance blacks over whites. At that time, a group of angry Democrats who had thought that the 1950's was about racism joined the Republicans, and they and their descendants are there to this day.
There are a couple of takeaways here. One is that when the Republicans retort that racism against blacks was a Democrat behavior, they are correct; when the Democrats retort that a bunch of those old racists are Republicans, they are also correct.
The big takeaway is that Civil Rights, for the Democrat Party, was never actually about racism. They didn't care if they were elevating or trampling blacks. What mattered was a particular core strategy: Get the populace to accept big government by making them enemies of each other and promising each group that you will use the government to trample their enemies.
Fast-forward to 2008 and Obama's election. He basically campaigned, more or less openly, on this strategy. He was elected by people who believed that he would use the power of the government, all the power they could give him, in order to bludgeon their enemies. They did not, as our founders did, fear the government more than they feared the people with whom they merely disagreed. Under the Obama Administration, we saw the IRS scandal among other incidents. I think the IRS scandal struck the hardest impact, because it showed us that Obama's government was willing to go after ordinary folk for disagreeing with him. Many praised his election as an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that "people were willing to elect a black man as our President". It was an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that people were willing to elect a man on promises that he would use government power against their 'enemies'; their fellow citizens.
I did not cast my vote for Trump and did not speak in support of him during the election period. Too many people believe that I agreed with them that he is misogynist, or stupid, or somehow unqualified to be President. Too many other people believed that I was against him because I preferred "the status quo in Washington", because I hated whites, because I wanted to be marginalized as Obama had marginalized me. When he made his "bitter clingers" quote, after all, he was talking about me. When Hillary made her "deplorables" quote, she was talking about me.
This is the real reason I did not cast my vote for Trump.
I saw among his followers too many people who were looking to him to use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared this 'war'.
Angry people on one side elected Obama in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. Angry people on the other side elected Trump in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared them to be enemies. (Let me offer credit where credit is due. At least to this point, from what I have seen, President Trump has not in fact used his office, as many followers had hoped, to bludgeon the other side, but has contented himself with tearing down regulations and releasing trapped power back into the wild.)
Now I want to go back to the first takeaway that I referenced about the Civil Rights movements. I have come to believe that the people on Trump's side against whom I have set myself are actually the people and their descendants who left the Democrat Party, not because the Democrats were using the government as a bludgeon, but because they were bludgeoning the "wrong" people.
So in this Charlottesville matter, I find myself set against the white supremacists who are anti-Constitution, who march because they want Trump to use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. I find myself also set against the "antifa" groups who are anti-Constitution, who counter-march because they want the government to be used as a bludgeon against their enemies. Both sides engaged in violence. Both sides insist that we consider their side blameless. Both sides are very eager to assume that I am on the other side if I refuse.
I don't want either of them.
Am I a Conservative Republican? Am I a Conservative Christian? Am I a Christian Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Christian Libertarian Republican? I haven't figured that part out yet.
I'm the one who joins with those who don't hate "the other side" more than we fear government control over us.
I'm the one who doesn't want anybody, even myself, to have the power to use the government to bludgeon another group of fellow citizens.
No matter how much I don't like what they have to say.
There are many different epoch's along the path that brought us here. Different people argue about which ones were most important, about which ones "started it", about which moments of history should be focused upon. I am choosing to focus here for several reasons, many of which should become apparent by the end of this post if they were not already.
In the 1950's, Republicans tore down "Jim Crow", series of laws that Democrats had enacted in local areas with the purpose of using the government to keep blacks down. In the 1960's, the Democrats succeeded in beating the Republicans with promises (which were fulfilled) of using the government to advance blacks over whites. At that time, a group of angry Democrats who had thought that the 1950's was about racism joined the Republicans, and they and their descendants are there to this day.
There are a couple of takeaways here. One is that when the Republicans retort that racism against blacks was a Democrat behavior, they are correct; when the Democrats retort that a bunch of those old racists are Republicans, they are also correct.
The big takeaway is that Civil Rights, for the Democrat Party, was never actually about racism. They didn't care if they were elevating or trampling blacks. What mattered was a particular core strategy: Get the populace to accept big government by making them enemies of each other and promising each group that you will use the government to trample their enemies.
Fast-forward to 2008 and Obama's election. He basically campaigned, more or less openly, on this strategy. He was elected by people who believed that he would use the power of the government, all the power they could give him, in order to bludgeon their enemies. They did not, as our founders did, fear the government more than they feared the people with whom they merely disagreed. Under the Obama Administration, we saw the IRS scandal among other incidents. I think the IRS scandal struck the hardest impact, because it showed us that Obama's government was willing to go after ordinary folk for disagreeing with him. Many praised his election as an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that "people were willing to elect a black man as our President". It was an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that people were willing to elect a man on promises that he would use government power against their 'enemies'; their fellow citizens.
I did not cast my vote for Trump and did not speak in support of him during the election period. Too many people believe that I agreed with them that he is misogynist, or stupid, or somehow unqualified to be President. Too many other people believed that I was against him because I preferred "the status quo in Washington", because I hated whites, because I wanted to be marginalized as Obama had marginalized me. When he made his "bitter clingers" quote, after all, he was talking about me. When Hillary made her "deplorables" quote, she was talking about me.
This is the real reason I did not cast my vote for Trump.
I saw among his followers too many people who were looking to him to use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared this 'war'.
Angry people on one side elected Obama in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. Angry people on the other side elected Trump in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared them to be enemies. (Let me offer credit where credit is due. At least to this point, from what I have seen, President Trump has not in fact used his office, as many followers had hoped, to bludgeon the other side, but has contented himself with tearing down regulations and releasing trapped power back into the wild.)
Now I want to go back to the first takeaway that I referenced about the Civil Rights movements. I have come to believe that the people on Trump's side against whom I have set myself are actually the people and their descendants who left the Democrat Party, not because the Democrats were using the government as a bludgeon, but because they were bludgeoning the "wrong" people.
So in this Charlottesville matter, I find myself set against the white supremacists who are anti-Constitution, who march because they want Trump to use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. I find myself also set against the "antifa" groups who are anti-Constitution, who counter-march because they want the government to be used as a bludgeon against their enemies. Both sides engaged in violence. Both sides insist that we consider their side blameless. Both sides are very eager to assume that I am on the other side if I refuse.
I don't want either of them.
Am I a Conservative Republican? Am I a Conservative Christian? Am I a Christian Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Christian Libertarian Republican? I haven't figured that part out yet.
I'm the one who joins with those who don't hate "the other side" more than we fear government control over us.
I'm the one who doesn't want anybody, even myself, to have the power to use the government to bludgeon another group of fellow citizens.
No matter how much I don't like what they have to say.
Saturday, May 20, 2017
A new 'autism' theory: Terrestrials and Aerials
Autism. ADHD, in hyperactive, inattentive, and mixed. Synesthesia.
Neurotypical.
Imagine for a moment that there is a world with two main tribes of sentient beings. They're both the same kind of creature underneath in that they can interact and even breed. There's one main difference between them. The Aerials can fly. The Terrestrials cannot.
Now that's actually not a huge difference on the face of it, but it does result in the development of two different societies. The Aerials don't bother much with roads or sea travel. Why would they? They can fly. The Terrestrials have roads, bridges, ships. If you asked who was more technologically advanced, you'd say the Terrestrials. But the reason the Aerials haven't built as much infrastructure is because their living conditions don't require it. They aren't stupider than the Terrestrials. On the other hand, the Aerials have conventions that Terrestrials don't understand, like "I can come to your party if the winds are favorable." Why would it matter what the winds are doing? It doesn't, to the Terrestrial. The Aerial has to fly down from his home, so for him it does matter. On the other hand, you have a bunch of Terrestrials fully expecting an Aerial to use the ferryboat to get from one side of the river to the other, because 'that's how it is done'. The Aerial is pacing on the deck, frustrated at the slowness of the boat, and not understanding why he can't just spread his wings and glide across. Of course, if he tries to take off right then and there, he's going to rock the boat and make all the Terrestrials uncomfortable.
Now imagine that the Aerials are a small percentage of the population, and the majority are Terrestrials. You are more likely to have rules in place regarding airspace, schools judging you on how well you can swim (something Aerials don't tend to learn, because they were learning to fly instead), and a culture that regards flight as capricious and self-centered.
We could apply the same theory to humankind. The Terrestrials are what autism and ADHD groups call "neurotypical". They are the solid, organized, regimented people who build society by virtue of being in the majority. They have social rules and understandings, which they are practically born able to intuit. They can tell you what the social conventions are, from birthday parties to condolences, and how to perform your part in it properly. The Aerials are people who are wired differently. Terrestrials have struggled for centuries to define Aerials. Just recently, more people who used to be called ADHD are considered to have some form of autism. The term "aspergers" has also merged back into "autism" and spawned another term, "high-functioning". In other times and places they have been "eccentric", "insane but harmless", "shamans" or "witches", dreamers, "highly sensitive individuals", "Age of Aquarians", and so on.
I'd like to insert a disclaimer. I am not saying that "autism doesn't exist" or that it is not a problem. I am aware that there are Aerials who are nonverbal, who can't fight their way outside of their own heads, who engage in violent fits in response to bright lights and whatnot. On the other side, you need only read from the website notalwaysright.com to understand that there are neurotypicals on the extremist side as well. They just demonstrate it differently. However, there is an enormous struggle in the world of psychology and psychiatry to define and deal with the "high functioning" who do not respond to medication (or who can live fairly well without it), with the ones who are not called 'autistic' and then called 'autistic', and then 'aspergers', and then 'not aspergers'... How to differentiate them from the neurotypicals who have learned to be delicate in order to mimic a diagnosis, how to understand ADHD, what to do with a kid who seems very intelligent, but just can't apply it the way Terrestrials do. That's what I would like the term "Aerial" to do for me and others like me.
I also would like to take a moment to explain what "Terrestrials" and "Aerials" is not about. It's not about who is boring and who is artistic. It isn't about who is smart and who is stupid. It isn't about who has a stereotypical interest in engines and who prefers to work with people. It isn't even about fantasy versus reality, although Aerials tend to create fantasy and enjoy it, while Terrestrials may or may not enjoy it at all. For instance, I would say that Batman is an Aerial and Superman is a Terrestrial. Luke Skywalker is an Aerial and Leia is either Terrestrial or a mix. The main character of action-adventure stories is often a Terrestrial. Detectives may be either; Holmes was definitely an Aerial.
Now it gets interesting.
Being that we live in a Terrestrial society, we tend to judge things in terms of Terrestrial thinking. That's natural. In doing so, however, one of the big things that we say about Aerials is that they are socially inept. They don't follow social cues. They don't know how to interact with people the way the people expect to be interacted with. They ask weird questions, reveal more of themselves than they should in some areas, hide parts of themselves they shouldn't in other areas. At least, that's how the Aerial looks from the Terrestrial point of view.
In this area, I have a bit of a unique perspective. Usually, being that Aerials are rare, you will find one of two in a Terrestrial family. Both "Aerial' and 'Terrestrial' are, however, in part genetic. One classic stereotype (which has become a stereotype because it is often true) is that of a black sheep uncle and the nephew or niece who resembles him. That would be a key example of Aerial genetics within a majority Terrestrial family. In my family, however, we have an oddly strong concentration of Aerials. My father's side is strongly Aerial. My mother's is mostly Aerial within the recent generations, and mixed in some family lines as you start to move up a hundred years or more. My parents, my siblings, and I are all Aerials. In my husband's case, however, his Terrestrial father married an Aerial, and at least my husband (and perhaps his sister) is an Aerial. We have three children; all of them are unquestionably Aerials.
With all these Aerials, especially as my side tends to be close-knit and like to live near each other, I am slowly realizing that there is an Aerial social environment with intuited and unspoken rules, conventions, and practices. It is different than a Terrestrial social environment. I do not think it will emerge unless you have enough Aerials in one place. Once you do, however, you will find that they, like Terrestrials, will have ways to give offense, ways to avoid offense, things you are 'expected' to 'know' to do, and all of the other markers of any social environment. A Terrestrial in a group of Aerials who are no longer struggling to associate with each other the way they have been taught by Terrestrials will find himself just as puzzled, just as insecure, just as unable to intuit social graces as an Aerial at a Terrestrial party. Visit a family gathering of the sort that I grew up in, and you will find people asking each other favors that you're "not supposed to ask" and discussing topics that you're "not supposed to discuss" (according to Terrestrial norms), and yet simply intuiting which topics to avoid (which a Terrestrial might "clumsily" attempt) and at which point you simply do not push. A social group of Aerials understand why, to go back to my original fictional analogy, one Aerial cannot come or must return home early "because the winds aren't right".
Neurotypical.
Imagine for a moment that there is a world with two main tribes of sentient beings. They're both the same kind of creature underneath in that they can interact and even breed. There's one main difference between them. The Aerials can fly. The Terrestrials cannot.
Now that's actually not a huge difference on the face of it, but it does result in the development of two different societies. The Aerials don't bother much with roads or sea travel. Why would they? They can fly. The Terrestrials have roads, bridges, ships. If you asked who was more technologically advanced, you'd say the Terrestrials. But the reason the Aerials haven't built as much infrastructure is because their living conditions don't require it. They aren't stupider than the Terrestrials. On the other hand, the Aerials have conventions that Terrestrials don't understand, like "I can come to your party if the winds are favorable." Why would it matter what the winds are doing? It doesn't, to the Terrestrial. The Aerial has to fly down from his home, so for him it does matter. On the other hand, you have a bunch of Terrestrials fully expecting an Aerial to use the ferryboat to get from one side of the river to the other, because 'that's how it is done'. The Aerial is pacing on the deck, frustrated at the slowness of the boat, and not understanding why he can't just spread his wings and glide across. Of course, if he tries to take off right then and there, he's going to rock the boat and make all the Terrestrials uncomfortable.
Now imagine that the Aerials are a small percentage of the population, and the majority are Terrestrials. You are more likely to have rules in place regarding airspace, schools judging you on how well you can swim (something Aerials don't tend to learn, because they were learning to fly instead), and a culture that regards flight as capricious and self-centered.
We could apply the same theory to humankind. The Terrestrials are what autism and ADHD groups call "neurotypical". They are the solid, organized, regimented people who build society by virtue of being in the majority. They have social rules and understandings, which they are practically born able to intuit. They can tell you what the social conventions are, from birthday parties to condolences, and how to perform your part in it properly. The Aerials are people who are wired differently. Terrestrials have struggled for centuries to define Aerials. Just recently, more people who used to be called ADHD are considered to have some form of autism. The term "aspergers" has also merged back into "autism" and spawned another term, "high-functioning". In other times and places they have been "eccentric", "insane but harmless", "shamans" or "witches", dreamers, "highly sensitive individuals", "Age of Aquarians", and so on.
I'd like to insert a disclaimer. I am not saying that "autism doesn't exist" or that it is not a problem. I am aware that there are Aerials who are nonverbal, who can't fight their way outside of their own heads, who engage in violent fits in response to bright lights and whatnot. On the other side, you need only read from the website notalwaysright.com to understand that there are neurotypicals on the extremist side as well. They just demonstrate it differently. However, there is an enormous struggle in the world of psychology and psychiatry to define and deal with the "high functioning" who do not respond to medication (or who can live fairly well without it), with the ones who are not called 'autistic' and then called 'autistic', and then 'aspergers', and then 'not aspergers'... How to differentiate them from the neurotypicals who have learned to be delicate in order to mimic a diagnosis, how to understand ADHD, what to do with a kid who seems very intelligent, but just can't apply it the way Terrestrials do. That's what I would like the term "Aerial" to do for me and others like me.
I also would like to take a moment to explain what "Terrestrials" and "Aerials" is not about. It's not about who is boring and who is artistic. It isn't about who is smart and who is stupid. It isn't about who has a stereotypical interest in engines and who prefers to work with people. It isn't even about fantasy versus reality, although Aerials tend to create fantasy and enjoy it, while Terrestrials may or may not enjoy it at all. For instance, I would say that Batman is an Aerial and Superman is a Terrestrial. Luke Skywalker is an Aerial and Leia is either Terrestrial or a mix. The main character of action-adventure stories is often a Terrestrial. Detectives may be either; Holmes was definitely an Aerial.
Now it gets interesting.
Being that we live in a Terrestrial society, we tend to judge things in terms of Terrestrial thinking. That's natural. In doing so, however, one of the big things that we say about Aerials is that they are socially inept. They don't follow social cues. They don't know how to interact with people the way the people expect to be interacted with. They ask weird questions, reveal more of themselves than they should in some areas, hide parts of themselves they shouldn't in other areas. At least, that's how the Aerial looks from the Terrestrial point of view.
In this area, I have a bit of a unique perspective. Usually, being that Aerials are rare, you will find one of two in a Terrestrial family. Both "Aerial' and 'Terrestrial' are, however, in part genetic. One classic stereotype (which has become a stereotype because it is often true) is that of a black sheep uncle and the nephew or niece who resembles him. That would be a key example of Aerial genetics within a majority Terrestrial family. In my family, however, we have an oddly strong concentration of Aerials. My father's side is strongly Aerial. My mother's is mostly Aerial within the recent generations, and mixed in some family lines as you start to move up a hundred years or more. My parents, my siblings, and I are all Aerials. In my husband's case, however, his Terrestrial father married an Aerial, and at least my husband (and perhaps his sister) is an Aerial. We have three children; all of them are unquestionably Aerials.
With all these Aerials, especially as my side tends to be close-knit and like to live near each other, I am slowly realizing that there is an Aerial social environment with intuited and unspoken rules, conventions, and practices. It is different than a Terrestrial social environment. I do not think it will emerge unless you have enough Aerials in one place. Once you do, however, you will find that they, like Terrestrials, will have ways to give offense, ways to avoid offense, things you are 'expected' to 'know' to do, and all of the other markers of any social environment. A Terrestrial in a group of Aerials who are no longer struggling to associate with each other the way they have been taught by Terrestrials will find himself just as puzzled, just as insecure, just as unable to intuit social graces as an Aerial at a Terrestrial party. Visit a family gathering of the sort that I grew up in, and you will find people asking each other favors that you're "not supposed to ask" and discussing topics that you're "not supposed to discuss" (according to Terrestrial norms), and yet simply intuiting which topics to avoid (which a Terrestrial might "clumsily" attempt) and at which point you simply do not push. A social group of Aerials understand why, to go back to my original fictional analogy, one Aerial cannot come or must return home early "because the winds aren't right".
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Who is rich?
Trump's new declared tax plan has sent out ripples of reaction throughout the media, mainstream and not. Some say that he goes too far. Many say he does not go far enough. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on the specifics of the plan. Memorably, several scattered sources have claimed that the mortgage interest deduction currently causes rich people who pay the AMT to buy larger homes (and people being able to afford larger homes is a problem, for some reason). Others have claimed that some lower-middle class families may pay as much as $100 per year in additional taxes as a result of this "horrible and regressive" plan. (They were notably silent when Obamacare premiums rose by an average of about 25% this year.)
I have seen a theme repeated, though, among rank-and-file commenters on various news sources, that troubles me, because it is linked to a problematic underlying philosophy. They say that this plan is all well and good, but this tweak or that tweak needs to be made to ensure that the rich pay their fair share. Usually in debunking this argument, conservatives and libertarians lean on words like "pay" (does the government have the right to take the money?), "fair" (a higher percentage of their income? A higher percentage of the taxes?), or "share" (What do people owe society as tribute for the shame of being wealthy?). I would like to focus, instead, on the word "Rich".
Terry Pratchett was an economic and political genius, and we are all sadder for his loss. In one of his early books, Guards Guards, he described the mindset of a group of laborers coming together under the leadership of a man who hoped to rule the city by terrorizing it with a dragon that he needed their help to summon.
The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly lightheaded feeling. It was as if he’d known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such astonishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all.
If there's one takeaway I'd like my readers to get from this post, it is this, and I'll put it in boldface so that it sticks out despite being probably about halfway through my 'essay' by the time I'm done: You do not want someone else deciding what constitutes "wealth" for the purpose of government confiscation and redistribution of wealth.
This is actually a lesson that I first tried to give people when Obama was running for office in 2008, and many moderates took his speeches about how "the rich need to pay their share" and "we need to have a global mindset" in this exact same way: they mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. All the while, I was trying to pound away, to get people to listen and understand that, on a global perspective, even the poorest people who aren't even on welfare, even the homeless people on the street with no ID, no income, and no government social programs, are wealthy.
When the working-class started seeing their costs rise and their benefits decrease under Obama, I already knew it was coming. They fussed and fretted and felt betrayed, but I had already anticipated this move. The universe had been divided by the people with the power to make the changes, and these folks were not on the side where they expected to be.
The people now talking about the "rich paying their fair share" are mostly speaking against the total removal of the AMT. Don't remove it completely, they say. Just shift it up a bit. A bit further. You know, far enough so that I'm not "rich" anymore. What they miss is that this was the original intent and purpose of the AMT, which at first only targeted about 155 families, but which now reaches well into the middle class.
So let me remind 'my people'... 'ah, my people'... that the average American household in poverty has a large enough home that it would be considered 'wealthy' in most of Western Europe. You could halve the food stamp allotment to the poorest families and they'd still have more to eat than most people in the world. In fact, even in the country with the highest median income per household in the world (Norway, according to Gallup), that income is less than $52K/year... and some people claiming both that we need to keep the AMT and they shouldn't be paying it were claiming a household income in the $70-150K range.
Ditch the AMT. What with the removal of all these tax breaks, Trump would be practically enacting it on everyone anyways. Let the rich have their break. You have your break. Don't be so eager to define whether someone else has "too much" money, "too big" house, "too many" vacations, "too fancy" clothing.
Rest assured that someone else is doing it to you.
I have seen a theme repeated, though, among rank-and-file commenters on various news sources, that troubles me, because it is linked to a problematic underlying philosophy. They say that this plan is all well and good, but this tweak or that tweak needs to be made to ensure that the rich pay their fair share. Usually in debunking this argument, conservatives and libertarians lean on words like "pay" (does the government have the right to take the money?), "fair" (a higher percentage of their income? A higher percentage of the taxes?), or "share" (What do people owe society as tribute for the shame of being wealthy?). I would like to focus, instead, on the word "Rich".
Terry Pratchett was an economic and political genius, and we are all sadder for his loss. In one of his early books, Guards Guards, he described the mindset of a group of laborers coming together under the leadership of a man who hoped to rule the city by terrorizing it with a dragon that he needed their help to summon.
The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly lightheaded feeling. It was as if he’d known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such astonishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all.
“I bet a king’d have something to say about landlords,” said Brother Plasterer.This little mental exercise is undergone by each and every person who argues that "the rich" need to pay "their fair share". They celebrate tax cuts for "the middle class", of course, people making only [insert their own income here], but the "really rich people" need to continue to pay more. The definition of "really rich people" differs wildly by example, but it always represents a margin north of the commenter's own income.
“And he’d outlaw people with showy coaches,” said Brother Watchtower. “Probably bought with stolen money, too, I reckon.”
“I think,” said the Supreme Grand Master, tweaking things a little, “that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving.”
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
If there's one takeaway I'd like my readers to get from this post, it is this, and I'll put it in boldface so that it sticks out despite being probably about halfway through my 'essay' by the time I'm done: You do not want someone else deciding what constitutes "wealth" for the purpose of government confiscation and redistribution of wealth.
This is actually a lesson that I first tried to give people when Obama was running for office in 2008, and many moderates took his speeches about how "the rich need to pay their share" and "we need to have a global mindset" in this exact same way: they mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. All the while, I was trying to pound away, to get people to listen and understand that, on a global perspective, even the poorest people who aren't even on welfare, even the homeless people on the street with no ID, no income, and no government social programs, are wealthy.
When the working-class started seeing their costs rise and their benefits decrease under Obama, I already knew it was coming. They fussed and fretted and felt betrayed, but I had already anticipated this move. The universe had been divided by the people with the power to make the changes, and these folks were not on the side where they expected to be.
The people now talking about the "rich paying their fair share" are mostly speaking against the total removal of the AMT. Don't remove it completely, they say. Just shift it up a bit. A bit further. You know, far enough so that I'm not "rich" anymore. What they miss is that this was the original intent and purpose of the AMT, which at first only targeted about 155 families, but which now reaches well into the middle class.
So let me remind 'my people'... 'ah, my people'... that the average American household in poverty has a large enough home that it would be considered 'wealthy' in most of Western Europe. You could halve the food stamp allotment to the poorest families and they'd still have more to eat than most people in the world. In fact, even in the country with the highest median income per household in the world (Norway, according to Gallup), that income is less than $52K/year... and some people claiming both that we need to keep the AMT and they shouldn't be paying it were claiming a household income in the $70-150K range.
Ditch the AMT. What with the removal of all these tax breaks, Trump would be practically enacting it on everyone anyways. Let the rich have their break. You have your break. Don't be so eager to define whether someone else has "too much" money, "too big" house, "too many" vacations, "too fancy" clothing.
Rest assured that someone else is doing it to you.
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