#alicetesla

[alicetesla]

Remember the Crusades?

It is time for us to apologize to fat people. And I don't just mean those individuals among us who walk by the obese feeling somehow superior, I mean the medical industry and the food industry, too. And the government. We all owe people struggling with their weight a super-sized "sorry."

While I don't want to promote a victimization mentality, there is no doubt that all of us have succumbed to one degree or another to the endless marketing that has promoted what it calls "healthy" eating. While I would expect nothing less from Big Food and Big Pharma, the government does marketing, too. It's called Public Health.

And no, I'm not against government, or public health campaigns. Nor am I going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that just because we've been mislead in the case of nutrition, that global warming is a scientific hoax. (That comparison was almost instantly made in the comments to the Wall Street Journal's review of Nina Teicholz's new book "The Big Fat Surprise"). 

In the case of nutrition, science wasn't the problem—as Teicholz describes, the research done in the 1950s contained plenty of examples that contradicted the burgeoning American thesis (forwarded by the influential biologist/pathologist Ancel Keys) that one's risk of heart disease was correlated with dietary saturated fat intake. The problem was that scientists such as Keys refused to abandon their hypotheses even when the evidence didn't support them.

In short, this isn't a problem with the scientific method, but with people who decide (for ego, for money, for who-knows-why) not to hew to its principles, essential among them being the maintaining of objectivity, i.e., the courage to admit your hypotheses were totally wrong if the evidence demonstrates so. That takes a lot of courage and humility in general, and in the context of the time when this work was undertaken (the rise of heart disease as the leading cause of death in America), it would have taken a very particular man to say "we don't know the answer, yet." Keys was not that man. For him, a wrong answer was apparently preferable to no answer at all.

While the shift toward a low-fat diet—total fat became a target in addition to saturated fat by the 1970s—did not solve the heart disease problem (which remains the leading cause of death for American men and women), it succeeded in demonizing dietary fat. As early as the 1920s, fat in food was feared to be the cause of weight gain, and adding the mantra of heart healthiness only worsened the situation. Saturated fat was endorsed by the government as the quintessential dietary evil, and the food industry ran with that message, churning out processed foods with lots of flour and sugar, using no fat at all or new fats (including trans fats) made from processed oils. Cake and cola weren't bad for you because they could be fat- and cholesterol-free—never mind all that sugar! Oh, but you are getting fat? Well, don't eat so much sugar, eat more whole grains! Never mind that bread is the same as Skittles to your bloodstream...

Big Pharma ran with it, too; from a shareholder perspective, there are no better medications than "preventative" ones that people need to remain on for many, many decades. The best example of these are the class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, under the premise that lowering cholesterol can reduce the risk of heart attack. Millions of Americans are on these drugs, despite the fact that it has been repeatedly demonstrated that: a) dietary and blood cholesterol are not neatly correlated such that lowering one's intake of the former decreases serum cholesterol levels AND b) lower cholesterol levels are not associated with a lower risk of heart disease. And yet these days doctors are now putting children on statins because of the received (profit-producing) dogma that cholesterol is bad.

So... exit fat, enter rampant obesity and Type-II diabetes. Sorry, American public! Naturally the government recognizes this as a huge public health crisis, but so far it shows no real signs of trying to turn the ship around by advising people to add saturated fat to their diets in exchange for carbohydrates (although, it should be said, the AHA and the USDA have quietly removed their consumption caps on overall fat intake). It about broke my heart last week to witness Michelle Obama campaigning on behalf of fruits, veggies and whole grains, given that there is mounting evidence that too many carbohydrates—no matter from fruit or Cheetos!—are themselves at the root of our dietary problems. 

But we've gone so far down the fat-is-evil road that, even if the First Lady came out tomorrow on the side of the fat's-not-bad-for-you proponents, the reaction would probably be one of knee-jerk backlash. You want to feed our kids eggs and bacon-sautéd broccoli? With whole milk? You must be sent from the devil! After all, it's very hard to unlearn what our culture has "learned" over the last fifty years (since 1961, when the American Heart Association issued its first low-saturated-fat, low cholesterol diet recommendation).

Not to mention the incredible investment that all sorts of industries (medicine and food in particular) have in the status quo. It is one thing for me, an unknown blogger, to say there's nothing I'd like to see more than the soda and cereal industries to vanish tomorrow (the top two non-food foods in my book), but it would be nearly treasonous for someone whose official role is to be, among other things, unfailingly patriotic, to say such a thing. After all, wishing death on giant multinational corporations is, our capitalist credo tells us, very unpatriotic. Think of the job losses!

Even if medical and governmental establishments eventually start to spread the message that increasing the saturated fat and lowering carbohydrate consumption in their diets can actually be a good thing—not only to promote weight loss but overall health and well-being—it isn't going to be simple to change the way Americans eat. The reason for this is purely economic: the industries that grow, process, and distribute our food aren't based primarily on the delivery of staples such as meat, eggs, milk/cheese, fruits, veggies, and nuts. Ultimately, there's not a lot of money to be made in these less-manipulated food staples. Instead, the profits are where the markup is (hello, cereal aisle, oh, and hey there, soda aisle). That's why Big Food is built on wheat flour, corn (often as a sweetener, i.e., corn syrup) and soybean byproducts (cooking oils). And let's face it, Americans eat a ton of processed foods.

Moreover, the return to the diet of times gone by isn't just a matter of ending the dominance of Big Food, but of returning to the practices that make it unnecessary. As anyone who has tried to deemphasize grain in her diet can tell you, it is rather difficult to do so without cooking for oneself. This goes double if you want to avoid vegetable oils, whose oxidation products (i.e., the result of using them to fry food) could well be devastating to our health. Sadly, now that trans fats have been declared lipo-non-grata, restaurants have no choice but to return to polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which may be even worse! Why is this? Well, because all the saturated fat choices, both from plants (palm oil, coconut oil) and animals (tallow, lard) long ago forced out by the anti-saturated-fat Crusaders.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that McDonald's food was less bad for you before it fell victim to the anti-saturated fat Crusade. Yes, that's right. McDonald's used to cook its fries in tallow, and the scientific studies that exist suggest it would be far better for all of us if it—and all other restaurants—started to use saturated fats again. For the last ninety years, we've replaced an age-old ingredient with one whose health consequences are at best dubious, and at worse entirely negative. While correlation isn't enough to prove causation, it should caution all of us to learn that the increased consumption of so-called "vegetable" oils (the term is misleading, because the oils come from seeds, mostly soybeans) is the single greatest change in the American diet in the last 90 years. ("The most striking modification of the US food supply during the 20th century was the >1000-fold increase in the estimated per capita consumption of soybean oil from 0.006% to 7.38% of energy." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, May 2011 93(5): 950-962) 

Until the "bring back tallow" campaign kicks into high hear, the return to more home cooking could be a very good thing. And although the food industry has worked for decades to convince us that cooking is hard, it really isn't. Indeed, what undoubtedly made it hard for many people in recent decades was the handing down of the dogma that lard and butter were off-limits. Because any cook knows that the easiest way to make anything taste better (especially green veggies) is to add fat. In short, not only did we get screwed out of the deliciousness of red meat, we got screwed out of passing down our traditional ways of cooking because it was deemed unhealthy. As one commenter on the WSJ article lamented: "Who do I sue?"

No need to get litigious, just pass the butter. 

[alicetesla]

Misfortune in the modern age: The world is not enough

Years ago on my previous blog, I wrote a piece in which I explored the concept of "word poverty," namely, the difference in the size of the vocabularies of even very young children that researchers have discovered in the children of economically poor families. 

The initiatives, including one named Too Small to Fail, are driven by the notion that success in the world requires that parents develop their children's vocabularies at very early ages through singing, talking, and reading to them from birth. In part, this and similar initiatives take the norms of upper-middle-class parenting and seek to spread them as a new gospel, the gospel that emphasizes education and personal development. On another level, these interventions are redefining poverty not as a lack of funds, but as a cultural deficit.

What does that mean? Well, it means that the poor these days aren't the poor of yesteryear. When Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty 50 years ago this year, the targets in his sights included families living with dirt floors and no plumbing and children going hungry. The blight of poverty was physical; it kept people from possessing the basic amenities of a comfortable life.

Today, poverty is different; refrigerators and toilets are taken for granted, as are more modern amenities such as cell phones and flat screen TVs. The "poor" can afford these latter items mainly because their prices, relative to other consumer products, have plummeted steeply over the last several decades. People on the political right (e.g., the Heritage Foundation) use this fact to encourage people to be dismissive of the problem of "poverty" in America (yes, they put it in scare quotes!). What this emphasis on material comfort elides is the fact that other costs, such as those of education, childcare, and healthcare, have increased—and it is the ability to secure access to those amenities that allow people to improve their station in life. 

The right clings to the older understanding of poverty in order not to address the problem: poverty today represents the impossibility of gaining any traction on the economic ladder, the ladder whose rungs are made of capital. If you can barely pay your rent and keep your car working to go to your low-paying job, you are never going to increase your capital, even if you can afford (usually on credit) a new television. Similarly, subsidies we do give to the poor (food stamps, housing credits), while allowing them to maintain a certain standard of living, aren't enough to permanently alter their status as poor. Like a mantra, we simply repeat the importance of educating the next generation as a way 'out'.

When we encourage mothers to speak more to their children as a way of securing their future out of poverty, we are in fact admitting that the world is driven by capital, and that there is no longer any capital to be earned by speaking plain, getting a grade school education, and working with one's hands. If your mother is poor, it seems to be implied, she must raise you as if she weren't poor to raise you right. Poverty isn't the lack of money, or even the lack of opportunities. Rather, it is the non-material difference between the minds of the people who have money and the people who don't. If that sounds far-fetched, take a look at this recent article that discusses the evidence that the greatest predictor of college graduation is parental wealth. 

I suspect it isn't a coincidence that the way parents now see (or are encouraged to see) their children as capital investments coincides with the tendencies in today's economy toward wage stagnation. While one should not wax too nostalgic about children working on the family farms, one might also see in the connection between the coming into the world of a child and the sustainable livelihood of the farm as a fundamental and worthwhile natural relationship. I don't mean natural in the sense of perfect, and I don't mean to suggest we should all go make our way off the grid in the dirt, but I do mean to suggest that the way we are raising our children today reflects a strange change in the place of people in the economy: like children, too many of us have been deemed economically worthless.

In this climate, the fretting over the economic significance of stay-at-home mothers or the financial hardships of single motherhood both reflect the larger worry that the economy isn't working very well to take care of people 'as they are,' which is to say, as people, not people-in-relation-to-wealth. That said, at least some children are today the site of an intense social reevaluation of what it means to be valued: the epidemic of autism has fundamentally altered the way our culture sees people with developmental disabilities. Whereas it was the norm a generation ago to institutionalize severally disabled children, now it is routine for parents to rise to the challenge of their children's illnesses, becoming their primary caretakers, teachers, and advocates.

While one would hope that this is part of a larger trend toward understanding disability and care as part and parcel of the human experience, one might question why we are so ready to accept—and expect—the parent as martyr. Given that it now is the parent's job to render her progeny valuable to the marketplace, it is inevitable that this same economic anxiety has crept into the new attitudes toward developmentally disabled children—and the adults that they will become. The reason that so many autistic children live with their parents as adults is that we understand independence as economic (having a good job) and dependence as familial (parents support children)—there is not much exploration these days of the middle ground, i.e., the interdependence of a multi-household entity called community. 

This is the problem as I see it with the modern antagonism toward misfortune: we have lost sight of the values that grow out of an awareness of powerlessness, of our own limits. The idea that everything can be remedied is a hallmark of contemporary culture, but such optimism may itself be part of the problem. Do we really need to teach mothers to speak to their children differently? Or do we need to change the world in which this mother and child speak?

[alicetesla]

Misfortune in the modern age: Motherhood

There is probably no other arena that demonstrates the changing understanding of misfortune than parenting today. Parenting—and motherhood in particular—captures perhaps better than any other issue how our culture now views as entirely fraught what used to be understood in much less nuanced terms.

In her book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting, Jennifer Senior summaries two obvious reasons that childrearing has changed: the luxury of choice of whether and/or when to procreate and the expanding role of work in adult lives. In short, people who plan to do what was once merely viewed as inevitable or obligatory have different expectations of the experience of parenting. Add that to the fact that the majority of women with children now work, and you have a very different picture than motherhood 50 or even 30 years ago.

But what Ms. Senior's book is really about is the transformation in what it means to be a modern child: after WWII, the long-standing model under which children necessarily contributed to the household (whether on the farm or the factory) slowly reversed to today's model where a parent's job is to serve her children. As Ms. Senior puts it: "Children went from being our employees to being our bosses."

The pressure that modern parents take to raise happy, healthy, profoundly nurtured children reflects the idea that the parent can—and therefore should—protect the child from a world beyond the home that is often unhappy, unsafe, and uncaring. In my mind, it is the notion that such protection is possible that, gradually, transforms this ideal into a demand, even a necessity. While babies then and now are utterly dependent creatures, such dependence did not always carry the same implications: namely, the implication that appropriate parental vigilance could prevent bad things from happening. Failure was, in short, an option, because the world was a dangerous place, particularly for babies and child-birthing mothers.

Evolution seems cruel in this way; why should it be so dangerous to be born and to give birth? There is a biological answer to this but it is the philosophical one that interests me more. And the change in one impacts the other: the more and more possible it becomes to spare mothers from the fatal risks of pregnancy and delivery, the younger and younger premature babies that can be kept alive, the more and more unnatural failure and loss in regard to children seem to become on a cultural level.

In 1963, Jackie Kennedy delivered a premature baby boy (Patrick) during her husband's presidency; while today such a child (delivered in an emergency Caesarian section four and a half weeks early) would almost certainly survive, at that time, the death of a premature baby wasn't terribly unusual, even when the woman in question was the First Lady. (The Kennedys also had a stillborn daughter, Arabella.) If anything, one might argue that the fact that such problems plagued the first couple reinforced the normal, if terribly sad, fact of infant death.

These days, failure, whether it be on the part of the parents or the doctors, is not an option. The "miraculous" power of medicine combined with a much more rigorous analysis of risk have triggered an anything-but-miraculous attitude on the part of today's parents—and so the helicopter parent is born. You must, the logic goes nowadays (turning on its head the reality of yesteryear) be totally devoted to your child, as nothing short of that will allow them to thrive. In this cultural climate, it becomes very difficult to imagine an unenthusiastic mother being good for her children. Somehow, the mere fact that we can choose not to be parents makes parenting into an all-or-nothing venture.

My father knew very early in his life that his parents' attitude toward children was precisely that of "children happen." And yet the fact that they never lost their focus on the other aspects of their lives (work, music, sports) didn't always work to my dad's disadvantage. For one, he was free to roam on his own at a very young age. Second, he wasn't isolated in a separate child culture, but rather exposed to the serious passions of his parents: hiking/backpacking, ice skating, international travel. These days, the needs of children are considered particular; in those days, it was just taken for granted that when the parents wanted to do something, it wouldn't hurt the kids if they came along.

While the importance of the first-world woman's liberation from uncontrolled or unwanted child-bearing cannot be understated, it doesn't seem to me that what has really been gained is freedom. While you don't have to have children, the expectation is clearer than ever that, if you decide to have them, that decision means that you are going to raise them firmly within today's child-focused culture; a culture that insists that the world itself—by which I mean as it actually presents itself to the adults living it in—is not enough.

My mother stayed home with me for the first several years of my life: this was the glorious late-70s when a family could still get by on one income. Yes, it could be isolating and boring, being home with a baby, then a toddler, for days and months on end, but I don't think my mother thought of it in the kind of apocalyptic terms that seem to cling to the stay-at-home-mom discussion today. (I can't imagine her, feminist though she was, wondering about her salary were mothering a paid job.)

Maybe this was the soft insult of that time: my mother wasn't giving up a career because women didn't have them to begin with. The funny thing is, though, from where I stand, that attitude seems to have helped her more than hurt her, since it allowed her to raise me without making any sort of dramatic statement about the whole thing. And later, she went and got her career, starting with law school in her early thirties, after I entered grade school.

It's not even 40 years ago, but such a world seems like La-la-land. But it sounds like a reasonable world in which to raise a child. One in which a woman is not constantly being measured by either the leaning in or the leaning out stick. I mean, someone's got to raise the child, and if nowadays many more mothers are so by choice, then clearly the issue here isn't the obligation, but something larger.

Personally, I think it has to do with the contemporary relationship between economic and emotional values. And this has everything do with misfortune.

Huh, you say? To be clarified in the next post.

[alicetesla]

Misfortune in the modern age: Introduction

Scroll far enough down and you'll find that I linked to a piece about the controversy on the Underwear Man, but I never got around to writing a piece about it. And now here he pops up again, in of all places a NY Times piece about a new-to-me trend on campuses to warn students about potentially discomfort-causing material they might encounter in their coursework.

While all reports indicate that the modern college experience is awash in undeniably traumatic sexual misadventures, slapping warning labels on syllabi seems an inadequate and illogical response. After all, such a policy does nothing to address the actual problem, namely, a campus environment rife with sexual assault. 

Someone looking at this problem through the pre-feminist lens of generations past would find it pretty obvious that the problem is fraternization—leave young men and women to their own devices, and the result is mayhem and misery. Of course, nowadays the notions that women can't be trusted to regulate their sexual lives, or that men can't be expected to accept no for an answer, are all horribly retrograde.

Maybe so, but I don't consider women feeling threatened by the sight of a statue of an old guy in his undies to be a sign of progress on the sexual liberation front. If anything, I'd have thought that these educated, self-possessed young women would be the perfect audience, the one most likely to catch all the ironies and, after perhaps a brief shock, have a hearty laugh. 

This obsession with trauma and a demand for what we might call trauma concessions seems to be a misplaced backlash against the college environment. We have been victimized, these feminists seem to take pride in proclaiming, and as part of our commitment not to sweep our trauma under the rug, we assert the right not to be blindsided by it in our schoolwork. It's not that these women don't read magazines or ever watch TV—or surf the Internet. I mean, any given episode of Law & Order: SVU is inarguably 100 times more traumatic than The Great Gatsby. But these sources of cultural messages are optional, as opposed to the students' (almost certainly tamer) syllabi. The former are excused under the right to free expression. With the syllabi, though, it is different: these women are paying consumers and thus demand the right to shape the college environment. And since they are apparently unable to effectively demand that this environment be free of sexual assault, they demand—as a sad, poor proxy—that their syllabi warn them of upsetting material. 

This notion of trauma (the "raped all over again" principle), and the imperative—indeed, a feminist right—to be free of it simply makes the status of victim permanent. If the only hope of living a happy life post-sexual assault is in a good-news-only environment, well, for these co-eds there is no hope at all. While it is true that one's statistical belonging to the category of victimhood has no expiration date, it would seem a healthier attitude to claim that, given the right counseling and enough time, a woman would emerge out from under this mantle and simply go on with her life without every single subsequent experience she encounters—whether in film, literature, or in life—reducing her, or rewinding her, back to the sole status of victim.

It is easy to claim that I am not being understanding enough; certainly there are experiences from which it is very hard, if not nearly impossible, to recover. Many women may never feel 'the same' as they did before being raped. But almost as certainly, these feminists who are trying to avoid all reminders of past trauma, be it personal or cultural, are being naive, not only about themselves, but about the world in which we live. People do bad things, even college students, but the true feminist response, in my opinion, would be to claim that one negative experience does not brand someone a victim forever.

Violence is an event, violation is a crime, but there is nothing in our biology or psychology that says we need to bear the marks of it forever. Indeed, that was the old way of looking at a woman; once she was deflowered or degraded, she was permanently damaged. Why on earth would feminists want to claim the forever-branded mantra as their own? 

It's not just feminism that seems suddenly enamored by this right-to-coddling. It's rampant in all sorts of areas of life. Stay tuned as I continue with this theme.

[alicetesla]

What the hell happened to you?

TumblrBot: Alice, fancy seeing you here!

Alice: Yeah, right?

TumblrBot: I was beginning to think you'd been uploaded to the Machine.

Alice: No, but I did see that movie—twice—and let's just say I'll always remember the German verb for 'upload'.

TumblrBot: Uploaden?

Alice: Lol. Close, though. Hochladen.

TumblrBot: So if you haven't transcended us, what is your excuse?

Alice: Well, it all started when I saw Paul Solomon's report on basic minimum income potentially appealing to both the left and the right.

Alice: Well, sure. But it just proves that whatever I come up with is already covered by a source that has way more reach. I mean, if your ideas are getting play on PBS, you can consign your 'cutting edge' sweater to the attic. Ya know?

TumblrBot: There's nothing new under the sun, I hear.

Alice: So you see, I decided my time was better spent elsewhere. I went to learn more German while I still have the advantage of being in situ. And then I got sucked into the wormhole known as Objective-C.

TumblerBot: You mean the language in which iPhone apps are written?

Alice: The very one.

TumblrBot: Yikes, Alice.

Alice: Well, it has been character building. In a painful, soul-searing kind of way.  

TumblrBot: You might be too old to jump into that pool.

Alice: Oh, there's no might about it. I feel it. But that doesn't bother me, because you can learn at any age. Whether you can prosper or profit from it is another issue. And that part does bother me a bit. The fact is, you don't get a lot of mileage these days out of having good ideas. Your ideas aren't worth much if you cannot get them out there, connect with a broader audience. For what is looking more and more like a parenthesis in the modern period, that process of connection involved communication skills. And so people who wanted to trade in ideas studied the reading arts, because it was those arts that taught you to think, to absorb ideas, and in turn to express your own.  

But that's not how you reach people today. Today's ideas are applied ideas: 'there's an app for that' is not an idle joke, but a measure of the reality of your own impact. If there isn't an app that puts your idea in the hands of millions, your idea may as well not exist.  

TumblrBot: Hmm.

Alice: So here I am, educated in the old world and trying to make it (well, not trying all that hard, admittedly) in the new one. But I do need to try, try until I succeed. It simply will not do to never be engaged in something bigger than myself...

TumblrBot: You sound a bit down. 

Alice: Well, frankly, even if I had already made my great app, even if it were in the app store right now, it probably wouldn't change much. It's not merely that I don't possess the skills to put my ideas in the going format; it's also the fact that my ideas themselves are firmly within the old world. So even if I somehow manage to coax a few neurons into the way of the the code, I'm never going to alter the fundamental orbit of my thought. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to.

Which is to say, although I feel like a fool for having assumed that being a good reader and writer (and not a half-bad teacher) would of course get me a job as a professor, the anger/embarrassment/confusion of not having a career at the wonderful age of 3– does not constitute a rejection of what I have learned and loved thus far. 

It just means that sometimes I go AWOL. Sorry about that. It feels good to be back. 

[alicetesla]

Unconditional Basic Income (part 2)

There are at least 92 federal programs designed to help lower-income Americans. For instance, there are dozens of education and job-training programs, 17 different food-aid programs, and over 20 housing programs. The federal government spent $799 billion on these programs in fiscal year 2012. 

But rather than provide a roadmap out of poverty, Washington has created a complex web of programs that are often difficult to navigate. Some programs provide critical aid to families in need. Others discourage families from getting ahead. And for many of these programs, we just don’t know. There’s little evidence either way.                                                                

                                                        —The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later

It's the same old story: conservatives criticizing the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of federal spending on anti-poverty programs, and liberals (in this case the NY Times editorial board) calling the Republican criticism hypocritical.

It’s easy to find flaws or waste in any government program, but the proper response is to fix those flaws, not throw entire programs away as Mr. Ryan and his party have repeatedly proposed. It might be possible, for example, to consolidate some of the 20 different low-income housing programs identified in the report, but Congressional Democrats have no reason to negotiate with a party that fundamentally doesn’t believe government should play a significant role in reducing poverty. (Similarly, Republicans complain endlessly about flaws in health care reform, but their sole solution is to repeal the entire program, not improve it.) 

What better moment could there be for a reconsideration of this issue?

What if we were to start the discussion by taking as a given both the conservative and liberal points of departure? That sounds crazy (if not impossible) but it's actually pretty simple. First, we acknowledge that the federal government is and must be in the business of redistributing income. That's the way it is and that's the way it is going to stay—any politician who takes a stand on getting government out of the way is simply vote-bating. Second, we acknowledge that, no matter what their intent, the programs that target specific populations in need (the poor, the elderly, the unemployed) are at best illogical and at worse ineffective. Our hearts may be in the right place, but clearly if the most openly progressive president in recent memory can preside over the new Gilded Age, something is very wrong with the system.

If we start from there, what becomes clear is that income needs to be redistributed but in a different way from the status quo. Let's consider the largest program that currently redistributes income: retirement benefits from Social Security. Although the New Deal certainly rescued a generation of older Americans from destitution, no one on Capital Hill seems to be willing to ask the question of whether this particular form of income redistribution is the one that, in this day and age, makes the most sense. Of course part of that reluctance is self-serving, as no politician is willing to incur the wrath of a large and reliable block of voters. 

But another part of that reluctance is ideological: the fact is that giving retirees income is (now, anyway) one of the rare kinds of income distribution that both parties can agree on. This is because it satisfies a liberal sense of justice and compassion without falling into the conservative fear-zone of encouraging government dependence. Conservatives fear that government assistance encourages dependence, and so are much more comfortable assisting retirees who have (presumably) worked hard all their lives. Besides, the elderly aren't going to pop out more babies to increase their monthly check.

Call me crazy, but I cannot be the only one who thinks that there is something morally odd about deciding that it is age that suddenly makes a human being deserving of a guaranteed means of support and access to health care. However, I think that there a particular American logic to why Social Security seems to strike people as a moral right while the notion of an unconditional basic income does not. This logic comes out of a belief that there is a morality inherent in the capitalist relationship between consumption and production, i.e., it is seen as proper that most people will work (produce) the majority of their lives in order to live (consume). Of course, the human truth of the matter is that most people cannot work their entire lives, and so some accommodation needs to be made for those final years as mere consumers. (Children are also mere consumers, but they are considered the responsibility of their families.) In this sense, retirement income is a minor adjustment to a moral, effective, capitalist system. The thinking is, of course, that even if retirees don't have the money to support themselves, they have nonetheless 'earned' the right to be taken care of by having contributed to the system—the system being the economy, not the reservoirs of Social Security (although they have done that as well). 

Once that logic is made clear, it is easy to see why the notion of redistributing income to all adult citizens, regardless of means or work history, seems like a violation of the essential ethos of capitalism. Even liberals, who are so concerned with helping the poor and/or disadvantaged, may balk at this type of proposal; they are invested in helping those who cannot help themselves. There is something 'fair' about that that is hard to argue with. 

And yet I want to argue with it. I think that this view is, in its own way, as narrow as the conservative view that thinks that a free market can raise everyone out of poverty. If I laugh at that, how can I not laugh at the equally ideological idea that an extensive web of social programs are the answer? Both these perspectives pretend that they can reduce the wide swath of human conditions and behaviors into a system that can be understood and, therefore, perfected. Conservatives say that people will be motivated by need and trapped by handouts; liberals say that people are crushed by poverty and motivated by opportunities. But both of these beliefs are true and false—they cannot be otherwise given the sheer number of people in this country and the incredible diversity among them. 

The institution of an unconditional basic income therefore appeals to me as a moral proposition that tries to acknowledge the risks of ideological principles. It appears moral to me because in a country of such great wealth, it seems idiotic not to come up with a better way to redistribute it, especially when it comes to the basics of food, housing, and access to healthcare. That is not the same kind of morality that claims it is immoral to be rich, or pretends that material equality between people is either possible or desirable. But that is also not to say that I take no notice of the effects of income disparity or that I have no opinion about it. It is merely to say that my ideas about policy respect the limits of what I believe it is possible to achieve through it.

Here's why I believe an unconditional basic income makes sense.

More practical redistribution of wealth. While Social Security was designed to save older Americans from abject destitution in their later years, it is given to all seniors, regardless of their other sources of income (savings, investments, pensions). If we have already crossed the Rubicon so to speak about awarding non-means-tested income, wouldn't it make a lot of economic sense to award such income to younger people as well, the very folks who are less likely to already have accumulated savings or reached their earning potential?  Oddly enough, this issue of the lopsidedness of SSI actually made the rounds late last year (under the meme 'generational theft'). It should come as no surprise that it did so as another round in the oh-so-familiar fight between the debt-obsessed conservatives and the save-the-seniors liberals. Here's the gist from the HuffPo:

The biggest lie in Druckenmiller's crusade is the premise that the income distribution problem is somehow generational and that he, as a billionaire, has anything whatever in common with most college students or most recipients of Social Security. One of his pitches to students is that Social Security is excessive because he, a very wealthy man, receives it but doesn't need it. But for the vast majority of the elderly, Social Security is a lifeline, and a meager one at that. Some two-thirds of all seniors depend on Social Security for half of their income. Fully 46 percent of elderly widows and other unmarried seniors depend on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income.

Conservatives use billionaires as an argument that social security is wasteful, forcing liberals to cite poor seniors (and even emphasize the program's meagerness!) to prove it is necessary. Neither party seems to be able to think outside the box and understand the program as a method not a means to one specific end. Social security redistributes income to retirees, something that we've decided is necessary and beneficial in this country. Yes, one of the benefits it has had is lifting many seniors out of poverty, or preventing them from falling into it—but as it is not run as an anti-poverty program, criticizing it for not functioning as one is pretty stupid. Conservatives know, though, that because liberals are so afraid of being accused of socialists, that they don't dare defend it on grounds other than poverty-prevention. That's why I'm sick of both the traditional party stances on this issue. If SSI works, why not expand it? Why all this ranting about stagnant salaries if we already know how to help people? And really, what is so wrong with billionaires getting a government check? They pay (some) taxes. Besides, maybe they will give it to charity. Not to mention we give tax breaks and bailouts to corporations all the time!   

Separation of the standard of living from the value of labor. Now more than ever, it is difficult if not impossible to make a decent living as an unskilled worker. You can be motivated, reliable, and trainable, but you cannot make the market pay you more than it wants to—or has to. Politicians on both sides of the aisle can talk until they are blue in the face about education as a way toward better-paying jobs, but the simple fact is that for every single mom who moves up from receptionist to technician, there is another person who has to take that receptionist job. Nor does education and/or training always make the difference—look at the crisis of the adjunct professor. On the other end of the spectrum, things are just as ridiculous: CEO pay is off the charts, even if we know that these salaries don't reflect any realistic sense of human value—I mean, do we really think that the 55 employees of WhatsApp are "worth" $350 million a piece because Facebook was willing to spend all that money to purchase away the threat of a competitor? Of course we don't.

Separation of work from consumption. I was listening to the reports about the January economic numbers the other day and they were talking about how the winter storms had prevented people from shopping, thus causing lower than expected consumption. The economy, of course, is not an actually thing (it is the classic example of "reification," literally thing-i-fication, that a high school history teacher gave us) but rather a concept talked about as a thing, so much so that we probably all believe it is real. And what does "the economy" do? It demands that we consume. I'm not going to discuss the morality of that attitude, or alternatives to it, but I will say that if that's the kind of thing our country believes (not just us but all global capitalists) we might as well facilitate that. There's no better way to stimulate consumption than to give more people the means to do it. Indeed, this was one of the arguments used in the debate around extending unemployment benefits—the money given out goes directly back into the economy, as people are using it to pay rent, mortgages, food, etc. Put quite simply, the economy needs us to spend, even when we can't find work. 

Market deregulation. While I don't think that minimum wage laws are per se bad, I think that an unconditional basic income is much better idea. Instead of skewing the market by incentivizing it to employ fewer, better-qualified people (thus increasing competition, which is the last thing you want to do when unemployment is high) the assurance of a minimum income allows employers to set compensation based on internal (market-determined) factors. While this could potentially lead to a lowering of hourly wages for already low-paid workers, when push comes to shove, corporations such as McDonald's cannot make money without employees, so it will have to pay enough to get no-longer-desperate people to come to work. Conservatives naturally foresee the collapse of the American work ethic, but I think the adjustments, while real, would be more subtle and overall positive. (I would expect, for example, that more people might work, but that they might work less, and that shifts might be shorter.) The real advantage of this sort of deregulation, though, would accrue to small businesses, who could afford to hire people because they would only have to attract their interest rather than be responsible for securing their entire livelihood. Meanwhile, for high-paid professionals, this supplemental income would likely have no effect on their salaries, as it would not be large enough to upset the current compensation schemes.

Elimination of bureaucracy and the increase of personal initiative. If conservatives really want to slay the beast of Big Government, I cannot think of a better way to do so than to institute a basic guaranteed income. Why? Because you can throw out all the government agencies whose sole purpose it is to evaluate the need of applicants. No more welfare means no more welfare fraud. Not to mention all those tragic stories of people who are reluctant to improve themselves (or their children) because it would threaten their disability payments. With an unconditional basic income, suddenly those issues are no longer.  Conservatives love to say that the current poverty programs trap people in poverty. Therefore of all people, they ought to be willing to view what we might call a citizenship dividend as a ticket to independence rather than dependence. I mean, what better way to send the message of personal responsibility than by guaranteeing each of us the means to stand on our own, regardless of the circumstances of upbringing? What better way to stop the whining and get busy? And what better way to make sure that each American has the means to contribute to her own well-being: out of this guaranteed income, mandatory health insurance (that's a conservative idea!), retirement, and taxes would be paid. And, in the spirit of choice, any citizen could direct it to a charity of his or her choice, or refuse it entirely. 

I'm not an economist, so I can't discuss the details regarding how such a program would work. But the New Deal teaches us that America is capable of great shifts in the way it views the role of the federal government. I think this is the time of another one of those shifts. We're spending the money already; why can't we spend it better? An unconditional basic income appears to me to be a lot more practical, a lot less ideological, and a lot simpler than the tired ideas—on both sides—coming out of Washington today. 

[alicetesla]

'I would prefer not to.' Religion and refusal to serve

Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I had, in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was, to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions. In was on the third day, I think, of his being with me... that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head bent over the original on my desk...

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when, without moving from his privacy, Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, 'I would prefer not to.'

                                                                          —Herman Melville, "Bartleby"

Melville's tale of the calm, cryptic—and ultimately doomed—scrivener is a story about religion and refusal. So is, in a different way, the narrative prompting the recent event in Arizona. On Thursday, the legislature sent a bill to Gov. Jan Brewer that, if she signs it, would make it legal for businesses to refuse service to gays and lesbians on religious grounds.

In Melville's tale, Bartleby's employer struggles with his conscience about how to handle the strange man whom he hires as law clerk. Although the narrator is perturbed by Bartleby's refusals to perform certain mundane tasks of the job, he finds other aspects of his character that he likes, and overall he is too busy to let the strange matter dominate his thoughts. However, the issue becomes more serious when the narrator discovers that Bartleby is not just around at all hours because of his commitment, but because he has been living at the offices. But his initial reaction of shock and suspicion is tempered by what can only be termed a kind of religious compassion. He feels sorry for Bartleby.

Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day is an emptiness. This building, too, which of weekdays hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. [...]

For the first time in my life a feeling of over-powering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.

Despite the escalation in Bartleby's insubordination—soon after this, he refuses to work altogether—the narrator reconciles himself to Bartleby's presence, despite knowing nothing about the man's history or the man's motives. He has compassion for Bartleby despite the fact that "he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear." Yes, he is angry that he cannot persuade or bribe Bartleby to leave. But he is able to throw of his resentment. "How? Why, simply by recalling the divine injunction: 'A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another. Yes, this it was that saved me."

Indeed, the narrator exudes the idea that the essence of religious feeling is to use compassion to tolerate what one might prefer (the verb at the heart of the story) to wish away, or to force away.

Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an allwise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never so private as when I know you are here. At last, I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.

But the narrator balks under the reaction of his professional friends, who cannot understand what the man is doing there if he does not actually work. And so the narrator first moves offices, and then—when Bartleby still refuses to leave the original rooms, despite the narrator's offer to take him into his dwelling—takes a trip out of town in fear that he will be further involved in the matter. When he returns, he discovers that Bartleby has been taken to prison as a vagrant.

The narrator goes to visit him, but the die has been cast. Bartleby refuses to speak to him. The narrator is pained by the implication that it is his fault he is here. He provides the 'grub-man' with money for Bartleby's food, but it is of no use. A few days later, when the narrator returns, Bartleby is dead. 

If the story begins about the expectations of an employer of his employee, it ends on a much wider scope: "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" goes the last line. Although I'm sure there are many ways one could read the story, the interpretation that came into my mind when I was reading the news out of Arizona this week is the following: "Bartleby" expresses the sentiment that neither the human the relationships defined by the free market nor those defined by the law can fully account for what one man owes another. The simple reason is that what we owe one another as human beings exceeds what is established as reasonable in either of those spheres.

Put simply, it is a tale of Christian charity in the original sense of the word, i.e., that relating to the attitude of Jesus. The narrator understands that it is his obligation as a son of Adam, i.e., a human being, not to persecute Bartleby— despite Bartleby's inexplicable preference not to conform to the entirely reasonable expectations of his employer. Indeed, the narrator had the right to dismiss Bartleby for his refusal to perform the tasks demanded to him, and he does not. Later, he would have had the legal grounds to have him forcibly removed from his offices, but he does not. He suffers Bartleby out of what he understands as a religious obligation. It is a rare and marvelous decision, the narrator's, and the fact that he cannot sustain this attitude takes nothing away from its marvelousness; rather, it is only a testament to the fact that none of us are perfect. 

Seen from this perspective, those who 'would prefer not to' serve gays and lesbians on the grounds that their 'Christian' faith demands it seems downright ridiculous; it seems to turn the powerful value of Christian forbearance and charity on its head in the ugliest possible way. (I can see the "Who Would Jesus Serve?" bumper stickers right now.) As I understand it, at the heart of Christianity, by which I mean at the heart of the New Testament, is the idea of inclusion, the tearing down of the barriers that had resulted from God's first effort at bringing his Law to mankind, namely, the establishment of the 'chosen people' of Israel. Jesus was God's vehicle for staying two things. First, my religion is not just words, it is people. Second, you are all My children. With these two precepts, it is clear that the whole of Christianity is (or should be) based on the concept of non-refusal. Its exercise should be the conscious effort to bring all of us into a brotherhood of man.

Of course, whether this anti-gay stance is truly Christian is not the issue. This is America, where we can practice whatever faith we like, or none at all. We are guaranteed two essential freedoms with respect to religion. First, we are free to worship any way we see fit (or not at all). Second, we are free from any state-sponsored religion. 

But these protections do not override civil law; religion is not a magical 'I can do whatever I want because it's what I believe' card. When there is a compelling state interest (the state being understood here in the sense of the collective, i.e., all of us), these civil laws can compel people to act in the civic sphere according to policies that contradict their beliefs. No court in the land would accept a religiously-motivated defense for terrorism, murder, or the severe beating of a child.

That is not to say that the state does not consider a person's religious convictions in the context of compelling civil duties. The Selective Service Act of 1940 exempted from combat duty individuals professing religious opposition to war. But courts have found that religious belief does not grant an unlimited excuse not to perform certain duties mandated by civil society (law): Christian Scientist parents have been convicted of manslaughter when they—following their religious beliefs—did not seek medical care for their sick children. 

In this case, too, the civil mandate that businesses not discriminate trumps any religious objections. A carve-out for business owners who feel a religious need to discriminate against classes protected by civil law is not necessary simply because there is no compulsion to enter the market. If your religion commands you not to treat blacks and whites equally on buses, or make cakes only for straight Christian couples, your recourse is to go out of that business. Once you enter the marketplace, you are obligated to obey the civil laws governing conduct in that sphere. Put another way, the state gives you the right to enter the marketplace, but not the right to alter the rules that govern the marketplace in accordance with the bubble-world of your own morality. 

This doesn't mean that businesses cannot promote religion. You can open a Christian bookstore, or even a Christian bake shop. You can run a business according to your traditions and values—look at the Pennsylvania Dutch markets in the northeast. Those markets are a great example of how a religious community that maintains itself apart from modern society can nonetheless interact in the larger commercial sphere without compromising its values. The vast majority of people who buy those products do not live their lives in way the Amish consider proper. But the Amish do not require that of their customers; they understand, like the anti-gay Christians in Arizona need to, that the proper activity of a business owner is not approving but selling. To think otherwise is to confuse the spheres of the marketplace and the free exchange of ideas.  

But this confusion seems to be spreading like wildfire these days. Remember the Chic-fil-A brouhaha, where support or boycotting of the Christian-values-focused fast food restaurant became a litmus test of your political stance on gay rights? While I may not like the idea of people using my money to promote policies with which I disagree, it is absolute foolishness to believe that the condition for my market participation (or anyone else's) is the seller's complete agreement with my political, moral, or religious values. For one, such a condition would make it impossible for any of us to by anything; second, none of this "don't shop there because of this or that" agitation is going to prevent people with lots of money from using it to forward their political viewpoints. 

The precise point of capitalism is to render these distinctions moot for the sake of the transactions themselves. While certainly this profit-centeredness can introduce moral blindness (look at the appalling way we farm (most) animals in this country), it can also introduce a greater fairness between players in the market. If I had a restaurant, I'd rather it be judged by how good the food was than by how I voted in the last election. Considering how polarized political discourse is these days, it's a relief to find a sphere where people can have the expectation of apolitical interaction. 

In short, the state doesn't owe Arizona business owners a carve-out to the anti-discrimination laws. Rather, it's up to the business owner to find a business he or she can feel comfortable doing within the existing civil framework. No business owner is compelled by these civil laws into actions he or she deems immoral—it just may be that, in the case of the anti-gay-marriage wedding cake maker, the only way to avoid that action is to get out of the business altogether. If this doesn't strike you as fair, think of the lesbian waitress who serves a group of people who have just participated in a rally in favor of traditional marriage. If she can put aside her personal feelings and serve you like she does other customers, so can you.

That is—or should be—the American way.

[alicetesla]

pbs.org

[T]o argue that raising the minimum wage is going to create upward mobility is, quite frankly, silly. I mean, $10.10 is not the American dream. The way you’re — the best way to look at it is to think about a person.

For example, someone who I know is a receptionist at a medical clinic. She makes very little money, maybe more than minimum wage, but not a lot. She’s a single mother who has two children to raise. [...]

The only way she’s ever going to increase how much money she makes is if she can become an ultrasound technician or a lab technician or a pharmacy assistant, not just the receptionist at the medical clinic.

To do that, she needs higher education. But how is she going to get higher education if she has to work and raise a family? The system we have in place now doesn’t allow her to do that. That’s the answer to the problem. [...]

What she would benefit from is the wage enhancement program that I have talked about, which is taking the Earned Income Tax Credit and converting it to a wage enhancement, where the same benefit is delivered through the paycheck.