United States of Entropy

[corianderstem]

btw, Irvine. Love your new avatar. My DVR is ready for her awesomeness.

 

[Irvine511]

btw, Irvine. Love your new avatar. My DVR is ready for her awesomeness.

I hope tonight’s formal has taught you guys that just because you go to a public school and you’re pover it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good time. Do you know what I mean? Seriously, like, stop worrying about money and get over it and just have an amazing time!

 

[INDY500]

He is neutering the United States on the world stage. He is spending us into bankruptcy.

Nobody ever said those things about George W Bush that's for sure.

It was fueled then, as now, by billionaires opposed to federal oversight, rabid media, Bible-thumping preachers and extremist lawmakers who had moved far from their political peers.

It was fueled then, as now, by billionaires opposed to the Patriot Act and Gitmo, rabid left-wing media and bloggers, Bible-hating secularists and extremist lawmakers who had moved far from their political peers.

Fixed

In 1963, that strident minority hijacked the civic dialogue and brewed the boiling, toxic environment waiting for Kennedy the day he died.

And yet Kennedy's parade route was delayed by the huge crowds that came to cheer him in Ft. Worth, Houston and Dallas before he was shot by a communist.

 

[Irvine511]

on a slightly related topic, wealth and being poor (or "pover" as they say in Australia), one of the things i find very entropic about America 2013 is the plight of the poor, and how if one is poor one is highly likely to stay poor.

it's very easy to tell ourselves that the poor simply make bad choices, and that if we were poor we'd make different choices.

and we might be right.

but it's not because the poor are weak, or lazy, or immoral, or stupid. it's because they're poor.

here's some very interesting reading:

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense
Posted: 11/22/2013 5:18 pm
Linda Tirado

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.

Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full course load, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12:30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.

When I got pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.

I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.

The closest Planned Parenthood to me is three hours. That's a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can't afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don't want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas. We're aware that we are not "having kids," we're "breeding." We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder.

Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.

Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.

Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.

"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like "money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.

I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.

I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it.

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense | Linda Tirado

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I don't think I've ever heard the term 'pover' here, it's almost always been 'povo.' You know, sticking with the Australian English tradition of plonking an 'o' on the end of a word.

 

[Irvine511]

I don't think I've ever heard the term 'pover' here, it's almost always been 'povo.' You know, sticking with the Australian English tradition of plonking an 'o' on the end of a word.

Sorry -- my source misquoted Chris Lilly.

 

[Irvine511]

i thought about starting an entire thread on economic inequality, but i don't even know where to start.

so i'll just post the Pope without much comment:

Pope Francis denounces ‘trickle-down’ economic theories in critique of inequality

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Michelle Boorstein, Tuesday, November 26, 1:19 PM

Pope Francis on Tuesday sharply criticized growing economic inequality and unfettered markets in a lengthy paper outlining a populist philosophy that he says will guide his papacy as he pushes the Catholic Church to reach out more, particularly to the disenfranchised.

Using sharply worded phrases, Francis decried an “idolatry of money” and warned it would lead to “a new tyranny.” And he invoked language with particular resonance in the United States, attacking an economic theory that discourages taxation and regulation and which most affiliate with conservatives.

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”

While Francis has raised concerns before about the growing gap between the wealthy and poor since becoming pontiff in March, his direct reference to “trickle-down” economic theory in the English translation of his 50,000-word statement was striking.

The phrase has often been used derisively to describe a popular version of conservative or Republican economic philosophy that argues that allowing the wealthy to run their businesses unencumbered by regulation or taxation bears economic benefits that lead to more jobs and income for the rest of society. Liberals and Democratic officials have rejected the theory, saying it is contradicted by economic evidence.

The papal statement, known formally as an apostolic exhortation, is the first to be written entirely by Francis and discusses a wide range of topics, including the need for “broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church.”

Francis, who was elected to lead the church in March after the resignation of Pope Benedict, hailed from Buenos Aires and became the first non-European to lead the church in more than a millennium.

Since then, he has been the subject of fascination and attention among many Catholics, political leaders and people all over the world as he has taken a decidedly more populist approach to the papacy. He has adopted a softer tone toward gay people, eschewed lavish features of the papal lifestyle, washed the feet of convicts and repeatedly urged greater effort to lift up the world’s poor.

Francis’s focus on the subject is especially notable given dramatic changes in the world economy.

Many of the world’s richest countries are experiencing historic levels of income inequality, with the quality of the life for workers in the middle no longer improving.

And even in the developing world, there are emerging concerns about inequality and whether workers will benefit from their countries’ increasing prosperity. In China, for instance, officials have made repeated promises to tackle the country’s widening income gap.

It’s the “boldness and explicitness” of the pope’s new writing that makes it so newsworthy, said Michael Sean Winters, a fellow at Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.

“There’s no way a Catholic who is a serious intellectual can ever again not address the issue of income inequality, of the structural sins of our economic system. This is so front and center,” he said Tuesday. “He’s not saying ‘I’m an economic expert.’ This is a pastor’s voice. He’s saying, ‘If we’re serious Christians, we need to be knee deep in this stuff.’ ”

Around the world, Francis’s approach has won plaudits from many but also caused anxiety among some. President Obama last month said he has been “hugely impressed with the pope’s pronouncements.” Conservative Catholics, however, have worried that his open tone is too unspecific and causes confusion on traditional teachings such as those against abortion and gay equality.

While Francis’s economic philosophy has yet to cause any major upheaval among conservatives, U.S. bishops and other prominent Catholics spoke out last year against a budget proposed by then-vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) that would have dramatically cut the safety net.

According to polling, U.S. Catholics are more supportive of government taking action to improve living standards and say the wealth gap is historically high, but are divided over the size of government and whether the nation’s biggest problem is unfairness or over-regulation of business. In 2012, Catholics voters split on whether government should take action to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans.

Helping the poor and combating inequality have been long tenets of papal statements and classical Catholic teaching, which supports carefully regulated markets and even a government role in redistributing wealth.

In 2009, Pope Benedict wrote in a teaching called “Charity in Truth” that economics should be rethought so that it is guided not just by profits but by “an ethics which is people-centered.”

“An unregulated economy shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way,” Benedict wrote. This has “led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.”

In 2011, as the Occupy Wall Street movement was underway, the Vatican’s Justice and Peace agency called for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a central global bank. The document condemned “the idolatry of the market.”

Yet while previous popes discussed the disenfranchised, they didn’t single out the issue the way Francis has. He has not only done so with his words, but in his actions, such as paying his own hotel bill in person or affectionately embracing a man disfigured by disease.

Experts see Francis as trying to reframe economic justice not just a matter of duty but as a way of connecting better to God.

Winters, who writes on Catholicism for the National Catholic Reporter, said a key to understanding Francis is that he’s from Argentina and was archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2001, when the country’s economy collapsed.

“When you see people trying to bless capitalism, he has a very real, vivid experience of capitalism and what it has brought to his country, and it’s not a happy experience,” Winters said. “The key is this is a guy from the Global South. This kind of poverty — there’s no food-stamp program. And these are his people.”

Francis’s language and actions on the economy have been far more accessible than those of Benedict, a theologian who wrote primarily in thick books hard to untangle for the regular layperson.

Pope John Paul also saw his warnings on economic inequality swallowed at times by his war on Communism, far more dangerous in the church’s eyes because of its anti-religious bent. He and Benedict were seen as hostile to some of contemporary Catholicism’s loudest anti-poverty voices — clergy and others who embraced liberation theology in South and Central America.

The two saw theological danger in a movement that brought many clergy into politics, but some historians saw a watering down of church teaching against unrestrained capitalism.

Pope Francis denounces ‘trickle-down’ economic theories in critique of inequality - The Washington Post

i think the issue of economic inequality will be the defining economic issue of the first half of the 21st century. it's existence isn't in and of itself political -- it's a byproduct, in many ways, of technology. it simply is. what to do about it, if anything can be done about it, is where the politics are.

 

[AEON]

i think the issue of economic inequality will be the defining economic issue of the first half of the 21st century. it's existence isn't in and of itself political -- it's a byproduct, in many ways, of technology. it simply is. what to do about it, if anything can be done about it, is where the politics are.

We're entering some strange times. The Pope is right, of course. The worship of money is wrong and any system that promotes it is ultimately flawed.

However, it does seem we are making a lot of progress on defeating extreme poverty:

Today, roughly 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty - nearly 700 million fewer than 1990, when more than 1.9 billion people lived below $1.25/day.

The world achieved Millennium Development Goal 1 - to halve the poverty rate among developing countries - five years ahead of schedule, in 2010, when the global rate fell to 20.6% (from 43.1% in 1990). Aggregate poverty rates are now falling in every region, including sub-Saharan Africa since around 2000.

Source:Ending Extreme Poverty | U.S. Agency for International Development

 

[AEON]

Here's an interesting proposal.

End the 1 percent’s free ride: Taxing land would solve America’s biggest problems

If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

An LVT would stimulate urban property development without incurring the socially catastrophic ethnic displacement pattern we call “gentrification.” As that noted far-left rag the Economist notes, “Property developers … would be less inclined to hoard undeveloped land if they had to pay an annual levy on it.” Despite this, the new developments wouldn’t push rents up throughout the rest of the neighborhood, because the increased land value would be taxed. The rest of the apartment buildings in the area didn’t get any nicer. So why should they cost more? Urban land, scarce by definition, is very valuable. There is no reason to let a small group of rich landlords extract its value, when what created the value are parks, subways, local restaurants and other things the landlords didn’t provide.

 

[Pearl]

i think the issue of economic inequality will be the defining economic issue of the first half of the 21st century. it's existence isn't in and of itself political -- it's a byproduct, in many ways, of technology. it simply is. what to do about it, if anything can be done about it, is where the politics are.

It was a major issue in the late 1800s and early last century. Unfortunately, it took the form of communist tyranny in Soviet Russia, China and elsewhere. Let's hope the issue has a better outcome.

We're entering some strange times. The Pope is right, of course. The worship of money is wrong and any system that promotes it is ultimately flawed.

However, it does seem we are making a lot of progress on defeating extreme poverty:

It looks like economic inequality differs from place to place. The poverty inequality is definitely much worse in the Third World, while the struggles in the developed world are nothing like other countries.

 

[digitize]

Here is a very worthwhile post in one of The Economist's blogs about a creative idea for dealing with income inequality. Could an increase in the portion of people who are partial owners of companies help?

Employee share ownership: Turning workers into capitalists | The Economist

Turning workers into capitalists
Nov 25th 2013, 8:58 by Z.M.B. | WASHINGTON

THERE is a depressing familiarity about much of the discussion on what to do about America's widening income inequality. Some remedies are uncontroversial but hard-to-achieve (such as improving education); others are the subject of furious argument (such as more progressive taxation). Debate is heated, but within a fairly narrow set of potential solutions. Once in a while, though, more creative, proposals are added to the mix. "The Citizen's Share", a new book that is the subject of this week's Free exchange column, is one of those.

The book is written by three long-time analysts of, and advocates for, employee share ownership: Joseph Blasi and Douglas Kruse of Rutgers University (Mr Kruse is currently working at the Council of Economic Advisers), and Richard Freeman of Harvard University. Their proposals for countering wealth concentration and the workers' squeeze stem from this background. Their thesis is simple: since part of the reason for America's widening wealth gap is labour's declining share of national income, then countering this inequality means encouraging firms to give workers broader participation in profits, whether through profit-sharing, stock ownership or stock options. The federal government, they argue, ought to be much more radical in encouraging broad employee share ownership, particularly through tax incentives.

The authors show, convincingly, that the logic of citizen capitalism has periodically motivated American politics and business since the Founding Fathers. George Washington gave a tax break to the New England cod industry in 1792 on condition that shipowners signed a profit-sharing agreement with their crew and split the federal "allowance" with them. The 19th century Homestead Acts distributed land free to those willing to till it. In 1974 legislation, sometimes dubbed the Industrial Homestead Act, created Employee Share Ownership Plans, tax-advantaged trusts through which companies can provide employees with share-ownership.

As a result, surprisingly large numbers of American workers share in some way in their employers’ success. Based on a series of national surveys, the authors reckon that some 47% of full-time workers have one or more forms of capital stake in the firm for which they work, whether from profit-sharing schemes (40%), stock ownership (21%) or stock options (10%). About a tenth of Fortune 500 companies, from Procter & Gamble to Goldman Sachs, have employee shareholdings of 5% or more. Almost a fifth of America’s biggest private firms, including behemoths like Cargill and Mars, have profit-sharing or share-ownership schemes. Some 10m people work for companies with ESOPs.
In most cases workers equity stakes are fairly small. But the authors argue that this widespread, if shallow, citizen capitalism is the basis from which something much bolder can be built. They urge a 21st century version of George Washington's logic: government incentives designed to encourage firms to expand employee share ownership. Their proposals range from the small-bore (use the federal government to spread the word on employee share ownership) to a more ambitious restructuring of tax incentives (for instance, making all existing corporate tax breaks contingent on a firm having a profit-sharing or employee ownership scheme).

Are these proposals a good idea? Certaintly the logic that broadening capital participation is part of the answer to countering the squeeze on workers is an appealing one. But does it make sense for workers to build up capital stakes in the firms they work for? One worry has to be the concentration of risk.

If share ownership comes at the expense of wages, workers may simply be shifting from a stable and liquid form of compensation to a riskier one. Messrs Blasi, Freeman and Kruse argue that share ownership should be, and usually is, additional compensation. Surveys suggest that over 70% of workers who benefit from a profit-sharing or other share-ownership scheme say their wages are at or above prevailing market rates—presumably thanks to their firms’ superior performance.Even if the compensation is genuinely additional, employee share-ownership can have disadvantages. It may lead workers to hold too much of their wealth in their own company’s stock. The authors acknowledge this risk and recommend that workers should diversify their portfolios. But since most Americans have very few savings, that caveat sharply limits the potential expansion of employee share schemes, especially for poorer people.
Rather than dole out new special incentives to promote a particular, and perhaps risky, route to broader share ownership, why not eliminate existing incentives that serve to encourage the concentration of capital? The carried-interest loophole, which allows private-equity partners to pay (lower) capital-gains tax rates on their income, would be an obvious place to start.

Interestingly, if we frame this as "putting capital into the hands of workers", it's not terribly far from a textbook tenet of Socialism. And a lot of this mechanism's level of usefulness is a function of how structural the current labor market's problems are, which is an open question.

 

[anitram]

It is an interesting idea but not without its own complications.

For example, if you increase ownership by employees, how does that have an impact on the markets? Remember that markets need some level of volatility. Or, if you increase ownership by employees, how does that impact the risk appetite and risk tolerance of a corporation and does it in fact promote unsound, risky practices (short term gain, long term pain)?

 

[digitize]

It is an interesting idea but not without its own complications.

For example, if you increase ownership by employees, how does that have an impact on the markets? Remember that markets need some level of volatility. Or, if you increase ownership by employees, how does that impact the risk appetite and risk tolerance of a corporation and does it in fact promote unsound, risky practices (short term gain, long term pain)?

Very valid concerns.

 

[INDY500]

his direct reference to “trickle-down” economic theory in the English translation of his 50,000-word statement was striking.

So is the Pope saying Catholics should give their tithes and donations directly to their "excluded," sick or needy neighbors rather than the Catholic Church and their "trickle down" assistance system?

 

[Pearl]

So is the Pope saying Catholics should give their tithes and donations directly to their "excluded," sick or needy neighbors rather than the Catholic Church and their "trickle down" assistance system?

Basically. Being Argentinian, the Pope saw firsthand what happens when capitalism falls apart and the average person suffers. So he knows what he is talking about.

 

[Irvine511]

So is the Pope saying Catholics should give their tithes and donations directly to their "excluded," sick or needy neighbors rather than the Catholic Church and their "trickle down" assistance system?

Yes. You've seen how this Pope lives in comparison to plenty of Popes past?

Way closer to actual Jesus and not Supply-Side Jesus.

 

[AEON]

Yes. You've seen how this Pope lives in comparison to plenty of Popes past?

Way closer to actual Jesus and not Supply-Side Jesus.

If there had been more popes like this one - Western Civilization may have turned out much differently (I would think for the better).

As it is, I am thankful for Pope Francis - and I think he's setting the right tone for the entire Christian faith. Heck, even Bill Maher likes him (not that the Pope seeks out or requires such an endorsement).

 

[digitize]

Greg Mankiw's dissenting view on Pope Francis's comments (worth reading, at least):

Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Pope's Rhetoric

The Pope's Rhetoric
I see that the pope has decided to weigh in on economic issues:

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

A few reactions:

First, throughout history, free-market capitalism has been a great driver of economic growth, and as my colleague Ben Friedman has written, economic growth has been a great driver of a more moral society.

Second, "trickle-down" is not a theory but a pejorative used by those on the left to describe a viewpoint they oppose. It is equivalent to those on the right referring to the "soak-the-rich" theories of the left. It is sad to see the pope using a pejorative, rather than encouraging an open-minded discussion of opposing perspectives.

Third, as far as I know, the pope did not address the tax-exempt status of the church. I would be eager to hear his views on that issue. Maybe he thinks the tax benefits the church receives do some good when they trickle down.

 

[Pearl]

This article was written just after he was named Pope:

First, there’s the basic biographical particulars: He’s a Jesuit from South America, Argentina in particular. Both facts on their own represent intellectual and ideological milieus which are decidedly unconducive to creating appreciation for the virtues of the market system. The movement known as ‘liberation theology’ , which splices Marxist economic theory onto Christian vocabulary, has strong roots both among Jesuits and Argentinians. This is not to say that Cardinal Bergoglio was in any sense a liberation theologian, let alone a Marxist. He resisted that tendency, and was often criticized by the hard left. Then again, entering fully into liberation theology would have been a bridge too far, outside of the good graces of the Church entirely. But one can be a fierce critic of the market system and still remain within orthodox Roman Catholicism.

And that appears to be the case with Cardinal Bergoglio. Although he’s been criticized by the hard left, his biographer, Sergio Rubin (who no doubt is a very happy man right now), says that such complaints should be put in context:

This kind of demonization is unfair, says Rubin, who wrote Bergoglio’s authorized biography, “The Jesuit.”

“Is Bergoglio a progressive — a liberation theologist even? No. He’s no third-world priest. Does he criticize the International Monetary Fund, and neoliberalism? Yes.

Where do his political sympathies lie? Certainly not on the Left. Those who know him best would consider him on the moderate Right, close to that strand of popular Peronism which is hostile to liberal capitalism. In the economic crisis of 2001-2002, when Argentina defaulted on its debt, people came out on to the streets and supermarkets were looted, Bergoglio was quick to denounce the neo-liberal banking system which had left Argentina with an unpayable debt.”

The liberal National Catholic Reporter says that “Bergoglio has supported the social justice ethos of Latin American Catholicism, including a robust defense of the poor…” and approvingly quotes him as saying,

“We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least. The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”

The former Cardinal placed a strong emphasis on the distribution of wealth, not the creation of it. Spiritually he places emphasis on identification with the poor and the spiritual benefits of living a life of poverty. His decision to choose the name Francis squares well with that. Conflicting press reports claim that he either chose the name to honor Francis Xavier, the founder of his order, or to honor Saint Francis. I think probably the latter is true. Francis built a monastic movement on vows of poverty, recruiting men, many of them wealthy nobles, to imitate Jesus’ life without property. Resisting the Albigensian heresy which held that poverty is morally obligatory and that private property is immoral, the Franciscans stayed within orthodox Church teaching. Nevertheless, Francis has become a revered figure among the Catholic left partly because of his practice of voluntary poverty.

Is Jorge Bergoglio, The New Pope Francis, A Capitalist? - Forbes

I'm not sure where I stand on capitalism and socialism. But when people criticize the Pope for not being too crazy about capitalism, Acts 2:44-45 mentions how the apostles lived:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

 

[Irvine511]

Greg Mankiw's dissenting view on Pope Francis's comments (worth reading, at least):

Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Pope's Rhetoric

those are good points.

 

[deep]

the guy is without sin
so he can throw stones

good thing Mother Teresa is not still alive, she would kill this guy in his sleep

 

[anitram]

those are good points.

I think at least one of those points is really stupid.

 

[digitize]

I think at least one of those points is really stupid.

Which one?

 

[anitram]

Which one?

The third one, where he says that the Pope hasn't addressed the tax exempt status of the Church. What a non sequitur.

First of all, this is a matter of tax policy. The Catholic Church is not uniquely tax exempt - typically in countries where the exemption exists, as in the United States, it extends to all churches which fall within the definition under the relevant tax legislation, and it extends to charitable organizations. As a consequence, the Catholic Church is just one of many religious institutions that benefits from a tax exempt status.

Second, exemptions from tax for religious institutions is a matter that has been challenged on constitutional grounds and litigated at the supreme court level of a number of nations. Typically in those cases you will see a very good discussion of the purpose behind the tax policy, namely that the provision of charitable services by churches and charitable organizations decreases the tax burden on ordinary citizens who would otherwise have to cover the difference so that the state can provide the same services. We are talking about homeless and women's shelters, medical institutions, schools, food kitchens and food banks, counselling services, addiction treatment and so on. You can decide to take away the tax exempt status of these organizations if you are willing to then foot the bill through your income taxes (doubtful) and if the state is capable of providing the same sort and level of services (also doubtful).

Third, there are plenty of religious organizations which are far more "anti-capitalist" than the Pope's stance has been (consider branches of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity) and nobody challenges their baseline views by stating that they are invalid because those organizations benefit from a tax exempt status.

This tax exempt thing has become like a talking point against the Pope which is very strange because it is not related to capitalism at all, but to sound tax policy with a view to establishing the most efficient tax system. Furthermore, the Pope did not lobby for the exemption, nor is he benefiting from it in some way that other religious institutions are not.

There can be a legitimate discussion of whether this is the best tax policy or whether it needs amending, but then we are talking about it on a global level and not just about one branch of Christianity led by one man.

 

[digitize]

The third one, where he says that the Pope hasn't addressed the tax exempt status of the Church. What a non sequitur.

Oh yes, I totally agree. It seemed like a pointless dig at the Catholic Church.

 

[LJT]

I will generally agree that capitalism has helped greatly reduced the most extremes of poverty in the world, though I think that is in part due to a variety of things, but I'm not sure I'm seeing it as the driver of a more 'moral society'.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Yeah, it was/is definitely a step better than feudalism for sure.

 

[Irvine511]

Obama gave a speech on inequality yesterday that some are calling one of the best of his presidency.

Obama focuses agenda on relieving economic inequality

By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Published: December 4

President Obama laid out an aspirational agenda Wednesday for the remainder of his presidency, looking past the Republican opposition that has long blocked his goals and toward policies to narrow income inequality and promote opportunity for the poor.

Obama’s remarks at an arts and education center in a low-income Southeast Washington neighborhood provided his most specific road map for how he intends to spend his final 37 months in office, seeking to overcome partisan fights about the budget and the troubled rollout of his health-care law. He pressed for a higher minimum wage, more spending on early-childhood education, an overhaul of immigration laws and other measures aimed at boosting the economy.

“We know that people’s frustrations run deeper than these most recent political battles. Their frustration is rooted in their own daily battles, to make ends meet, to pay for college, buy a home, save for retirement,” Obama said. “It’s rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them. And it’s rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be better off than they were.”

But the president offered little sense of how he might achieve his long-sought economic goals. Instead, the speech — coming at the end of a difficult and politically damaging year — was designed to help define a populist argument that he and other Democrats can carry into upcoming legislative battles and into next year’s midterm elections.

Wednesday’s speech came two years after a similar address Obama delivered in Osawatomie, Kan., in which he outlined policies to help the middle class that would form the basis of his reelection campaign. As he is now, the president was at a low point in 2011, battered by a dangerous debt-limit fight with Republicans and fearful that his chances for a second term were in peril.

Many Democrats think a rejuvenated economic message is far more comfortable terrain for them than for Republicans, particularly after the political whipping Obama and his party have received over the fumbled Affordable Care Act rollout. But the harder edges of Obama’s message Wednesday may make some centrists in the party nervous, posing a challenge for Democrats fighting to hold their seats in conservative states.

Republicans widely panned the speech and said they would continue to work in opposition to Obama’s economic agenda, including continued endorsement of deep spending cuts and an end to jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

“It should be no surprise why his approach has left more Americans struggling to get ahead,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said in an e-mail Wednesday. “The president’s economic policies promote government reliance rather than economic mobility. Rather than tackling income inequality by lifting people up, he’s been fixated on taxing some down.”

But Obama faulted Republicans for not offering their own proposals to address economic insecurity, relying instead on simply opposing him.

“If Republicans have concrete plans that will actually reduce inequality, build the middle class, provide moral ladders of opportunity to the poor, let’s hear them,” he said. “I want to know what they are.”

Jim Kessler, a co-founder of the centrist group Third Way, has expressed concerns about an overly populist tilt in the Democratic Party, openly feuding with ascendant liberals such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and newly elected New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. “On a political level, we find it just very divisive and seeking out a host of things to blame for people’s predicaments and those folks are holding you down,” Kessler said Wednesday.

But he said that Obama’s speech in Southeast struck the right tone. “The president has done a pretty good balancing act,” he said. “Income inequality is something that people at every end of the spectrum should be speaking at.”

Obama’s 48-minute address, filled with historical references and economic statistics, showed a president less concerned about retail politics and more concerned about his legacy — seemingly aware that he may not be able to pass any substantive legislation for the rest of his tenure.

At times dark and at other times sunny, Obama spoke of his and wife Michelle’s humble beginnings and recalled the economic activism of predecessors Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also invoked the views of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and of Pope Francis, who issued a long statement last week condemning economic inequality.

But in describing the “relentless decades-long trend” of a “dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility,” Obama acknowledged that his administration has not arrested two stubborn trends: widening income inequality and declining mobility, where lower-income people have a harder time finding a path to the middle class.

Many Democrats worry that the problems with the health-care law’s launch could undermine the public’s faith in the government’s ability to reverse such economic trends. But Obama argued that the law will help relieve one of the greatest economic anxieties facing middle-class Americans who have long struggled with rising costs and the threat of bankruptcy if they fall seriously ill.

The address, hosted by the liberal Center for American Progress and delivered at THEARC — the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus — was the return to an argument Obama has been honing for more than a decade. Advisers said it would form the basis for next month’s State of the Union address, as well as for his priorities in the rest of his term.

Obama’s earlier concerns as a young politician focused on the impact of globalization and technological automation on middle-class jobs, as well as growing wage inequality. While those remain important to him, he lately has been sounding the alarm more loudly about economic mobility.

“The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough,” Obama said. “But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care or a community that views her future as their own — that should offend all of us.”

In making his argument, the president sought to shatter “myths” about inequality, starting with the notion that it is exclusively a problem of minorities.

“Some of the social patterns that contribute to declining mobility, that were once attributed to the urban poor . . . it turns out now we’re seeing that pop up everywhere,” he said. “Government can’t stand on the sidelines in our efforts, because government is us. It can and should reflect our deepest values and commitments.”

Obama focuses agenda on relieving economic inequality - The Washington Post

at a minimum, it's time to raise the minimum wage, which is lower today, when adjusted for inflation, than it was in the 1960s.

income inequality is an issue that transcends politics, is the fault of both parties, and must be dealt with by both parties.

and there was something far braver in the speech:

Obama Confronts Liberals' Biggest Skeptics: White People

The broad based social safety net has always faced skepticism from white voters, who don't want to spend tax dollars on the "undeserving" poor. In a speech today, Obama took that on.

If you’ve been listening to President Obama’s speeches with any regularity over the last two years, you’ll be familiar with this afternoon’s address at the Center for American Progress on income inequality and economic mobility. As usual, he notes the growing gap between the rich and everyone else, the deep insecurity of the middle-class, and the disappearance of working-class jobs that can provide a decent quality of life.

There was, however, something different about this speech relative to all his others. Namely, he zeroed in on one of the key problems liberals have always faced in their efforts to expand the social safety net.

White people.

Even today, nearly fifty years after the end of legal segregation, racial attitudes are the most reliable way to predict support for certain government programs. On one end is outright opposition: Whites who show high levels of “ethnocentrism,” for instance, are more likely to oppose means-tested welfare—like Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF)—even after you adjust for ideology. Likewise, whites who show high levels of “racial resentment”—the belief that blacks and other minorities unfairly benefit at the expense of white Americans—are reliable opponents of government programs for the poor.

Indeed, there’s some evidence to suggest that the Affordable Care Act’s poor approval with white Americans owes itself—in part—to perceptions that the law primarily benefits blacks, Latinos and other non-whites. Arguably, one ad in the 2012 election played on this perception, attacking Obamacare as a program that took billions from “you”—illustrated as an older white man—to spend on a new government program for unspecified others. What’s more, there is research to show that one ad—which attacked President Obama for “gutting welfare”—had the effect of priming negative racial attitudes towards African Americans.

Even among those who support safety net programs, the level and degree of support is mediated by racial perceptions. “As whites become more racially resentful,”writes Oberlin political scientist Christopher DeSante, “they are less willing to spend money on welfare, but are always willing to spend more on applicants with white names.”

This fits with a deep well of research which shows that Americans divide welfare recipients into the “deserving” and the “undeserving.” Thanks to decades of slanted images of black poverty, the broad image is that the black poor are lazy and unwilling to work, while the white poor deserve a break. Phrases like “welfare queen” and complaints about “handouts” and “Obamaphones,” for example, are heavily racialized and dredge up (or use) images of inner-city blacks.

Simply put, beliefs about who benefits are key to public opinion on the social safety net. And judging from his speech, President Obama is more than aware of this, telling the audience that “[T]he decades-long shifts in the economy have hurt all groups, poor and middle class, inner city and rural folks, men and women, and Americans of all races.”

From there, he dismisses the idea that these are “exclusively minority concerns,” stating that “The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race,” and that “we have to reject a politics that suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of handouts.”

Now, it is true—as he points out—that “The gap in test scores between poor kids and wealthy kids is now nearly twice what it is between white kids and black kids,” and that problems of drug abuse and broken communities have spread beyond the inner cities, to the white working-class. Still, racial inequality exists, even adjusting for income and wealth. Middle-class blacks, for instance, live in neighborhoods that are dramatically poorer than their white counterparts. According to sociologist Patrick Sharkey, “Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 have been raised in neighborhoods with at least 20 percent poverty, compared to just 6 percent of whites.” For every disadvantage conferred by class, in other words, race multiplies it.

But that’s a digression. What’s important is Obama’s decision to address race as a potential barrier to collective action. As far as I can tell, it’s a first for his presidency, which—overall—has been unusually mum on the subject of race. Yes, his comment won’t change the political landscape, but as far as his rhetoric is concerned, it’s a landmark worth noting.

Obama Confronts Liberals' Biggest Skeptics: White People

anyone who doubts that BECAUSE RACISM isn't a factor in the mindless, reactionary resistance to anything and everything Obama touches is a fool (tin foil hats! tin foil hats!), or being willfully obtuse. racial politics are alive and well and obviously working and being manipulated to continue the flow of capital ever upwards.

 

[Irvine511]

some good news!

U.S. Economy Adds 203,000 Jobs, as Unemployment Falls to 5-Year Low
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

The jobs picture brightened in November as hiring in the United States was stronger than expected and the unemployment rate fell to a five-year low, data that increases the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will begin easing its stimulus efforts sooner, rather than later.

Still, many observers cautioned the encouraging figures from the Labor Department on Friday do not necessarily mean the central bank will act when policy makers meet later this month. A move early next year, they said, is more likely.

While the 203,000 jump in payrolls in November was an improvement over the 158,000-a-month rate that prevailed in the summer, it is not much better than the 198,000 level in the first nine months of 2013.

“We think the chance of tapering this month has risen, but on balance we expect the Fed to wait a bit longer,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

While the return of hundreds of thousands of federal employees following October’s government shutdown may have exaggerated the move in the unemployment rate for November, the continuing payroll gains suggest the economy has picked up momentum very recently.

In November, the jobless rate dropped to 7 percent. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg before the Labor Department announcement had expected an increase of 185,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate falling by 0.1 percentage point to 7.2 percent.

Payrolls are tracked using data gathered from employers, while the unemployment rate is based on a separately survey of households.

On Wall Street, the monthly report on the labor market is by far the most closely watched economic indicator, but the November data created more anticipation than usual.

That’s because the Federal Reserve seems poised to begin slowly easing back on its stimulus efforts. While the move had been expected in September, it was put off amid mixed economic data instead of the sustained signs of improvement policy makers want to see. The delay by the central bank caught Wall Street off guard three months ago.

But the spate of recent positive data, economists said, could bolster the case for the Fed to start pulling back in the coming months. The latest figures on hiring follow more robust data for economic growth and jobless claims on Thursday and a report on Monday showing increased activity at factories.

While welcome news for job seekers, a healthier labor market is likely to be viewed more warily by investors and traders, at least in the short term.

Stronger economic growth and employment gains should bolster corporate earnings and therefore stocks over time, but speculators fear a quick Fed tapering could sap the stock market’s recent momentum. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up more than 25 percent in 2013. Stocks were higher in early trading on Friday, with the S.&P. up about 0.8 percent.

Although the holiday shopping season seems to have gotten off to a mixed start, the retail sector added 22,000 jobs last month. Manufacturers, a sector that is closely watched as a bellwether for the broader economy, hired 27,000 workers. And the overall participation rate rose 0.2 percentage point to 63 percent, reversing a decline in recent months.

Even as the overall unemployment rate fell, the situation does remain desperate in some pockets of the labor market.

For example, the unemployment rate among workers aged 16 to 19 remains above 20 percent. And for workers with less than a high school diploma, the jobless rate stood at 10.8 percent.

 

[AEON]

racial politics are alive and well and obviously working and being manipulated to continue the flow of capital ever upwards.

True. And on his watch - it's the worse "flow" since the Gilded Age.