Myth Taken Politics

Are you better off now then you were four years ago?

Well, it could be worse, seems to be the best answer the administration can conjure up. Four years ago, June 29, 2001, things were not looking great, but not looking horrible either. Since then we have been attacked brutally, gone through a recession and an anemic recovery, allowed commentators to point to the coming century as the Chinese century, started and now stuck in two wars, mired in scandal after scandal in business and government, stalled stock market, malaise, potential real estate bubble collapse in the offing. Yes, I agree things could be worse, but not much.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol  Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners. - Sen. Dick Durbin in the Congressional Record

Protests arose over the Senator's comments, and Sen. Durbin apologized for associating the conduct of Americans under the color of the U.S. government with truly horrid governments. Indeed, things could be worse, and were under those regimes. But do we have to list the worst regimes in order to find ones that are worse than ours. Surely this is no great honor. The torture that the Senator described was gruesome and inhumane. People seem to forget that Guantanamo was picked as a prison to avoid being under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Why? Well, if you read what has leaked out regarding the treatment, you might realize that such treatment would not be tolerated under U.S. law.

It could be worse. It sounds like an excuse, but in reality it is a warning to us about what happens if we do not speak up against the outrageous behavior of the administration.

 

Deceptive Advertising by Cato Institute

The Cato Institute thought they had a winner, dissolve Social Security. But although time marches on and their cause loses steam and credibility, they still hold out hope. Today in the New York Times op-ed page they took out an ad. Unfortunately, they do not have to uphold journalistic ethics or avoid deceptive advertising practices. To be fair, they may actually believe what they wrote. So in the spirit of editorial advice I have made some notes that they can use in their corrections piece below.

Minimum Wage = Minimum Efficiency

While enforcing a "living wage" is a noble goal and should be a given for a humane society, there is another important reason for it. Right wingers argue that jobs will be lost if the cost of labor increases beyond the ability of the market to sustain the increase. Although the concern for lost jobs is not a cause for many right wingers, it does reveal a true reason for having a true "living wage."

In reality, a living wage is just a way to measure if the employer is paying the full freight for the labor gained. A person needs a certain amount to live (as opposed to die of starvation, etc.). Society will often fill the gaps created by the lack of a livable wage. These subsidies allow businesses to create jobs that are extremely inefficient, in other words, to game the market system. No business should be able to create inefficient positions and just pray that others, especially the government will make up for their poor business practices. It may be that our society values certain industries or types of companies (e.g. small business) and should knowingly subsidize otherwise inefficient and unsustainable business models. But outside of that exception, the market should not encourage, and would not, creating employment positions that to not create enough wealth to sustain the worker and provide profit.

Unfortunately as was shown by Wal-Mart documents, large, otherwise profitable businesses rely on subsidies and are allowed to create huge inefficiencies that drain capital and hurt competition. A living wage is one of the only ways to enforce free and fair markets. Markets rely on government and other organizations that are outside the market to establish standards for weights, trademarks, common symbols, etc, and a minimum wage is a similar standard that a fair and impartial organization should determine.

A Sick Person Makes for a Sick Society

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, there was an insightful article about medical malpractice and the practice of anesthesiology. Unlike the current clamor of some to reduce the liability to insurance companies for medical malpractice claims, the association representing anesthesiologists worked on reducing avoidable deaths and injuries in a studied and comprehensive manner. The result over the past twenty years has been substantially reduced deaths and injuries as well as overall significantly lower malpractice insurance rates compared to the rest of the medical professions. Sometimes working to create better practices, you get healthier people and by extension a much lower cost to everyone in our society.

It is lost on many of us in this land of high cost medical care without high success rates that may be we should treat everyone equally. Besides the obvious point that we are equal, we also function as an interdependent and intricately intertwined individual parts of a whole. Someone who picks tomatoes in California, touches the food that a diner in Chicago eats. When SARS threatened us, it is only because of group actions that allowed a containment. We do function as individuals at the same time we function as a larger connected health environment. Not protecting one of us, is to threaten all of us. Health care is not just a right for all of us, it is a societal necessity. Standing in the way of providing care, especially by saying it is optional, is to ignore the impact of individuals cast out of a protected status to inadvertently become a danger to those who believe they are still being protected.

Rethinking Common Myths About Social Security

1. America is growing older and therefore will destabilize Social Security.
America is growing older and therefore the necessity of Social Security is even more obvious. To pare back Social Security would be to do the opposite of what was intended. According to figures on the Social Security web site, Social Security was born in part because of the boom in retirees (and urbanization). The life span of Americans' had shot up by 10 years in only three decades (1900 to 1930). Also, life spans increased as more children survive childhood which means that productive years of workers probably increased substantially. Also, with less children per family now and many households with both spouses in the workforce, the ratio of non-worker to worker is not as extreme as looking solely at the ratio of worker to retiree.
2. Social Security is a finite resource that may run out.
All resources are finite which is why societies have and will continue to try to increase efficiency and find new resources. Since 1930, the percentage of food production workers has decreased substantially. The number of people to build cars, clothes, buildings, appliances, etc per item generally has decreased substantially. We have just embarked on a networked society that is driving productivity up substantially. It may be the case that Malthusian economics could come to bear, but that catastrophe will impact all of society, not just the elderly. I have to put my hope and effort into increasing resources to supply all Americans (and people) to live.
3. The Social Security Trust Fund should not be Trusted.
It is easier to take something away from a person when they do not believe that it is theirs or that the thing has no value. People's trust in the system is what keeps it going. Just like people's trust in their bank accounts deepened when the government insured depositors, having a government that issues bonds and money stand behind all their bonds and money allows for a stable economy. My opinion is it is better not to trust organizations who claim that Social Security is insecure because we cannot trust our democratically controlled government. I would rather trust organizations that give the full story about all government finances and promote the trust in and legitimacy of our democratic institutions. In any case, do some research and evaluate the facts and positions dispassionately for yourselves.