Conservatives believe two things:
A) Taxes are bad for the economy.
B) Progressive taxation is unjust.
Liberals take the two opposite views:
A) Taxes are good for the economy.
B) Progressive taxation is just.
What’s interesting about these different stances are that they each make one subjective and one objective (at least more so) claim. Whether progressive taxation is just or not, is based in large part on relatively intangible philosophical principles. Whether taxation is good or bad for the economy is more measurable, although hardly reliably so and fraught with complexities likely too advances for the layperson to appreciate.
Yet in both political perspectives, each view is claimed to bolster the other.
For the conservative, if taxes are bad for the economy because they put a burden on investment, then progressive taxation must be doubly bad for the economy because it is especially burdensome – specifically to those in the best position to be investing, namely business owners. And if progressive taxation is unjust because money is private property and each is entitled to a fair share of his earnings, then taxation’s negative effect on the economy must be doubly unjust because it forces individuals to disproportionately contribute to a newly weakened economy.
For the liberal, if taxes are good for the economy because they act as social investments, then progressive taxation contributes to this investment. And if progressive taxation is just because it rewards citizens more fairly, then taxation’s benefit to the economy will of course improve everyone’s life.
So basically, each set of views are ideologically sympathetic. It is no wonder why they would be comfortably embraced as such. But just because they are sympathetic does not mean that either is contingent on the other, or that because one is true so must be the other.
Maybe taxes are bad for the overall economy, yet it is still just to make them progressive because that is indeed fairer. Or maybe the reverse is true: taxes are good for the economy, yet progressive taxation is unfair by principle.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Institutional Chaos
Modern society depends, one could say, on a few powerful institutional entities. Without these, it would surely lose its course and fall prey to any manner of insidious and destructive forces, resulting ultimately in physical and emotional suffering of its people, to say nothing of the failure in living up to the promise of progress, so far defined as general happiness, personal liberties, respect of conscience, etc.
Democratic government is the most significant, but a free press and academia are close seconds and thirds. Imagining the absence of one cannot help but reflect new, poorer light upon the others. And they are interdependent. Arguably, none could really exist without the others, at least to their fullest potential. Without democracy, what good is the expression of journalism, or academic ideas? Without a free press, are democratic principles even possible? And without academia, well, would time not come to a sort of standstill?
But what brings me to this topic a the development in modern conservatism, expressed with vigor by the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the last debate, of a heightened form of ideological fervor that in many ways has essentially obliterated two of those institutions. By defining them in such a way as to make them irrelevant, the end result has been that they have been taken out of the social order.
I have no idea how long this movement has been going on, or how precisely it came to be what it is today. It certainly has roots in many political traditions, some of them more uniquely American than others. Populism is a large part of it: we the people are not our institutions. We create them to serve us, not the other way around. But populism alone is nothing but anarchy, and thus self-defeating as a governmental design.
There seems to be a subtle nihilism at its core - an end-of-days sort of reductionism that, not getting its way, wants to throw everything on the fire and watch it all burn. Sour grapes. In so doing, two of civilization's greatest institutions are spurned.
The first dismissal is the media, often more specifically referred to as the "mainstream media". Derided as hopelessly liberal, biased, partisan, it becomes altogether dismissible. The reporters can no longer be trusted, and so neither can their reporting. Suddenly there is a vacuum. Imagine for a second what life would be like with no journalism. No TV. No radio. No newspapers. No magazines. How would we get our information of the world and current events? Yet, by dismissing all established media as partisan out of hand, this is effectively what one does. In such a cynical situation, there may be hope that a discerning consumer might be able to take their pick from a variety of sources, partisan though each may be in its own right.
But this movement is not skeptical of all media, including that it may agree with - just that of which it does not approve. News is reduced to what comes through one's own approved filter. And what this inevitably means, is that there is news, and then there is news. Certain media outlets, defined by their partisan stances, are to be trusted, while everyone else is not to be. A hallmark of contemporary journalism is the charter claim to attempt objectivity. Yet by defining those one purports to disagree with as wholly biased, and therefore inconsequential, the only alternative is partisan sources. Given that this claim is leveled at almost every major national and international news organization, there isn't much left. One is left receiving only the news which with one preemptively agrees. Inevitably, facts conform to view, instead of view conforming to facts.
The second dismissal is academia, and in many ways is the much scarier position. Journalistic bias is generally not terribly difficult to parse. The assumptions behind its attack may be false, but the requisite facts themselves are usually pretty straight forward. The trust we place in journalists is not so much that we depend on their authority in every issue, but that that do their job well, reporting honestly, accurately and in sufficient detail.
Academia is a much more complex and difficult beast. By its very nature, the contribution it makes to society must be taken on good faith. No ordinary citizen can be expected to be well-versed enough in every area of study to make judgments on the relative merit of each issue. Even the college educated citizen has not been exposed to more than a very brief introduction to most relevant fields. Most research is read by only a very select few. Yet it's effects are obviously enormous. Pertinent information from academic study winds its way throughout the halls of policy-specific think tanks, down into mass media journalism, through the minds of newly graduated job applicants, into courtroom deposition, across government cabinet councils, etc.
And so, faced with its impact on so many issues in so many areas of society, we are forced to choose what makes sense to us and what does not, even while being so little-informed of the context from which each bit of new information arose. What were the parameters of the study involved? What were the prior assumptions involved in examining the issue? What sources were used? We can ask all of these questions. But it would be foolish to pretend that a layman could ever digest the totality of academic output with authority. And so we do not. We trust academia. We may not want to. But what is the alternative?
Looking back over the past 25, 50 or 100 years, the progress of human intellectual development has been staggering. Imagine if 100 years ago, one decided to refuse to accept any new thought coming out of academia for fear of embracing "biased" or distasteful conclusions. Well, we all know what that looked like because there have always been those that have fought every new idea. From evolution to psychoanalysis, racial and gender equality to cigarette smoke, there have always been those uncomfortable with trusting the authority of those more familiar with an issue.
And this is not to say that this forced blind-embrace of academic authority always leads to human progress. Eugenics was maybe the most notorious example of the misappropriation of academic authority. One can only hope for a continued social emphasis on political & social reflection, with an unfailing investment in public education.
But here may lie the greatest irony. Those who would wave away academic thought, especially thought that challenges traditional assumptions, as biased and therefore irrelevant, are themselves contributing to just the sort of environment in which ill-conceived social developments arise. A public who is uncomfortable with the rigors of academic thought, incapable of holding competing positions in their head at once, evaluating issues from many angles, or waiting patiently for more evidence to arise, is exactly the type of public most vulnerable to political & social manipulation.
Democratic government is the most significant, but a free press and academia are close seconds and thirds. Imagining the absence of one cannot help but reflect new, poorer light upon the others. And they are interdependent. Arguably, none could really exist without the others, at least to their fullest potential. Without democracy, what good is the expression of journalism, or academic ideas? Without a free press, are democratic principles even possible? And without academia, well, would time not come to a sort of standstill?
But what brings me to this topic a the development in modern conservatism, expressed with vigor by the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the last debate, of a heightened form of ideological fervor that in many ways has essentially obliterated two of those institutions. By defining them in such a way as to make them irrelevant, the end result has been that they have been taken out of the social order.
I have no idea how long this movement has been going on, or how precisely it came to be what it is today. It certainly has roots in many political traditions, some of them more uniquely American than others. Populism is a large part of it: we the people are not our institutions. We create them to serve us, not the other way around. But populism alone is nothing but anarchy, and thus self-defeating as a governmental design.
There seems to be a subtle nihilism at its core - an end-of-days sort of reductionism that, not getting its way, wants to throw everything on the fire and watch it all burn. Sour grapes. In so doing, two of civilization's greatest institutions are spurned.
The first dismissal is the media, often more specifically referred to as the "mainstream media". Derided as hopelessly liberal, biased, partisan, it becomes altogether dismissible. The reporters can no longer be trusted, and so neither can their reporting. Suddenly there is a vacuum. Imagine for a second what life would be like with no journalism. No TV. No radio. No newspapers. No magazines. How would we get our information of the world and current events? Yet, by dismissing all established media as partisan out of hand, this is effectively what one does. In such a cynical situation, there may be hope that a discerning consumer might be able to take their pick from a variety of sources, partisan though each may be in its own right.
But this movement is not skeptical of all media, including that it may agree with - just that of which it does not approve. News is reduced to what comes through one's own approved filter. And what this inevitably means, is that there is news, and then there is news. Certain media outlets, defined by their partisan stances, are to be trusted, while everyone else is not to be. A hallmark of contemporary journalism is the charter claim to attempt objectivity. Yet by defining those one purports to disagree with as wholly biased, and therefore inconsequential, the only alternative is partisan sources. Given that this claim is leveled at almost every major national and international news organization, there isn't much left. One is left receiving only the news which with one preemptively agrees. Inevitably, facts conform to view, instead of view conforming to facts.
The second dismissal is academia, and in many ways is the much scarier position. Journalistic bias is generally not terribly difficult to parse. The assumptions behind its attack may be false, but the requisite facts themselves are usually pretty straight forward. The trust we place in journalists is not so much that we depend on their authority in every issue, but that that do their job well, reporting honestly, accurately and in sufficient detail.
Academia is a much more complex and difficult beast. By its very nature, the contribution it makes to society must be taken on good faith. No ordinary citizen can be expected to be well-versed enough in every area of study to make judgments on the relative merit of each issue. Even the college educated citizen has not been exposed to more than a very brief introduction to most relevant fields. Most research is read by only a very select few. Yet it's effects are obviously enormous. Pertinent information from academic study winds its way throughout the halls of policy-specific think tanks, down into mass media journalism, through the minds of newly graduated job applicants, into courtroom deposition, across government cabinet councils, etc.
And so, faced with its impact on so many issues in so many areas of society, we are forced to choose what makes sense to us and what does not, even while being so little-informed of the context from which each bit of new information arose. What were the parameters of the study involved? What were the prior assumptions involved in examining the issue? What sources were used? We can ask all of these questions. But it would be foolish to pretend that a layman could ever digest the totality of academic output with authority. And so we do not. We trust academia. We may not want to. But what is the alternative?
Looking back over the past 25, 50 or 100 years, the progress of human intellectual development has been staggering. Imagine if 100 years ago, one decided to refuse to accept any new thought coming out of academia for fear of embracing "biased" or distasteful conclusions. Well, we all know what that looked like because there have always been those that have fought every new idea. From evolution to psychoanalysis, racial and gender equality to cigarette smoke, there have always been those uncomfortable with trusting the authority of those more familiar with an issue.
And this is not to say that this forced blind-embrace of academic authority always leads to human progress. Eugenics was maybe the most notorious example of the misappropriation of academic authority. One can only hope for a continued social emphasis on political & social reflection, with an unfailing investment in public education.
But here may lie the greatest irony. Those who would wave away academic thought, especially thought that challenges traditional assumptions, as biased and therefore irrelevant, are themselves contributing to just the sort of environment in which ill-conceived social developments arise. A public who is uncomfortable with the rigors of academic thought, incapable of holding competing positions in their head at once, evaluating issues from many angles, or waiting patiently for more evidence to arise, is exactly the type of public most vulnerable to political & social manipulation.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
No One Knows
God... I've been having a terrible time at work. On Friday I was told, now definitively, that I would be spending the rest of the school year teaching a K/1 blend - which if you know anything about Kindergarten is a nightmare scenario. Basically, I will have to do interventionist teaching to bring two different grade levels of children to benchmark by the end of the year... with each of them receiving half the time - while one group is receiving my full attention, the other will be working independently. And expecting Kindergarteners to be able to do this is crazy.
But as I was given this news, I was also chastised for not having my management down well enough, despite the fact that I was having to have the kindergarten working independently from the second week of class.
I was also accused of not following the curriculum, and not having the students doing enough writing. This despite the fact that Kindergarteners do not even learn their first word until the 2nd month of school.
Oh yeah, and the reason we're in this mess (grade sizes are in the single digits across K-8), is that obviously recruitment hadn't worked. Yet apparently no real recruitment had even happened. Glossy fliers were ordered, yet still sitting in boxes as of the 2nd week of school. The school finally decided to spend thousands on advertising... in mid September.
OK, so that's why I haven't been sleeping. My wife is worrying about me again. But I'll be OK, honest. It's just going to be a ball-busting year.
And in the background... the economy is apparently collapsing into fire and brimstone. On the Sunday news shows, Congressional insiders wouldn't even mention the nightmare scenario Secretary Paulson painted for them if they didn't act quickly on a massive, trillion dollar bailout. They literally would not say. It was as if the economic future was Voldemort.
Yet they hinted at competing ideological rifts that may impede such an act from getting passed, even as they promised that the levity of the situation assured a minimum of friction. Then Kristol comes out saying it's all a big establishment power-play. Gingrich tells NPR that Bernanke & Paulson had been wrong before, so we couldn't trust them now. A scanning of the various blogs and columns reflects a frustrated clamoring for answers, explanations, solutions... seemingly in vain. Its almost as if the fabric of space-time is rupturing, and the public is being asked to digest, and give support to political positions on theoretical physics.
OK Newt, the function of time divided by the root of variable constants can't be exponential-dependent.
No One Knows. And everything depends on it. Reading David Brooks today, wily devil though he often is, seemed to paint a perfect portrait of the nebulousity of these times. Liberal + Conservative = "..........."
But as I was given this news, I was also chastised for not having my management down well enough, despite the fact that I was having to have the kindergarten working independently from the second week of class.
I was also accused of not following the curriculum, and not having the students doing enough writing. This despite the fact that Kindergarteners do not even learn their first word until the 2nd month of school.
Oh yeah, and the reason we're in this mess (grade sizes are in the single digits across K-8), is that obviously recruitment hadn't worked. Yet apparently no real recruitment had even happened. Glossy fliers were ordered, yet still sitting in boxes as of the 2nd week of school. The school finally decided to spend thousands on advertising... in mid September.
OK, so that's why I haven't been sleeping. My wife is worrying about me again. But I'll be OK, honest. It's just going to be a ball-busting year.
And in the background... the economy is apparently collapsing into fire and brimstone. On the Sunday news shows, Congressional insiders wouldn't even mention the nightmare scenario Secretary Paulson painted for them if they didn't act quickly on a massive, trillion dollar bailout. They literally would not say. It was as if the economic future was Voldemort.
Yet they hinted at competing ideological rifts that may impede such an act from getting passed, even as they promised that the levity of the situation assured a minimum of friction. Then Kristol comes out saying it's all a big establishment power-play. Gingrich tells NPR that Bernanke & Paulson had been wrong before, so we couldn't trust them now. A scanning of the various blogs and columns reflects a frustrated clamoring for answers, explanations, solutions... seemingly in vain. Its almost as if the fabric of space-time is rupturing, and the public is being asked to digest, and give support to political positions on theoretical physics.
OK Newt, the function of time divided by the root of variable constants can't be exponential-dependent.
No One Knows. And everything depends on it. Reading David Brooks today, wily devil though he often is, seemed to paint a perfect portrait of the nebulousity of these times. Liberal + Conservative = "..........."
Friday, September 12, 2008
David Brooks had a great piece this morning...
My response...
My response...
Wow. How refreshing to read an argument for conservatism that is logically coherent and intellectually honest. Just like the far-left reactionaries who apologized for communism's corrosive double standards, contemporary conservatism's loudest pundits seem equally ready to ignore glaring inconsistencies between the hubris of their policy analysis and proven socio-economic theory.
Conservatism has a vital role in acting as a counter-balance to liberalism's utilitarian emphasis, reminding us of the value of improvisation in social transformation. But ignorance in the face of fact is no way to develop political philosophy, and instead of a quest for truth, one follows a cult-like obsession with being "right".
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Socioeconomic Status
So I recently posted that I've always wanted to find an index for figuring out my SES. It's obviously complicated, and dependent upon what variables you throw into it. But here's a great interactive graphic from the NYTimes article a few years back titled "Class Matters". Apparently as an elementary school teacher, with a Master's degree, making 48k a year, with less than 10k in the bank, I'm in the 66th percentile overall. What's scary is that moving the income slider up to 200k a year puts you in the 99th percentile. Those poor Republicans again...
What the graphic doesn't include is family data. How about number of kids, single parents, dual incomes, etc.?
Anyway, so now I know.
What the graphic doesn't include is family data. How about number of kids, single parents, dual incomes, etc.?
Anyway, so now I know.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Miss Anthropic
No, Tom Friedman, the problem is not that someone "slipped .... Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee". The problem is that Americans are fucking stupid. OK, not just Americans, we just happen to be pretty good at it. How else to explain Sara Palin's energizing of the McCain campaign? Putting aside the fact that there is a HUGE difference between the Republican and Democratic parties - not to mention what they supposedly stand for, who the fuck are these people who are now voting Republican because of the Alaskan Governor? White women, mainly, according to polls. One was interviewed on the news last night, and admitted she didn't really know any of Palin's policy stances, but liked her. You know, she's "one of us".
Didn't we try that 8 years ago? We elected "one of us"? Fucking asshole. What kind of dipshit votes for people this way? Go back to American Idol.
And Maurice Sendak is gay. Good for him. I don't know why. But good for him.
I guess I'm just cranky because our nation is going to shit, Tillie was up half the night throwing up, I got my kids way too giddy after recreating a Rube Goldberg device after reading Lights Out, meanwhile one of them wouldn't stop crying for his Mommy, and all the colored paper I ordered was the wrong size. And Sara Palin makes me want to throw up.
If McCain is elected I'm going to move to Australia.
Didn't we try that 8 years ago? We elected "one of us"? Fucking asshole. What kind of dipshit votes for people this way? Go back to American Idol.
And Maurice Sendak is gay. Good for him. I don't know why. But good for him.
I guess I'm just cranky because our nation is going to shit, Tillie was up half the night throwing up, I got my kids way too giddy after recreating a Rube Goldberg device after reading Lights Out, meanwhile one of them wouldn't stop crying for his Mommy, and all the colored paper I ordered was the wrong size. And Sara Palin makes me want to throw up.
If McCain is elected I'm going to move to Australia.
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