… It all depends on what else is happening in a country, especially related to other indicators of well-being. For example, if high inequality is coupled with high poverty and low social mobility, then we have three problems. If high inequality is coupled with low poverty and high social mobility, it’s not clear to me that we have a problem.
As if the example of other countries’ healthcare systems weren’t enough for ideas on how to fix the US system, the Urban Institute recently released a report comparing six multi-payer health reforms with two single-payer reform options, including Medicare for All. Care of the Commonwealth Fund, here is a nice summary of the eight possible reforms…
According to the researchers, these emotional reactions are understandable in the context of human evolution. Human emotions evolved to help our ancestors survive and reproduce during a time when conditions were brutal. Emotional reactions served to reinforce behaviors necessary for individual and group survival: warm fuzzies for individuals who demonstrated a willingness to put in the effort, reciprocate, and cooperate; and anger for individuals deemed lazy, selfish or uncooperative.
The most common hate crime bias motivations are, in order: anti-African American, anti-sexual orientation, anti-Jewish, anti-white, anti-Latino, and anti-Islamic. Per the following table, the bias mix shifted in 2018…
Cross-cultural studies have found that most people agree with the following: 1) Distribute resources equally, when need and merit are equal and the rules allow it; 2) Give more to the needy at some threshold of neediness, regardless of merit; 3) If there are agreed upon rules, and resources are allocated unequally based on these rules, that’s okay; and, 4) Merit is partly based on considerations of effort, both quantity and quality.
Why is it taking longer for today’s under-40 set (aka millennials) to accumulate significant wealth? Mostly because they’re delaying marriage and home ownership, which is partly a result of financial constraints and partly a matter of social change. Compared to previous generations of young adults, millennials are staying in college longer, have higher levels of student debt, and face tighter mortgage lending standards. They also tend to live in cities with nonoptimal housing markets.
According to the just released Responding to Rising Seas: OECD Country Approaches to Tackling Coastal Risks, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and United Kingdom all have coastal adaptation plans in place.
… income and life expectancy have more to do with how we evaluate our lives and less to do with how we feel on a day-to-day basis…freedom to make life choices and a sense of community make us feel good…corruption, lack of social support, and lack of freedom make us feel lousy.
Lecturing, guilt-tripping, or trying to scare farmers into sustainable practices will not work and is likely to invite resistance - especially in the US, where there’s already a lot of bad blood between the farming community and environmental activists. Forcing farmers to change their ways with new laws and regulations could very well backfire come the next election cycle. Nope, advancing the cause of sustainable agriculture requires an attitude of respect and a solid understanding of farmer priorities, constraints, and concerns. And that requires getting answers to a bunch of questions, such as…
Why is self-efficacy so important to how we approach the challenge of climate change? Because self-efficacy is associated with persistence, tolerance of uncertainty and risk, creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience. Qualities we all could use in the coming decades.
The study authors applied a new model to calculate the global land area below high tide lines this century. Based on this model, they estimated 110 million people already occupy land lower than current high tide lines and that somewhere between 150 - 630 million people currently occupy land that would be lower than the high tide lines in 2100, depending on the emissions scenario.
Wasteful spending on health care is not a trivial problem. It represents resources that could be redirected to, say, higher wages, R & D budgets, affordable housing, or climate change adaptation. Yet it is a problem the political class has pretty much downplayed or ignored, probably because serious spending reform would anger a lot of voters, especially the healthcare workers who lose their jobs or get their pay cut as a result of reform. Luckily, the media and some politicians are finally beginning to grapple with the issue
…global beef consumption will continue to rise due to increasing demand outside the US. Beef consumption destroys carbon-storing habitats and contributes to climate change. However, much of the damage done by beef consumption happens outside the US. If Americans ate less beef, there would be more beef available to export. If the US exported more beef, fewer forests and wetlands abroad would be cleared for cattle.
This is not an argument against ideology. Ideals, grand narratives, and stubborn persistence can all feed the engine of positive change. What tips ideology into a force for awful is the concentration of power and silencing of other voices.
Money holds the promise of future satisfaction. Purchases hold the promise of fading excitement. So at least in some contexts, money may be worth more than what you can buy with it. Which doesn’t mean the economists are wrong. Only that intuitions sometimes speak to truths that economists don’t care much about.
The challenge of housing the chronically homeless is how to do it without breaking the bank, distorting the local housing market, or incentivizing dependency.
I put this snapshot together, because the original report goes on and on, making it hard to see the forest through the trees. Part of solving a problem is organizing your information into relevant facts. One of the problems I’d like to solve is how to fix chronic homelessness without creating serious problems elsewhere. This is a beginning of that project.
Researchers and zookeepers know their animal charges need enriching environments to be happy in their species-typical way. Per Wild Welfare, enrichment is about “creating choices for animals so they feel more in control of their environment.”
“The problem with free speech is that it’s hard, and self-censorship is the path of least resistance. But once you learn to keep yourself from voicing unwelcome thoughts, you forget how to think them – how to think freely at all – and ideas perish at conception.” George Packer, Mute Button /The New Yorker.
Responsive government is like a doctor treating a patient: sometimes 'wait and see' is the way to go and sometimes active intervention. Either way, the best doctors know how long to give the current approach a chance and when to cut one's losses and try something else. Above all else, the best doctors are not burdened by ego, former convictions, or the tyranny of past investment. They let go.