SUPERSTRUCTURE DANCE

A part of Marxian theory, a part with which I wish I didn’t agree, is his notion of the superstructure.  I am not a purist or raw version believer; I believe in what I understand Marx himself believed.  That is, the economy functions as a sort of a base for the society and over it, metaphorically, is a superstructure made up of the major institutions of that society.  The raw view sees the superstructure being dictated by the base; it follows the demands of the economy.  In the more modest view, the one with which I agree, the base sets the parameters for the superstructure.  The individual institutions are highly influenced by the values and beliefs constituting the economic system.  So, while the economic system does not dictate all the activities in which these other institutions engage, it does set boundaries and help define what is judged acceptable.  This more modest view also allows for the possibility that the institutions have some limited effects on the economic base.  In the last thirty years, you have seen the effect that the economic system has had on the superstructure.

Of course, our basic economic system operates under the controlling influence of capitalism, the ism that is based on private property, property rights, and markets.  Throughout the history of capitalism, the economy has had varying degrees of control over the other institutions.  Here is my take on this variance.  We have, during the reign of capitalism, been drawn to its dictates as an object is attracted to earth.  We might at various times be “shot” away from it by some force, but as the force expends its energy, we fall back to the capitalist way of thinking and resume acting much as an object falls back to earth.  And what is the force that propels us away from capitalism?  Well, ironically enough, it’s the result of going through a period of radical capitalism.  When we approach an unbridled form of capitalist, economic activity – unbridled markets – certain social effects arise due to a magnification of dysfunctional levels of greed.  This is characterized by more and more economic behaviors pursuing profits irrespective of what consequences arise from such strategies.  History tells us that what results are a maldistribution of wealth, high debt levels, and a general disregard for those caught on the short end of the wealth and income “stick.”  In the twentieth century, we had such a time during the 1920s, so raucous a time it was nicknamed the “Roaring Twenties.”  Of course, the result – the force – that propelled the society away from this radicalism was the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which most economists blame the excesses of the previous decade for its eventuality.  Of course, the resulting depression, historians agree, was instrumental in the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and the tragedy of World War II.

As a result of this historical evolution – perhaps, revolution – there was an extensive attempt to bridle in raw capitalism.  Western countries went through a period of Keynesian economics noted for a set of policies that placed meaningful regulations and restrictions on pure capitalism.  What we learn and then seem to forget is that markets don’t necessarily self-correct and they need to be regulated.  In addition to regulatory policies, particularly on the financial industry, there was a plethora of welfare and recovery programs to better distribute income.  This included minimum wage and work programs.  Some have survived but have been diminished.  They have been diminished as part of an overall creep, once again during the thirty years preceding our latest financial crisis, toward the rawer or radicalized capitalist thinking – that gravitational pull has once again had its detrimental effects, resulting in the Great Recession of 2008.  As we study this latest version, though, two historical factors should be kept in mind.

One, the latest manifestation has had a strong supportive mental disposition that is quite conducive to the capitalist mindset; that is, the ascendency of the natural rights construct has become part and parcel of our social thinking.  Natural rights, with its emphasis on individual value determination and lack of substantive moral precepts, makes ignoring the more social aspects of a healthy society easier to accomplish.  Let me share Michael J. Sandel’s thoughts:

[With market triumphalism] some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities.  So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question – health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on.  These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones.  To resolve them, we have to debate, case by case, the moral meaning of these goods and the proper way of valuing them.

These examples illustrate a broader point:  some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities…

This is a debate we didn’t have during the era of market triumphalism.[1]

 Naturally, all that sort of valuing, lack of valuing, and calculations accelerated our gravitational pull toward radical capitalism.  As I alluded to above, this radicalism can be traced to the thirty years prior to the 2008 financial crisis.  The difference, though, was that this latest version, at the point of the debacle, despite our natural rights bias, was met with a more active government reaction than was the case in the 1930s.[2]  This was more of an accidental happenstance; the more progressive party was in power.  During this version, the critical implosion was stymied, and while many suffered, the catastrophe did not reach the drastic levels of the earlier depression. 

So the question this time is:  how forceful was the force?  To what extent did the economic downturn generate the levels of suffering that would result in the reactive forces to propel us away from those gravitational forces of capitalist thought and policy?  A lot of what is going on politically is about this very question.  While many have jobs, nowadays, their jobs are not paying very well and many families are still dealing with the consequences of the recession.  This includes deleveraging from steep debt obligations.  I have lost count of the number of ads I’ve seen that refer to some strategy by which to handle poor credit ratings.  It is my belief that the push away from raw capitalist biases was not strong enough among many citizens as they maintain a healthy belief in markets, while for others, socialist solutions – a la Sanders – do not seem as foreign as they once did.  What has resulted is a confused period in which no one vision, as Keynesian economics was, has emerged to point a way out of our collective woes.

Two, the predictable response of nationalism is less strident this time around, but has made its presence known nonetheless.  The Brexit and Trump – and to some extent Sanders – phenomena can be viewed this way.  No, these are not totalitarian versions of either nationalism or socialism that befell Europe during the 1930s, but it is enough to undermine the dreams of the post-World War II leaders for global semi-governance.  Those dreams were activated so as to lessen the probabilities of another global conflict that inflicted untold suffering and destruction.  Given the potential destructive power of today’s weaponry, this is no small matter.  In this context, the Brexit vote seems worrisome.  Perhaps the decision that Britain is to leave the European Union is not a done deal and the parties can reconsider the vote.

To get back to Marx, all of these social understandings – those emanating from the superstructure – hopefully can influence the base; that together, between our economic and political institutions, we can devise those policies that allow us to establish a workable level of protections from unbridled capitalism.  Such a move would make our political-social-economic realities less worrisome and, hopefully, more promising for a brighter future.  Can we learn from our historical past, a past that was not so long ago?

---

[1] Sandel, M. J.  (2012).  What Money Can’t Buy:  The Moral Limits of Markets.  New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, p. 10.

[2] By way of a reminder, the initial event that led to the onset of the Depression was the Stock Market collapse on October 29, 1929.  FDR’s administration began on March 4, 1933.  The interim years allowed the collapse in the economy to take a strong hold.

WHO’S THE CULPRIT?

This topic is going to come up:  the national debt.  It seems that every election cycle and campaign dedicate at least some interest to the question (or the problem) of the national debt.  Big numbers are involved and, as such, can easily be manipulated and the average citizen can be left mystified as to the seriousness and effect the debt can have on their individual lives.  The party that cries the most about the debt is the Republican one as it tries to paint the Democrats as irresponsible spendthrifts.  In the eyes of most voters, this view is enhanced with the image of the Dems as being the party that favors welfare, bureaucracy, and foreign aid.  These citizens, listening to this campaign rhetoric, seem to have little understanding of what the government spends and many see such budget items as foreign aid gobbling up much more money – in absolute as well as percentage terms – than is actually the case.  And yet when one actually does see the numbers, those pertaining to who is responsible for the increases in the national debt, one gets a very different picture.

In this posting, I want to review the record of the last five administrations.  But before I share these numbers, let me point out one important fact.  The increase in the debt is not just a product of the government spending more or even of tax rates going up or down.  Yes, of course, these are definite factors.  But another important factor has to do with how well the economy is doing.  Why?  Because, if the economy takes a nose dive as it did in 2008, businesses make less profit and workers lose their jobs.  As a consequence of less profit and wages, tax revenues plummet and the government takes in less money – a lot less money.  But it is precisely at those times that governmental support services and other welfare demands increase.  Of course, this means more money going out of government and less coming in.  Consequently, deficits increase and the overall debt goes up.  Again, tax rate policy, such as the Bush tax cuts, and government spending such as the military buildup under Reagan, take their tolls as the numbers below demonstrate.  But one should not forget other sources of debt when one considers what the appropriate levels of spending and taxing should be.

Here are the numbers for the last five presidents:

Ronald Reagan (R) – January, 1981 to January, 1989 – inherited a total federal debt of $848 billion and left office with a total federal debt of $2,698 billion, an increase of 218%.

George H. W. Bush (R) – January, 1989 to January, 1993 – inherited a total federal debt of $2,698 billion and left office with a total federal debt of $4,188 billion, an increase of 55%.

Bill Clinton (D) – January, 1993 to January, 2001 – inherited a total federal debt of $4,188 billion and left office with a total federal debt of $5,728 billion, an increase of 37%.

George W. Bush – January, 2001 to January, 2009 – inherited a total federal debt of $5,728 billion and left office with a total federal debt of $10,627 billion, an increase of 86%.

Barack Obama – January, 2009 to a scheduled departure in January, 2017 – inherited a total federal debt of $10,627 billion and is currently presiding over a debt of just over $16,000 billion, an estimated increase of 60%.[1]

What can a civics teacher do with these numbers?  Well, one thing a teacher can do is test the popular hypothesis of which party is more responsible for the debt.  This would need more information.  For example, which party controlled Congress during the different administrations?  It’s Congress that sets up the final budget and votes it into law.  Another question I think is very important is how able we Americans are to handle increased debt.  So, for example, what was the GDP (gross domestic product, the total dollar value of goods and services produced in a given year) in a particular year as opposed to another year?  I use this figure because it is used most often to measure the health of the economy.  For example, in 1980, the year before Reagan took office, the GDP was $5,934 billion or about five times the amount of the debt.  Today, the debt is just over the GDP number or about one to two trillion dollars over the GDP.  Many find this ratio alarming.  But we have seen these rates before.  After World War II, we had a debt level quite a bit higher than the GDP level.  These kinds of comparisons are useful.  Another investigation that students can do – more of a math problem – is to see during which administration the debt, on average, increased on a monthly basis or the increase between the times that the two parties held the White House.  This latter concern can be answered in terms of a percentage basis or actual money amount basis or both.  So, in the figures above, the Republicans controlled the White House for 240 months.  Using the easier numbers for illustration purposes, during the Republican years, the total percentage increase was just under 1.5% per month, while for the Democrats, it was an increase of .5% per month over the 192 months they held the presidency (which will be the number of months – Clinton plus Obama – when Obama leaves office).  Perhaps these numbers are easier to understand.

I have previously in this blog written about comparing debt to wealth.  My message in that posting was that we can afford our debt as it is currently constituted.  Having stated that, I do want to make it clear that the debt can be a problem, especially when the servicing of debt – how much we pay in interest payments – becomes too large a number in our yearly budget.  So, all other things being equal, we should find a way to lower the debt and that means lowering our deficit rate – the amount by which the debt increases every year.  Here is where a citizen’s values come into play.  We can lower the deficit by the government spending less or we can raise revenues – a nice way of saying raise taxes.  There are portions of our citizenry that are not paying enough and some that are paying too much.  That’s my opinion reflecting my values.  You might have another view, but whatever, the question should be asked and answered:  how do we make sure we can continue to afford our debt?

---

[1] Mikkelson, D.  (2012)  Who increased the debt?  Snopes, retrieved from http://www.snopes.com/politics/politicians/nationaldebt.asp .

HE SAID, SHE SAID

In this blog I have argued for a federated approach to the running of schools.  I mostly have done so because in promoting federation theory as the guiding construct in choosing civics content, I feel that such a civics curriculum would be highly assisted by its being taught in a school that exemplified the concepts and principles that make up that construct.  What does that mean in terms of how the school is run?  Well, it means several things.  That is not to say that the construct’s ideas dictate a modus operandi, but it does demand that the school be run respecting certain qualities.  To understand this, let me go over some basic attributes I have shared in the past – attributes that characterize federal collectives.

A federal collective is one in which the participants in the collective have gotten together and agreed to the commitment that the collective will be united under federal principles.  That agreement, preferably in writing, states that the undersigned pledge to: a set of purposes for forming the collective, a set of principles by which the collective will be governed, the structure of the collective (including positions of authority and subordination), any added elements or relations the collective recognizes, identify any provisions for acts that diverge from the agreement (such as sanctions or other punishments), and a recognition of the solemnity of the promise to keep the provisions of the agreement.  Of course, the last part is the signatures of those agreeing to this pledge.  This type of founding agreement is called a compact.  In order for the typical public school to take such a commitment seriously or to even attempt setting one up is a demanding enterprise and one that falls outside the expected mode of operations that characterizes how the vast majority of schools is administered.  Most schools are simply entities within established school districts and they, in turn, are not federated unions, but substantially sized bureaucracies.  We citizens have allowed these bureaucracies to develop.  Why?  Mostly for the sake of efficiency.  As the famous jurist, Louis Brandeis, pointed out, a cost for republican government is the inefficiencies they entail.  In order for a public school to be federated is to grant it an anti-bureaucratic status; that is, enough leeway so that more of its policy decisions can be made at the school site.  For example, a federated school would almost out of necessity be allowed to select its assistant principals and in that context give the principal primary say as to who should be hired.  As it is, these decisions are made at the district level.  Such authority at the school level would seriously disrupt existing power relations within the vast majority of school districts.  What is being considered, therefore, would be transformational in nature.

So that is the context for what follows.  In such a federated school, certain conditions would have to be put in place; the school would have to establish and support a certain sense among the staff, especially among the teaching faculty.  They would need to generate and maintain a partnership among themselves in which, while their own individual integrity is recognized, they would expect and demand that each participant set his/her goals within the collective in such a way as to not offend the common good of the whole enterprise or within any sub- organized arrangements within the school – such as in a department (e. g., the social studies department).  Part of what is defined as the common good is to pursue actively the purposes of that collective and that might be contrary to the wishes of one or more individual teachers at any given time.  And to pull that off, the participant has to be knowledgeable, to a higher degree, about what such working arrangements demand.  This type of thinking and feeling is foreign to many, if not most, teachers who see their authority in the classroom as their domain.  And yet what he/she does in that classroom has ripple effects in the functioning of that school.  He or she has to understand that to maintain a sovereign view short-circuits any attempt at a federated approach.  The thing is that for a federated scheme to work, the staff, teachers particularly, have to want it to work, and agreeing with such an aim needs to be close to unanimous.

Where in everyday life do we come close to such a commitment?  Why, in the institution of marriage.  As I see it, the more specific the aims of a federated arrangement are – that is usually among smaller collectives – the more demanding it is to have such a commitment.  On the other end of this continuum, for example, would be the federated sense of being a citizen of the US; there, the aims are more broad and dispersed.  But in a marriage, demands are fairly specific in terms of expectations.  So it is at a worksite.  You have your roles and such factors as time, financial resources, norms, and the like, are usually spelled out.  In most work spaces, therefore, federated arrangements are not established and workers do not count on such voluntary levels of compliance and commitment.  Instead, most workplace models are based on contractual arrangements:  I do so and so and you pay me so much.  Federated arrangements have an entirely different sense and feel.  It is more of a “we” sense which is sustained among the workforce by collective goals and agreement on all of the aspects that make up the collective.  Some have described this sense as being organic in which individual cells are in congruence with all other cells.

And, as with a marriage, the interpersonal relations have to go beyond a contractual definition.  The way coworkers interact and communicate takes on a heightened importance.  And this leads me to a body of research that I think is pertinent to this whole business of federated relationships.  The research has been conducted by John Gottman.[1]  Gottman had married couples simply talk between themselves at his research locations and their back and forth sessions have been analyzed using a number code in which a researcher would write down a string of numbers, each one recorded every second and indicating what type of comment was being made.  This research was started in the 1980s and in a relatively short amount of time, these notations have allowed the researcher to predict with a high degree of accuracy whether any particular couple was going to remain married in the ensuing years.  Further research using less time of analyzed comments has shortened the amount of observation time needed in order to solicit high rates of predictability.  What that indicates is that the way couples, in this type of federated arrangement, communicate is very important in determining whether or not a particular arrangement will be successful or not.  Why?  One can only speculate, but it seems that the way we communicate reflects how we feel toward the other person and this in turn will, of course, lead to how we act and how we are motivated to act.

The research was also able to determine what types of communication are detrimental; that is, what types of messages prove to be fatal to the marriage.  As one would guess, negative messaging is involved, but some is more detrimental than others.  The research identified four types of negative messaging:  defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt.  In the account I read, a distinction was made between criticism and contempt.  Criticism occurs, for example, when one would say the partner is selfish, or that he/she never listens to what I say.  But contempt raises the bar to a whole other level.  Contempt occurs when one spouse belittles the other in the form of an insult as in he/she is scum or a bastard.  Often, what is generally considered foul language seems to accompany such utterances.  And that, the use of contempt, is what seems to be the indicator that the marriage will not last.

But in a workplace, outside of a marriage situation, contempt verges on raw insult without the veneer of informality, at least usually.  There are stronger norms against the use of contempt.  If there is contempt among workers, one would expect that the language is more nuanced or hidden.  But I believe the Gottman research is still useful.  In any attempt to establish a federated arrangement, participants would do well to become aware of this research.  Any negative messaging, and some will always be called upon in work situations from time to time, needs to avoid any of the forms identified above, but above all, there is no place for contempt.  Negative messaging should always be related to specific behaviors or the lack of desired behaviors and with sufficient contextual content so as to communicate that the worker is not the target; the behavior or lack of it is.  If there is a question about attitude, values, motivation or other motivating factors, these should be communicated sensitively, in private between supervisor and subordinate.  Again, training for this is important because it’s not whether such communication will be needed, but when and how it will be needed and exercised.  Perhaps, if the resources are available, any large school should hire an expert in such matters to train and supervise how such communication is being conducted within the school among its staff members.

Of course, the question would be asked:  is all this worthwhile?  Why not just go for the contractual model?  I would argue that any collective would benefit from such concerns such as those relating to how fellow workers communicate, but I would also submit that this blog has given enough reasons to date to justify the effort; that is, to become more federated than they are at present.  Of course, such efforts are motivated by understanding and pursuing long-term interests and we seem to find such motivation hard to find.

---

[1] As reported in Gladwell, M.  (2005).  Blink:  The power of thinking without thinking.  New York, NY:  Bay Back Books.

FAIR IS FAIR

One saying that kids are fond of saying is “That’s not fair.”  The thing is, we don’t grow out of saying it, if not out loud, then quietly within our minds – sometimes our subconscious minds.  Fairness, according to George Lakoff,[1] is something we become cognitive of at an early age.  No one teaches us the notion.  Yes, experience helps us define it better and also teaches us:  “No one likes a crybaby.”  So, we learn to be more stoic in life; we grow an awareness that it is not always fair and that quietly coping with slights and other forms of unfairness is best treated without fuss.  But if the stakes are at all meaningful to us or if we’re just having a bad day to begin with, we will be more disposed to react so that others can see our displeasure.  And sometimes it is good to express anger or disappointment or a “What; are you kidding?” sort of reaction.  Others should know when you consider that a line has been crossed if for no other purpose than to establish and protect your integrity. 

At such times, out in public, I have opted with trying to control my emotions and begin with, “I am going to say this as nicely as I can; I hope what I am going to say doesn’t offend you.”  Then I express, in as calm a voice as I can, what my concern is.  If I’m cheated and the consequence is a meaningful loss, what happens next depends on whether restitution can be gained.  If the offending party is known and approachable, of course, a discussion commences and a satisfactory result is sought.  But if the other party is unknown, refuses to acknowledge the offense, doesn’t care and therefore refuses to own up to his/her culpability, then a third party needs to brought into play, most likely entailing a lawyer and the courts.  Of course, all of this adds costs to the process, even if contingency arrangements are made with legal representation.  So, in such cases, the aim would be retribution, not revenge.  Revenge helps no one, even if the emotional side tells us it would feel so good.

Then there is the case when laws have been broken and another branch of the legal system is called upon:  the police and a prosecutor.  You file charges and let the legal system do its thing.  This entails other costs such as being deposed, possibly becoming a witness in court and, perhaps, having to hire a lawyer.  Again, it is very rare that an average citizen goes through this process and says, “Boy, that was fun.”

 In all of this, a very practical strategy is to avoid as much as possible being the offending party; that is, decide early on that it is the safest, with the least long term costs, and the friendliest (acquiring and keeping worthwhile friends) strategy is to act fairly in all your dealings, even if it either incurs short-term costs or gives up on some short-term advantage.  But we should remember that in all of this, we work under an allusion of sorts.

The allusion is the spell of a metaphor that is so entrenched we have codified it into law.  That is, as Lakoff points out, the allusion of money or financial calculations with fairness.  Fairness is a qualitative, not a quantitative thing.  But in dealing with it, we have constructed a quantitative way to measure it.  We are not taught to be concerned with fairness as in when we first said, “He got more cookies than I did and that’s not fair,” but we are taught the notion of a ledger.  This notion takes the following form:  I have so many “points” for being fair or I, in being unfair, owe someone something to make up for my unfairness.  We find it practical and helpful to see this business of fairness as a sort of business, a quantifiable commodity that one can measure.  I say that law codifies it in that if, for example, a dear family member, a father or mother, let’s say, is killed or maimed, the courts will take into account the earning potentials of the injured party so as to figure what monetary amount might satisfy the “justly” defined loss.  We need to balance the ledger.  This way of thinking is so ingrained that we lose sight of the fact, at least as the process is progressing, that this does not begin to address the loss; it can only provide some metaphorical relief.

I bring all this up because I believe that trying to quantify fairness fits the natural rights view of governance and politics.  If governance, in part, is about keeping these collective ledgers somewhat in balance, the government is addressing a maintenance function and trying to satisfy it.  If not, the levels of disagreement and resulting disruptions would render the whole system – governmental and societal – as dysfunctional; if there is enough of that sort of thing, the very existence of the system comes into question or the citizenry, in one form or another, opts for some radical, perceived solution.  Radicalism has a poor record in meeting the problems which we are considering.

Could our current presidential cycle be explained under this light?  If there is a prevailing sense that the system is unfair – and this does not need to be accurate, it just has to be perceived – modern societies tend to look for one of two options.  These are a nationalist option or a “revolutionary” option.  This condition is intensified if actual conditions can be cited as proof that the system is unfair.  If almost all the new increased income of a nation’s economy is going to the top 1%, this can be cited as a factual.  Hence, we have Trump, the nationalist, and Sanders, the revolutionary.  My suggestion to the 1% is to consider your actions, consider their fairness, and consider what you consider fairness to be.  No level of persuasion can eliminate people’s concern over fairness; we’re just wired that way.  And policing our way of accepting general unfairness is very expensive.  I write this with no sense of a threat, but more of a warning.  The telltale signs seem to be popping up.  By all accounts, this campaign season seems to be something very new; it’s telling us something.

---

[1] Lakoff, G.  (2002).  Moral politics:  How liberals and conservatives think.  Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press.

UNENDING, EMOTIONAL WANDERING

We often associate emotions with love.  When cultural messaging turns its focus on emotions, it is often regarding romance or other loving relations.  The prime example is popular music; love is the number one topic.  But, of course, there are many emotions ranging from the more blasé to the most dramatic.  Emotions can be so strong that we can’t seem to see anything other than what is stirring them.  Recently, we have experienced the product – the behavior – that extreme emotions can produce.  There was the killing of a young singer beginning her career, the extraordinary events in Orlando, Florida, and the assassination of a British Member of Parliament.  Of course, the past years have witnessed many such events, perpetrated by highly charged individuals.  With the recent record, one can easily be led to believe that emotions are the enemy; that we need to saddle our emotions and shroud their expressions.  We need to be more rational, objectifying our surroundings, calculating the pluses and minuses those surroundings offer, and arrive at cold conclusions.  I believe all that is a fool’s errand, an impossible aim.  Emotions are an integral part of our decision-making and we need to understand them as much as possible, not be bent on suppressing them.

David Brooks[1] shares with us a certain number of attributes that emotions have.  To begin, reason is ensconced in emotions.  Reason depends on emotions.  When we reason, we consider factual information.  Some of that information, to begin with, is about emotions – we “measure” those with whom we deal and by doing so, we formulate opinions or conclusions about their emotions – “where they are coming from.”  But beyond that, our motivation to engage with others is initiated by emotions.  As a matter of fact, all behaviors are initiated by emotions; we want before we act.  It is emotions that attribute value to things and people.  Those emotions can range from positive ones to negative ones and at extreme levels in both directions, sometimes at the same time.  Brooks states, “The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.”[2]

How should we see this relationship between emotions and reason; how do they function in the mind?  Brooks indicates that the best way to imagine this cauldron of mental forces is to see it as a complex array of pressures, reactions, sensations.  These, in turn, at any given point are vying for influential power in whatever is being considered both at the conscious or subconscious levels – actually more is going on at the subconscious levels due to the enormous amounts of information the subconscious deals with, while the conscious is relatively small in its ability to process information.  The mind is best seen as a conflicted arena, not a town square where reasoned discussion takes place.  The “we” or “me” in this reality, Brooks points out, is best seen as a wanderer traveling through this mayhem.

The “me” travels as a pilgrim across this landscape.  We observe the goings-on and make valuations.  In doing so, we gather information, make judgements, form priorities, and the like.  Through an unmeasurable number of judgements, our mind comes to certain conclusions.  These include a series of goals, ambitions, desires, and what we consider prudent as in the best way to do things.  All of this, upon reflection, makes us amazed that our minds can produce such results.  It is also done in remarkable time; mostly done in moments.  There are, of course, those times when the stakes are perceived as high and the process takes longer.  We wish, at times, that a decision could be avoided or passed on to others.  Our wandering solicits inadequate information or an insufficient amount of information.  It turns out that we don’t know a lot.  Or more to the point, our mind cannot settle on what we want – what our emotions are – and given the nature of what is happening mentally, it is a wonder that this is not the case more often.  And all of this happens in a maturing mind; it “grows” in terms of information or more sophisticated emotions.  It is not as if we are born with an unchanging set of emotional vistas – to carry on with the wanderer analogy – that eventually becomes familiar.  It is said that self-discovery is one of the most challenging journeys anyone takes.  Well, given the image presented above, we can see why.

---

[1] Brooks, D.  (2011).  The social animal:  The hidden sources of love, character, and achievement.  New York, NY:  Random House.

[2] Ibid., p. 21.

A MOVING TARGET OF CONCERN

I have in this blog described Social Security as a very federalist program.  I believe this because of the inter-generational quality of its funding.  The fact that the current working population pays the benefits of the preceding, retired population offers us a high level of interdependence among our citizenry that underlines the federalist notion that we are all partners in this project we call the United States.  I have also observed in my postings that most citizens don’t appreciate this quality; most just see it as a program that they pay into so that at some future date they draw from – a forced savings program.  This is not exactly true.  And it is becoming less true as time passes.

S. Jay Olshansky, Dana P. Goldman, and John W. Rowe,[1] in a recent article, review some of the math involved in Social Security.  The account gets a bit confusing – not their fault, it’s just the nature of the thing – but with what figures I was able to grasp, I would like to report some of the conclusions I think are important.  The article did not address dollar amounts the SSA derives from payroll taxes it collects, but instead shares figures relating to ratios and proportions of people working and contributing to the program, life longevity figures, and proportions of working to retired people.

The first conclusion is that not only are we living longer and are living healthier longer, these numbers have shot up way above what was anticipated when the program was first initiated back in 1935 – as part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt – and even above what the Social Security amendments of 1983 anticipated.  Healthcare advancements have been amazing, a good thing, but have led to strains on the payer/beneficiary ratios.  Point of interest is that the original age for full retirement benefits under Social Security was 65; this was because of the observation that in 1935, most pension plans used that age as the retirement age.  In 1983, as I just alluded to, Congress instituted a set of reforms.  Among them, the law upped the retirement ages.  They set the age for full retirement, starting in 2006, at 66 and it will be upped to 67 in 2027.  Early retirement age, 62, remained the same, but benefits were lowered. 

Was this sufficient?  One way to measure whether the changes are sufficient is to look at what proportion of the population, only including those who survived to twenty-five, were over age 65 in 1935 when Social Security began.  If you take those percentages and apply them currently, since so many people are living longer, retirement age should be 66.5 for early retirement and 69.4 for full retirement.  At those levels, the program would be as fully funded as it was designed to be.  Just to give you a flavor of the article, let me quote part of it:

In 1935, assuming a full retirement age of 65, the population aged 20 and older spent 78 percent of its remaining life working.  If we were to hold this ratio of working to retired years constant and index the full retirement age to rising life expectancy at age 65, the full retirement age would have been 69.1 years in 2009 (based on a ten-year moving average in life expectancy after 65 …).  Assuming an early retirement age of 62, the over-20 population in 1935 spent 74 percent of their remaining life working; and the analysis … in 2004, would have yielded an early retirement age of 66.3 (p. 73).

Got that?  No, don’t feel bad; I’m sure few would, but these numbers reveal grave concerns over the future of Social Security, but the problems are solvable.

Let me share some other numbers.  In 1935, the expected number of years over 65 was 12.6 years; probability of surviving till 65 (conditioned on having lived to 25) was 62.4%.  By 1983, the number of expected number of years above 65 increased to 16.6 years (increasing at a rate of 30 days per year), while conditional survival to age 65 rose to 79.4%.  Between 1983 and 2009, these numbers jumped again.  The number of years beyond 65 rose to 18.9 years (an increase rate of 31.8 days per year) and conditional survival to 65 was then 84.8% between the years ’83 and ‘09.  Another interesting set of numbers is:  approximately 72 percent of retirees begin receiving benefits before they are eligible for full retirement and 46 percent begin receiving those benefits at age 62.

What seems to be a recurring aspect of this situation is that efforts to draw conclusions and suggest solutions to the funding of Social Security continuously underestimate the pace of how fast it is changing, how fast life expectancy numbers are going up.  The article dedicates some space to the efforts of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the Simspon/Bowles Commission).  Its analysis suggested, for example, that full retirement age be set at 68 by the year 2050.  Given the authors of this article’s analysis, this would be highly inadequate.  The history of studying this concern, starting in 1935, has continuously not grasped how successful we are in increasing life expectancy years.

These numbers are averages; not all people, of course, live the same number of years.  We know that variance of life expectation varies according to certain factors.  Gender, ethnicity, geographic area of residence, employment, and others are such factors.  It turns out that attained education level is highly correlated to longevity rates.  Of course, in terms of causal effect, spending extra time in classrooms cannot be reasonably adding years to one’s life.  But having higher levels of education, on average, opens individuals to knowledge, life perspectives, opportunities, and lifestyles that do add years to life.  At least, that seems to be the case.  It probably also reflects family income and rates of wealth.  Here are life expectancy numbers in relation to education:  less then 12 years of schooling in 1990, life expectancy was 75.7; in 2008 it was 74.5; for 12 years of schooling in 1990, life expectancy was 78.3; in 2008 it was 78.7; for 13-15 years of schooling in 1990, life expectancy was 88.1 years; in 2008 it was 89.2; for 16 or more years of schooling in 1990, life expectancy was 86.0 years; in 2008 it was 92.1.[2]  I think you would agree that these numbers are stunning and reflect how unequal the realities of our nation are.  But that is an issue for another posting; here, the point would be that any changes to Social Security definitely need to take into account these variations if such changes will be true to our commitment to equality, a deep-seated federalist value.

Considering issues relating to Social Security is very important.  Talking about it can easily become mind-numbing given the numbers involved.  One such number is how much we spend on Social Security, the number one expense item of the central government’s budget.  Issues include how the Social Security Trust Fund is the holder of enormous numbers of IOUs from the Treasury Department.  In 2011, that number represented about 2.7 trillion dollars.  That is nothing to sneeze at.  How do these rates affect the viability of the cherished program?  Questions of this nature need to be addressed not only by our politicians but also our citizens as well; they need to ask these questions and get their heads around the numbers involved.  Again, Social Security is one of our basic federalist efforts; we need to protect it, not only for the sake of our current and future beneficiaries, but also to protect who we are.

---

[1] Olshansky, S. J., Goldman, D. P., and Rowe, J. W.  (2015).  Resetting Social Security.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Science, 144 (2), (Spring), pp. 68-79.

[2] These numbers are for education attained by 25 years of age.

AND IN THIS CORNER

So, the presidential campaign seems to be set:  Hillary vs. the Donald.  What a joy- ride it promises to be.  The thing is that these candidates are all too familiar to the American public.  Consequently, an institutional practice which we usually would see at the respective convention, the “meet” the candidate film, might not be so important.  This is the film that is shown just before the candidate addresses the bevy of Democrats or Republicans – the speech being the culminating event of the convention.  At least, that is what usually happens.  Trump promises that his convention will be different; it will be more entertaining, showtime.  And since these two candidates are very well known, can either candidate really reintroduce him or herself; can a campaign really “define” the opponent to its liking?  We’ll see what the attempt will be, assuming one or the other convention follows the usual script.

To the extent that such an effort is made – introducing the candidate and defining the opponent – certain psychological principles will be relied upon to guide producers in their efforts.  I have, in a previous posting, I’ll Get My Fix, reported that the cognitive psychologist, Drew Westen,[1] believes that people generally don’t reason over politics; rather, they feel politics.  It turns out, when it comes to thinking about whom to vote for or what policy position to accept and support, people in general let their gut feelings control their decision-making.  Successful producers of such efforts as an “introductory film” understand this, while those who are guided by notions of presenting a logical argument are not so successful.  That previous posting explains these mental operations a bit – check it out (posted on April 26, 2016).  It all has to do with your neurons working in association among themselves.

Westen, in describing these phenomena, uses two contrasting examples to illustrate this difference.  On the successful side, he cites the Bill Clinton film.  He judges that effort as one of the most successful ever.  He explains how footage of his “birth town,” Hope, Arkansas, and his meeting, as a teenager, of President Kennedy at the White House – an event sponsored by a youth group – engendered those emotional ties to which people could relate.  Here is the story of a poor kid, whose father died just before he was born, struggling to improve himself while the narration informs the audience that his professional commitment is to help others through his public service – he was governor of Arkansas at the time.  Westen then provides a counter example as he describes the film produced for John Kerry, the Ivy Leaguer, born to privilege and married to an exceptionally wealthy woman who has a foreign accent to boot.  While there is nothing wrong with having a wife with a foreign accent, the whole image was one to which the average American voter would have a difficult time relating.

In that previous posting, I pointed out that the electorate is fairly evenly divided into three groups:  30% Democrat, 30% Republican, and 40% not committed to either major party and open to persuasion.  This time around, this might not be the case.  Since the primary/caucus season drew so much attention, given the Trump factor and that it has been going on for a year now, – Trump announced his candidacy last June 16 – many more Americans have probably made up their minds; that is, their gut feelings have settled on a choice and that has been further reinforced by their adoption of the respective narratives the campaigns have been using about their candidate and the opposition.  Coming up this week, Trump is going to make notorious charges against Clinton on her schemes to become wealthy, entailing her official duties as secretary of state, and Clinton surrogates are attacking Trump on his attacks on a federal judge and intimating that he would use the power of the executive branch to intimidate the judiciary – a real no-no under our separation of powers principle.  Vice President Biden just yesterday claimed that that is what Trump threatened to initiate in his tirade against the judge who is presiding over the case in which Trump is being sued over matters concerning his defunct Trump University.  All of this is nasty and promises to get nastier.  The one thing I would add is that Trump, with his experience in show business, does have an advantage in this game of pricking emotions.  The result might very well rely on Hillary’s ability to adopt more emotionally laden messaging; she seems to be getting better at it.  She not only is evoking fear of a Trump administration, but also has taken a reflective demeanor and is able to communicate with an air of knowing what she is talking about – a quality which the punditry will help – whereas Trump seems to be limited as to how deeply he can expound on any issue.  Again, the important thing here is not how true this is, but how the candidate can generate or quell fear or other relevant emotions in the audience.

It is said that successful lawyers are successful not because they can muster the better argument, but because they can put on the better show that plucks at the existing emotional biases of the jury.  Well, in an election, the same principle holds, only we voters inhabit the jury box and the two candidates are the opposing lawyers.  Think more of Johnny Cochran than Daniel Webster or Henry Clay.  I would argue this truism has been true all through our history, but it has gotten worse.  When seeing on TV a Trump rally, for example, one can’t help feeling that we are witnessing a modern version of the Roman Circus.  An event lacking in any substance with a speaker spouting mostly banalities and noted for his outrageous and inconsistent messaging.  And, of course, a news media that has abandoned just about any claim at providing a public service – seeking eyes and ears to bolster its ratings and, therefore, its revenues – has broadcast every spectacle of this roadshow as it moved around the country.  There is more to come, and Trump has promised his convention will be something to remember – not so much an introduction, but a heightened effort to cater the inexhaustible demand for entertainment.  Let the good times roll?

---

[1] Westen, D.  (2007).  The political brain:  The role of emotions in deciding the fate of the nation.  New York, NY:  PublicAffairs.