America Is Purple

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I am currently in the process of buying a house and it’s overwhelming thinking of all the stuff I will have to go through with closing coming up and then moving, dealing with having a yard, and all the little headaches of home ownership.  I’ve been living happily in an apartment for the last three years, and while the house is far nicer, there are definitely some down sides.  I think similar feelings are the reason for the tea-party movement.    We, as a country, are going through some big changes currently and while sometimes big changes can lead to something good, change itself has a cost.  How many people do you know that will put up with something annoying rather than put in a bit of effort to change it?  I’ve been guilty of that.  A wise man once said, “Change will only happen when the cost of staying still becomes greater than the cost of making a change.”

And let’s face it, we humans hate change.  Sure there are those of us who love variety, but by and large we like our routines to stay the same.  If we have to do something differently, it means figuring out a new system which involves emotional and mental investment.  Often that investment pays off, but there is no guarantee of that going in.  For me, moving from an apartment that I’m mostly happy with to a house that I will likely be very happy with constitutes a risk.  What if I’m not happy?  What if the benefits don’t outweigh the annoyances?  In the apartment, if something breaks you call maintenance and they come and fix it for you.  In a house, you’re it unless you call someone in and pay them to fix it.

Add to that the fact that in every change there are winners and losers.  In moving out of an apartment and into a house, there may be things that annoyed my wife about the apartment that are solved by the house, while there may be things I liked about the apartment that are lacking in a house.  With political and cultural change, the people who are winning are going to oppose change because they might not be the winners once the dust settles.  Those who are secure and those that the current system fails will embrace change, those who lack security but for whom the system largely works will oppose it.  And we see that with the protesters. The Tea Party people are better educated than average and make more than the average American, yet they’re out there protesting.  They’re the ones for whom the current system has largely been working.  Which is why they so vehemently hate the government in Washington that promises change.  It’d be like winning the house cup after a long year of effort only to have some last minute rule change hand victory to another team.

They feel angry.  “Their” country is being taken away from them and given to people who are not like them.  The systems that let them be the winners and those other people the losers are being changed to favor the losers.  They won the championship and now the losers are getting a first round draft pick, and it’s going to be harder to compete next season.  (Ugh, did I just make a sports analogy?  I HATE sports analogies!)

But there is a major problem with the white-hot anger that burns in their guts.  The fact is, at least so far, change has been mild and largely in their favor.  A large majority of the tea-party conservatives believe that their taxes have gone up, when in fact they have been cut.  They protested tax freedom day (The day when we stop working for the government and start working for ourselves) despite it being the earliest it’s been in decades.  Despite any of these changes, the winners will remain winners.  They just might have to try a bit harder to stay ahead.  They might not have as big a lead as they once did.

This animosity towards change that they feel is a very gut-level instinct.  If people actually thought about these issues, they’d probably realize that government doesn’t have that much control of our day-to-day lives and if we who are above average in the money department end up paying an extra couple hundred dollars, it’s not going to hurt us as much as it’s going to help people who really need it.  But it will hurt.  Change always hurts.  Even really good change can feel bittersweet.  Change that is lateral or only slightly for the better can feel as bad as change for the worse.  For a lot of these protesters, their lives are not being changed all that much for the better or worse, but change is being forced upon them.  And they resist it.  Skipping work to go protest is less painful than having change thrust upon them, even if said change does not negatively effect them much.

In a way, I can understand the conservative impulse.  I’m experiencing it now.  Where I am currently is pretty darn good, moving forward is uncertain.  And yet, even if I sit still, the world still moves forward.  If I sit still, the world will move around me until the place I’m staying in becomes completely unfamiliar.  It is the paradox of the conservative movement.  It is the urge to stay still when it is impossible to do so.  The same people who fought against medicare years ago are the very people defending it to the death now.  It’s not about policy, it’s a deep-seated fear of change.  Conservatives want to go back to how it was, when things were simpler (they weren’t) and people were more open and caring (they weren’t) and politicians were honest (they weren’t.)  Pushed to the extreme, they are no longer merely conservatives.  They are Regressives.   But I feel a bit of that impulse, that fear, that uncertainty.  But I’m going to keep moving forward.  If the world changes anyway, I might as well try to keep up.  It beats stagnating.

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A lot of the arguments I hear lately have been accusing the administration of “Wealth Redistribution” by which they mean “Communism.”  It’s one of those loaded words by which those opposed to progressive ideas demonize them by painting a picture of your hard-earned money going to lazy, good-for-nothing bums so they can afford a better television than you.  The idea of “Welfare Queens” has been around for decades and has not been weakened by the sudden increase in formerly hard-working real Americans joining the ranks of the unemployed.  The argument goes that giving people who are down on their luck (which is what we used to refer to lazy non-working people as) enough to get by on until they can get back on their feet will just make them lazy.  That if we stopped giving them money, they would just go out and find a job.  This despite many areas having 30-100 applicants for any available job.

I’m sure there are any number of examples of lazy people making a bare living off of unemployment, however to get unemployment you have to have been employed.  To get Social Security, you have to have paid into it.  The idea of the government handing out entitlements to people who have never worked a day in their lives is simply not accurate.  The people who blow their food stamps on expensive shoes are simply not going to be able to eat.  Those who are gaming the system for their own benefit and living off the government dole are breaking the law and should be brought to justice.  The problem is the mentality that seeks to get as much out of the system as possible without contributing to it.  It’s a problem that is not confined just to the poor.  The rich benefit the most from the system while many are lobbying, loop-hole finding, and generally doing their best to contribute the least to the system that makes their wealth possible but also props up those lazy bastards who should just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps the way we did!” I object to this “I’ve got mine, screw you!” mentality.  We as a nation are all in this together.  The “This” is making this country the best it can possibly be.

Redistribution of wealth always happens, whether we like it or not.  Generally, the redistribution comes in the form of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.  If this gets out of hand and the robber barons are too unreasonable, it can lead to violence.  It is not unreasonable for the government to take steps to prevent the disparity of wealth from reaching “Let them eat cake” levels.  They do this in three significant ways.

The main way governments redistribute the wealth is from all to all.  Government invests our tax dollars in the things that benefit everyone, like infrastructure.  Things that we all benefit from we all pay for: roads, bridges, communications, police, fire fighters, the military, and in some places health service.  Even if I never travel down a particular road or cross a particular bridge, its existence allows others to travel to new destinations quicker and easier, allowing them to more easily buy products and services that increase our economy’s health and that benefit our nation as a whole.  Police to protect us from criminals and firefighters so that a fire in one building does not level a city.  The military to protect us from foreign attack, communications so that we can talk with people from across the country and around the globe (and hopefully buy things from them.)

The second way government redistributes wealth is many to few.  When the government takes everyone’s tax dollars and uses the money to benefit a select few.  This can either be to benefit the wealthy (pork-barrel politics) or the poor (Welfare.)  While few people have issue with the government fixing the roads (we just wish they’d do a better job of it) or making the trains run on time, lots of people have issue with our tax dollars going to bail out irresponsible banks or irresponsible home-owners whose reach exceeded their grasp.  The problem is determining who was a responsible person that hit a patch of bad luck and who is a lazy slacker who brought their situation upon themselves.  It’s not always clear.  In some cases, the government helping the poor will give them the opportunity to get back on their feet, and in others it will create a person totally beholden to the government for their existence.  Many people have a problem with this setup, and it is reasonable for them to be slightly miffed that their hard-earned money is going to those who don’t work.  (I’m personally a fan of having those on welfare work a day or two a week at community service to improve their communities, clean up trash, etc. in order to earn their welfare payment.)

The last distribution is the Robin Hood phenomenon, few to many.  Take from the rich and give to the poor.  Even many of the poor who would most benefit have a problem with this.  There is a fundamental unfairness that someone who has worked hard should be unfairly burdened.  It is unjust.  However, there exists a subset of this wealthy group that make this a bit more complicated: the heiresses.  The people who have never worked a day in their lives and yet jet about in extreme luxury.  The people, in short, who make money by having money.  Money tends to attract more money.  At a certain level, you can stop working and let your money pay for your living.  If I had a million dollars, and were able to find a savings account that gave me five percent interest, I could comfortably live off the interest.  (5% of a million would be $50,000 a year, which is way more than what I’m making currently.)

There is also the obscene amount of money that CEOs and Bank Presidents make.  How would you even spend $300 million dollars?  If I made $100,000 in one year, I’d be able to pay off all my current loans and still have a hell of a down-payment on a house.  $300 million dollars?  Really?  I did a brief, unscientific survey a while ago and the consensus seems to be that you can live comfortably on around $40,000 a year.  $50,000 if you have kids.  With that kind of money, you can pay the bills, pay for a car, and make a mortgage payment or keep current on your rent.

The median income in the United States is $44,000 a year.  Roughly 45% of Americans live on less than $40,000 a year.  For a quick estimate, if you figure a fairly nice house has a mortgage of $1000 a month, food costs $400 a month, utilities (gas, water, trash service, electricity, phone service) cost another $400 a month, someone making $40k a year would still have $1500 a month to work with to pay off debts, buy things, and save up for future catastrophes.   Someone making $20k a year (which 20% of us do) would probably have a crappy apartment for $600 a month, $2-300 for food (which tends to be unhealthy food.  The good stuff is expensive.)  $400 for utilities, and they’re left trying to pay down debt or make a car payment on $350 a month.  Heaven help them if there’s an emergency or they get sick.

On the other hand, if you make $100,000 a year, you have over $8000 a month to work with.  You could afford a mortgage payment on a McMansion of $5,000 a month and still have double left over for food, clothing, car payments, and spending of someone making $20,000 a year.  Let that sink in.  If someone making $100k a year bought a house in the same price-range as someone making $40k, paid the same in food and utilities, they would have $6500 left over every month.  Imagine what you could do with $6500.  Every month.  Now imagine what it would be like to have $19,000 left over every month.  Which is what you would have left over per month if you made $250,000 and still lived in what the $40k set would call a “Nice neighborhood” but which you are now starting to think of as “The Ghetto.”  How would you spend $19,000 a month?  If you’re smart you’d invest it to start living off the interest, but if you wanted to spend it?  What would you buy?

Now imagine taking $20,000 from the man making $250,000 ($1600 a month) and giving it to the guy who is only making $20k a year.  (Not necessarily in a handout.  It could be in the form of health-care, better working conditions, help with housing, etc.)  $250k guy isn’t going to miss it much, he’s still got $17k to work with, but it’s going to make a huge difference for $20k guy.  And yet, this is stealing.  We are robbing the rich and giving to the poor.  This is not just.  If $250k guy chose to give it, there would be no problem, but if we as a people take it, we as a people are stealing.  Which raises all sorts of questions.

Does stealing from someone who will not feel it to aid the poor who desperately need it feel justified?  If $250k guy blew a gasket that the government was stealing from him and taking away his hard-earned money, would you have sympathy?  What about $1.5M guy?  Should someone who has benefited the most from the American financial system be obliged to help those less fortunate, even if he doesn’t want to?  Would someone who makes $20,000 a year feel insulted if he is offered help?  Should he?

And finally, how much is enough for you to live comfortably on?  Would you be willing to give up a bit of comfort so that someone who isn’t making it can get by?

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While I said in a previous post that I have more respect for people along the poles of political alignment, (Straight libertarians, conservatives, totalitarians, and progressives) I still have an issue with anyone who takes those beliefs too far or holds them too strongly.  We are in a polarized political climate, and the more ardent the political belief, the further it pushes people to the edges.  Think the free market needs a bit of regulation so greedy businesses can’t run roughshod over the economy?  You’re obviously in favor of government takeover of everything.  And so on and so forth.

And it becomes more and more of a problem to argue with someone the more and more strongly they believe something.  If someone believes that Obama is a closet communist and no amount of contrary evidence is going to convince them otherwise, it becomes impossible to have a functional conversation with that person since that underlying premise is at odds with other people’s beliefs (and also objective reality.)   Most reasonable people would give up, which leads to the jeer that, “You can’t argue with THAT, can you?!  I win!”  I would argue that causing all your opponents to walk away in disgust is not winning when it comes to arguing your side.  Winning is convincing your opponent that your ideas, not theirs, are correct.  having beliefs so strong that they do not even entertain the possibility of being wrong and will ignore any evidence that contradicts their theories isn’t just losing, it’s tipping the board and scattering the pieces.  You not only don’t win, you actually push your opponents to take up arms to oppose you.

For instance, the healthcare bill.  I believe that it’s a compromise, a deal that will probably do more good than harm, but that leaves everyone unsatisfied.  (As opposed to leaving progressives very happy and conservatives apoplectic.) However, due to the furor raised by the right over supposed “Death Panels” and the like, I came out in defense of the bill, a bill which I would otherwise have been rather apathetic about.  There is a balance in politics, and the more you push to one side or the other, the more the other side pushes back.  The problem comes when both sides push too far out and something snaps.  If you become so far apart politically, you can no longer communicate with anyone of differing views.  If you can no longer communicate, you lose your ability to enact positive policy.

We live in a representative democracy, which means that the elected are not elected leaders, they are elected representatives.  They represent us, the people of their district, state, or country.  Optimally, our representatives would be the best of our district, state or country.  We are sending them to represent us to the world.  However, since elections require a majority of votes to win and the accepted way to get votes is to fire up the base, we get representatives that speak for roughly half of their constituency.  They are elected over the protest of their opponents.

If people do not feel they are fairly represented, they become angry.  Sometimes this is justified, if they are prevented from having their say in the matter.  Sometimes it is not, when they have had their say and a majority decide otherwise.  Further problems occur when someone’s strongly held belief becomes more important than the process of democracy.  If someone believes so strongly that the current path the government is on will lead to ruin, they will take matters into their own hands, regardless of evidence that contradicts their beliefs.  This is dangerous to a working democracy.

So what to do?  The obvious thing is to not believe things too strongly.  No matter how right you think you are, there is always the possibility that you are wrong.  Always.  Second, understand that things are never, ever going to be as good or as bad as the extremists believe.  If you hear that a particular ruling will end democracy as we know it or will solve all our ills, don’t believe it for a second.  Things are never as simple as the true-believers say it is.  There are always unintended consequences, but lets not pretend that we know exactly what they are.  If we did, they’d be intended consequences.

Thirdly, acknowledge that people believe things differently than you for a reason, not just because they’re idiots.  Nobody believes we should take up communism because it leads to totalitarian regimes and the purging of all who disagree.  Nobody believes that unregulated free-market capitalism is great because it allows the rich to feed off the poor.  There are good and bad things in any system of government, the trick is to account for them and try to set up checks and balances to smooth out the rough edges.  If we believe too strongly in any one particular platform, we ignore it’s ills and when a rational person of a different stripe talks to us and brings up an issue, we don’t have an answer short of  “Oh, that’s not a problem.  If the system runs right, it takes care of that.”  Which doesn’t answer the question of how it takes care of that or what happens if things aren’t running right.  It is far better to listen to criticism and think of solutions to those problems than to blindly follow a belief full of holes.  And all systems of government have holes.

The absolute best way for our government to run is to pick and choose working solutions from any and all ways of thought.  Libertarian ideals aren’t necessarily  going to solve things, but they do point out the weakness in totalitarianism.  Conservatism can’t move the country forward, but Progressives do well to listen to their concerns, they’re more likely to see the unintended consequences of progressive policy.  (At least if they’re doing their job right and not beating each other into a frenzy with the crazy stick.)  We need all ideas on the table to have a healthy debate and a working democracy, with representatives working together to find solutions and weed out problems in legislation.  If we get too hung up on our own ideology, we become unable to work together to forward the common goal of a better country.  It is a sad day indeed when people hold an ideology so strongly that they would rather see the country burn than work with those whose opinions differ from their own.

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A few weeks back I posted about the nine different political alignments represented by this chart:

A recent article by a friend of a friend got me thinking again about the differences between the political alignments and I came to a personal conclusion: I find the alignments along the axis to be far more appealing than the ones at the corners.  I respect Straight Libertarians as being against both the Progressive Totalitarian Democrats and the Conservative Totalitarian Republicans.  I understand the desire to glorify the past (however imperfect it may have actually been) and try to live up to the goals and aspirations of our forefathers.  I can even understand the desire to say, “Screw it, the people are idiots!  Let’s have some people in charge that know what they’re doing and make them take care of it!  (The fictional Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comes to mind as the kind of pragmatic, cynical leader who could do Totalitarianism without falling into Either Communism or Fascism.)  Most of all, I think I resonate with the progressive causes.  I want a government that is invested in making the country more fair for everyone.  But I also want a government that is more efficient, less wasteful, and less intrusive.  I want a government that works in the background and is there when you need it, but unobtrusive in your day to day life.

This would put me ever so slightly in the Progressive Libertarian camp.  AKA Hippie.  Which in the 60s would have put me in a popular group, but now it’s fairly lonely.  All the hippies from that era have grown up and become Conservative Libertarians, affectionately referred to as “Tea-baggers.” In fact, across the board, It’s lonely at the top.  The Straight Libertarians have been largely co-opted by the Conservative Libertarians, who have largely been co-opted by the out of power Conservative Totalitarians.  (You could make the argument that an out-of-power totalitarian becomes a libertarian by necessity, although the majority of them switch back as soon as they return to power.  Yet another reason why I think Republicans make a much better opposition party than a leadership party.  Although lately they’ve been doing a bit too good a job at opposing damn near everything, including their own ideas.)

The main problem I have with Libertarians is the blind belief in the free market.  It is the same as the Conservatives’ blind belief in past glories, a Totalitarian’s blind belief in Authority, and the Progressive’s blind belief in the goodness of human nature and their ability to build a glorious future where everyone is enlightened and gets along without offending anyone else.  In the case of the Libertarians, the myth of the free market makes it difficult for me to support them since human nature has shown time and again that any market run by humans will invariably not be free for long.  In a perfect world, a fair and free market (fair being in the best interest of the market itself) would prevail because taking advantage of the market would, in the long term,  lead to catastrophic failure.  This implies that humans are capable of self-policing, long-term planning, and have the ability to ignore large short-term gains that may be offset by long-term losses.  While this may be true of SOME humans, it is certainly not true of them all.  Enron and AIG being just two recent examples.  I prefer my free market to be policed by competent watch-dogs.  The Washington regulators haven proven to be anything but competent.  I would call for a third-party group to regulate wallstreet in true free-market fashion, but that would be the ratings agencies that were either duped or complicit in giving triple-A ratings to junk.

While I share the Libertarian desire for a smaller, simpler, and more efficient government I can’t agree that the Free Market always provides by the might of its invisible hand.  There are some things that I think the Government can do and do well and maybe even should do well.  In these areas, we should be fighting to make it work correctly, not to gut it or to get rid of it.  I for one would not want to return to a completely deregulated Jungle of unregulated food production.

In fact, I think regulation of all commodities on which people’s lives depend should be in place.  Food, housing (up to code), energy production (avoid another Enron induced brown-out session), water purity, financial markets, working conditions, and maybe even health care.  What I don’t think should be put in place is stupid regulation that causes more harm than good.  It shouldn’t be an undue burden on industry, just enough to prevent the natural human impulse to let things slide.  The founding fathers went to great lengths to protect the American people from tyranny by dividing power into multiple branches of government in the hopes that by so doing they would frustrate the human impulse to crave power.  In the same way, I would like Government to be a check against the worst parts of the citizenry’s all too human nature.  Unfortunately, many of our representatives (or as they refer to themselves, “Leaders”) exhibit the worst parts of human nature.  This would lead the cynical to declare game over, there’s no point in supporting either party, or being involved at all.  Principle will never win out over greed.  I say that it just means we need to work harder to vet our prospective representatives and give our full support to the principled, honest fellow citizens who wish to represent us, regardless of which party they find themselves in.  And we need to learn that agreeing with our stances on issues is not the same as being honest or principled.  The corrupt “Leaders” from both sides of the aisle show us that much.

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I recently received the following email forward from a conservative.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich… “a great equalizer”.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”.
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A…

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B- (B minus).  The students who studied hard were upset and the students who never studied were happy.  As the second test rolled around, the students who never studied didn’t even open their text books and the ones who had before studied hard, decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D!  No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

So a couple observations about this.

1) The above story is not about socialism at all, it’s about communism. If the students think that “Obama’s Socialism” means that there won’t be any poor people or rich people, they’re stupid on several levels.  For starters, socialism does not mean there are no rich or poor people.  Look at socialized Europe.  No rich people or poor people there!  No wait, that’s completely wrong.  The only difference between the poor here and in socialist Europe is that their situations are slightly better.  They may not have any money, but they at least have access to things like health care.  Secondly, while Obama may or may not have some socialist views, he’s certainly no communist. He hasn’t put forth an plans for actual government takeover of anything.  (The health care reform bill mandates people buy health care but they’ll be forced to get it from private insurers.)

2) The above story seems to be about a class of Young Republicans. The students cut their nose off to spite their face.  Seriously, who would give up a passing grade just because a few free-loaders are taking advantage of the system? Also, they must have been trying pretty hard to flunk everyone else because I went through college barely studying and got mostly “A” grades.  I can’t think that everyone in the class would completely fail (F average) unless they were actively trying to.

3) The above story has a very, very low opinion of human nature, and the social skills of those students must have been nigh non-existent.  Has anyone here worked with someone who wasn’t pulling their weight?  I’m certain we all have.  What happens?  They become universally unpopular and people within the majority of the group bring them back into line, with beatings if necessary. This isn’t so much a story about the failure of socialism/communism as it is the failure of people who are only looking out for themselves to work together towards a common goal.

4) I could come up with a more compelling story with the same scenario where a teacher decides to average the grades of the class and give everyone the same grade.  The smartest students in the class still want to pass, so they spend extra time with the dumbest students, tutoring them.  Everyone comes together to study hard and in the end everyone passes the class with an A.  Life lessons are learned. The real breakthrough happens when the female class nerd convinces the bad-boy slacker student who wasn’t studying to try hard, even though he doesn’t care about the class.  The slacker goes on to ace the last test, bringing the class average above the threshold for an A.  Everyone cheers.  Then he teaches the nerd how to love.  It’s very touching.

5) The kind of people who find the above story compelling are likely the same ones who would react like the “smart” students did in the story.  “Oh, if someone’s free-loading, that means I’m not going to try.  Screw them!*”  (*And by “them” we mean everyone else in the class, myself included. The slackers were going to fail anyway so they haven’t lost anything.) It’s the kind of people who would shut down their business to avoid paying an extra 3% in taxes.

6) If the professor “Once failed an entire class,” because they were fans of “Obama’s Socialism,” it must have been recent.  Obama’s been in office for a little over a year, yet the professor is telling this story as a “Once upon a time.”  I’m starting to think this never actually happened!  (Actually I started to think that when I first started reading it.)

Socialism isn’t “The Great Equalizer” that conservatives paint it as, but what is it?  It’s difficult to answer that question for two reasons.  The first is that socialism has been stigmatized in the United States for years now and like Communism and Fascism seems to have taken on the meaning “Bad System of Government,” or “Style of Government that we don’t like.”  Secondly, socialism is a broad band of ideas stretching from light communism to hippie.  In it’s most common form however, and the way it would likely appear if it ever took hold here in America (which it won’t any time soon) would be Limited Capitalism.

Capitalism is great because it allows people upward mobility, and for the most part people who work hard can make a decent living for themselves and their families.  The problem with Capitalism is the ability of greed and selfishness by a few to negatively impact a large group of people.  The goal of Limited Capitalism is to keep all the good that comes about from the Capitalist system but smooth out the outliers.  Make the poor a bit less poor and the rich a bit less rich.  Unlike Communism which would take everyone’s income and divide it “Equally” (some are more equal than others), socialism aims to provide fairness to a system that can at times become seriously out of whack.

The hallmark of a socialist agenda is not government takeover of business (that would be communism) but employee-owned businesses and non-profits.  On a national scale, Socialism puts strict regulations on banks and businesses to protect the country, the employees, investors, customers and even to protect the businesses from themselves.  (A lot of people would be better off if the government had been paying attention and stopped the likes of Enron and AIG from destroying themselves.  Wouldn’t have required a bailout if they’d nipped it in the bud.)  There’s still capitalism, there’s still winners and losers, the winners still are richer than the losers, but it’s not a zero-sum game.

The founding fathers of our country knew that human nature was prone to greed and lust for power, so they separated the government into three branches with checks and balances to prevent too much power being placed in the hands of too few.  Socialism is that in economics, trying to prevent the unchecked greed that has run rampant in wall street.  (Just look at the AIG execs who are throwing a fit about not getting their bonuses.)  Optimally, socialism is not hamstringing the good players, it is merely leveling the playing field.  Some aspects of socialism would do well for America, and some would not work so well.  One thing I would like is for people to argue the pros and cons of the system with the actual pros and cons instead of importing cons from other systems to prop up a straw man.

The few aspects of socialism I’d like to integrate into our current system are some enforced regulation on wall street for the banks who have proven time and again that they cannot police themselves.  Too-big-to-fail banks should be broken up into smaller, non-life-threatening banks, and some limits should be placed on executive pay (Maybe ten or 100 times their lowest paid employee.  If their lowest paid employee makes $30k a year, they’d be capped at $300k or $3 million not $300 million.)  I’d like to see non-profit hospitals who pay their employees well and roll any extra they make into expanding the hospital’s services.  I’d like to see non-profit insurance companies.  In short, I’d like to see more companies who were dedicated to their customers and employees instead of their bottom lines.  That’s socialism I can live with.  Compared to this mild socialism, straight capitalism with no checks or balances seems a little anti-social.

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With all the talk of national debt and deficit spending lately, I can’t help be reminded of the awful truth of the American economy: The economy runs on debt, or as it’s called by the savvy marketing types: credit.  If everyone were to pay off their student loans, mortgages, car loans, and credit cards the American economy would collapse.  While it is good for individuals to pay off loans quickly to be in a better financial position for the long term each dollar that you pay back on the principle of your loan shrinks the economy.  What the hell am I talking about, you ask?  Leverage.

If I went to the bank tomorrow and was granted a loan to buy a house, a mortgage, the bank would give me many thousands of dollars in bank credit to go out and purchase a house.  They are not giving me actual money that they have in the vault.  In fact, for each dollar they have in the vault they may have loaned out 10 or 20 dollars.  Our government allows banks to give out bank credit in the form of US Currency.  This means, that when I get a loan, the bank is conjuring into existence money.  It is theoretical, ephemeral money but I will pay that money to the home owner who will likely take that money and put it towards a new house.  An actual monetary transaction will have occurred but with money the bank created this morning!  And the more that banks do this, the more money is flowing in the system.  This is what was happening in the years leading up to 2008 and the crash.

Leverage is the ratio of actual money to credit that a bank has.  If a bank has one dollar and they loan out 9 dollars, they are said to be leveraged at 9:1.  If instead, they loan out 30 dollars and they have 1 dollar, the are leveraged at 30:1.  Where this becomes a problem is if someone is unable to pay back the money.  If I have $10 and give three people an IOU for $10, I’m fine until more than one of them tries to collect at a time.  If a bank has given 30 people $100,000 mortgages based on them having $100,000 on hand, they’re screwed if more than one person is unable to pay them back.  During the real estate bubble, banks thought nothing of giving nearly anyone a mortgage loan because the value of the property would likely increase and even if the borrower couldn’t pay back the loan, the bank would be able to seize the house and sell it for a profit.  Once the bubble burst and they were no longer able to sell the house at a profit, or possibly even at all, the whole house of cards came close to collapsing.  All that ephemeral bank credit in the form of US Currency went poof, and the economy contracted.  The result was less less money in the system.

Which brings us to the United States National Debt.  While deficit spending and increased national debt are a problem, having less money in the system (banks are wary of giving credit to people after getting burned) is more of a problem.  While many people liken the US Government to a family that has to tighten the belt and balance the checkbook, the US is in actuality more like a business.  Many businesses run on credit.  Many were hurt badly or were closed down when they were no longer able to get credit to make payroll.  The US Government runs on credit as well.  Aside from a brief couple years in the 1830’s when we paid it off, the nation has always been in debt.  (Oddly enough for those who think the national debt is purely evil, after Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt the country entered a huge recession.)

While skyrocketing national debt is worrisome, so long as we can afford the interest payments, debt on a national level is not as horrifying as many would have us believe.  Again, we’ve been in debt since 1836 and the country hasn’t imploded yet.  The debt allows us to add currency to the economy without as much risk of inflation.  The government could simply print more money, conjure it into existence much like the banks do, but without the value that comes from having to pay it back, it would cause the currency as a whole to drop in value, diluting the value of the dollar.  This is important because unlike the banks which have $1 to back the several dollars they loan out, the currency of the United States is backed only by the good faith of the American Government.  Comforting, I’m sure to those who have no faith in the American Government.

And to the idea of balancing the nation’s checkbook, there are two ways to reduce deficits just as there are two ways to pay off debt in your household.  You can cut your spending on everything else, subsist on Ramen and put all your money into paying off your debt.  It isn’t a pleasant way to live, but may pay off long-term.  The other way you may have little control over, but it’s to increase your income.  Get a better paying job, or a second (or third) one.  In the Government’s case, this would involve raising taxes.  Those who are hell-bent on reducing the national debt never seem to be open to this idea, for some odd reason or other.  (It also seems strange that I didn’t hear a peep out of them about the deficit spending and increased national debt during the Bush administration, but that’s another post.)  And there’s no reason you can’t do both.  Cut unimportant programs and remove tax cuts.  It’d be wildly unpopular, but if you’re truly in favor of reducing the national debt, that’d be the way to go.  Of course, in so doing  you would be removing 13 trillion dollars from the nations economy.  I imagine with money being scarce enough as it is, we may want to rethink that plan until the banks are once again in the conjuring mood.  Perhaps once we have some regulation in place to make sure they don’t go too crazy with it again.

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There’s been a lot of debate for months now on the health-care reform bill in congress.  A lot of groups on both sides absolutely hate it.  Those on the right call it “Socialist” despite it not coming anywhere close to actual socialized medicine.  Those on the left call it a gift to the health insurance corporations.  What it is really is a gutted compromise that will be better than nothing, but certainly won’t solve the problem long-term.  In order to better understand the debate, let’s look at some health care options.

The basic idea behind health insurance is that you take a large group of people and pool their resources so that if one of the group gets sick, the others pay for their treatments.  It’s a bad deal for the healthy people but pays off once it’s their turn to get sick or injured.  A simple example would be 10 people who pool together and each one pays $100 a month.  One of them gets sick, there is $1000 per month available to pay for their treatment.  If two of them get sick, there’s $500 for each of them.  As long as the number of sick people do not overwhelm the pool all at once, there’s plenty of money for their treatment, and in the long term the pool gains in value.  If more are sick than are well, it becomes necessary to either have each individual put more into the pool (raise rates) or increase the size of the pool to include more healthy people who contribute more than they take out of the system.  By increasing the pool from 10 to 100 people each paying the same $100, you then have $10,000 to work with for covering those 100 people.  If a low enough percentage of the people need actual care, the pool makes money.  If one person is taking up too much of the resources of the pool, it may be necessary to kick them out of the pool or risk taking the entire pool down or forcing the pool to raise the rate people are contributing.

What we have seen recently is people leaving the pool.  Due to unemployment and loss of income many more people are without healthcare, many of which are the relatively healthy who pay into the pool more than they take out.  This requires those that remain to pay more.  Hence the rate hikes we’re seeing across the board.  So how do we solve this problem?  There are a number of different ways to do it.

1) Single payer.  The actually socialist option.  Not that socialism is necessarily a bad thing.  In this model, everyone in the country is in the same massive pool.  Because it requires healthy people to join the pool as well as the sick, individual costs go down.  Since everyone has the same health coverage, you can go to any doctor in town and it will cost the same.  Instead of the current medicare and medicaid payments being removed from your check each month, you’d have the government taking out your healthcare payment from your wages.  Canada, England, and Germany all do healthcare this way and are quite happy with it overall. This is perhaps the most fair plan, but requires government management of the system and will cause hurt to the current health care companies.

2) Public Option.  The not quite socialist option.  In this plan, if the privately owned pools are not able to keep prices low enough to be affordable to the general populace, the government steps in sets up their own pool but without taking anything out for profits.  The corporations hate this because many people will chose the public option, and they will lose customers.  The Public Option must thread the needle of pools however because if they just admit the sick people, their pool will become unsustainable.  By requiring the healthy to join they can make it more solvent but that requires a mandate that will be a bad deal for the healthy, forcing them to pay into a system and not getting any real benefit.

3) The current bill in congress.  This does NOT (as of this writing) contain a public option, however it does require everyone to get health insurance in a similar way to the way we require all cars to be insured, with the exception that people can chose not to drive a car.  This will force the young, healthy people who currently forgo health coverage into the pool in the hopes that this will lower costs overall.  In the case of the poor who cannot afford the health coverage, it provides subsidies.  It’s pretty much the same system as we have no except that nearly everyone will be required to buy health coverage or pay a fine.  (Many people may opt for the fine since it may cost less than the health coverage they would be forced to get.)  On the plus side, health insurance companies would no longer be able to kick people out of the pool.

4) The current system.  The current system allows insurers to kick people out of the pool if they are too much of a drag on the system, costs more than other options, and leaves many people locked out in the cold.  Insurers will not invite someone already sick to swim in their pool.  Despite being quite unfair, it is an option.  It just requires that we ignore the suffering of those who aren’t allowed in.  It seems heartless (okay, it IS heartless) but the world is not fair and the have-nots will just have to deal.  We have a couple public-pools but being eligible for memberships is not guaranteed (medicare and medicaid.)

5) The libertarian plan.  Basically this involves getting rid of the public pools, medicare and medicaid, and letting everyone fend for themselves.  While the left may call this akin to throwing the wounded to the sharks, it would save a lot of money and reduce the deficit by a ton as spending on Medicare and Medicaid currently makes up nearly 20% of government spending.  (Factor in Social Security and it’s over 40%.)  With this plan, those who can’t afford coverage will drop out of the pool, leaving less people to spread the risk, further increasing prices, causing more people to drop out.

6) My wishful thinking plan.  Ban for-profit insurance companies and hospitals.  Cut off the need for profit from hospitals and require anything they make in profits be invested back into the hospital to improve the quality of care.  Insurance companies would be straight pools to balance risk amongst people to keep costs affordable.  This will never happen and if it actually did, there would probably be a drop in quality based on smart people no longer going into the field since they will no longer be making obscene profits.  On the other hand, maybe only those who are legitimately concerned with making people well would enter the field and it might just balance out.  Oh, and make for-profit drug companies illegal too.

So which of these actual options (1-5) is best?  That depends on the person.  I would like the socialist single-payer plan provided it could be administered efficiently.  Public option has some definite issues, although popular with progressives.  The current bill is not socialist at all, but doesn’t really go far enough in either direction to make much of a difference.  It’s better than nothing, but not anything to get excited (or worked up) over.  Despite the right calling it communism, it’s pretty much middle of the road.  The current system is broken, but still provides excellent service for those who can afford it.  I can’t in good conscience support the current system or the libertarian plan since they would leave many, many people consigned to a level of care below what wealthy people donate to third world countries.  Single-payer may be progressive totalitarianism, but I can’t see that being worse than the de facto anarchy we have now.  This is one case where the center may not be the best location, although if I’d have to pick I’d say the health care legislation currently in congress is not far from it.

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I’ve been having trouble writing for this blog for a while now because I live in a very conservative part of a blue state and pretty much everyone I regularly talk politics with is a conservative.  This has lead to me having to explain the left side of things to them and generally play devil’s advocate for the left in most of my discussions.  The more I do this, the more I worry that I am not truly in the center, where I have made it my mission to remain.

On top of that, it is increasingly difficult to find the center of America.  I have argued that we are not a center-left country or a center-right country, that we are a center country, balanced mostly by strong feelings on the right and the left.  I’m not sure if that is the case anymore.  If we look back on history, it seems that today’s establishment left is to the right of Richard Nixon in a lot of areas. I’ve been thinking on this subject even more after reading this article describing the political spectrum not just in terms of conservative or progressive, but also in terms of freedom vs totalitarian.  I think Mr. Ferris’ chart is off slightly, but it did get me thinking about my place in the political spectrum.  I will therefor substitute my own chart for his.

It seems like the conversation in this country has, for as long as I’ve been alive, been relegated to the lower half of this chart.  Conservatives talk about small government when they are out of power, but whenever they are in power, they grow it.  I think that instead of having two sides in a political debate, there should be more like nine.  Going from the chart, I’ll take them clockwise from upper left.

Libertarian Progressives, or as they are more commonly called, “Hippies” are those who believe the government should stop harshing their buzz, man.  They are Utopian idealists who believe that the government should be unnecessary because we should all just get along.

Straight Libertarians believe the government is too big period.  They don’t necessarily want to abolish government, just shrink it down to the point where it can’t interfere in their lives.  A favorite of today’s youths and Ron Paul supporters, they generally get ignored by the “mainstream” press and marginalized by both right and left.

Conservative Libertarians are your typical Tea Party protesters.  I think that makes them essentially conservative hippies.  They want less government because they do not think government can or should solve people’s problems for them.  Conservatives tend to become this when out of power.

Straight Conservatives are essentially your grandfather.  They believe that the country was better off years ago and would like to return to a simpler time that may or may not have ever actually existed.  Like your grandfather telling you about walking to school in the snow up-hill both ways, and this was somehow better than today, Conservatives want to return to an idealized Leave-It-To-Beaver 1950’s, just minus the turmoil and racism that was actually going on then.

Conservative Totalitarians, while saying that Government can’t do anything right in order to placate their libertarian brethren, believe that the government CAN do stuff right, mostly rounding up “illegals”, running a military capable of conquering the rest of the world on it’s own, monitoring the citizenry for signs of dissension via wiretapping.  They’ll try to outlaw unseemly acts as they see fit.  It’s basically your conservative grandfather with the added step of shaking the fist and saying, “There ought to be a law!”   And then going out and making a law.  At a lower setting, they’re the prohibitionists from the early 1900’s.  At their worst they’re hyper-nationalistic, scapegoating, jack-booted thugs who will round up anyone who doesn’t fit with their vision of what a good citizen should be and throw them in the gas chamber.

Straight Totalitarians believe that government should be in complete control.  This can be either magnanimous or sinister depending on the government.  A typical monarchy would be one side and complete control by a despotic ruler on the other.  It’s the belief that people should not be free to chose because when people are free they abuse their freedom in many harmful ways.

Progressive Totalitarians believe that they can use the power of government to make everything fair.  At it’s worst it leads to the idea that if government controls everything, it can redistribute the wealth so everyone is equal, comrade!  Of course, some are more equal than others.  Like the hippies, this idea ignores human nature and those in power use that power to stay in power.  At best, it results in government welfare programs that do a lot of good but leave a lot of people dependent on the government for their existence. At worst, it results in millions of people dying in Siberia.

Straight Progressives are in favor of moving the country forward to a glorious time of mutual cooperation that will likely never exist.  Like the Conservatives they believe in an ideal, just based on the pie-in-the-sky future instead of an ephemeral past.  They’re in favor of socialism, which is like communism lite, employer owned businesses, “fair” wages, healthcare for all.  They’re constantly disappointed that humans just aren’t as fair minded and evolved as they hoped they’d be and that people aren’t inclined to change things, even given the promise that their untested theories will make things “Better.”

And now to the center.  True Neutral.  This is where I like to reside.  The belief that big government or little government isn’t the issue, efficient, smart government is.  The belief that the idealized past of the conservatives and the rosy future of the progressives are both stinking piles of BS.  You have to take a view of history that includes both the good and the bad.  Likewise the future is going to be somewhere between the Jetsons and a post-apocalyptic nightmare.  I want government to stay out of people’s private lives and do their job of making things work, protecting the people from tainted meat, predatory financial institutions, and terrorists.  I’ll gladly pay my taxes (well, maybe not gladly, but at least less grudgingly) if they’re actually going to make people’s lives better through roads, infrastructure, and yes even healthcare.

Looking back at politics in my lifetime, it seems that the argument has always been between the factions on the lower side of the board.  Hippies and Tea Party protesters get laughed out of the room when it comes time to actually legislate.  Between the tax and spend progressive totalitarians and the cut taxes but keep spending anyway conservative totalitarians, I don’t place my trust in any of them.  I continue to believe that government can be a solution to our nation’s woes, but it should not be THE solution.  I cannot place myself in any one of the eight outer camps.  I must place myself in the center where I can pick and chose from the good things in each camp, and reject the bad ideas and divisive tendencies of each one.  That is what I mean when I say I am a Centrist.

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This seems to make the most sense of any argument I have yet heard concerning the healthcare debate.

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