Moral Pragmatism -- Part II

So, when I write:

We cannot evade the moral question, nor can we hope to answer it, unequivocally, once and for all.  It will, so speak, always be open to question and discussion, and there is likewise no evading the questioning and the discussion.

I am admittedly echoing Thoreau and Walden, a thinker and a text that has had a profound influence on my thinking.  In the broad outline of my thought, I am also echoing Isaiah Berlin, another thinker that has had a profound influence on my thinking.  I borrow the term "comprehensive doctrine" from him, and spin out to Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.   I am not sure where the influence of one begins or ends, but they are there, always, in the background, along with many other voices, central and marginal.  

Having said that, there seems to be a yearning among the American people, at least today, for a strong and messianic "leader."  Historically, we have good reason to be fearful of those who put themselves out as such, and perhaps enough has been said on that score, but indulge me just a moment.  It would be delusional and counter-productive for anyone today to claim actual divinity within the populace, and those like the donald, with their overweening megalomania, claim to be, in themselves, the "embodiment" of a comprehensive doctrine.  It is, as I've said, the messianic imperative to "follow me, for I am the path to salvation and greatness."  In corporate life, and the large public organizations that envy the corporate life, there is an abundant valorization of "leadership" and those who possess it.  I have heard the catch phrase -- "lead, follow, or get out of the way" -- too many times to count, and perhaps in corporate life, in the military, where a clarity of vision and the means to achieve it may well be necessary, so too "leadership" and the obedience it demands may well be necessary.  In the sovereign state, however, what those who are not "in leadership," but who also refuse to follow, particularly when it is clear enough that the self-interest of leadership has trumped reciprocal moral obligations?  It may be sufficient to "lay low," but what of those who refuse to follow, and likewise refuse to "get out of the way?"   They are, so to speak, an impediment and must eventually be "PUT out of the way."  Within the circumscribed boundaries of corporate life, the military, or even the "church," it is perhaps enough to put the impediment outside the boundaries -- fire them, discharge them, excommunicate them -- but within the sovereign state, what then?

In my youth, another catch phrase that was quite popular among bumper sticker thinkers, was "America, love it or leave it."  There was much implied in such a statement that today, post Nixon, would be almost unthinkable.  Loving America meant loving the leadership and their bellicose stand against the "red menace," but the prescription to "leave it" was, of course, for the most part meaningless.  To avoid the draft, some did, of course, and the destination of choice was Canada, but for the vast majority of disaffected Americans, there was no "leaving," at least not voluntarily.  I remember having the conversation with my father, even writing a letter to the Omaha Herald, to the effect that "freedom of speech" allowed us to give voice to our dissent, convince others to our point of view, and change either the minds of the existing leadership, or when the vote came round, change the existing leadership.  I was, with all the energy of youth, aghast that so many seemed perfectly willing to contravene what I thought was, after all, a core American value, embodied in our first amendment, "freedom of speech."  I am now, with all the cynicism of age, hearing the same refrain in the donald's imperative to "get him the hell out of here."  Right now, of course, he is referring to the protestor's presence at his rally, and within the circumscribed space of the rally, not unlike the circumscribed space of a corporate board room, one might actually understand the imperative, but what would it mean were it expanded to the broader sovereign state?  If the violence advocated against the protestor were extended outside the space of the rally?  We are beginning to see the same confrontational politics that prevailed during the 60s spill over in, of all places, Chicago.  So ...

It is perhaps not surprising that the immediate impulse of the leader, the fuhrer, the dictator, the ubermensch, the CEO, those who would be the embodiment of greatness and the one to take us to their greatness, is to shut down free speech.  I have railed enough against "comprehensive" doctrines, or the even more dangerous "comprehensive" and messianic ego.  They are dangerous in the most fundamental sense because they would "put out of the way" anything that contravenes their doctrine, or their ego, and we have seen enough evidence, throughout history, to believe that they would not be sent to a posh resort in the Bahamas.  Both the comprehensive doctrine and the comprehensive ego are, in a fundamental sense, un-American.  Our founding fathers recognized early on that "a perfect union" might be unattainable, but "in order to form a more perfect union," a variety of voices should be heard.   If we cannot hope to answer, unequivocally, once and for all,  the moral and ethical issues implicit to the question "how best to govern?" then free speech, and the dissent to the prevailing view that comes with free speech, is a necessary condition to our continuing attempts to provide, if not perfection, then more perfect provisional answers.   Of course dissent always comes with risk -- one imagines Thoreau in the Concord jail and King in the Birmingham jail -- but both venues were rather posh compared to the concentration camp or the gulag. 

Moral pragmatism aims at a "more perfect union," and more on that, with a touch of Kuhn, tomorrow perhaps ...              

  

Moral Pragmatism -- part I

In my previous series of posts, I touched on any number of things, but there is one that might deserve some elaboration.  I do believe it possible (though perhaps very unlikely) that we could solve "problems" with moral pragmatism.  First, of course, before we can even begin to address solutions, we need to answer the question, "what exactly is the problem?"

Here, I would say any ad hominem answer -- that is to say, any answer that identifies a person or a group of people as the problem -- is inherently wrong.  I might be accused of the ad hominem argument when speaking of the donald, but I don't think the donald is the problem, per se, but rather symptomatic of a deeper disease that we have only begun to diagnose.  To identify a person as the core of a social problem, in the reductio ad absurdum world we inhabit, is ultimately to advocate assassination.  If the donald were truly the root cause of our social malaise, then the only cure ultimately is the removal of the cause.  I suspect that, were it possible to travel back in time, and assassinate Hitler, things might have been different, but it is highly dubious that the elimination of Hitler, per se, would have made things better, only different.  There is a beautiful Dan Bern song that plays with this recognition.  In it, he asks God to send him back to Berlin with a gun to assassinate Hitler, but God denies the request because, as God replies, 

If I sent you back 

You would get caught up 
In theory and discussion 
You would let your fears 
Delay and distract you
You would make friends 

You would take a lover 

The fears, theory and discussion, and the life that one lives at a specific time, in a specific place, would overwhelm one, even if one were not of that time, and really it is only in hindsight, given all the accidents of history, that we know to assassinate Hitler and not, say, Ernst Rohm.  At the time, it may not have been as clear.

Likewise, to identify a group as the core of a social problem is ultimately to advocate for political, ethnic, religious, or racial cleansing.   I suspect that there are deeply ingrained (and consequently deeply satisfying) traits that drive our penchant to vilify the other -- you know, the one's lurking, so to speak, out there in the bush, with spears and knives, lying in wait to kill the men, rape the women, and eat the children.  I'm being a bit melodramatic around the "threat," but the vilification of the other drives a "banding together" to meet the threat, itself deeply satisfying  It is even more satisfying because it is an appeal to the simple, the comprehensible, and the elemental conflict of the kindred good, those who are like us, those who are for us, against the evil other and all those against us.  I am disparaging of "comprehensive doctrines," particularly comprehensive religious or political doctrine, even more particularly political doctrine justified by religious doctrine, because they lead very quickly to the reductio ad absurdum of "cleansing."  The world would be peachy fine if only "they" were not in it.  We have seen it play out, time and again, through history, and it is playing out again as we "reenact" the crusades.  It is one thing to say, "I believe the evangelical right (or the secular left) is wrong about, well, nearly everything."  It is another things to say, "the evangelical right (or secular left) is inherently evil." The first could, perhaps, potentially, maybe lead to discussion.  The latter ultimately only to genocide.  

Conversely, of course, any "solution" identified as a single person is ultimately wrong.  Speaking historically and temporally, of course, neither Lenin, Hitler, the Christ or Mohammed have succeeded in "saving" us.  The world has gone on fractionally pretty much as before, except that we have the residual comprehensive doctrines of Das Kapital,  Mein Kampf, the New Testament, and the Koran, each of which purports to have the answer, once and for all, and provide boundaries for the fractures.  Whether the latter two will save us in the next life is a matter for speculation, but none have saved us in this life.  In the end, neither will the donald save us or this country, though he positions himself as the messiah and the messianic yearning among his followers for a savior is clear enough in his campaign rhetoric.   Any "solution" identified with the empowerment of a single group is, likewise, wrong.  I would hope it unnecessary to discuss Hitler's "final solution" at any length.  We want to see the vilification of the jews as a blind prejudice, but having pledged never to forget, we have forgotten  the depth and breadth of populist disdain for the jews.  We have forgotten our own American reluctance to accept jewish refugees when the nazi pogroms became clear enough.  We have forgotten how conveniently they focused and provided a justification for the exercise of repressive power.   Any group has "identity" in the first place because there are boundaries that "identify" it, and in the end the opposing group must maintain the power of its "identity" by excluding and targeting those who cannot or will not conform.  In the end, we have the nazi extermination camps, the soviet gulag, an exclusion and "cleansing" of one sort or another.   One sort or another "cultural revolution" or another will always play out.

Having said that, what exactly do I mean then by moral pragmatism?  Well, first of all, we cannot evade the "moral" question.  I have given my take on this, here and there, but ultimately I believe there is the reciprocity of the so-called golden rule -- if I don't want someone killing me, then I am obligated to refrain from killing others -- if I don't want someone raping my wife or my daughters, then I am obligated to refrain from raping the wives and daughters of others -- et cetera.  There is nothing "perfect" about the golden rule, and I don't think it provides us with anything that might resemble a "categorical imperative."  Take the first example, I don't want someone killing me.  True enough.  I don't.  Though I can think of circumstances where I might want to amend that statement (e.g. after a long, debilitating, and fruitless struggle against a terminal illness) generally speaking, for the most part, I don't want someone randomly killing me, as Johnny Cash might put it, "just to watch me die."  Take the reciprocal obligation, that I must refrain from killing others.  True enough.  I should.  Here again, I can think of circumstances where I might want to grant myself an exception (e.g if someone is threatening MY life) but generally speaking, for the most, usually, I really should refrain from killing others.  Having said that, the categorical imperative, "thou shalt not kill" can't quite hold water in all circumstances, and even the more generous "thou shalt not murder" equivocates circumstantially around a definition of "murder."  It is clearly "killing" but is it "murder" if I dispatch someone who attempts to rape my granddaughter?  So on and so forth.

Nevertheless, despite all the equivocation, I still don't want someone killing me, or robbing me, or raping me, or lying to me, or ... there is quite a list.  We cannot evade the moral question, nor can we hope to answer it, unequivocally, once and for all.  It will, so speak, always be open to question and discussion, and there is likewise no evading the questioning and the discussion.  Even with a twenty page definition of murder, outlining each and every possible exception that might conceivably permit one to take another's life, we would still need a court of law to question and discuss the definition of murder and whether a particular killing fits the definition.   Here again, the golden rule applies as a point of departure.  Were I the accused, I would WANT a full discussion, I would WANT my case to be presented, and so I am obligated to provide others, should they be the accused, with a full discussion.  I say "legislature" and "court of law" in part because I am cynical enough to know that we, as human beings, are often quite clear on what we want, but not quite willing, always, to abide by the reciprocal obligation, particularly when our interests might be served by, well, granting ourselves an exception that we would not necessarily grant to others.  Just as we cannot evade the moral question, we cannot evade the question of "law," but likewise, we cannot hope to codify our laws, unequivocally, once and for all.  We would still need a legislative body to question and refine our understanding of the "law."   

Picketty Called It -- Part III

Let me be honest here.  I have some sympathy with the tea partiers.  In the admittedly simplistic formulation, I have fulfilled my obligation with the payment of taxes, but I have secured none of the rights.  In the first year after my "forced" retirement, it seems I made too much money in the previous year and had too many assets in my retirement account to secure any benefits.   Between my wife and I, we have over twenty years of service in the military, but we didn't "qualify" for VA benefits and no subsidy under the provisions of Obama Care, in part because of the income restriction, in part because we were "unemployed."

Consequently, we paid full freight for our insurance, which amounted to a bit over $800 a month, nearly twice what we are paying on our mortgage.   This insurance carried with it a $5000 deductible, and co-pays of close to 50% after the deductible had been met.  Under normal circumstances, we would never meet the $5000 deductible.  Under dire circumstances -- say we had a $100K hospitalization and that is not inconceivable with my wife's health issues -- we would still be obligated for nearly $50K.  To be frank, we made the $800 payment a couple of times, but we quit.  Here's the thing.  Over the course of the year, that amounted to $9,600, more than we could afford.   We rolled the dice, and bet that we wouldn't have a dire need over the course of the year, and that our medical expenses wouldn't be more than $14,600 or the total out-of-pocket expenses of premiums and co-pays.  Fortunately our bet paid off and we moved through the year in good health.

We now qualify for the subsidies, and we are making payments similar to my employee contribution when I was employed, but here's the other thing.  We still have the humongous deductible and co-pays.  If something were to happen, if we had that $100K hospitalization, the hospital would get $50K, but I'm not sure how we would pay the remaining $50K without surrendering ALL our assets.  I haven't explored the bankruptcy laws of late, but I'm pretty sure that we would need to exhaust all our available means before we could write off any remaining debt.  In short, the dire circumstances would be dire regardless.  The hospital is protected, perhaps not to the extent that they would like to be protected, but we are only marginally protected and the hospital would continue to have dunning rights.  On top of the health issues, we would have a plethora of financial issues to confront.  

And here's one more thing.  Health care is expensive.  We all know this of course, but it's like toilet paper.  When you need it, you need it, and you'll pay for it.  The Post the other day ran an insightful little story about why the poor pay more for toilet paper.  The bottom line is this:  they don't have access to or the means to take advantage of cost saving strategies (no access to Costco and no funds to buy in bulk regardless).  Consequently, they pay full retail, often the full retail of a convenience store.  As the article concluded, it's expensive to be poor, and indeed it is.  We could, for example, get a more expensive plan, which would protect us better against the shock of a major hospitalization, but the bottom line is this:  we can't afford it and the benefits aren't THAT much better.   Moreover, with the deductible, we are postponing or avoiding routine, mostly preventative medical care.  Think of it this way.  Although the cost of a routine visit would go toward our deductible, and preventative care might well mitigate a more catastrophic event later, it still represents an out of pocket expense, money thrown into a black hole.   Most American families have to look at a $200 expense and weigh this against that.  I won't say they always make the most prudent decisions, but there are always more pressing day-to-day needs and wants.   

So, my tax dollars are at work, but I do feel some resentment that they are most definitely not working very hard for me.  The resentment is fueled in part by an invidious comparison.  I do, that is, see others for whom they seem to be hard at work.  Take, for example, my buddy Mike.   I won't get the story exactly right.  It came in dribs and drabs when he came into our shop, but the general outline goes something like this:   He is an immigrant, born in Ireland, and brought to the US to stay with relatives.  He served two years in the military, and at a relatively young age, he had a motorcycle accident which left him with "back problems."  Although he probably can't do construction work (his trade before the accident) he is not so disabled that he couldn't seek one form of work or another.  Let me put it this way, he is no more disabled than my wife, who suffers from a degenerative arthritis of the spine.  She has had three back surgeries, but nevertheless manages to be employed as a hospice worker.   Mike, however, remains unemployed.  He has access to the VA system, which keeps him supplied with hydrocodone for "pain management."  He also receives disability benefits through the social security administration.    Perhaps it is one of those ironies that those states that draw most heavily on the federal larders are also the most "republican."  There are plenty of Mike's around Mountain Home.  One doesn't need to look long or hard for those milking the system, which probably fuels resentments across a broad spectrum of the working and middle class families in the area.

I regret my resentment, but there it is nevertheless.  This by way of saying, I don't have many illusions about the poor of this country.  I could, for example, have talked about my other buddy Brad.   He had to count out pennies to buy a single fly in the shop, but he seems to have sufficient resources to maintain a cigarette habit.  The one time I did go fishing with him, he also seemed to have sufficient resources to buy weed.  He had illusions as a youth of being a rodeo and country music star, but he is now a fifty year old man who hasn't quite outgrown the illusions.  He lives with and on the benefits of his elderly mother.  I could, for example, have talked about ... the list goes on.  When we had our store, I watched a daily stream of "them" going into the thrift store across the way.  I try very hard avoid judgement, but when they meandered into our store, obese, tattooed, reeking of cigarette smoke, with poor hygiene and very often overweening supercilious "attitude," it was difficult NOT to judge.   One such, who came into the shop looking for worms, told me that "fly fishing was for people who liked 'play with themselves,'" and went around poking fun at everything in the store, and couldn't leave without a gratuitous comment about that "nigger Obama."   This by way of saying, again, I don't have many illusions about the poor of this country.  Although it might have been easier to romanticize the noble poor of the depression, I can't romanticize them today because there is little to romanticize.

The American social state is broken.  Those it "serves," like the Mike's of this world, can't really respect it, in part because they get their benefits through what amounts to a scam.  Those who administer the systems can't respect the recipients of benefits, in part because they know they are being scammed and can't do much about it.  Those who are outside it, watching, can't help but feel some resentment that their tax dollars are going into a morass.  The idea, for example, that Muslim foreigners would come into the country, as refugees, and no doubt get benefits, sends many over the top.   Regardless whether or not it is true, the idea ...  The political parties appeal to an amalgam of isolated attitudes about mostly base emotional "issues," with little ability or desire to actually address fundamental problems within the government rationally with solutions.  Although I tend to lean toward the progressive left, and feel the so-called conservative revolution that began with Reagan and Thatcher is responsible for much of our current malaise, I am not exempting my progressive brethren from the general malaise.   Bernie might be the antithesis of Trump, but he is gaining the traction he has gained fueled by the same resentments.   

      

Picketty Called It -- Part II

OK, why the social state?  A quick answer goes like this:  one should not confuse fly rods and health care.  The purchase of a fly rod is discretionary in every sense of the word.  Not everyone will want a fly rod, and for those that do, it seems perfectly legitimate that buyer discretion be left to market forces.  If one wants the brand cache of an expensive fly rod, and can afford it, go for it.  If one can't tell the difference (and I admit that my casting is not sophisticated enough to tell the difference) then perhaps one will forego the brand chache and go for a perfectly adequate, less expensive rod.  Regardless, no one NEEDs a fly rod.  I just happen to WANT one -- well, several -- but the state should feel itself under no moral or ethical compulsion to provide them to me or anyone else.

On the other hand, health care, I believe, is a moral and ethical entitlement of all men, women, and children.  I am not sure where, exactly, to begin making this argument, so let me begin where I have begun before.  If the fundament of morality is simple empathy and the golden rule, I would WANT to be provided with health care when I needed it, so to I might assume others would WANT to be provided with health care when they needed it.  I would want it whether I could afford it or not, and so too must assume that others would want it whether they could afford it or not.  The difference between wanting a fly rod and wanting health care is, of course, is a matter of universality.  Not everyone will want a fly rod, and no one needs a fly rod, but everyone, at one time or another in their life, will want and need health care, if not for themselves, then for a suffering loved one.

Having said that, modern medicine and health care is a science.  The vast majority accept the scientific basis of medicine.  The vast majority are astonished when parents, for arcane religious reasons, reject available treatment for their children because we know that a scientific hypothesis was formed around the cause of the malady, a treatment proposed and tested at various levels to demonstrate its effectiveness experimentally, and so we have great confidence that the administered treatment will be effective.   Consequently, we also know that NOT administering the treatment is tantamount to standing at the side the swimming pool and watching a child drown even though we might be perfectly capable of reaching down and saving her.  If we cannot save the child, we fully expect the lifeguard, one trained to do the saving, to jump in and save her.   We do not ask first whether the child deserves to be saved, or whether its parents have contributed premiums to the lifeguard association.  We simply and correctly expect the child's life to be saved.

In other words, to my mind, it makes little difference whether the impending cause of suffering is a virus or a swimming pool, if the means exist to save the child from its grip or alleviate its suffering, we simply and correctly expect all available effort, short of endangering one's own life, to be made.  Although it seems clearer when we are speaking of children, I would simply extend the argument to all sentient human beings.  I would expect all available effort to be made on my behalf, or on my child's behalf, and as a consequence of that expectation, I have a duty to others to make the same effort on their behalf.  Clearly, however, when it comes to health care, not everyone is able or qualified to save lives or alleviate suffering, and so we have trained others (life guards if you will) who take on that responsibility as a professional obligation.   We have, as it were, a health care system, and the same argument extends to the "health care system."  I would expect it to make every effort on my behalf, and consequently I have a moral and ethical obligation to make that system available to others.

It is here, of course, relative to that moral and ethical obligation, that questions around the social state come into being. The moral and ethical obligation assumes, I should point out, the universal availability of the "health care system."  I do believe it should be universally available, and because I believe it should be universally available, I also believe that it is the collective responsibility of the people as a whole, which is simply another way of saying that I believe it is a fundamental responsibility of the government.  During the last election cycle, I'm not sure who it was that shouted from the back of the crowd "let them die," but I am sure that I do not want to find myself feeling or saying the same.  I'm not sure precisely what Jefferson had in mind when he characterized "life" as an inalienable right.  I suspect, in the absence of 21st century medicine, he was thinking simply that one had the right to be free from the fear that government might deprive one of life without due process.  I am suggesting, however, in the presence of 21st century medicine, that "life itself," so long as the means exist to preserve it, is an inalienable right.   To my mind, the question is not "do we have an obligation," but how do we best fulfill the obligation?

Before I answer that question, let me back track a bit.  When we see a child drowning in a pool, we don't ask does it "deserve" to be saved.  We probably don't.  We do, however, find ourselves asking whether a chronic alcoholic "deserves" a liver transplant or a two pack a day smoker "deserves" the prolonged and expensive treatment for lung cancer.   I don't want to suggest that such questions are not legitimate, but we can quibble forever around individualized questions of desert.  For example, does an 80 year old man "deserve" a heart transplant, particularly when it might deprive a 20 year old woman?  What if the 20 year old is a heroine addict?  As an aside, we study literature and film to gain an appreciation of such particularized moral and ethical questions, but I don't want to slip into what would prove to be endlessly elaborated "what if" discussion.  I simply want to bracket such questions of "desert" for the moment and focus on one in particular -- does someone who doesn't "pay into" the health care system deserve treatment?

Setting aside a "pay as you go," there are basically two ways that we "pay into" the system in America today.  One is through taxes, that supports medicare and medicaid, and the other is through "insurance."   To "qualify" for medicare one must be at least 65 years of age and a citizen.  To "qualify" for medicaid one must be below a certain income threshold and be a citizen.  Such programs are "universal" in a the sense that all citizens, if they should meet the criteria, qualify.   The other is through "insurance."   There are basically two types of insurance as well, employer sponsored and government sponsored health care. Under the current design of Obama Care, if I understand its broad outlines correctly, in the absence of employer sponsored health insurance, the government offers health insurance as if it were employer sponsored health insurance -- that is to say, just as employers pay a portion of the health insurance premium, the government pays a portion of the health insurance premium.   Both are basically "proportional" -- here again, that is to say, employees and government sponsored individuals pay a percentage of the premium based on income in a way similar to the flat tax.

Back to the question -- does someone who doesn't "pay into" the health care system deserve treatment?  We live in a world, to use Picketty's words, where there is "free trade and circulation of capital and people."  To bring this home, my wife worked at one point in an emergency room.  "Aliens" would come into the emergency room, because there they could not be refused treatment.  They did not have a social security number, nor did they have employer based insurance, most working at numerous part time, minimum wage jobs that put them outside an employer's health care benefits.  For the most part, their maladies were not "life-threatening" and could have been treated just as effectively and much less expensively by a family practice physician or neighborhood clinic, both of whom could refuse treatment if the patient did not "pay into" the system.   They received basically "free care" much to the resentment of those who treated them and who had for their part paid into the system.  This raises all sorts of ethical questions, both for those who, lacking other choices, accessed the system in the only way they could, and for those who, fulfilling their moral and ethical obligation, had paid into the system.  These individuals fell through the cracks in the American social state, and partly because of that, their presence in the emergency room exacerbated what Picketty called "defensive nationalism and identity politics" -- the sort of resentments that the donald and others prey upon.

I still haven't answered the question -- does someone who doesn't "pay into" the health care system deserve treatment?  The answer is "probably not," if they fail to do so out of negligence, or willful perversity.  If you believe, as I do, that health care is a universal right, with a universal obligation, then we MUST contribute our share and the government is perfectly entitled to compel people to do so through appropriate taxation and sanctions.   Government must assume that everyone, when it is needed, will find some way to access the system, and consequently everyone has the reciprocal obligation to "pay into" the system.  The universality of the obligation to "pay into" the system brackets all questions of desert.  If all fulfill their obligation, whether through compulsion or consent, then we don't even need to ask the endlessly quibbling questions of need or desert.  We all have secured our right to the system through the fulfillment of our obligation.

The current system sorta fulfills this basic argument -- sorta.  It is convoluted, arcane, beset with incomprehensible and contradictory regulation that even the administrators of the program don't understand.   It is (here's the kicker) designed more to protect the income of private insurance and health care providers, designed more to fulfill the obligation of the individual to pay into the system, less to insure the system provides the necessary treatment.  Government, per se, is not the problem.  Our current ineffectual government is the problem.  Getting rid of or eviscerating government, however,  is not the solution to bad government.   In the absence of anything else, it simply makes for small bad government.   Building a better government is the solution to bad government, rationally deciding how best to secure our rights and fulfill our obligations, and that I will save for tomorrow.

Picketty Called It -- Part I

In Picketty's Capital (near the end of the 15th chapter) he writes:

If you have free trade and free circulation of capital and people but destroy the social state and all forms of progressive taxation, the temptations of defensive nationalism and identity politics will very likely grow stronger than ever in both Europe and the United States.

At some level, this makes common sense.  Let me see if I can explain in a way sufficient to satisfy myself at least.  

In the first place, I'm not sure there's much we can or want to do about "free trade and free circulation of capital."  I am surrounded by people who want to buy American made, not foreign, products, particularly not those made in China.  Fly rods and reels are a case in point.  In our small store, we carried rods manufactured in China and Korea, and they came with reasonable price tags.  There were any number of people who professed to buy only American, and there are American made fly rods, but for the most part they are "premium" or "luxury" brands -- that is to say, they cost on order four to six times as much as the foreign manufactured product.  I am pretty sure they are not four to six times "better" in any qualitative sense, except that  sense of "better" that comes with brand snobbery.  Moreover, I'm not sure they are "entirely" manufactured in the US.  It is one thing to be "made in America," another to be "assembled in America" from parts manufactured elsewhere, or even more evasively "designed in the US."None of the big box retailer's rods at Cabelas or the chain retailers like Orvis, to the best of my knowledge, sell rods that are actually "made in" the US.    


In the end, the "made in" sticker means little to me.  I doubt that there is an extensive market for fly rods in either China and Korea, and indeed both companies, TFO and ECHO, are American companies distributing primarily in the US market.  So yes, we have contributed to the standard of living within China and Korea, but ultimately, the actual manufacturing is a small part of the enterprise, when one considers all the other factors, to include the wholesale and retail sales distribution, that go into putting a fly rod in the hands of a fly fisher person.   A good number of Americans made money off those fly rods (including me) and, insofar as it isn't quite what you'd call a necessity, a good number of Americans could afford $150 for the recreational TFO rod a bit quicker than they could afford $600 for at the equally recreational Sage rod.  If we were to build a wall around the US, either literally or figuratively with tariffs, keeping out the cheaper foreign made goods or making them as expensive as the American made goods, we would feel the impact on our lifestyle quickly and considerably across the entire inventory of Walmart.   There are, of course, unfair trade practices, and these need to be addressed diplomatically, but in the end agreements like NAFTA, which open the doors to "free trade and free circulation of capital," but also diplomatic solutions to unfair practices, are likely a good thing.

Of course, the GOP has been bent on "destroying the social state" and the "progressive taxation" that supports it.  Picketty's translators use the term "social state," rather than the "welfare state" in part, I suspect, to avoid the loaded word "welfare," but before we touch that, let's start with "progressive taxation."   I've tried to demonstrate why a "flat tax," or a "proportional tax" in Picketty's language, is a better deal for the wealthy.  They would, quite naturally, resist any form of "progressive taxation."  It takes more money out of their pocket and slows the geometric growth of their wealth.  In some superficial sense, the taxes are "equal and fair," but even at what might be considered low tax rates, a 20% tax has a much, much greater impact on one's ability to live when one is making $50K a year than one's ability to live when one is making a million a year.  In a deeper sense, if one considers even briefly the impact of a tax on the taxpayer, a progressive tax is more "equal and fair."  Consider, it would take a tax of 95% to reduce the income of the millionaire to that of the median income person.  A tax of 50% would leave the millionaire with an income 10 times greater than that of the median income person.   This is overly simplistic, and doesn't reflect a "real" tax table, but I am simply suggesting that the more "realistic" tax of, say, 50% would leave plenty of "motivation" to earn that million dollars, if money is one's motivation.  So, if one tries to minimize the impact of the tax on the median income taxpayer, without deleteriously affecting "motivational" factors of the millionaire, then a progressive tax is more "equal and fair."   The progressive tax not only slows the geometric growth of inequality, but can be construed as "equal and fair."

It seems clear enough to me that the tax cuts advocated by the GOP have had mostly a deleterious effect on our country.  It has put more money into the pockets of people, and I suspect that for the median income person, it goes directly into consumption of goods and services.  The impact, however, is negligible and short lived.   For the millionaire, I suspect the cuts simply go into savings, increasing their net wealth, but doing little to stimulate the consumption that drives the economy.  As an aside, I believe the word "savings" means something a bit different to the median income person than it does to the millionaire.  For the median income person, it means "deferred consumption" -- that is to say, they are "saving for" something, whether it be a "rainy day" or "down payment."  For the millionaire, there is little reason to defer consumption.  Saving is more like the image we have of Scrooge Duck, of the Donald Duck comics, sitting on sacks of money, except the sacks of money tend to grow on accumulated rent.  Although the GOP claims the savings will "stimulate investment" and "grow jobs," I have seen little evidence of either.   The stagnation we feel in the economy is the so-called "supply side" prioritization of "savings" of the rich over "consumption" of the median income folks.

It also seems clear enough to me that the progressivity of the ostensibly progressive American income tax has been undermined in many, many ways.  In the last election cycle, when it was demonstrated that Mitt Romney, a very wealthy man, had a tax rate LOWER than his secretary, we had some inkling that real tax rates, at least for the very wealthy, are actually regressive, not progressive.  I cannot begin to enumerate the ways to "beat" the tax system, in part because I have never had the means to  "beat" the system.  One must be able to make the "right" kind of investments, in the "right" places, with the right legal and tax advice to "capitalize" on those exemptions, and it all takes more money than I have ever had.   I have simply had to pay my taxes.

Having said that, why a progressive tax?  Let's consider something simple, like health care and health insurance.  Before I get to it in earnest a couple of disclosures.

First, I think any profit based, private insurance suffers from contradictory motivations.  They are highly motivated, that is, to take your money in premiums, but only reluctantly motivated to pay out money in claims.  They will pay, of course, but only to the level of the contract you have entered into, not to the level of your need, and they will pay ONLY what insures them a reasonable return on their capital.  If there is any "legitimate" reason to avoid paying a claim, they will -- "legitimate" in the sense that they will prevail in "litigation" should it come to that.  

Second, I think employer based, private insurance is unsustainable.  At my last benefited job, during wage negotiations, our president wanted us to argue that the health benefits were "real" compensation, and in a sense they were.  The escalating cost of the benefit cost the college real money, and were a real benefit to the employee, so if you added the increased cost of health benefits to the money paid in wages, it would appear that the employees indeed received a "raise."  In reality, despite the increased costs, the benefits were increasingly less beneficial.  The employee contribution rose at the same rate as the college contribution, taking money directly out of their paycheck.   Co-pays and other out of pocket expenses also went up, taking money out of their paycheck.  As a result, although total compensation went up, take-home pay went down, meaning of course that our employees actually had LESS money to pay their mortgage, buy gas to get to work, feed their family, et cetera.   The rising cost of their health care nibbled away at this ability to be good consumers.  At the same time, they had the added benefit of an increased cost to access the insurance.  Fewer claims were made, particularly among those at the low end of the pay scale, not because they had less need, but because they lacked the immediate ability to afford the co-pays.   The rising out of pocket costs nibbled away at their ability to access quality health care.

OK, why a truly progressive tax?  Because it is necessary to pay for the social state, which begs the question of why a "social state?"   More on this in part II.       

Violence

The Washington Post asks in their headline today, "Trump has Lit a Fire.  Can it be Contained?"  Although I have no reason, per se, to believe what I am about to say except a gut-wrenching concern, that our "original sin" of slavery and race hatred will be the fall of America.  Trump, with very thinly coded language, is baiting our race hatred.  The news organizations have done enough in reporting this, with the possible exception of Fox News, so I won't belabor it here.  The Post reports that "GOP political consultant Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, said Trump’s rhetoric is 'almost verbatim' what segregationist George Wallace was saying in his third-party 1968 presidential campaign."  I am old enough to remember George Wallace, his axe handle, and the odd sense of bewildered shame that I felt toward during the civil rights movement.   One can write off King's non-violence as exceptional gamesmanship for the TV cameras, and it was of course, but I couldn't help but feel shame at watching  AMERICAN police with dogs and weapons beat helpless black protestors.  Gamesmanship, perhaps, but it was nevertheless non-violence with intellectual roots in Thoreau, from Ghandi, and from the example of the christ who said "turn the other cheek."  I also remember Huey Newton and the black panthers, and the odd sense of dread that I felt during their emergence and their acceptance of violence as a means of political change.

The post may be over-stating the case, and if it hasn't quite erupted to the same level, I nevertheless would want to say, "not-yet, keep going."  In our small store, I was asked once how I felt about black people.  I was a bit puzzled.  Black people are a distinct, and I mean distinct, minority in Mountain Home, and most, if not all, are associated with the military base.  I tried very hard not to alienate a potential customer, so I did what Lora calls the Dr. Picard thing, I responded with a Socratic question, "as a whole or individually?"  He had to think about it for a moment, but he then responded, "as a whole."  My response was, "well, they're people.  I'm not sure I can say anything about them 'as a whole' any more than I can say anything 'as a whole' about white people, or brown people."  The subject took a slight divergence at that point.  He showed me, with evident pride, a 'monkey's fist' that he had fabricated himself.  A monkey's fist is essentially a medieval weapon, a mace, that is constructed of a striking ball with a flexible handle.  He had made one for himself, and his wife, for "the coming days."  I admired it with the enthusiasm I could muster,  and I didn't press the matter on "the coming days."  Clearly enough, it was an apocalyptic vision, fueled in part by video games and the walking dead.   But he wasn't kidding.  It wasn't a video game fantasy.  He was "prepared" and continuing to prepare.  "The coming days" were going to involve bloodshed, and it was, clearly enough, something he looked forward to engaging.

I don't know his church, but "the coming days" is the sort of language that comes, not from silicon valley or hollywood, but from a pastor steeped in biblical locution.   I mentioned the Assembly of Yahweh in my last post, a core figure of which is helping fund Ted Cruz's run, and they "affirm," for example, that

"our Savior, Yahshua the Messiah, will establish the Kingdom of Yahweh, the Kingdom of the Heavens, on this earth, Psalm 115:16, Proverbs 11:31; Matthew 5:5; Revelation 5:10.  This Millennial Kingdom will prevail for 1,000 years and will be set up by Yahshua the Messiah at His Second Coming.  At that time, righteousness will be established as the order of the day, and this earth will be rebuilt into an Edenic paradise which man lost originally through sin, Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 6:10.  After the Millennium, a new heaven and earth will be brought forth, Isaiah 66)22, Revelation 21:1."

I'm not sure why an omnipotent creator god would need to go through all these machinations, but it represents a mindset, one that I'm sure is sincere among those who can preserve the proper level of ignorance to believe it.   I say this, "proper level of ignorance" because the "explanations" of the machinations (e.g. that we are being "tested") always involve an anthropomorphic centrism that simply isn't merited when we know that "the Kingdom of the Heavens," the night sky, is filled with the stars of our own rather insignificant milky way galaxy, itself just one among the billions of galaxies "out there."   Why would a god who created our universe, bother with the likes of us?   This vision of "the coming days" belongs to an earlier, earth centric version of the universe, but still it represents a mindset.  The fellow who came into my store was preparing himself for the battle needed to "establish the Kingdom of Yahweh," or something like it, and it was clear that it would be populated, not with righteous people, per se, but with righteous white people.   In his mind, if not the official doctrine of his church, the apocalypse would be largely a race war of the righteous whites against all the "others" who worship strange gods, to include of course gays, communists, socialists, abortionists, and all the other bugaboos of the right.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, extrapolating a bit far, but the wrenching dread I feel watching the GOP, the party of Lincoln, twist in their own poorly concealed race baiting and xenophobias, their own complete disregard of environmental concerns, doesn't allow me to dismiss the sort of implicit claims that such apocalyptic thinking entails.  Never mind that the environmental policies espoused by the GOD would enrich the rich, they are unnecessary regardless because "the coming days," the Kingdom of the Heavens, is just around the corner.  All will be well then, and if they are doing anything, they are simply hastening the day of judgment.  I had thought, hoped, that the election of Obama, which I saw as a proud day for America, gave some hope  of moving past racial politics, but if anything, his election intensified the divide, gave the pendulum a push in the direction of the donald, David Duke, and the like.   The coming apocalypse, at least for America, will not come from the outside, per se, but will come from the ignited spark of an internal terrorist attack against the secular, welfare state.

Again, perhaps I am being unfair, but Trump, and those like him, and those who like him -- those who applauded the old red-neck who punched the protestor and then suggested that next time the protester may need to be killed -- are fanning the flames of the next Timothy McVeigh, whose destruction of a federal government facility seems dreadfully prescient.   We fear the terrorist without, but not the terrorist within.   It is hard NOT to see the old punch throwing, gun toting, red-neck morphing into our own version of the Sturmabteilung.  It is hard NOT to see Corey Lewandowski emerging as the next Emil Maurice.   It is hard NOT to feel a sense of historical deja vu.   If extreme anger leads to violence, and who can suggest that it doesn't? It is hard NOT to feel a justification and encouragement of violence while Lewandowski fans the flames of anger, xenophobia, blame, a shift from ideological and policy debates to a (self-proclaimed) messianic leader who will, through the force of his personality alone, restore a nationalistic pride: "The American people are angry.  They’re upset at the way this country has been run. They’re upset that this country is being taken advantage of by every other country in the world. And they’re tired of not being proud to be Americans.”  It is hard NOT to wonder who will be the first to populate the American concentration camps.  Oh wait.  I already know the answer to that question.

The Unholy Alliance

I have been trying to understand the conservative party for some time now -- the central tenants of their belief system.  The alliance between fiscal conservatism and religion seems to me particularly perverse, but at their core there is a distrust of the existing government.   On the one side, while the policies are never cast in this light, there is the aversion of the very rich to any government interference with their ability to accumulate capital and power.  Hence their particular aversion to regulatory or taxation policy, except the end game of no-regulaton or no taxation except that imposed by the invisible hand of the free market.   On the other side, while again policies are never cast in this light, there is the aversion of the very religious to any government interference with their ability to accumulate what might be called moral authority of "biblical values" and the power to impose that moral authority on each and all.  I use the term "moral authority" loosely, in part, because it is not a reasonable or rational moral authority, or one that can be justified from a central tenant like the golden rule.  We are all subject to blind prejudice, but no one would treat women or homosexuals the way they have been treated historically if that same treatment were to be imposed on them for some equally arbitrary accident of birth.

I want to say that the freer the free market -- that is to say, the less it is subject to regulatory restrictions and redistributive taxation -- the more it tends toward monopoly and oligarchy.  This is ultimately just another version of aristocracy, if not a landed patrician aristocracy of the Downton Abbey sort, which seems benign enough in the soft focus light of nostalgia, then a new aristocracy, one predicated on other forms of inherited capital.  We want to think of it as a meritocracy, and we continue to espouse the myth that this is the land of opportunity.  Perhaps we could think of it as a meritocracy throughout the brief period following each of the world wars, and in the so-called tech-era where a few techies rose to riches with an idea, but now that we are moving into the third millennium, we have long since past the time when it could be assumed that every rich man was a self-made man.  Nevertheless, each rich man wants you to believe that he was a self-made man, that god endowed him, as the donald put it, with a "special brain" that allowed him to rise to a position of "success."  I have not seen anything very impressive about the donald's brain, except a talent for narcissistic self-aggrandizement.  If god endowed him with anything, it was an inherited fortune.  His egomaniacal selfies aside, it is infinitely easier to get even richer if one begins with riches in the first place.

Here's a way to think of meritocracy.  Imagine a foot race -- a hundred yard dash.  Everyone has a stash of cash, and everyone must contribute 20% to the pot for the race.  Of course, each individual's stash of cash is different, some have a considerable amount, some a negligible amount, but everyone must contribute 20% to the pot of whatever they have for the prize.  In a true meritocracy, of course, everyone would start from the same starting line, race one-hundred yards to the same finish line, and the winner would come away with a considerable prize regardless of their initial contribution.  That, of course, is not fair.  In such a scenario, the winner may not have contributed much of anything to the pot.  Indeed, if they were indigent, but fleet of foot, they may have contributed nothing at all to the pot and yet still come away with a considerable prize.  It seems fairer, does it not, to have different starting lines based on one's contribution to the pot.  Those that contributed nothing to the pot, would start at the one hundred yard mark, while those that contributed more would start closer to the finish line and those that contributed considerably more would start even closer to the finish line.

Metaphorically speaking, the economic race currently resembles the second scenario more than the first.  It's not exactly winner takes all.  The prize money is distributed on a diminishing scale, with the winners taking a greater percentage of the pot, the losers taking a much smaller percentage of the pot, so there may be some jockeying for position along the starting spectrum, but it is very unlikely that someone racing 100 yards toward the grand prize is likely to beat someone racing, say, 1 yard toward the grand prize, no matter how meritorious, no matter how fleet of foot he or she happens to be. There will be some falling away.  One of the largest contributors to the pot, living in the lap of luxury, may have grown lethargic and weak.  Despite starting close to the finish line, he may fall back in the pack as others, more energetic and stronger, pass him by and win a greater share of the pot, thereby contributing more the next time, starting even closer, and winning an even greater share of the pot.  If he can maintain his energy and strength in successive races, he may find himself on top.

One can think of various elaborations of the metaphor, and there are some elements of merit, even in the second scenario.  Generally speaking, however, given a normal distribution of running ability, in the second scenario, those that contributed the most to the pot at the beginning are still going to come away with most of the pot at the end.  Still, we want to believe in a meritocracy, we want very badly to believe in a meritocracy, the American dream.  I won't elaborate on Weber's thesis.  He did it better than I could, but the close connection between the "merit" of having money and "moral authority" plays out again and again in American society with variations on the theme.  In my small shop, how many times have I heard that the donald can be "trusted" because he is not obligated to anyone.  He has "more money than God" and so can be "trusted" to speak "without political correctness" because he is not in the pocket of various lobbyists or contributors.  One may not like what he says, but at least it can be assumed that "he's speaking his mind."

The "moral authority" is heightened when one professes, however weakly, to be christian.  It's not exactly as though the donald is running as an evangelical, but he is pandering to a base form of xenophobia -- he is not one of "them" -- not muslim, not an immigrant, decidedly not a homosexual with his endowment,  not a woman or black, et cetera.   Ted Cruz, however, is running as an evangelical.  He doesn't have the donald's merit of having money, however.  Hence YouTube videos, based on CNN reporting, like "Meet the FOUR People Funding the Ted Cruz Campaign."  Whether or not the facts are correct, it alleges that 36 of the 38 million raised by the Cruz campaign came from four, very wealthy contributors.  The commentator goes on to say, "you think Ted Cruz is going to represent the people?  No!  He's going to represent those four guys."  The remainder of the video makes explicit the connection between the donations and religion, and the desire, on the part of a religious minority,  of fundamentalist beliefs, to impose their values on the whole of the American people.

The video also makes clear enough the potential hypocrisy.  Ted Cruz, in representing the contributors, who also favor a fiscal conservative agenda, one that would decrease regulation and taxation, a fiscal agenda that clearly favors, well, people like then, the rich.  Ted Cruz is the proxy, in other words, for a religiously inspired oligarch not unlike the imams.  His religious beliefs may or may not be sincere, but if CNN's reporting is correct, it's not a stretch to suppose he is going to represent "those four guys" not only in their religious, but in their fiscal agenda as well.   According to Forbes, the largest contributor to the Cruz campaign, Farris Wilks, at 15 million dollars, is "buying ranches in Idaho and Montana."  I suspect the purpose in doing so is not benign, but unlike Trump, they are in fact self made men, more or less.  They established FracTec, a tracking concern, that they sold a 70% interest for over 3 billion dollars to a Singapore concern, so one can imagine, apart from an end days religious agenda, why they might support loose regulation on environmental concerns. The hypocrisy goes even deeper.  He is also a pastor of the "Assembly of Yaweh church," a fundamentalist christian organization that affirms old testament law, or at least that which suits the moment.  On homosexuality, we can, of course, quote Leviticus 18:22 or "do not have sexual relations with a man as one has with a woman," and one can imagine why sincere believers among the conservatives would oppose gay marriage.   On immigration reform, however, we have Leviticus 19:34-35 which tells us "when a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born.  Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt."  If not foreigners from Egypt, for most Amerians, including Ted Cruz, one needn't go back too far to find they were foreigners in Mexico, Guatamala, Poland, and well yes even Egypt.  Seems to me, if one accepts biblical values in one regard, one must accept them in the other, particularly if the bible itself is infallible truth.  Yet, I have not heard a conservative candidate support the latter set of verses.