Should we scrap the present benefits system?

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The government of Finland is hoping to kick-start its stagnant economy by investing €20bn in a two-year trial, involving 100,000 people, for a system known as “universal basic income”, or UBI. Instead of the current complicated and bureaucratic system, fraught with rules, means tests and alleged opportunities to cheat the system, the government plans to simply hand out the same set weekly allowance to everyone in the programme. This enlightened idea would do away with the dreaded “welfare gap” but wouldn’t be so big as to provide a disincentive to find and keep a job.

Any job you accepted, from a short-term computing contract to taking a minimum wage job as a street cleaner, would give you extra money on top of your weekly government allowance. Big questions remain, of course – above all, whether the payment can be set in such as way as to make it both effective and affordable.

It’s hard to see how this would work without raising taxes, and those taxes would be collected from a shrinking number of people in work (because of increasing automation and robotisation). But it has the benefit both of simplicity and fairness. The semi-employed or unemployed would have sufficient money for (very) basic food and shelter, and would spend all of it because of the high marginal propensity to consume.

The Finnish government is a centre-right government, and Finland is accepting of social equality and relatively high taxation for the general good. As such the Finns tend to be good Epicureans, even if they are not aware of the fact. But suggest such an idea in the US or UK and resistance would be immediate. I personally love the idea and am very happy to pay taxes so that people worse off than I am have more pleasant lives. Unfortunately, this is not a view shared by the “robust individualists” who oppose tax wherever they find it (unless it benefits them personally, of course). It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Prime Minister Teresa May supports “universal basic income”, but getting it off the ground would be a huge political problem for her. The United States? Probably best forget it.

One’s spirit lifted by the extraordinary

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Last night my wife and I attended a packed Royal Albert Hall to hear Bach’s Mass in B Minor, performed by Les Arts Florissants, a group from France founded by William Christie, an American. This was a Promenade Concert, one performance in the longest annual music festival in the world, lasting two months every year.

You don’t have to be religious or be a believer to be uplifted by this glorious work of art that raises you from the realm of the ordinary and reminds you forcibly how very unimportant are the trifling irritations and problems one is confronted with day by day. One doesn’t need to have struggled mightily over musical counterpoint and four-part harmony to recognise how extraordinary was Bach, a genius and a true product of the Enlightenment. This major work is over 260 years old and is as fresh as ever it was, truly uplifting. I found I had tears in my eyes as I reflected on the debt we owe these rare men (and women) who contribute so much beauty and meaning to the world.

And then downstage came a counter-tenor, an Englishman called Tim Mead. I cannot remember ever having heard a more clear and faultless voice in my life. I was not alone. You could hear a pin drop. The applause at the end of the Mass was louder and longer than anything I have heard since Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Sistema orchestra from Venezuela in the same concert hall years ago.

We all need these moments of exaltation to remind us that our fellow human beings still pack huge auditoriums to hear beautiful music, or throng to galleries to enjoy great art. We must, all of us, make time to observe and enjoy the great creations of humanity. And if I seem a bit excited at six in the morning, then I am simply enjoying an Epicurean moment, recognising the positive artistic achievments of the human race that belong to us all. It’s such a pleasure to write about something so rewarding.

A brave battle to tell the truth

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Khaled Diab of Al Jazeera comments as follows: “It’s not just the news that is depressing these days; so too is the state of the global media. Everywhere you look, the press is under assault from repressive regimes, terrorists and corporate interests. Freedom House’s latest report found global media freedom was at its lowest level in a dozen years: according to the Washington DC-based watchdog, just 13% of humanity enjoys access to a free press. Conditions are particularly bleak in the Middle East. Indeed, given the dangers facing reporters there, “it is almost a miracle that anyone would make journalism their career choice”. Yet the war on the press disguises a “paradoxical truth” – that, thanks to digital and social media, Arabs have never enjoyed freer access to information; and “never have the region’s journalists mounted such a constant, consistent and comprehensive assault on the state’s media dominance”. Investigative journalism sites such as Inkyfada in Tunisia and Mada Masr in Egypt have refused to be cowed; as has the award-winning Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, the brave citizen-journalist group reporting out of Islamic State-controlled Syria. Despite everything, the truth is getting out.  (Al Jazeera,Doha, Qatar, 13 May 2016).

I felt personally uncomfortable when Al Jazeera folded in the United States. It was a media outlet that not only broadcast news no one else carried, but it had a ring of truth about everything it did. I kick myself for not watching it and supporting it more often (advertisers were suspicious of its Arabic (horrors!) ownership, even though the staff were experienced Western reporters). The mainline American news channels, particularly Fox, cannot be relied upon, and are creatures of corporations and special interests. CNN International is slightly more inclined to offer the unvarnished truth compared with its domestic counterpart, but one still has to employ a healthy scepticism. I’m glad there are brave and honest journalists in the Middle East. But whatever happened to American journalism?

How the online media are misinforming us

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Politicians exploit our willingness to remember something that appeals to us, regardless of whether it will eventually prove true or unfounded. PolitiFact.com, looked into 158 claims made by Trump since the start of his campaign and found that four out of five were at best “mostly false”. But by the time they have looked into a statement the said allegation has already spread like wildfire and is believed by millions. A prime example is the totally disproved allegation that President Obama was born in Kenya and is a moslem. One is tempted to laugh, but unfortunately many believe this total lie.

In his book “Lies Incorporated: The world of post-truth politics”, US radio host Ari Rabin-Havt talks of an industry of misinformation. He says that we bring much of it on ourselves. “When people are given a choice, they’re going to choose what’s comforting and easy for them,” he says. “They’re going to avoid information that challenges them and they therefore get stuck in echo chambers.”

About six in 10 US adults get their “news” primarily from social media, according to a recent Pew Research survey. Much of this “news” is a blend offact and opinion, which simply confirms already held political convictions. They rarely get to see anything that challenges their beliefs.

We are witnessing the dual effect of identity politics and the effect of the social media on society, causing a giant and growing rift that is very damaging. It is true that politically biased newspapers and radio stations have been with us for decades, but speed of spread of “information” now bears out the old adage that “lies spread everywhere while truth is still putting on its boots”.

What should Epicureans, interested in truth and the welfare of their country, do about all this? Epicurus told us to avoid politics altogether. My own suggestion is to ignore social media and see what Politifact has to say about current politics. It’s a quick read. For instance Trump claims “Inner-city crime is reaching record levels.” PolitiFact, on Tuesday, August 30th, 2016, commented: “A possible uptick doesn’t erase 25 years of decline”.

One in the eye for the corporatocracy!

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Yesterday, NPR reported that Sigmar Gabriel, German vice chancellor and economy minister, had said publically (for the first time) that talks aimed at setting up a U.S.-European free trade zone under TTIP have run aground because of “intransigence on Washington’s part”.

“In my opinion the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed even though nobody is really admitting it,” he said Sigmar Gabriel, in an interview with the broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.

Negotiations have reportedly stalled because of the unexpected decision by Britain to leave the EU and because of growing public opposition to trade agreements on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gabriel said the U.S. and the EU “haven’t agreed on a single item out of 27 chapters being discussed, despite 14 rounds of talks”, and he said Washington was “angry” about a similar trade agreement struck between Canada and the EU. He said Europe “must not succumb to American demands.” (Extracted from the NPR website)

One has the impression that the US Administration thought TTIP would be a slam dunk, and that everyone would gratefully accept the self-interested proposals of American lobbyists, which have little to do with actual trade but a lot to do with cementing the corporatocracy in place for another generation. I doubt the implication of crass arrogance can be attributed to the Obama trade negotiators themselves; they are simply weak, doing the bidding of the people with the real power. If the latter get a slap in the face then this has to be an Epicurean outcome.

Cyrenaic philosophers and hedonism

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It was the philosophers, Aristippus the Older and Aristippus the Younger, who lived in Cyrenaica, who first suggested that hedonism was the right waty to conduct a good life. That basic idea, modified of course, was adopted by Epicurus, and later was misinterpreted by the early Christians to mean a life of total self-indulgence, eating, and drinking, careless of the duties of life. Basically, the latter believed we are all sinners and should be endlessly tormented by the “fact” and cover ourselves in sackcloth and ashes. How this strange point of view gained traction is a mystery and a misery.

So maybe it’s got something to do with my Anglican upbringing, but I feel most uncomfortable about too literal an interpretation of “hedonism”, which has these unfortunate connotations of self-indulgence. It denotes selfishness and excludes any idea of doing constructive things for other people. I prefer the idea of pursuing what gives you pleasure. One can pursue a life of pleasure, fueled with moderate amounts of wine and good living, by doing a job you love, by involvement in the arts, by devoting yourself lovingly to another person, or helping the sick and poor. And a hundred other things, since we are all different, with different outlooks and interests (itself a wonderful aspect of the human condition).

Giving of yourself can be a joy, in particular. Philosophers seldom say so. Gorging yourself with food, drink and cigars, on the other hand, is not only unattractive and vulgar, but is elitist, since only rich, spoiled people have the means to crudely self-indulge.  Epicurus, as we all know, was modest in his daily living and an advocate of the restrained Mediterranean diet. He also ran a “flat” organisation, and was no empire building CEO. Good guy, which is why I like him.

So while we can be grateful to the Cyrenaic philosophers for rejecting a monastic life of woe, sackcloth and ashes, eating only porridge and lashing yourself with leather-thonged whips, I think (unless I missed something) that they should have been more expansive in their definition of hedonism. Let us enjoy the short lives afforded us, but do so in moderation, generosity, and with a sense of humour.

Who’s using whom?

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As internet companies have challenged existing business models, from taxi services to hotels, they have rubbed up against existing regulations. They have increasingly lobbied to change them, just like their corporate brethren, but are doing so by recruiting unaware users to promote their cause, using apparently harmless, “one-click-and-you’re-done” methods.

When India’s telecoms regulator sought public consultation on services that offer limited access to internet sites via phones, one such service, called Free Basics, owned by Facebook, invited millions of its users to send boilerplate emails of support, deluging the unamused regulator. 

Uber, for example, last year defeated a proposed cap on the number of its vehicles in New York City. One of its tactics was to roll out a new mode on its app named “De Blasio” – after the city mayor championing the cap. The mode made all of Uber’s cars disappear from the map and directed users to a petition. And home-stay giant Airbnb is organising its US users into “guilds” to fight proposed regulations on short-term rentals around the country.

Internet services have spent vast sums learning how to direct their users’ activity, something that can be exercised with little transparency and without the user being fully briefed on what he or she is being asked to do. (Based upon an article entitled “Customer or lobbyist?” in the New Scientist).

Beware of being part of anti-consumer, untransparent campaigns to increase the profits of these tech companies  – unless they are very clearly in your best interest. They are tantamount to at least an invasion of privacy; others would say they are are basically dishonest. In any event, they are un-Epicurean.

French businessmen dress better – but so what?

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“I first noticed how well French business leaders dress in 2013”, when Publicis chief Maurice Lévy unveiled his doomed $35bn merger plan with the US group Omnicom, says Adam Thomson. Lévy strode out in a black suit, crisp white shirt and black tie: “it was understated but elegant and brimming with confidence”. His opposite number’s blue shirt and gold tie came a distant second. The Lévy black-white-black combo is a classic in France. Indeed, the “flamboyant” London code of pink and striped shirts “could easily derail a promising career” in Paris. And in France, clothes fit; while if you remove an Englishman’s jacket you will probably “discover a spinnaker billowing under his arms”.

What explains this style gap? I blame school uniforms, which English children wear and the French do not. Choosing what to wear makes French children more aware of clothes and fit; uniforms bought by value-conscious parents, by contrast, are either too large, or too small. The lesson, if you’re heading for Paris, is to play it safe: “rein in the colours, and above all, wear a suit that fits”. (Adam Thomson, Financial Times)

I have no doubt that feeling elegant and well dressed gives you confidence, but no amount of money and tailoring can substitute for brains, ability, shrewdness and understanding of human nature. Over the years the French seem to have consistently underestimated the Anglo- Saxons, which is why, relatively speaking, the latter have more thriving economies than the French. Enough with style! Bring on substance!

Moreover,the writer is, in my opinion, totally wrong-headed about school uniforms, which avoid the horrible business of competitive dressing in schools and its attendant bullying and teasing of less well-@off children. Moreover, they denote ‘egalite’, a concept introduced during the French revolution and apparently abandoned thereafter. Epicurus would have approved of the uniform. It assists peace of mind.

Remembering apartheid

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Back home from Africa……

My wife asked for some brown bread at lunch in a restaurant in Namibia, a country ruled by South Africa until 1990. Our guide explained to her that until 1990 no white person would ever ask for brown bread, which had grit in it and damaged teeth.  They ate only white bread of much better quality.  Black servants doing the shopping for their employers at a bakery needed written authorisation to buy white bread for the household. Brown was only for coloureds, white for whites.

Such was the crass futilty and unfairness of apartheid.  In Namibia brown bread is now of excellent quality, as good or better than in Washington and London, but it seemed significant that the waitress never did bring my wife her brown bread.  Maybe she forgot; maybe old habits die hard.

Epicurus, who welcomed women, slaves and, very likely, other picked-upon people, would have been very indignant at the divisive and totally unnecessary indignity of the breads.

Meanwhile, I am happy to report that we found Namibia, with only 2 million people, to be very well organised, very friendly, the tourist guides experts at their jobs, and the country complete with every modern amenity – probably not what the Boer masters would have expected when they gave up control.

Learning mathematics

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The teaching of mathematics in the US and U.K is alleged to be in a huge crisis. So much so that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that he wanted compulsory maths taught in State schools up to the age of 18. Maths is the subject that the illuminati use to judge the excellence of teaching, and they have pronounced the US and UK particularly hopeless.

And yet one has to look at not just how a subject is taught, but what is being taught.  A YouGov survey in England found that about a third of those surveyed had no idea how to calculate a mode, a median or a “line of best fit”, or the area of a circle.  Well, this reader knows (or thinks he knows) what a median is and how to calculate the area of a circle.  But he’s never heard of a mode (except in music) and apparently “line of best fit” has something to do with regression analysis, but he has no idea what it is.

I am in my third quarter of a century and have never needed any of the above, never learned statistics and never needed them.  I taught myself book-keeping and how you produce profit and loss figures.  And that, after the invention of the pocket calculator, was all I have needed, except for being able to add, subtract and divide in my head.

So why do we beat ourselves up comparing ourselves with the (dire) learn-by-rote Chinese system? If our system is so bad why, when we visited MIT in Cambridge, MA did we notice that practically every student we encountered was Asian?  Somebody clearly has a high opinion of what is taught there. Why do rich Chinese send their teenage children to British boarding schools if maths is so badly taught and is the be-all-and-end-all?

What we should be focusing on is comprehension of a passage in English, the ability to explain its meaning lucidly and, in turn, to speak and write using correct grammar and with a wide vocabulary. Then we can communicate. Kids should know the basics of mathematics but be very well versed in their language. There are other things they should also know, but reading, writing, comprehension and persuasive language has to be top, not mathematics.

Exercise “may boost memory”

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If you want to remember something, take some vigorous exercise – but not immediately. A new study has found that exercise boosts people’s powers of recall, provided they leave an interval of a few hours between absorbing the new information and heading to the gym. Professor Guillén Fernández, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, the author of the study, suggests that exercise improves memory because it produces adrenaline and dopamine – neurotransmitters that have been linked to memory in studies on rats. It is still not clear why those who exercised right away saw no advantage, but Fernández speculates it could be because memories take a while to form as the brain absorbs the new information, and exercising too soon could disrupt this process.

Like all findings by scientists there are always exceptions.  I am one of them.  I get a lot of exercise.  My blood pressure is around 112/60 and my resting heart rate below 50. Notwithstanding this I cannot remember names, what day of the week it is, or where I left my glasses.  Perhaps if I ran four hours a day……….

Prolonging life

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Much is being made of efforts to prolong human life. Lots of money is available, it appears, to fund research on allowing those who can afford it, to live until they are 120 and beyond.

I think this is a simply dreadful idea. Already there are too many people on a planet where food and water security is dodgy, to say the least. There is an old-age bulge already in some countries, which people are expected to pay taxes to support. But to fiddle with the biology of man to extend lives is a perilous undertaking, an undertaking, I am convinced, Epicurus would heartily disapprove of.

Think of the unforeseen consequences. If the old person whose life expectancy is extended expects to work, that takes jobs away from younger people. Health costs rise as the population ages Because someone has taken a pill or an injection to let them live on, it doesn’t mean that all sorts of unexpected illnesses won’t occur to them, a burden on the health services.

One could go on, but the fact is that what researchers should be doing is to improve the lives of the young, the poor, the medically ill-served. They should be tackling alzheimers, cancer and all the other major killers, making medicine more effective and more efficient, not keeping alive self-absorbed idiots.

The artistic temperament

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The notion that melancholia spurs creativity is widespread, but in science it has been controversial, and research has not really demonstrated a direct link between sadness and many of the most lasting achievements in art history.

Now, a new study from an economist at the University of Southern Denmark appears to show that link. The researcher, Karol Jan Borowiecki, examined the emotional state of three influential composers through the full course of their lives. Using linguistic analysis software that scanned the text for positive and negative emotions, such as joy, love, grief and hurt, he analyzed 1,400 letters written by Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt to their friends, colleagues and loved ones. All three had turbulent lives, sometimes tragic, sometimes jubilant. He compared the data with the compositions they produced, looking in particular at their most influential and transformative works.

What he found was a link between periods of negative emotions, especially sadness, and artistic brilliance.

For all their extraordinary achievements, Borowiecki’s analysis suggests that the causes of these composers’ happiness and sadness were the same as any ordinary individual. When they had stable and engaging employment, good health and personal relationships they were happy, and when they fell on hard times financially, their health became poor or when a close relative died, they were predictably sad.

Borowiecki’s analysis suggests that negative emotions are not just correlated with creativity but that they actually have a causal effect on it. Using econometrics, he calculates that a 9.3 percent increase in negative emotions leads to a 6.3 percent increase in works created in the following year. To generate an entire important composition in the next year, the composer would need to see his negative emotions increase by about 37 percent.

“Creativity, measured by the number of important compositions, is causally attributable to negative moods, particularly sadness”.(adapted from an article on Inc.com)

Apparently, composers wrote more letters when they were angry or depressed,and fewer when they were happy. Moreover, their production of first class pieces went down if they were married, in a relationship, or felt contented.

Maybe the moral is: if you associate with someone who has an artistic temperament make him or her utterly miserable and the world will be blessed with a masterpiece! Seriously, though, I think the answer lies in the fact that, when stressed or miserable, artists find refuge in the one thing that gives them pleasure, that they know how to do well, and which will allow them, if temporarily, to forget their troubles. Music composition is, in particular, utterly absorbing – balm for the soul

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Please Note: I have found a way of posting these last two days, but will probably not be able to do so on Monday or Tuesday.

Return of the printed book?

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When Amazon launched the Kindle, in 2007, the death of the printed book was confidently predicted. But while e-books make up a significant share of the market—between 20 and 25 per cent—sales slowed sharply in 2015. In the US, the number of people reading books primarily on e-readers fell from 50 per cent three years ago to 32 per cent now. Publishers such as Simon & Schuster and Hachette have been investing heavily in warehouses and book distribution depots.

The pattern has been repeated in Britain. Waterstones, once under serious threat of closure, has returned to profit. Overall sales of paperbacks and hardbacks rose 3 per cent in the first half of 2015. Publishers have started to create books that are also beautiful, and the  market is growing for special editions you can show off on your bookshelf.

So is this the end of the e-book? Not quite. Fans of crime and romance—who in the past would have bought throwaway paperbacks—still much prefer e-books. Sales of the Kindle are down but you can easily download books from the Kindle or iBooks app on your tablet or smartphone. Holiday reading on your device is now commonplace. But readers saturated with screen-time are undoubtedly rediscovering the pleasures of the printed page. (based on a Prospect magazine article, Big Ideas  of 2016, Dec 2015)

One of the benefits of the digital age is that authoring a book has never been easier.  I recently published a small volume of rhymed verse, just for friends and family.  The copy editing, the design and illustration on the front and back pages all take time, but once the overall design of the book is done the printing takes a matter of a few days, and, bingo!, you not only have your book, advertised on Amazon as well. One can argue, justifiably, that we are overloaded with information and books to read, and self-publishing is not generally a good way to make an income. The 80/20 principle applies. On the other hand it is a wonderful encouragement to put your ideas into print with relatively little time and expense.

An apology – and shootouts (good for bullet manufacturers)

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My apologies for a two day break in posting. I will also not be posting for four further nights from Saturday. Normal posting will hopefully be resumed thereafter. Please give yourself a short break from this blog, but I will be delighted to welcome you back, approximately next Wednesday.

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Today’s post

“This year, shootings have been on the rise in several cities across the country. 370 children in the United States — 12 years old or younger — have been harmed or killed by gunfire so far this year, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which collects gun violence data daily.

Accidents like kids playing with guns, and domestic disputes, often cause the injury and deaths of young children. In Chicago this summer, at least 15 children in the city, age 12 and under, have been wounded unintentionally by bullets, says Andrew Holmes, a community activist in Chicago”. (NPR website, 2 August 2016)

Meanwhile, in Texas, college students are now allowed to carry loaded guns on campus. This is “justified” on the specious pretext that it will prevent mass shootings. To rational supporters of Epicurus this is just a ruthless means of increasing gun and ammunition sales and recklessly abandons any respect for the sanctity of life, not to mention common sense. I live much of my life in the United States and simply cannot understand the thought processes of some of my fellow citizens. They baffle me. Equally sad is the fact that my disbelief and revulsion baffles the gun advocates.