Moral heuristics, public policy, and self-defeating tribalism
November 14, 2010 12:34 PM Subscribe
Tragedy of the technocrats - "[H]uman affairs are a morality play, and economics, if it is to be useful at all, must be an account of human affairs... Policy ideas that cannot survive in equilibrium with achievable social mores are useless." (more here and responses here, here, here and here)
To promote the general welfare - "Should the government guarantee a job for anyone who wants one?" [1,2,3,4,5]
Faith-Based Economics - "it appears that economics, or at least the dominant 'pain caucus' part of economics that forms the substrate of current finance and economic policy, is more like religion than science in some respects"
Just another vote for dysfunctional polarization - "There is no Tea Party in Canada, and likely never will be. One reason is that so many Canadians still trust their government... The question is not whether Democrats or Republicans will ultimately prevail, but whether the political culture can evolve enough to tackle fundamental institutional reforms... As the astute thinker Walter Russell Mead argues, the U.S. will have to dramatically reduce the size and cost of its government and legal, health and education systems, while finding ways to make them more productive."
Recession Shadows America's Middle Class - "Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them. Wall Street is preoccupied with chasing new profits again. Yet for large sections of the nation, that old myth of working your way up, of bootstrap success and its ultimate prize, homeownership, has evaporated. The middle class, the America's backbone, is crumbling. The American Dream has turned into a nightmare... And nobody seems to care. Poverty wasn't an issue during the midterm elections -- and it won't be an issue now that the spendthrift deficit hawks of the Republican Party have reclaimed the House of Representatives."
Our Banana Republic - "I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie. But guess what? The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976... the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana... That's the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans... So we face a choice. Is our economic priority the jobless, or is it zillionaires?"
Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems - "Fraud [is] finally being discussed in polite company ... now where are the prosecutions?"
How Obama Enables Rush - "We live in a mendocracy. As in: rule by liars... (note the cover article lionizing Limbaugh in this week's Newsweek) ... Governing has become impossible. When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes 'uncivil' to call out liars, lying becomes free."
The soft paternalism of tough choices - "To some extent all age groups, but especially the young workers we claim to be concerned about, believe that raising taxes is a superior solution to cutting benefits. Perhaps, they don't understand the full trade-offs... However, at a core level, if people would prefer to pay more in order to get more then there is nothing wrong with that... That is, unless, your position is that young workers don't know what's good for them and it is up to us to safeguard them from themselves... I fear that calls to make tough sacrifices aren't about protecting future generations. They are about proving to the current generation how hard-nosed and responsible we are."
Nearly 59 million lack health insurance: CDC - "the data also allow us to debunk two myths about health care coverage [1] that it's only the poor who are uninsured. In fact, half of the uninsured are over the poverty level and [2] that only the healthy risk going without health insurance ... more than two out of five individuals who are uninsured at some point during the past year had one or more chronic diseases ... People with such conditions often end up in emergency rooms and require treatment, paid for by hospitals or taxpayers, that is far more expensive than getting proper preventive care" [1,2,3,4,5]
Individual human beings act against their material interests all the time, providing full employment for economists who endlessly study the "ultimatum game". Political choice combines diffuse personal costs with powerful moral signifiers. We should expect politics, including the politics that determines economic policy, to be dripping with moralism. And sure enough, it is! This doesn't mean that policy outcomes are actually moral. (There's a hypothesis we can falsify quickly.) But exhortations to policy that cannot survive in terms of moral framing are nullities.BONUS
To promote the general welfare - "Should the government guarantee a job for anyone who wants one?" [1,2,3,4,5]
Faith-Based Economics - "it appears that economics, or at least the dominant 'pain caucus' part of economics that forms the substrate of current finance and economic policy, is more like religion than science in some respects"
Just another vote for dysfunctional polarization - "There is no Tea Party in Canada, and likely never will be. One reason is that so many Canadians still trust their government... The question is not whether Democrats or Republicans will ultimately prevail, but whether the political culture can evolve enough to tackle fundamental institutional reforms... As the astute thinker Walter Russell Mead argues, the U.S. will have to dramatically reduce the size and cost of its government and legal, health and education systems, while finding ways to make them more productive."
Recession Shadows America's Middle Class - "Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them. Wall Street is preoccupied with chasing new profits again. Yet for large sections of the nation, that old myth of working your way up, of bootstrap success and its ultimate prize, homeownership, has evaporated. The middle class, the America's backbone, is crumbling. The American Dream has turned into a nightmare... And nobody seems to care. Poverty wasn't an issue during the midterm elections -- and it won't be an issue now that the spendthrift deficit hawks of the Republican Party have reclaimed the House of Representatives."
Our Banana Republic - "I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie. But guess what? The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976... the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana... That's the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans... So we face a choice. Is our economic priority the jobless, or is it zillionaires?"
Even Greenspan Admits that Moral Hazard and Fraud are the Main Problems - "Fraud [is] finally being discussed in polite company ... now where are the prosecutions?"
How Obama Enables Rush - "We live in a mendocracy. As in: rule by liars... (note the cover article lionizing Limbaugh in this week's Newsweek) ... Governing has become impossible. When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes 'uncivil' to call out liars, lying becomes free."
The soft paternalism of tough choices - "To some extent all age groups, but especially the young workers we claim to be concerned about, believe that raising taxes is a superior solution to cutting benefits. Perhaps, they don't understand the full trade-offs... However, at a core level, if people would prefer to pay more in order to get more then there is nothing wrong with that... That is, unless, your position is that young workers don't know what's good for them and it is up to us to safeguard them from themselves... I fear that calls to make tough sacrifices aren't about protecting future generations. They are about proving to the current generation how hard-nosed and responsible we are."
Nearly 59 million lack health insurance: CDC - "the data also allow us to debunk two myths about health care coverage [1] that it's only the poor who are uninsured. In fact, half of the uninsured are over the poverty level and [2] that only the healthy risk going without health insurance ... more than two out of five individuals who are uninsured at some point during the past year had one or more chronic diseases ... People with such conditions often end up in emergency rooms and require treatment, paid for by hospitals or taxpayers, that is far more expensive than getting proper preventive care" [1,2,3,4,5]
This post was deleted for the following reason: this is again seeming like a giant linkdump of articles loosely based around a theme that is again somewhat inscrutable given the framing. This seems like a grwat post, but for some other site. -- jessamyn
Haven't had the chance to read the articles yet, but
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976...
is the subject of a new book I'm reading, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
posted by Rykey at 12:58 PM on November 14, 2010 [1 favorite]
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976...
is the subject of a new book I'm reading, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
posted by Rykey at 12:58 PM on November 14, 2010 [1 favorite]
yea, i made a post about that here :P
oh and speaking of technocrats, waxpancake is joining expert labs!
posted by kliuless at 1:11 PM on November 14, 2010
oh and speaking of technocrats, waxpancake is joining expert labs!
posted by kliuless at 1:11 PM on November 14, 2010
Wasn't it decided that long linkdump posts that are essentially "here's a bunch of stuff about politics and economics" veer into GYOB territory?
posted by proj at 1:53 PM on November 14, 2010 [4 favorites]
posted by proj at 1:53 PM on November 14, 2010 [4 favorites]
Moral heuristics, public policy, and self-defeating tribalism
What are three unrelated adjective-modified nouns, Alex?
posted by RogerB at 2:16 PM on November 14, 2010
What are three unrelated adjective-modified nouns, Alex?
posted by RogerB at 2:16 PM on November 14, 2010
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Standard economics as a social norm and an anomaly?
"Among the topics Richard addresses are "anomalies" is how standard economic models fail to predict most of our behaviors. I know I am not being very original here, but it always strikes me that what economists refer to as "anomalies" are actually what everyone else would call "real life"!"
posted by tybeet at 12:37 PM on November 14, 2010 [1 favorite]