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Politics and Economics
For the sake of argument, I'm reducing the value of social status to its effect on widening the "field of eligibles" - that is, increasing the quality and quantity of potential mates. When in mate-seeking mode, we look around to see who’s available and who we think we can attract. Social comparison is the game. Inequality of mating opportunities is built into this game.
Should every generation be “better off” than the previous generation? What does “better off” mean? Looking only at the middle class and above, I’m assuming recent generations have been able to meet their core needs (sufficient housing, nutrition, healthcare, and education), so what should the current middle class be getting to reflect that they’re doing better than their parents?
I would imagine that many people who commit criminal acts are victims of abusive caregiving, awful environments, or at least genetically-influenced traits that facilitate criminal behavior (e.g., impulsiveness, mental illness, substance abuse, cognitive impairments). As victims, should these offenders get special treatment in the criminal justice system?
In several posts I have supported a modest Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), with the proviso that it be sufficiently miserly not to disincentivize work or add to the federal budget.
Global population growth is not slowing down fast enough.
Ideal # 4: Everyone has a right to 16 years of education Let the questions begin! Is there an age limit to this right? For instance, 30, 50, 70? How is the “right” realized? Through free tuition? Through a stipend? Is there a course/training load required to activate the right? Are there performance requirements to maintain the right? ...
Ideal # 3: Everyone has a right to healthcare. Questions: Where does one draw the line between healthcare that is a right and healthcare that is not a right? Who decides which procedures and treatments will be provided as a right? How much is cost a factor in determining what is and is not a healthcare right? How much does the probability of positive outcomes impact how much cost the right will bear? Or the seriousness of the condition?
Ideal # 2: Everyone has a right to safe and sanitary living conditions Questions (focusing on ‘safety’ only): Re-wording ‘safety’ as protection from danger, what types of dangers should we be protected from? What types of dangers should be tolerated? How much danger should be tolerated within each category of danger? ...
Ideal #1: Everyone has access to affordable housing Let the questions begin! What does ‘access’ mean? Does it mean everyone can be housed if they so choose to be housed? What if they so choose not to be housed? What if they choose to be housed in a way that violated other ideals, like the right of everyone else to live in safe and sanitary conditions? Does it mean housing is guaranteed in certain metro area? Or that it’s available somewhere in the country, but you might have to move to redeem your access? ...
You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand correctly. And you can’t begin to understand a problem unless you see it as a problem. And you won’t perceive it as a problem unless it conflicts with some ideal of what you want the world to look like: a vision of the good (not just a vision of a fixed bad). In that spirit, here’s an outline of my ideal society...
Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right. Wait and see? Try something? Try something else? All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds.
Ideology is not a collection of beliefs and opinions. Ideology is a system of beliefs and opinions. The parts (beliefs and opinions) are interconnected and form a complex whole. The whole is organized according to some core principles or themes.
The Ideological Square:
1. Exaggerate Our Good Things: Our vision is good and true
2. Exaggerate Their Bad Things: Their vision is evil and false
3. Minimize Our Bad Things: Our vision has no serious downside
4. Minimize Their Good Things: Their vision has no merit
“Rather than talking about the 1% and the 99% as if they were forever fixed, it would make much more sense to talk about the fact that Americans are likely to be exposed to both prosperity and poverty during their lives & to shape our policies accordingly.” - Mark R. Rank, “From Rags to Riches to Rags” New York Times, April 18, 2014
Relative affluence or poverty is less a matter of fixed groups than of lifespan. The young are poor, the middle-aged are gaining traction, the near-retired have peaked, and old age is a long decline - in wealth and income as well as health. When we're young, we're getting educated and sampling jobs - a process that can extend into our 30s.
Inequality is correlated with all sorts of bad things (at least if you look at subsets of the international data, which often includes different countries and time periods and doesn't control for outliers, mediators, moderators, and confounding variables). But we all know correlation is not causation...
I've often suspected that one of the appeals of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is the idea that in the ideal society, people would only do what they feel like doing and that people shouldn't feel compelled to do something they didn't feel like doing (a teenage boy utopia). Some think this ideal is about to be realized because work is going the way of the dinosaurs, thanks to robots.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2011, gross median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose from $59,400 to $75,200, or 26.5%. However, once adjusted for household size and looking at taxes from an after-tax perspective, real median household income grew 46%.
The problem with providing grants, low-interest loans, tuition waivers, and free tuition is that they exert no pressure on educational institutions to increase efficiencies, productivity, or otherwise keep costs down.
I’ve written a lot about the Basic Income Guarantee, aka BIG, which is a proposal that all adults get some non-means-tested check from the federal government every month. Arguments for the BIG come from both the left and the right. Progressives consider it a compassionate way to eliminate poverty. Libertarians see it as an efficient way to provide a safety net.