Doing something practical about inequality

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Let us have a discussion about what is “political”!

Below is a short piece about inequality in the United States, and how the Oregon government is going to tax companies with “extreme CEO-worker pay gaps”. To the furious CEOs and committed libertarian capitalists I’m sure this is purely (party) political, to be overturned at the earliest opportunity. Other people believe that extreme inequality is disastrously bad for the country and is not likely to end up happily. History tells us that societies that are not cohesive and are regarded as unfair break apart and violence eventually ensues. To me this is a social problem and system break-down that heralds political turmoil, is very much in the purview of Epicurean commentators. Aside from it being immoderate, social upheaval is bad for pleasure and peace of mind. If you disagree please explain.

“A year ago the Portland, Oregon local government voted to slap a surtax on corporations that pay their chief executive officers more than 100 times what they pay their typical workers. This is the first tax penalty on corporations with extreme CEO-worker pay gaps in America, and may not be the last.
“Much like the Fight for $15, this bold reform could well spread like wildfire. Indeed, we may look back at the Oregon vote as the dawn of a new “pay ratio politics.” The key driver of the Portland tax: city council member Steve Novick, who has pressed on doggedly to win passage of this landmark reform.
“The Portland surtax will rely on new federal pay ratio data. Thanks to a Securities and Exchange Commission regulation announced last year, publicly held corporations will this year have to start calculating the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay. The first of these ratios will go public about now.
“These federally mandated pay ratio disclosures will make it easy for states and cities to adopt Portland-style surtaxes — if they have the political will to do so. In Portland, local officials had that will, and their deliberations showed just how broad the potential political support may be for leveraging the public purse against corporate pay practices that increase inequality.
For Novick, the tax is all about sparking a national movement against inequality. “CEO pay is not just an eye-catching example of, but a major cause of, extreme economic inequality,” he notes. “Extreme economic inequality is — next to global warming — the biggest problem we have in our state”. (Onequality.org)

Rage on social media

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There’s no such thing as any season of goodwill when it comes to political debate on social media. It’s all about fury and outrage. Even when tweets are funny, you can taste the “anger inside the sugar coating of smug satire”. Rage is contagious – it spreads like an infection across online forums, which have a vested interest in stoking it. It’s part of what has been dubbed the “outrage economy”. Shrill, divisive opinions attract eyeballs and yield a “double payoff” for publishers and platforms, as posts are then shared by people who both agree and violently disagree with them. Sharers come to enjoy, even grow addicted to, this easy way of displaying righteous indignation. And “so the cycle of provocation continues”, as people yield to the temptation to correct perceived wrongness with “a caustic retort” online and one side’s scratch becomes “the other side’s itch”. Any sense of empathy or curiosity is lost in the “riotous rhetoric of online dispute”. We can’t do without our devices, but now and then we desperately need to log off for a few days to regain a sense of perspective.(Rafael Behr, The Guardian)

Moderation is what partly distinguishes Epicureanism from other philosophies. Yes, for good reasons this blog has liberal, un-didactic views – we should be finding ways to get on with one another, not using derogatory or foul language against those who disagree with us.  One can have passionately held views, but listen and understand the views of others, even if they have echoes of the days of Mussolini or Hitler.  Quietly asssembling your rational reasons for disagreeing is the trick, and asking (with a smile detectable in your words) “have you ever considered this from another point of view?”. Of course, dealing with mentally sick or deranged people is an altogether more tricky matter. Epicurus would advise us, in the cause of calm, to ignore them and refuse to engage.

Child rearing

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Experts in child-rearing believe we have a lot of it wrong these days. They think parents are too invested in their children’s minute to minute happiness. They are too protective, too eager for their children to be proved academically outstanding, too reluctant to accept the kids are not all going to excel equally, indeed, far too hands-on. The experts have the following historical and psychlogical points of view:

1. A strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one primary caregiver (parent, aunt, adopter and so on) is said these days to be crucial.  But for most of history, and across all cultures to varying extents, the emphasis has been for the mother not to get too emotionally invested in a newborn or young infant who might die or sap her energy and health, and consequently the well-being of the family or community.  No apparent damage seems to have been done to children, as far as we know.

2. Co-sleeping, on-demand feeding and constant parent-child play – now associated with “attachment parenting” should serve both parties or be abandoned.

3.  Too much is made of the uniqueness of every child, alongside an “everyone’s-a-winner” mentality. Obsessed with children’s happiness, US parents, “tolerate mediocre academic performance and rail against teachers who expose our children’s failings”. Treating children with kid gloves for fear of harming their self-esteem is doing them no favours.

4.  Learning through observation, play and autonomy are critical.  Children are more resilient and inquisitive than we think.

5.  There is too much emphasis on shielding children from harm, thereby undermining their natural inclination to learn adult survival skills, social and practical.

6.  Benign neglect in parenting can be positive. “Go ahead; try it. They’ll thank you later on”.

7.  Collaborative projects and play are key to creativity. Formal classroom work is less important. Children need balance between freedom and structure to optimise their creativity.  There is a programming language called Scratch, which is supposed to be good, also Minecraft – let the kiddies loose!

“It is time to unwrap the seedlings from the cotton wool in which we have enwrapped children, plant them in rich soil and make sure they don’t grow up into another generation of overprotected kids”.

It would be interesting to know what Epicurus would have thought of the efforts to overturn the generally adopted modern methods of child-rearing. I strongly suspect he would have concurred. Something radical has to be done about the unhappiness of children today. Not all of it can be put down to Facebook et al.

Book information:

“Raising Children: Surprising insights from other cultures”, by David Lancy,Published by: Cambridge University Press
“Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers, and play” by Mitchel Resnick, Published by: MIT Press
(Based on an a review of the above books by Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist)

The latest UK privatisation rip-off and disaster

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Questions are swirling about the British government’s apparently lax oversight of its major outsourcing contractor Carillion before it collapsed last week, leaving thousands of British private-sector workers unpaid. Up to 30,000 small firms are thought to be owed money by the sprawling company. It has emerged that in the three months leading up to its liquidation Carillion was not overseen by a crown representative, which usually happens when a government supplier has financial difficulties. The Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, has told parliament the government will continue to pay those among Carillion’s 19,500 UK staff working in public-sector jobs, such as NHS cleaners and school catering, but thousands more in the private sector face being cut loose. Jeremy Corbyn says Carillion’s collapse proves it is “time to put an end to the rip-off privatisation policies that have done serious damage to our public services and fleeced the public of billions of pounds”. Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, said: “The government has mismanaged contracts so that fat cat bosses are able to get away with millions, hedge funds are able to make millions, while their jobs are at risk.” (The Guardian, Jan 16, 2018)

The National Audit Office has looked at 700 existing public-private projects and concluded that there was little evidence that any of them have delivered any financial benefits. They are generally 40% more costly than if they had continued in government management. There are currently 716 operational private finance deals with a capital value of 60 billion pounds. Annual charges for these deals amounted to 10.3bn pounds in 2016-17,and even if no new ones are entered into the existing ones are due to continue until the 2040s, costing nearly 200 billion pounds.

Privatisation is gospel to “conservative” politicians, whose conservation seems to be restricted to conserving pally relationships with Big Money and (are we allowed to guess?) reaping just rewards for their pains? Privatisation is window-dressing at best; at worst it is jobs for the boys, well paid ones, too. The British taxpayer has been ripped off for too long.

How Britain should treat Trump.

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Donald Trump is by far the most unpopular US president amongst British people in living memory, and that’s a huge low considering how unfavourable George Bush was with Brits. Admittedly, part of that is post-colonial snobbery; Trump epitomises an American brashness and distinct lack of intelligence and sophistication, serving a British narrative of cultural superiority. But it’s also because of Trump’s policies. The wall, the attempted Muslim travel ban, his support for torture, and the pretence of being one of the people while passing enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans- are all met with strong disapproval. Britain is hardly alone in disliking Trump, though perhaps the British have been more vocal in our criticism than people elsewhere.

Despite an anti-Trump consensus in Britain, the country is divided as to how to treat him. For the left, we should distance ourselves from him as possible. Trump should not be given a state visit, nor should Britain sing his praises in exchange for the possibility of a trade deal. The left regards Trump as too toxic and prejudice to work with. It’s also worth noting that due to his historic unpopularity, Trump will probably be gone by 2021 if not sooner if he is impeached. So the economic consequences of not working with him are minimal. It is more important to build good relationships with Democrats, who will soon retake the US Federal Government. The Democrats will not work as well with people who they believe strongly supported Trump.

Much of the right disagrees. In occasional instances, such as Nigel Farage, the right likes Trump. What is more common is the belief that the structural forces that made Trump president also benefit the right in Britain- concerns about immigration, opposition to social liberalism, scepticism of globalisation, the desire for a business-friendly politics. The demographics of Trump support and Conservative support in 2017 are roughly the same: older, rural, white voters without university degrees. Therefore Britain should work closely with Trump for our benefit, even if we may disagree with some of Trump’s more erratic outbursts. Vocal Brexiteer and Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg recently met with Steve Bannon for precisely this reason. The right favours significant divergence from the EU’s economic orbit. To compensate for the losses this would create, they regard it as essential Britain signs a free trade deal with America, and quickly, even if it means dealing with Trump and downgrading Britain’s regulatory standards and welfare state in the process.

To a limited extent, the right has a point. There has been a far greater public outcry over the possibility of a Trump state visit than there ever was over dictators visiting Britain. The UK frequently plays host to leaders of authoritarian regimes such as China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kenya. Working with people we don’t like is often necessary, such as working with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Britain should have a cordial relationship with the US, not seeking to antagonise Trump or comment on America’s domestic affairs unless it has a direct impact on its own wellbeing. I’m not opposed to a state visit for Trump; we may not like him, but he is still President of the US, a crucial ally and trade partner.

Where I strongly disagree with the right is that I don’t believe Trump is a reliable ally, so we can’t depend on him. Cutting ties with the EU for the possibility of a trade deal with the US is an exercise in futility. Partly because Trump is an instinctive protectionist, as clearly seen in the Department of Commerce’s 300% tariff on Bombardier aeroplane imports from Northern Ireland. Trump sees the world as a zero-sum game, where a good deal for other countries must come at America’s expense and vice versa. He believes the increasing amount of trade China and Mexico are doing is to America’s detriment. A US-UK trade deal, even one negotiated with a Democrat, would almost certainly be impossible to pass the British Parliament. There would be concerns about British agriculture being unable to compete with cheap US imports, the opening of the NHS to American procurement companies, and a general fear of being dominated by American multinational corporations. It’s also worth noting that Britain’s current trading relationship with the EU is far more sophisticated and comprehensive than anything possible with a conventional free trade agreement.

Britain should treat Trump like it treats everyone else. It should show Trump the respect that his office is due. But Britain must never sacrifice its standards or values to curry favour with an unstable, unpredictable, and increasingly disliked man.