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:

Living Standards in the U.S. and Europe are Much Closer than They Appear to Be

If you compare the incomes in Europe and the U.S., it looks like people in Europe are much worse off than people in the U.S., but this could be an illusion according to a a research paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the U.S. written by Charles I. Jones and Peter J. Klenow. The authors state that:

"...living standards in Western Europe are much closer to those in the United States than it would appear from GDP per capita. Longer lives with more leisure time and more equal consumption in Western Europe largely offset their lower average consumption vis a vis the United States."

What Will the Tea Party Folks Say When They Wake Up To a 2nd Stimulus Package?

As much as I am frustrated by Obama's seemingly unbreakable hope in "bipartisan" goodwill, I wonder if it might not be the Republicans that will have to pay the largest political price for today's "deal". What are they going to tell the tea party crowd now that they have betrayed the deficit fanatics. I suspect that many tea party people will go after Boehner & Co for adding another trillion dollars to the deficit. However ill designed the compromise is, you could say that it is a second stimulus package of sorts, as David Leonhard points out in New York Times.

Hans Sandberg

Call the Republican Bluff by Letting All of the Bush Era Tax Cut Expire!

Everybody (on TV at least) talks about the disaster that would strike if the Bush tax cuts were to expire, but you rarely hear any of the pundits specify how much people would have to pay in tax if the entire unfinanced tax cut were allowed to expire as it was intended to do. The bottom half of the population would have to pay between $5 and $836 more in tax in 2011. Big deal! The 3,4 % making 200-500.000 would have to pay $7,484, which is peanuts considering their income and the fact that their tax break for 2004-2010 was $54,707. Why all this hysteria? Call the bluff, and let the whole thing expire!

For more data, check out this link.

This in from Arizona: "Yes, We Can!" (Let You Rot and Die!)

Here is a story that is NOT written by Charles Dickens in time for Christmas:

Francisco Felix, 32, a father of four who has hepatitis C and is in need of a liver, received news a few weeks ago that a family friend was dying and wanted to donate her liver to him. But the budget cuts meant he no longer qualified for a state-financed transplant. He was prepared anyway at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center as his relatives scrambled to raise the needed $200,000. When the money did not come through, the liver went to someone else on the transplant list. “I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you can’t cut human lives,” said Mr. Felix’s wife, Flor. “You just can’t do that.”

To which all stern scroogelike born-again or just born budgetcutters join in a fiscally conservative Christmas Carol:
YES WE CAN!
(Aren't their graveyards to take care of those who can't take care of themselves?)

David Kessler Talks About Fat, Food and Health

Also watch Charlie Rose's interview with David Kessler

The Incredible Increase in Inequality in the USA and How it Happened

Författarna till “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class” presenterar sin bok.

The 111th Congress Delivered, Despite Republican Belligerence and Tea Party Agitation

Here is a summary from the Think Progress:

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)   gaveled in the 111th Congress in January 2009, the country faced severe problems, none more pressing than a cratering economy. The unemployment rate had skyrocketed since 2007 with no signs of relenting, and the private sector needed a jump start. In its first month, the 111th Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which President Obama quickly signed into law. The non-partisan CBO  found that the bill created 3.7 million jobs, and GDP and manufacturing have both grown steadily over the past year. The bill also included significant tax cuts. The Tax Policy Center  found that the tax cuts contained in the stimulus bill saved an average of $1,179 for 96.9 percent of U.S. households in 2009. Congress later passed, and Obama signed, the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 , which cut taxes by $12 billion for small businesses and leveraged $300 billion in private sector lending for small businesses. Congress also passed -- and Obama signed -- a $26 billion   jobs bill to save over 300,000 teachers, police, and other public workers from layoffs. Congress provided additional stimulus for the economy with the   Hire Act, which created up to 300,000 jobs by starting a payroll tax holiday and other tax credits for businesses that hire unemployed workers, and with an extension to unemployment benefits  for those still unable to find work in a tough economy. Aside from these major steps to jump-start the economy, the 111th Congress also reformed several dysfunctional institutions. The   Affordable Care Act transformed the country's health care system, by reforming health insurers' discriminatory practices, expanding Medicaid coverage, and income-based help for health care, and creating health insurance exchanges where consumers can shop for high-value coverage. The Wall Street reform bill  ended taxpayer-funded bailouts of large financial institutions, created numerous regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior by such institutions, and created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to serve as a Wall Street watchdog. The 111th Congress also reformed the student loan industry by passing a bill  that marked the largest investment in college aid in history: it increased Pell Grants, strengthened community colleges, and ended wasteful subsidies to private lenders. The bill is  expected to pump $100 billion into the economy thanks to the increased earnings of new students who can take advantage of the reforms. Congress also passed the  Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored basic protections against pay discrimination towards women.

Santity Restored, at Least Temporarily

It was a great rally, and the fact that it was almost three times larger than Glen Beck's rally in late August, gives you a little hope for the american part of humanity. It was not a rally about nothing, but a rally about respect, about tolerance, for believers and unbelievers of all strands, for conservatives, independents and progressives, i.e. for human decency.
There was also an underlying critique, and it was geared towards the political coverage in our 24/7 news cycle, where "if it screams, it leads" has repaced the old adage "if it bleeds, it leads."

Alex Altman, from Time Magazine, reports:
"The press is our immune system," Stewart said. "If it over-reacts to everything, we get sicker, and maybe eczema." If you listened to the attendees, however, the point of coming was simple: "to have fun," as one D.C. resident (who didn't want to give her name because she worked for the federal government) put it. Marsha Eck, a 54-year-old teacher from South Bend, Ind., expressed hope that the gathering could provide "a model for a new kind of conversation." A trio of teenagers from Downington, Pa., who came with their high-school civics class and wore matching lime-green t-shirts so that their teacher could spot them, explained that the rally was important because "everybody is yelling but nobody listens to each other."

My youngest son Alex enjoying the rally.

Jon Stewart Rally Attracts Estimated 215,000