On living and dying
Brilliant article about "dwindling". I hope never to be in the
position of Wolff's mother, nor in that of Wolff, but I've seen in my
own mother how easy it is to lie to yourself about an ageing parent,
and how hard it is to accept that they are done. Seeing my granddad
beg for death has made me a staunch believer that medicine has its
priorities entirely wrong. Let's not try to keep each other alive as
though we were chunks of meat. Let's show a genuine love for who we
essentially are.
http://nymag.com/news/features/parent-health-care-2012-5/
A quick note on school subsidy
The government here subsidises private schooling quite heavily, and a
recent report urged them to stop. It won't because it's a political
hot potato, which would see it excoriated in the press.
Supporters of the subsidy say that it is fair because people who do
not send their kids to public school deserve the same spending on
education as people who do.
I have no sympathy for that view at all. What governments should be in
the business of is opportunity. They are not money pumps that simply
hand everyone $x for education. They are facilitators of opportunity
for children. So they should not be subsidising children who already
have an advantage over those whose parents could not, subsidy or
otherwise, send them to private school. They should be spending their
education money on improving public schools to equalise opportunity.
These are different ideas of equity. On one side, people who feel that
it's unfair if someone gets "something for nothing" because they have
"worked hard" for everything they have and why can't everyone else?
and on the other, people who feel that society already has plenty of
unfairness and governments can do something to rectify it. You can't
really close the divide because one of the major political parties
relies on the politics of resentment to get themselves elected.
Without it, the Liberals here would simply never acquire power,
because frankly, their policies have always been inimical to the
wellbeing of most citizens. I don't think there are enough people who
hate gays and foreigners enough to win elections based simply on
bigotry, but there are plenty of rugged individualists who don't
understand how society has made their wellbeing possible.
Facts just get in the way
Mitt Romney promises to end the insane spending of the Obama administration.
In fantasy unicornland, that may well be true. Here in reality:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?link=MW_popularWhy don't conservatives like Obama? He's one of the best conservative
presidents we've seen.
Indebted
People say the national debt is a problem, that we can't afford
welfare because we've "borrowed" too much. The last time the national
debt was this high in the UK, they built a national health service and
expanded welfare to the current system. The outcome? A boom that only
ended when the Arabs pulled the plug in 1973.
A capitalist tells the truth
Nick Hanauer, an investor in Amazon among other businesses, tells the
truth. (Copy shamelessly stolen but I think he wants this idea to
spread, so I don't expect to find myself in intellectual property
court):
"It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and
its policies. Consider this one.
If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
This idea is an article of faith for republicans and seldom challenged
by democrats and has shaped much of today's economic landscape.
But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For
thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of
the universe. It's not, and an astronomer who still believed that it
was, would do some lousy astronomy.
In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and
businesses are "job creators" and therefore should not be taxed, would
make equally bad policy.
I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially
hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we
had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs
would have evaporated.
That's why I can say with confidence that rich people don't create
jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more
employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers
and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous
cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary
middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist
like me.
So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little
like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the
other way around.
Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a
capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when
increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling
ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.
That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a
tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates
benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens
is that the rich get richer.
Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than
tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.
If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy
would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in
jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.
Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be
enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual
earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times
greater than those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds
or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not
3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like
most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends
and family only occasionally.
I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions
of unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or
cars or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing
consumption of the vast majority of American families that are barely
squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or
declining wages.
Here's an incredible fact. If the typical American family still got
today the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn
about 25% more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year. Where would
the economy be if that were the case?
Significant privileges have come to capitalists like me for being
perceived as "job creators" at the center of the economic universe,
and the language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the
current social and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it
is a small step from "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not
accidentally choose this language. It is only honest to admit that
calling oneself a "job creator" is both an assertion about how
economics works and the a claim on status and privileges.
The extraordinary differential between a 15% tax rate on capital
gains, dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 35%
top marginal rate on work for ordinary Americans is a privilege that
is hard to justify without just a touch of deification.
We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like
me don't create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic
feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they
thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That's why taxing
the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for
both the middle class and the rich.
So here's an idea worth spreading.
In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the
middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the
middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle
class, the poor and the rich.
Thank You.
Nick Hanauer"
Reversal of fortune
Being my passenger when I'm driving can be a bad experience. I suffer
terribly from road rage, an outcome of being in a constant state of
nervous tension, caused by the awful drivers of South-East Queensland.
Each day they try to kill me, or failing that to damage my car as
severely as they can.
Three have succeeded. One was a man who turned right in front of me so
that I couldn't avoid hitting him, writing off my beloved Lady Jane.
He was lucky I'm a cautious, defensive driver, and had slowed down
expecting insanity, because his passenger door was severely dented,
and hurt his side. Had I been doing 60 kph, the limit, he'd likely be
dead or badly injured.
Number two was a guy on his way back from holiday, who was chatting
with his wife, the way people do, turning to talk to her instead of
watching the road. He didn't see that I had stopped and rearended me,
writing off Queen Kate. I spent a lot of money getting her back on the
road, which was not quite covered by the insurance. It just didn't
seem right to have her sent to the wrecker when the damage was only to
the boot and back bar.
Number three was a woman who reversed into me outside my house. I had
reversed into the empty road, as I do every morning, and was just
coming to a stop, ready to take off down Canopus Street when bang,
from out of nowhere, a car ran into my passenger door. Luckily, she
didn't hit me very hard, so Naughtyman, who was sat next to the door,
was not hurt. She jumped out full of apologies. She had not been
looking; she was in a hurry because she was dropping off some kids or
something, and had driven into the wrong driveway. I shrugged and said
shit happens, just call your insurance and no harm is done.
So imagine my shock when her insurance finally contacted me and the
guy says, I'm calling about an accident where you were at fault.
WTF, I said, no I wasn't. Your insured reversed straight into me
without looking. She accepted liability (because what else could she
do? It was her fault after all). She was close to tears because she
was so afraid she had hurt someone. I actually felt sorry for her
because she had so clearly done the wrong thing and it had had a bad
consequence.
But you were reversing, he said.
So what? I said. I was reversing down the road, side on to her. I
didn't reverse into her. She backed into the SIDE of my car.
Yes, but you were reversing. When people are reversing, it's 50/50.
No it's not, I said. I reversed into an empty road, carefully. She
reversed without looking, straight into my car. It doesn't matter what
direction I was going in, she still caused the accident through no
fault of mine. I was barely even moving and what motion I had was away
from her, not towards her. I mean, duh, my car door was done in, and
she has a small scratch on one side of her back bumper.
B thinks there is a law that the fault is shared when everyone's
reversing, but of course there isn't. That would be stupid. (For
instance, say you drive into someone who is rolling back on a hill
start. You are always liable then even though they rolled back a bit.
Or say you were driving at 80 kph down the wrong side of the road and
hit someone who was reversing to parallel park. You'd clearly be
liable then too.) There's a convention that applies when you reverse
into someone who reverses into you in a car park, and it's difficult
for the insurance companies to sort out. What there is is a law that
you must give way to all traffic when you enter a road. I did that.
The woman didn't.
So I am adding AAMI insurance to my list of bad businesses to deal
with. What I imagine happened is the woman said that she hit someone
backing out of his drive, and she needed to fix up what she had done.
They heard "backing out" and told her they would do it knock for
knock. But I didn't back into her. There's no joint fault. I backed
into an open road. She just drove straight into me. There's no law
that says you get off the hook because I happened to be going
backwards. It's deeply frustrating that they know that I did nothing
to cause the accident and could not avoid it regardless what I did,
yet they expect my insurance (and actually, just me, because my
insurance won't cover it) to pay. I don't intend to go through my
insurance. If she doesn't make it right, I will sue her, and win. I'm
pretty sure the small claims court will not reward her for breaking
the law, whatever AAMI thinks, and I'm sure there's no law that says
that there's no liability in traffic incidents if the person you smash
into happens to be going backwards.
***
The thing is, it's just wrong and we are expected to put up with so
much that is just wrong in this life. I mean, I will be really pissed
off if I end up having to pay for the damage to my car. This woman
didn't care about other people enough even to bother to look into her
mirror before driving out into the road. She *should* pay for that. I
shouldn't be on the hook for her stupidity. And her insurance company
shouldn't abet her. Fair enough, they can tell her they won't cover
it, but ringing me and suggesting I am at fault because I happened to
be in the road when she careered out into it is just wrong.
