To Review or Strut Your Feathers

I have been reading The American Prospect since it was launched back in 1992, and it is one of my favorite publications, but even with a magazine you like, you are bound to sometimes be disappointed. One such instance happened today when I read Chris Arnade's snarky review of Anne Case and Angus Deaton's new book "Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" and Nicholas Krystof and Sheryl Wudunn's "Tightrope - Americans Reaching for Hope." I have only read "Deaths of Despair", but I often read Nick Krystof's NYT columns, so I think I know where he comes from.

Arnade writes that Case and Deaton are "good enough scholars" and he can't really complain on their path-breaking research, "but it can’t replicate spending years in a neighborhood where you are woken up nightly by sirens, or a desperate knock from a neighbor whose son just OD’d, or the police investigating a killing out front." Well, he could have said the same thing about Karl Marx, who spent much of his time reading the British parliament's Blue Books at the British Museum's Reading Room. 

The critique of Krystof and Wudunn is even more bizarre, depicting them as naive philanthropists. "They insist that working-class kids leave behind their former lives, give up their worldview, and become educated. All with guidance, help, and enlightenment from America’s new noble class." 

At the end of the review Arnade goes all out, accusing the authors of "intellectual colonialism from the educated elite", which he accuses of wanting to "strip-mine" the poor, "taking what they want and leaving behind towns filling with death and despair. Lots of Americans want to stop being told they are on the wrong ladder. They want to live in a country that doesn’t insist you have to live like the elites. They want to stop being considered losers for not wanting to shape their life around building a résumé."

If there is anybody being condescending, it is not the authors, but the reviewer. 

I was surprised and disappointed to find this subpar piece in The American Prospect. 

Looking at Economic Policy from a Perspective of Economic Dignity

About a year ago, when spring was just another spring, Gene Sperling, who was National Economic Adviser for both Clinton (1997-2001) and Obama (2011-2014) wrote a very interesting essay for Democracy - A Journal of Ideas. The first paragraph makes you wonder if he reflects on missed opportunities, since he was there as an adviser during a time when two Democratic Presidents focused much of their attention on Wall Street (and where their top economic advisers came from firms like Goldman Sachs) at the expense of Main Street. Sperling opened his essay Economic Dignity with these words:

For all the things we find time for in the ongoing economic policy debates I have seen or been part of over the last 30 years, there seems to me too little reflection on the most basic economic question of all: What exactly is our ultimate economic goal in terms of increasing human happiness and well-being?

 And soon he adds:

Over the years, I have found myself stepping outside of the normal metrics that define our national economic dialogue to ask myself: What would a person on his or her death bed say mattered most in his or her economic life? That is the question that guides this essay. It seeks neither to explore highly technical issues of economic measurement nor sort out competing theories of social justice. It is rather one policymaker’s attempt to go out of the comfort zone of numbers to delve into this larger question. 

What follows is an interesting and thoughtful discussion of the role - and often lack of role for - economic dignity in modern economic-political praxis. It is admittedly a vague concept, but if you suffer from having your dignity ignored, you know what it means without having to google it.

As University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has written, compared to the focus on getting jobs, there is an eerie degree of silence on the arbitrary domination so many millions of Americans experience when they are actually working. To start, this means elevating worker dignity when making cost-benefit regulatory decisions—such as in the case of maximum line speeds in the poultry and hog industries. Oxfam and the National Employment Law Project have rightly called those industries out for leading to injuries or to the humiliation of denied bathroom breaks that leave workers no option but to wear diapers. 

Recognizing the fundamental importance of economic dignity has a deep impact on a wide range of policy strategies, including Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is a much more complicated and troublesome policy than some of its supporters understand.

It's a very interesting essay, and well worth your time.

Technologists Mad About the Future, or Just Mad?

Bryan Appleyard delivers a hard-hitting critique of technooptimism the New Statesman, reaching back to the 1950s and tracing the madness up through Google's Larry Page and Ray Kurzweil who Google hired as a resident futurologist of sorts.

The reality, as the revelations of the National Security Agency’s near-universal surveillance show, is that technology is just as likely to unleash hell as any other human enterprise. But the primary Ted faith is that the future is good simply because it is the future; not being the present or the past is seen as an intrinsic virtue. 

Bratton, when I spoke to him, described some of the futures on offer as “anthrocidal” – indeed, Kurzweil’s singularity is often celebrated as the start of a “post-human” future. We are the only species that actively pursues and celebrates the possibility of its own extinction.

Bratton was also very clear about the religiosity that lies behind Tedspeak. “The eschatological theme within all this is deep within the American discourse, a positive and negative eschatology,” he said. “There are a lot of right-wing Christians who are obsessed with the Mark of the Beast. It’s all about the Antichrist . . . Maybe it’s more of a California thing – this messianic articulation of the future is deep within my culture, so maybe it is not so unusual to me.”

Appleyeard's essay echoes of Evgeny Morozov's critique of irrational exuberance among the digiterati and is refreshing, even when it oversimplifies like in its critique of TED. Technology is always a two-edged sword, and so is TED. We love it for the global learning and debate it made possible, but we fear its potential to evolve into an opraesque secular mega-church.

Read the whole thing here:

Why futurologists are always wrong – and why we should be sceptical of techno-utopians
Bryan Appleyard is the author of “The Brain Is Wider Than the Sky: Why Simple Solutions Don’t Work in a Complex World”

A Pragmatic Vision for a Social Democratic Future in the U.S.

Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science in Arizona, has written a long and intriguing essay about USA's social democratic future in the upcoming January 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs. For most people, and this includes academic and political observers, the Nordic model with extensive social security and high taxes are written off as somehow un-American, but Kenworthy challenges this prejudice and he does it in Foreign Affairs, claiming that America will change and that the Republican party too, will embrace an expanded welfare state. Intriguing indeed! But the essay is well argued and not an ideological riff. It lays out the way ahead and offers a new vision that could replace the impotent blur that has led the Democrats since Clinton's days in office.

America's Social Democratic Future - The Arc of Policy Is Long But Bends Toward Justice

Here is a long quote of his setup:

"As pioneered by the Nordic countries, modern social democracy means a commitment to the extensive use of government policy to promote economic security, expand opportunity, and ensure rising living standards for all. But it aims to do so while also safeguarding economic freedom, economic flexibility, and market dynamism, all of which have long been hallmarks of the U.S. economy. The Nordic countries’ experience demonstrates that a government can successfully combine economic flexibility with economic security and foster social justice without stymieing competition. Modern social democracy offers the best of both worlds.

Still, the notion that the United States is likely to further increase the size and scope of its welfare state might seem blind to the reality of contemporary American politics. But step back and consider the long run. The lesson of the past hundred years is that as the United States grows wealthier, Americans become more willing to spend more to insure against risk and enhance fairness. Advances in social policy come only intermittently, but they do come. And when they come, they usually last.

That trend is likely to continue. U.S. policymakers will recognize the benefits of a larger government role in pursuing economic security, equal opportunity, and rising living standards and will attempt to move the country in that direction. Often, they will fail. But sometimes, they will succeed. Progress will be incremental, coming in fits and starts, as it has in the past. New programs and expansions of existing ones will tend to persist, because programs that work well become popular and because the U.S. policymaking process makes it difficult for opponents of social programs to remove them. Small steps and the occasional big leap, coupled with limited backsliding, will have the cumulative effect of significantly increasing the breadth and generosity of government social programs.

This is not a prediction about the timing or conditions under which specific policy advances will occur. It’s a hypothesis about a probabilistic process. Over the long run, new programs will occasionally be created and existing ones will occasionally be expanded, and these additions and expansions are unlikely to be reversed."

It's radical, but it is also pragmatic, and it is a much needed evolution.



Also check out Kenworthy's three Youtube lectures on the same theme:

America's Big Government Future: A lecture by Dr. Lane Kenworthy, Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Arizona, December 15, 2011. Presented by the Democrats of the Red Rocks, Sedona, AZ

The Rich Are Different... They Have More Palaces

New York Times' Real Estate section calls it the Big Deal

The $100 Million Question

I call it an outrage, and I call for taxing the rich to the max. I know that they are to few for it to solve the big problems the country and the world is facing, but it would surely be a moral boost and make other changes possible that taken together could get us out of the rut. You can't ask people for shared sacrifices when the Marie Antoinette of today toys with her Hollywood Versailles.

The Queen of Social Media Fights Fetishization

Arianna Huffington has written a very interesting and timely column for Huffington Post where she warns against "fetishization" of social media, where nothing matters besides catching up with the latest tweet, whatever it happens to be.

The title is a bit pompous - "Virality Uber Alles: Whatthe Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All" - but it is a good read that makes you think for a minute of Marshall McLuhan. She is of course not against social media per se, but she cautions against falling in love with the tool, instead of using it to do good:

The media world's fetishization of social media has reached idol-worshipping proportions. Media conference agendas are filled with panels devoted to social media and how to use social tools to amplify coverage, but you rarely see one discussing what that coverage should actually be about. As Wadah Khanfar, former Director General of Al Jazeera, told our editors when he visited our newsroom last week, "The lack of contextualization and prioritization in the U.S. media makes it harder to know what the most important story is at any given time."

Our media culture is locked in the Perpetual Now, constantly chasing ephemeral scoops that last only seconds and that most often don't matter in the first place, even for the brief moment that they're "exclusive." 

(...)

These days every company is hungry to embrace social media and virality, even if they're not exactly sure what that means, and even if they're not prepared to really deal with it once they've achieved it.

(...)

Or as Sheryl Sandberg put it, "What it means to be social is if you want to talk to me, you have to listen to me as well." A lot of brands want to be social, but they don't want to listen, because much of what they're hearing is quite simply not to their liking, and, just as in relationships in the offline world, engaging with your customers or your readers in a transparent and authentic way is not all sweetness and light. So simply issuing a statement saying you're committed to listening isn't the same thing as listening. And as in any human relationship, there is a dark side to intimacy.

So, the road to social media hell is paved with well-intended hashtags -- as well as disingenuous or inauthentic ones.

When Hoodlums Ran Amok in Stockholm

In a clip from March, 8, 1948, a very serious reporter describes the growing "youth problem" in Sweden. 15-18 year olds have "crossed the boundaries of decent behaviour and created problems for the local police." Fights, car thefts and disturbances have made the Stockholm police pay attention. See how the crowd disperses when Constaple Sven approaches. This being Sweden, there is a of course a solution: The youths have organized a club that rents a nightclub on Mondays where the young and restless (50 percent are children of divorce we are informed. On the night of the reporters' visit, a Jitterbug contest is taking place.. well what could you expect the reporter shrugs and informs us about the 80% drop in car thefts since the club opened.

Will the New Global Middle Class Adopt American-Style Bourgeois Values?

David Brooks discusses the new global middle class in an interesting column prompted by a new version of Hans Rosling's viral TED video about income growth and life expectancy. Brooks is usually good when he sticks to his forte, which is sociology, but his attempt to sell the U.S. model as the future for the new middle-class is to stretch it too far, way too far.

To be middle class is to have money to spend on non-necessities. But it also involves a shift in values. Middle-class parents have fewer kids but spend more time and money cultivating each one. They often adopt the bourgeois values — emphasizing industry, prudence, ambition, neatness, order, moderation and continual self-improvement. They teach their children to lead different lives from their own, and as Karl Marx was among the first to observe, unleash a relentless spirit of improvement and openness that alters every ancient institution.

(...)
Americans could well become the champions of the gospel of middle-class dignity. The U.S. could become the crossroads nation for those who aspire to join the middle and upper-middle class, attracting students, immigrants and entrepreneurs. (David Brooks: Ben Franklin’s Nation)

This is a narrow American perspective, "bourgeois values — emphasizing industry, prudence, ambition, neatness, order, moderation and continual self-improvement." It excludes other values that have grown all over the world as more and more people are entering the middle class, values such as social welfare systems, universal health insurance, long paid vacations, paid maternity leave, abolishment of death penalty, and so on. I don't know if Ben Franklin would have objected to parental leave, but that doesn't really matter. For all their glory, the Founding Father's had their limits (as well as their slaves). The new global middle class will of course get "Americanized" as they become relatively wealthy, but that doesn't mean that they will give up their traditional culture or preferences for social security and a more humane society. U.S. observers often think they see themselves whenever somebody abroad opens a can of soda, but that is not always the case!

Hans Sandberg

Here is Hans Rosling's presentation: