Am I a libertarian or a utilitarian?

Evan Mandery, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently wrote about his experience teaching an ethics course based on Michael Sandel’s book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do?” (which I’ve read and loved).  He taught the course for a semester at Appalachian State in Boone, NC, thinking he might find a difference in how people make ethical judgments in the Deep South when compared to Manhattan-based John Jay.  He didn’t.

While exploring how people make those judgments, one student stood out – one he describes as a libertarian.  Mandery tells us he believes the student would “sacrifice himself for the greater good” and observes that “people are too willing to prioritize what’s politically expedient over fundamental values.”  I confess I find his view confusing as sacrificing oneself for the greater good sounds more utilitarian than libertarian.  It was John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian ethicist, who defined the “greatest happiness principle” as “a moral action that maximizes utility, or happiness, for the greatest number of people.”  If that’s utilitarianism, wouldn’t one who sacrifices oneself for the greater good be utilitarian?  

Lately, I’ve taken to calling myself a libertarian. It’s how I express my distaste for the two predominant political parties without engaging in a long-winded explanation.  It has the added advantage of not having to defend policies or candidates affiliated with one or the other.  

But, that’s an expedient position rather than a principled one.  The truth is I am more pragmatic than dogmatic, arguing for the action I believe benefits society most.  So, for example, I would never argue that businesses should not be regulated as a true libertarian might.  To argue in favor of the chaos that would result from the complete elimination of regulation is, in my view, both lazy and impractical.

So, am I a utilitarian?

French economist Thomas Piketty has observed that elites may be divided between the “Brahmin left” (Silicon Valley) and the “merchant right” (Oil & Gas magnates).  Each has captured one of the major parties leaving out those with little money or education.  And, so, both Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren gain favor among them by espousing the theory that the system is “rigged.”

I reject the excuses of declaring the system rigged.  Sure, moneyed interests pour cash into our political system.  And, yes, those interests don’t much care about you and me.  But, at the end of the day, those of us in the middle-class are just trying to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and enjoy ourselves with what’s left over.  The system, rigged or not, is what we learn to deal with.  In that sense, we – those who occupy the middle-class suburbs of most cities – might be libertarians.  We take responsibility for our own families and our own outcomes.  

So, am I a libertarian?   

WHO WILL LEAD? 

Borrowing Your Way To The American Dream

My leafy, little neighborhood in Fairport, NY could be the poster child for the middle-class American dream.  Located within the village limits, in walking distance of three public schools, the streets are lined with well-kept homes, the garages of which contain late model SUV’s and sedans.  Free-range children can be observed riding their bikes, playing games and rolling down the streets on scooters and skateboards. 

Were that our only reference point, we might conclude America’s middle-class is thriving.  Unfortunately, it’s not.  It’s shrinking according to a Pew Research report.  There’s good news and bad in their report.  Yes, the middle-class is shrinking (bad news).  However, more families are moving up than down (that’s good, right?).  

The report uses family income as the criteria for defining middle-class. You are middle-class if your family income is between two-thirds (about $54,000 for a five-person household) and double the median annual income ($162,000) according to Pew. 

Income is one way to look at economic status.  But Pew’s report ignores net wealth.  Think of it this way: who’s more secure? A family of five with an annual income of $100,000 and $50,000 in savings or the reverse?  

And then there’s debt. Americans are borrowing heavily to maintain their middle-class lifestyles according to the Wall Street Journal.  Many families take seven-year auto loans to afford an average new vehicle cost that exceeds $32,000, often leaving them in the predicament of needing to trade-in an aging daily driver before they’ve paid off the loan.  No worries, though.  You can simply roll your balance due into the next car loan.  At the same time, debt to equity ratios on home mortgages now equal pre-financial crisis levels.  And, credit card debt exceeds $1 trillion for the first time since the Great Recession. 

Hedge-fund investor Ray Dalio has analyzed the split between the Top 40% and Bottom 60% of income earners.  The Top 40 earn, on average, four times the average of the Bottom 60 and have ten times the wealth.  This spread has grown over the last 20 years as manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the mix of household assets and liabilities have changed.  The Top 40% are more likely to own tax-advantaged real estate, stocks and bonds while the Bottom 60% are more likely to incur expensive student, auto and credit card debt.  So, over time, the split grows wider. 

Maintaining a middle-class lifestyle has become more expensive while incomes have not kept pace.  And, I haven’t even mentioned the impact of rising tuition and healthcare costs.  We learned a hard lesson in 2008.  Sooner or later, borrowing more than we can afford to repay will lead to financial ruin.

How will that impact our leafy suburbs?

WHO WILL LEAD? 

Teach your children well... Worry Warts... A footnote from the old, white guy

I stumbled across a 2002 article in Smithsonian magazine by historian Stephen Ambrose telling a story about his encounter with a University of Wisconsin history professor who had dropped Thomas Jefferson’s writings from her curriculum because he had owned slaves.  Ambrose describes Jefferson as racist and asks, “To what degree do the attitudes of Washington and Jefferson toward slavery diminish their achievements?”

Their achievements were what I learned in school. But the incident makes me wonder what schools are  teaching our children.  When it comes to U.S. History (if they’re studying it at all), they may be learning it the way you and I did, or they may have some important elements left out by design.  There is a revisionist view that teaches your children that our preeminent position in the world is the product of an immoral conquest characterized by raping, pillaging, cheating, lying and murdering.  This presentation captures factually accurate events but omits context – and, apparently, Thomas Jefferson.

You can say some things that are true and still not be telling the truth.

The approach reminds me of George Orwell’s fictional but prescient work ‘1984’ in which he writes:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

If we remove all the symbols or, as Orwell suggested, rewrite all the books, repaint all the paintings, tear down all the statues, what will replace it?  Should your children grow up thinking that they are the beneficiaries of the acts of evil dudes and should feel guilty about our prosperity?

Here’s something your children are likely not being taught: 

            

·       Private property rights, affirmed by the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Jay, are the foundation of our economic prosperity, our right to private enjoyment of our homes and protection against government overreach. 

·       Governance by the rule of law ensures that government officials – elected and otherwise – are held accountable and that contracts will be enforced even if such enforcement is to the detriment of someone more powerful than you. 

·       Economic freedom enables us to have the lowest cost of capital in the world and attracts foreign direct investment that ensures the pie we divide among us keeps getting bigger. 

·       We should not take our prosperity for granted and many politicians who advocate for government to restrict corporate activities will undermine that same prosperity without an understanding of cause and effect. 

Our children must be taught something to offset the voracious attack that’s been mounted by media and educators who find a populist audience eating up the idea that the system is rigged, CEO’s are evil, and the capitalist economic system should be shelved. 

Worry warts

Are human beings natural worriers?  It’s debatable and the folks at Psychology Today tell us worriers are made not born. Twenty-first century philosopher Noah Yuval Harari takes a different view.  In his great book Homo Deus, he points to the worries of mankind since the dawn of time.  What most often took the lives of human beings was famine, plague or war.  Not anymore, he tells us.  “For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.”

So, with all those major worries out of the way, we worry about income inequality, politically correct speech and “fairness.”  We forget that we have the luxury of such worries because of the unprecedented prosperity of the last 70 years – prosperity created by the very system that many now decry as predatory.

Let’s not take that prosperity for granted. 

A Footnote from the Old White Guy

An abbreviated version of last month’s post “I’m Just An Old White Guy” was published in our local newspaper, The Democrat & Chronicle, whose editor added “… Who Is Angry” to the headline.  It kicked up enough dust for me to be invited to discuss it on a talk radio show on the local NPR affiliate WXXI.

My piece was not about racism but was perceived to be.  The inclusion of the word “white” in the title is apparently a trigger.  In advance of the show, I suggested to the host that I was not qualified to discuss racism. Nevertheless, most of our discussion was about race.  A caller – a self-described “old, black guy” – challenged my expertise to discuss racism.  He was right about that.  The core premise of my essay is that categorizing people leads to tribalism and the political polarization from which we suffer. 

            

There are people who specialize in being offended.  There are people who specialize in calling out racism.  I am not sure if one is a subset of the other, but I know that it doesn’t lead to constructive dialog. 

            

My wife and my gay son will not vote Republican.  They feel excluded.  Their voices are not heard.  Their argument has merit.  But the response on the left shouldn’t be to exclude me based upon my race and gender.  If you exclude me from the conversation, you shouldn’t expect my support.  

WHO WILL LEAD? 

The Battle for “The Soul of America”

I just got around to reading Jon Meacham’s best-selling book ‘The Soul of America.’  Like most non-fiction books, the title is intended to get your attention and the subtitle tells you what it’s about: ‘The Battle for Our Better Angels.’

Meacham is a left-leaning editor and presidential historian.  So, I expected to get some moralizing about the current resident of the White House.  But I didn’t get it.  There were a few swipes at him in the introduction and the first chapter.  That was just to set the tone for what followed.

Meacham lays out a history of the United States as we have made progress on racial justice by consistently overcoming a tribal fear of “the other.”  The story he tells - mostly through presidential history - reveals the complexity of presidents who had the political courage and the moral leadership to enact laws, enforce court orders and espouse a moral philosophy consistent with that of our founders.  

He does so while pointing out the moral failures of those same presidents.  Harry Truman used racial slurs in private but wrote to Congress in 1948 about our belief that “all men are created equal and that they have the right to equal just under the law.”  He faced down the inevitable backlash from Southern Democrats saying, “I’m everybody’s president.”

Teddy Roosevelt (TR) was the first president to invite a person of color – Booker T. Washington – to dinner at the White House. He later recalled, “the very fact that I felt a moment’s qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself…”  And, yet, he worried that low birth rates among the “best people” (the English-speaking, white population) might lead to “race suicide.” 

The two-steps-forward-one-step-back struggle for racial equality and acceptance of immigrants has always been a study in contrasts.  Initial reforms under TR and Woodrow Wilson were “plagued by theories of racial superiority and fears of the ‘other.’”  FDR rescued capitalism and “redefined the role of the state to lift up the weakest among us” but interned “innocent Americans of Japanese descent.” 

Meacham spends more time discussing the courage and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson than other chapter of our history.  Paying scant attention to the failure of the Vietnam War and the five decade long failure of his Great Society, he paints LBJ as a hero of the same stature as Lincoln. And, indeed he was.  Despite my distaste for LBJ who lied us into a war we should never have fought, I gained a new appreciation for his moral and political courage.  Like Truman, LBJ was a Southern Democrat whose moral sense overcame his background.  He relentlessly advocated that we as a nation rise above racism, saying, “whatever your views are, we have a Constitution and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have the law of the land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate voted for [The Civil Rights Bill of 1964] and three-fourths of the Republicans… I signed it, and I am going to enforce it…”

Meacham closes his book thusly:

“For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the [American] experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”

WHO WILL LEAD?

I’m Just An Old White Guy

I decided to become a writer sometime around my sixtieth birthday.  My successes in this endeavor have been minor and infrequent.  My first book was published by Motivational Press and the editors of the Democrat & Chronicle (D&C) have graciously published my guest columns from time to time.  At least one of those – expressing the frustration of a political moderate in a Deep Blue state – was picked up through the Gannett network and published in the Des Moines Register. None of these successes have enabled me to make a living as a writer.  But I have learned a lot during my journey.

A love of language is essential to becoming a writer and there is no place language is more important than in our news media.  During my brief stint on the D&C’s editorial board, I observed true professionals as they worked to capture ideas without creating false equivalence whether writing about a sexual harassment scandal at the University of Rochester or deciding how to endorse or not endorse a candidate for mayor.  

Sometime in my journey, I created a  hashtag for myself #justanoldwhiteguy.  I fantasized that it would be followed by many on Twitter and it was NOT.  Maybe it doesn’t resonate with others as it does me or maybe other old white guys don’t know what a hashtag is for.  Whatever the reason, no one seems to care.  I am compelled to consider it in a new light this week as the media refers to white nationalism and angry white males in the wake of two mass killings within 24 hours.

The phrase ‘angry, white males’ can create a false equivalence.  It may accurately be said that the Dayton and El Paso shooters (both extremists one a conservative, the other a liberal) are both angry, white males. But that doesn’t mean all white males who are angry are likely to became mass murderers.  The broader context in which white males may become angry relates to the word ‘just’ in my hashtag.  Indeed, it’s the word ‘just’ that makes my hashtag work.  It’s obviously not meant as an adjective in the sense of being righteous.  Certainly, there are old, white guys who consider themselves righteous, render judgment and, in some cases, mete out punishment.  But, in my case, it is rather an adverb meaning ‘merely,’ as in “I’m just a temp,” the Cri de Coeur of those whose employment is not long term. 

My Cri de Coeur is that of a demographic being increasingly blamed for all the ills of society, both real and imagined.  Being a white male is now treated as an original sin as though the constitutional form of Republic asserting the equality of all and rule of law were not also created by white males.  

The word ‘old’ is also a significant factor in my feelings about such shifting social attitudes.  I am of a generation that protested the war in Vietnam but not Jimi Hendrix’ playing of the national anthem at Woodstock.  Students for a Democratic Society called for revolution, a call that was quelled as the war wound down and boomers started getting married and having babies (much as Millennials are today).  Just as the WWII generation saw us Boomers as an ungrateful lot, we have raised the generation of ungrateful rabble-rousers who now complain about our governance.  

And so, I am not justan old white guy.  I am also an angry white male.  I am angry that the Republican Party has provided us with a President who consistently fails to provide the moral leadership we need.  I am angry that the best alternative the Democrat Party can offer is a slate of candidates hellbent on destroying our prosperity through government control of the economy.  Most of all, I am angry that we are saddled with an electoral process that offers no relief.  

I’m not a gun owner or a member of a nationalist group.  I won’t find an outlet for my anger by committing mass murder.  My anger can only be resolved by political leaders who share my belief in a free American society.  Reproductive freedom means women should make their own moral choices. Social freedom means that all citizens should be entitled to equal opportunity but not equal outcomes.  Economic freedom means that capitalist transactions between a willing buyer and a willing seller should not be subject to government interference.  

Find me a candidate who embraces those ideas and I will no longer be an angry white male.  But I’ll still be #justanoldwhiteguy. 

WHO WILL LEAD?

Why the US should be competing to attract immigrants

We just returned from a mixed business and pleasure trip to Canada.  If you have a chance to hop across the border from Buffalo to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, I recommend it highly.  Located in wine country, there are lots of great restaurants and plenty of activities in which to indulge one’s appetite for the arts or the outdoors.  Plus, it’s a hop and a skip from Niagara Falls.    

Like the US, Canada is a full employment economy enjoying an economic mini-boom.  Unlike the US, Canada understands the importance of immigration to sustain its growth. Its immigration policies target an increase of annual immigration by 30% to 340,000 by 2021.  In fact, the government website offers a step-by-step guide to help employers and would-be immigrants apply for entry into the country.

In the US, a key component of the legal immigration system is the issuance of Green Cards, a legal permission slip for foreign nationals to live, study and work in this country. Historically, the government has issued approximately one million Green Cards per year.  Meanwhile, about four million stand in line metaphorically speaking to receive one.  A Trump policy announced in May, if approved by Congress, would press the reset button, changing the criteria for receiving a Green Card and requiring those currently waiting to reapply.  The new criteria would emphasize educational background and skills at the expense of family considerations.

There’s virtually no chance that Congress will approve these proposed changes. But it will no doubt come up often during the Presidential campaign that starts… when? …  has it started?  Oh, right… It never ended.  So, the issue will periodically take all the oxygen out of the room whenever Trump decides to grandstand on the topic.  

So, what should serious-minded voters like you and I think about when considering our options?

Let’s start with some basics.  The size of the economy, commonly measured by GDP, is largely a function of the number of people working.  And, by extension, economic growth is largely a function of the growth in the number of people working.  And, immigrants come here to work!  A study by the Brookings Institution put some numbers to it.  Foreign born men are 3.4% more likely to work than native born men. Foreign born women are less likely but that’s because they’re home having babies.  In fact, the Brookings study asserts that ALL net population growth comes from the immigrant population.

Got it?  The economy grows when the population grows, and the population grows because of immigration.  

Another significant factor in driving growth of the working population is entrepreneurial activity. In other words, new business starts. After all, small businesses create more jobs collectively than big businesses.  A recent study by the Harvard Business Review delineates the factors that make immigrants more likely to start them and reports that 27.5% of entrepreneurial businesses are immigrant owned despite only 13% of the population being foreign born.  

I’ve seen what legal immigration looks like in S. Florida.  Despite initial animosity between newcomers with different customs and behaviors and legacy residents, everything has turned out okay.  First and second-generation Americans of Cuban descent have become the economic engine of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metroplex.  It’s an economically thriving, culturally vibrant, exciting region that succeeds on its merits.  

The net of all this is that, like abortion, immigration ought to be available, safe and legal. Do you think any Republicans — reputedly the party of business — will catch on?

WHO WILL LEAD?

How Sweden got its groove back

The soul of political punditry is to cherry-pick facts and weave them together to support a pre-conceived notion of what’s right or wrong about this or that.  Thusly, we have been lied into two wars by presidents of different political parties; religious conservatives have created a mythology called “creationism;” and, social democrats have become convinced that the Scandinavian socialist economy is an example of a superior system.

As it turns out, the fall of Saigon didn’t have a material effect on the global balance of power; Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction; and, of course, we really did evolve from apes.  As for socialism… well, it hasn’t worked anywhere ever.  And, Scandinavian countries are not running on a socialist system.  Indeed, if you’re looking for evidence that the policies of social democrats don’t work, you need look no further than Sweden. 

Kudos to those who governed the country in the 1990’s for having the courage not only to understand that they screwed up by turning to socialism in the 1970’s but also for dramatically restructuring policy to ensure a turnaround in their fortunes. In a 1998 report of the Institute for Economic Studies at Stockholm University, Assar Lindbeck outlines the events leading to the near collapse of the Swedish economy and identifies the policies that led the country out of the darkness.  

“In the early 1970s, Sweden became dominated by large and centralized institutions and highly interventionist policies,” he tells us. “Important manifestations are (i) a drastic rise in government spending (to the interval 60-70 percent of GDP); (ii) a huge increase in marginal tax wedges (to 65-75 percent for most full-time income earners); (iii) an increasingly interventionist macroeconomic policy, in particular, in the labor market…” 

The results? “Policies… seem to have contributed substantially to reducing poverty, as well as to making the overall distribution of disposable income relatively compressed. In this sense, welfare-state policies basically attained established targets.” 

Sounds good, right? Just one little problem though.  Economic growth was much slower than the rest of Europe. Comparing Sweden’s growth to the industrialized countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Lindbeck goes on to say:

“While per capita GDP increased by altogether 52 percent in the OECD area as a whole during the period 1970-1990 (weighted average), it increased by only 40 percent in Sweden. During the period 1970-1997, the difference is even greater: 62 percent for the OECD and 42 percent for Sweden.” 

By the late 90’s – while the rest of the industrialized world was booming -- Sweden’s government spending was over 70% of GDP.  A tax on capital enacted in 1983 had reduced the amount tax revenue from that source. And, high marginal tax rates had reduced household income.  The results were devastating.  Total GDP declined 5% and unemployment increased to 13%.  

Today, tax reductions along with market-based reforms have placed Sweden among the elite in the global economy.  The government’s website points to its ranking in the Top 10 most competitive economies in the world according the World Economic Forum and the World Bank’s ranking designating Sweden as one of the easiest countries to do business with. 

By enacting a debt limit and reducing both government spending and government intrusion in the economy in the 1990’s, Sweden avoided the calamity of the global economic crisis in 2008.  With the lack of humility common to all governments, they point out:

“While governments with large budget deficits carry out austerity measures by increasing taxes and cutting public spending, Sweden has broadly avoided these difficulties. While Sweden remains a relatively highly taxed economy, the centre–right coalition government of 2006–2014 scrapped inheritance tax in 2005 and a wealth tax in 2007.”

Sweden remains a highly taxed nation and its redistributionist policies have reduced income inequality and created a social safety net that many admire.  Personally, I believe it’s easier to implement such programs in countries whose populations are not diverse.  Sweden has a population smaller than New York and it’s nearly homogeneous.  People whose reciprocal expectations are met are unlikely to resent those who rely on that safety net.  

But that may be changing. Noting Sweden’s historical openness to refugees, CBS News recently reported on the rise of populist political parties espousing anti-immigrant policies.  Using the slogan “Keep Sweden Swedish” the far-right Sweden Democrats increased their share of the vote from 5.7% in 2010 to 17.5% in 2018, according to CBS.  And, the New York Times reported last week that four years after the influx of refugees “growing numbers of native-born Swedes have come to see the refugees as a drain on public finances.”  The Times quotes a local council member from a rural Swedish town as saying, “people don’t want to pay taxes to support people who don’t work.  Ninety percent of the refugees don’t contribute to society.  These people are going to have a lifelong dependence on social welfare.  This is a huge problem.”

Five years ago, I wrote about my father’s journey from welfare to successful entrepreneurship (On social mobility:  confessions of a former yuppie).  It seems that Swedes’ view of the purpose of the social welfare system is much like ours.  Those who pay into a system meant to help people in times of need expect those who benefit to use it as a platform to become contributing citizens – not to rely upon it for life. 

WHO WILL LEAD?