#38 / JAN 7 2014: FEE! FI! FO! FUM! TO GROW OR NOT TO GROW? THAT IS THE QUESTION—OR IS IT? THE BEANSTALK CONUNDRUM

One of the byproducts of reading, thinking, and writing—which is how I spend most of my waking hours—is that the more you learn, the less you realize you know. 

It is just as well death comes along or you’d blow a gasket.

That convenient ‘certainty of youth’ thing vanishes although you become amazingly good at hiding your inner doubts.

Typically, you adopt a look—what I always think of as a carapace—which makes you appear knowledgeable even if you are a blithering idiot.

However, looking as if you are master of your area of expertise doesn’t mean you are. But that doesn’t seem to matter in a disconcerting number of areas. Politics, medicine and economics come instantly to mind. Economists, for example, have a truly awful track record of forecasting economic growth, but the media go back to the same experts time after time—because who else should they talk to?

Actually, I think they should talk to people who have a proven track record of getting it right regardless of whether they are credentialed economists or nor. But that’s not the way we work. We value credentialing over competence any day of the week—and a credentialed expert, who looks and sounds the part, scarcely has to be competent at all..

Aspects of our culture are decidedly peculiar.

I’m on this track because I’ve been thinking about economic growth. Our society focuses on it to the exclusion of almost every other metric when it comes to assessing the wellbeing of the Nation even though we know perfectly well (or should know perfectly well) that GDP is an impressively poor indicator of how well we are actually doing—and that’s assuming we are measuring it accurately (which we should positively not assume).

Folks, this is nuts. We are making major policy decisions (arguably most of our decisions given the importance of the economy) on the basis of data which we know to be grossly inadequate—and where superior alternatives exist.

Why do we do that year in, year out?

This brings me to the question of growth itself. There is currently a consensus that we have to have good economic growth if we are to balance our budget and solve our various problems—but is this true?

I’m far from convinced it is. Growth has all sorts of negative side-effects (giants being just one of them) in addition to its positive aspects. This doesn’t mean I’m against growth. I would just prefer if we adopted a more useful metric in relation to society’s progress, and really thought the implications through.

A further twist in relation to growth is that we act as if we have little or no control over it—as if it was a random bean whose growing rate was decidedly uncertain.

This begs the question of how so many other economies have grown so much faster than the U.S. over the last 40 years—and are continuing to do so. Were Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and so on just accidents—or does this planning thing actually work? And how about Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Holland and even much criticized France? And, for the hell of it, I’ll throw in Vietnam, Indonesia and China. I’ll even add Poland and a good chunk of South America. I’ll top up the whole thing with much of Africa and Australia.

I’m borderline on India for reasons you will, of course, be aware.

The thrust of my argument? Treating the U.S. economy as if it was a random bean isn’t working. However, we can’t plan until we have some broad consensus as a nation.

And given that we can’t plan, arguably it doesn’t matter if use a mediocre benchmark such as GDP.

Needless to say, it defies credulity to believe that perhaps our legislators, economists and media—all well educated, intelligent, honorable people—just aren’t aware of GDP’s flaws and limitations.

 

#37 / JAN 6 2014: THE TROUBLE WITH THE WORD ‘CLARIFICATION’ IS THAT IT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE WHAT IT MEANS—AND WORDS REALLY SHOULD. ‘GREED,’ FOR INSTANCE, SOUNDS NASTY—AND IT IS

I love the word ‘clear.’ It gets right to the point. ‘Clarification’ on the other hand sound like something you could be arrested for.

“You are charged with three counts of clarification. How do you plead?”

“She led me on, your honor. She backed into me.”

“Who?”

“The sheep—and it was dark—cold and dark and windy.”

“The sheep was under-age. Guilty as charged. Take him down.”

The obvious alternative word is ‘explanation,’ but that sounds apologetic—and I am certainly not apologizing for being critical of the current U.S. Economic System (AKA Business Model). Not only is it not what we pretend it to be—which is unfettered capitalism—but it is not delivering for most of the U.S. population. Statistical growth of GDP—which does not translate into increased earning power for most of the population—is no good for man or mouse. Don’t confuse statistical growth with progress.

You’re anti-capitalist.  You’re a communist. You’re engaging in class warfare. You’re being un-American. You could even be French! You’re de-Spockable. You’re almost certainly a Liberal.

Names, names names! They don’t constitute an argument.

I’m endeavoring to present a nuanced critique of the current U.S. Economic System on the grounds that most Americans are not being well served by the existing one. I’m not anti-capitalist—I’m a serial entrepreneur and proud of it—but I’m also completely clear that many other countries, who are practicing other forms of capitalism—are kicking our butts.

In a sentence: We need to do capitalism better.  They do so already, and what they are doing is working. As a bonus they get job security, pensions, better education, longer vacations (which they actually take) superior healthcare at lower cost, more investment in infrastructure—and they live healthier lives and longer (about two years). And, by the way, they are subjected to less propaganda, and there is less money in politics. Ah yes—and they are involved in significantly fewer wars.

Apart from all that, their cities are cleaner, their public transport vastly superior, their doctors make house calls, there is less violent crime, and their prison population is a mere fraction—proportionately—of ours.

But corporate profits have never been higher!

What good is that to most of the working population whose household income is actually declining?

What good is that if millions of workers are now so badly paid that they need government assistance to make ends meet.

What good is that if poverty is rife?

What good is that if our infrastructure is crumbling through lack of investment?

What good is that if there aren’t enough jobs, pensions are vanishing, and the social safety net is being eroded?

But the stock market has never been higher?

Since the top 10% of the population own most of the wealth, and since the capital gains and dividends go to them, that is irrelevant as far as most Americans are concerned.

But rising income inequality and unemployment are the inevitable consequences of globalization and other market forces. We’re forcing wages and salaries down because we have to remain competitive.

That is pure propaganda and the biggest lie of all. If that was the case, highly paid Northern Europe could not compete—yet it does. Where advanced economies are concerned, we are the outlier. We all practice a form of capitalism, but some get a great deal more out of it than others.

You are nothing but a troublemaker!

I truly hope so—and to have lots of company—because more and more Americans are, quite rightly, just plain fed up.

But, by the way, I do have French ancestors. They were part of the 1%. They were rich and privileged at a time when most of the population was poor and struggling.

The French economy had been hijacked by the aristocracy. The French population responded with the guillotine.

If the French Revolution hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here. All in all, with all due respect to my executed ancestors, I’m rather glad the French Revolution happened—and the American one. And lets not forget the Irish.

You can make a strong case that revolutions—preferably by the ballot box—are a good idea every now and then. You can make an even stronger case that they are inevitable in the case where an economy has been hijacked, and where economic injustice is rampant. Greed has consequences.

 

 

 

#36 / JAN 5 2014: THIS WIMPY NUANCE THING IS NOT PART OF THE AMERICAN WAY. IT REEKS OF AN INDECISIVE MIND. IT’S PROBABLY—DARE I SAY IT—EUROPEAN!

As a society, I don’t think we handle nuance well—and I suspect we are proud of that fact. After all, we consider plain-speaking to be a virtue. It fits our self-image of being blunt, hardy “rugged individualists.” (ejecting the British, taming the West, defeating both Germany and Japan then developing the most successful economy the world has ever known.

Hell, we’ve nothing to learn from anybody! 

We also have a disconcerting habit of categorizing people and ideas with amazing speed—and then judging them within the context of that category (or ‘box’). Perhaps we do this as a way of coping with the sheer size of our population—and it certainly saves us having to think—but it is redolent of closed minds, ignorance, intellectual laziness, the media, and politicians (but to borrow from Mark Twain—I’m repeating myself).

Here, the words ‘socialist’ and ‘socialism’ occur to me. They are pejorative terms in this country even though both words cover a multitude of different behaviors and values—and neither are adequately understood in the U.S.

In fact, we are impressively and enduringly ignorant about such matters. You would have to wonder why because both socialists and socialism have been around for well over a century, and endless variations of socialism have been experimented with—and more than a few found to work. In fact, many socialist concepts have been tried in the U.S.—though we tend to weasel out and call them something else.

The trouble is that nuance is essential to effective discourse because not only does language lack total precision—inevitable given they derive from humans—but words and ideas are interpreted differently by different people. As a consequence, if there is to be a meeting of the minds—an imperfect state no matter the intimacy unless you are a Vulcan—not only do you need nuance, but you require an appreciation of it. There is no point in being subtle, if the other party has a one-track mind—and a suspicious one at that.

On top of the innate fragility of the human interface—sometimes known as our “maddeningly refusal to understand each other (or bloody-mindedness)”—there is also the fact that most issues are not black and white. Shading is innate to the human condition. I was going to write ‘complexity,’ but if complexity is normal, and thus predictable, it probably isn’t complex.

Das ist klar?

This all reminds me of the Schleswig-Holstein affair in the 19th century. Commenting on it, British statesman Lord Palmerston famously remarked: “Only three people have ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.”

Nuance should be a manifestation of intelligence. Either way, it works best with a sense of humor. Charm does not go amiss. Short on charm?—Americans tend to be suspicious of charm—we’ll settle for good manners.

In truth, we seem to have evolved a binary culture in which one is deemed to be either for, or against, just about everything. You’re either for Capital or Labor, Conservative or Liberal, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice—and so it goes. Ideological and idiotic.

I’m pondering all this as a prelude to a clarification—but I think I’ll get to that tomorrow.

 

#35 / JAN 4 2014: ATTILA THE BANKER? JAMIE THE HUN?

Ancient Roman history was one of my special subjects at school – and I often thought how fascinating it would to go back in time and see that world in action. When? I fancied the reign of Augustus. Life in Rome became decidedly hazardous later on. 

Lacking a time machine, I opted for the U.S. instead—only this time I suspect I’m experiencing this country after Attila the Hun has sacked it.

You don’t remember the sacking of the U.S.? Lucky you if you missed it. Most call it THE GREAT RECESSION and it was something of a global affair. Today’s Huns are nothing if not thorough. Not only did they rob us blind, but we then had to pay them even more because they threatened to destroy our world as we know it. And, of course we paid. We’re still paying. Some would call it extortion—but we still call it banking.

So who are the modern Huns? What else but  major corporations—headed by the financial sector—which exert the kind of birth to death domination of our lives that Attila would probably have envied—and which would have driven the Founding Fathers to drink (though, as I recall, most had found it already).

But who is the modern Attila? I don’t know exactly, but I’m fairly sure he is a banker—or maybe it’s a group thing like the leadership of the Mafia. I don’t quite see Jamie Dimon in the role (though it’s a possibility)

Comparing a bunch of barbarians to today’s corporations is ridiculous.

Clearly I’m not the only person who has made the comparison. Read Wess Roberts book. But, I accept that Attila’s techniques were somewhat different. When his Huns attacked you, you mostly died fairly quickly (if unpleasantly).

Today’s Huns like to bleed you slowly. They no longer use swords and lances. They have different weapons today. They cause exquisite pain which tends to last most of your life. They are mainly psychological weapons and they are highly effective. They include Propaganda, Consumerism, Student Debt, Car Debt, Credit Card Debt, Mortgage Debt, Medical Debt, No Job Security, No Pensions, Low Pay, Transfer of Risk, Regulatory Capture, Corruption of Congress – and so on. Works like a charm – if you’re a Hun. If you’re not, you just get sacked. That’s just the fate of you little people and has been since—well—the Roman empire.

By “little people” you mean most Americans?

Same difference.

But at least you don’t get killed.

Look closely at CAFOs, Big Ag, Big Food, Fast Food, Hospital Charges, our Medical Error Rate, Antibiotic Overuse, Prescription Med Overuse, Industrial Pollution, River Pollution, Ocean Pollution, Pollution of our Water Supply, Toxic Chemicals, Global Warming and so on, and you may want to modify that statement. Americans age sicker and die younger—and that’s not an accident. It’s just Huns being Huns.

Are you serious about all this?

Not entirely—but mostly.  We need corporations—hell, we even need bankers—but one can have too much of a good thing.

Nobody cares—or they’re afraid. The Huns have money, power and all the weapons. All you have are words—and what can you do with words!

Use them.

 

#34 / JAN 3 2014: WE ARE DROWNING IN DATA—AND YET FRIGHTENINGLY IGNORANT—IT’S AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY AND IT IS HAPPENING NOW

The media excel at giving us news in digestible bites without context and without explaining the implications of a given development. This isn’t to say that the information isn’t there, but all too often you need a pick-ax, a miners lamp, considerable stamina, and a ridiculous expenditure of time to get it.

Does this mean: (1) They are too lazy? (2) They think we are too dumb to understand? (3) They are equally clueless?

Frankly, I don’t know the answer—though I suspect all three factors come into play—but I am convinced that this approach is damaging to the National Interest. Essentially, it allows deeply serious  developments to take place without appropriate counteractions being initiated.

Growth in the economy is a case in point. Again and again, we are told that U.S. growth is primarily consumer driven—at around 70 percent—but we are virtually never told where the remaining 30 percent comes from—or how we stand in relation to other countries. Also, it is rarely explained that GDP is a thoroughly lousy way to express the progress of an economy—particularly in relation to quality of life—and what measurements might work better (see Joseph Stiglitz’s work on this matter).

Instead, the whole issue is reported on as if it was a sports result in a blur of sports results. As a consequence, significant data is rendered near meaningless. In effect, though technically we are being informed, we are actually being dumbed down—and we, to our eternal shame, and despite evidence that this is so, accept this.

Are we being dumbed down deliberately? I think a number of factors come into play here—but certainly one element concerns the reality that it is in some people’s interests to keep the bulk of the American population as ignorant as possible—without appearing to do so. The ignorant are easier to manipulate; and manipulation, for both political and commercial reasons (Is there a difference?) underpins our culture.

Technically—the politics are another matter—it should be relatively easy to put together a scorecard which would help vastly more people understand and follow our economy—and thus support the need for some fundamental reforms (it’s something you could test on a before and after basis). However, the media don’t seem to want to do it—for reasons we should think about—and our politicians have evolved to the stage of being near criminally irresponsible when it comes to making use of data. They twist, they distort, they invent, they reject, and they lie like—well—politicians. They have rendered the truth near irrelevant. Since effective policies should be evidence-based as much as possible, this habit of dismissing evidence in favor of ideology is no small problem. 

So who does that leave? That leaves a substantial number of blogs—some excellent—which offer fragmentary data and still don’t add up to the critical mass required to help educate a population.

It’s quite a conundrum because meanwhile some terrible things are continuing to happen to the U.S. economy, and the American Way of Life ,which we could prevent, or ameliorate, if only we were more aware—and understood.

An obvious way to see how badly we are doing in relation to other developed nations would be to compare a range of data on a regular basis. Do we do that in a structured way? No. In fact, Americans are kept quite remarkably ignorant of the performance of other nations—unless the news about them is bad. Then the media gloat—and so do we. It feels good to feel superior.

We’re not Greece or Spain, we say to ourselves. No, we’re not—and we’re not Northern Europe either (unfortunately, in terms of the economic wellbeing of most Americans).

Across a range of metrics, feeling superior is about all we can achieve. In reality we are losing ground to a degree that is frightening. In fact, we lag in almost every area that counts—except militarily. We are the strongest nation in the world—with a disconcerting habit of losing wars at vast cost in blood and treasure to ourselves (let alone our supposed enemies).

We know that—at least to some extent—but it does not move us. We are not indifferent. It’s more that we feel helpless.

Grrr! I’m pretty damn sure we are not helpless—but I’m still thinking. Meanwhile, let me explain what else drives growth (the fabled “engines of growth”). Here I’m using the Federal Reserve’s definition (which, in my opinion, could be improved upon significantly).

• I = Investment
• G = Government purchases of goods and services
• NX = Net exports

So what is the significance of all that?

That’s really my point. If you don’t know how bad the situation is, history—as they say—will roll over you. And history (though fascinating)has a tendency to be less than kind. Let me comment briefly. This is an important subject that really needs more clarification—but this is a blog, not a book..

I = Investment

Investment today—providing it yields a return—yields tomorrow’s growth. However, if your focus is primarily on your stock price and next quarter’s results (because you are primarily incentivized through stock options), you don’t really care about the longer term. You are more interested in buying back your shares, or other forms of financial speculation. As a consequence, U.S. business has been under-investing for decades. The consequences of that are plain to be seen—particularly in the decline of the well-paid job.

G = Government

Advocates of austerity consistently fail to distinguish between consumption and investment. Trimming government consumption may well be a good thing (though not in a recession) but cutting back on investment over decades is a disaster. Look at the state of our infrastructure right now. What we have is crumbling. We are living off the past—off the foresight of our ancestors. We will need to spend trillions of dollars to catch up.

NX = Net Exports

A good way to think about our trade deficit is to appreciate that it equates to exporting jobs. When you appreciate that the U.S. has been in deficit since about 1980—a third of a century, hard to believe though that may be—the scale of the problem can be appreciated. We’ve paid for it by printing money—which we can do because the dollar is a reserve currency. However, there is still a price to be paid in terms of the debasement of the purchasing power of the dollar—better known as inflation.

When you add in the fact that consumer expenditure is in trouble—earning power for most people is actually declining—it is worth asking the fundamental questions: Where is future growth coming from? Is growth the way we should judge the health of our economy? Does it really matter if we are ignorant of all this stuff? Is there anything we can do to put things right?

There is actually a great deal we can do to put things right. Remaining ignorant isn’t one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

#33 / JAN 2 2014: ‘BRAIN FUNCTION BOOSTED FOR DAYS AFTER READING A NOVEL…’

Traditional publishers like to label authors by genre—and tend to rate novelists rather higher than, for instance, thriller or romance writers. Now a thriller is also a novel, but lets not confuse the issue with precision. Typically, when such people use the term ‘novelist’ they mean a good writer—in a literary sense—who writes primarily about the complexities of the human condition rather than, for example, action.

A cynic might think that literary novelists are the kind of people who write books that are widely admired but, not infrequently, left unfinished. There is some evidence to back up that unkind thought, but then there are some literary novelists who write so well, and so movingly, that they seem to have the pace of a thriller.

Personally, I find this habit of typecasting authors as being quite maddening—because apart from anything else, it makes it near impossible for a writer to break out of his, or her, particular box (at least where traditional publishing is concerned). That is frustrating beyond belief and makes me want to howl at the moon (even more than I do anyway) or, at least, bypass traditional publishing.

I certainly understand the need for genres, because we need some guidance towards the type of books we are drawn to, but I’m not sympathetic to the unspoken rating system that tends to go with such labels. As far as I am concerned, I have long disassociated an author’s writing ability from the genre. You can be a good, or even a great, writer in any genre from science fiction to pornography. Let me offer that ‘war novelist,’ Leo Tolstoy, as an example. Or was he a thriller writer? You could make a good case for both. And he was no slouch at romance, either.

Well, how about people who write computer manuals? Actually, some of these people are terrific writers, and I advance David Pogue as an example. Not only is he an extraordinarily gifted communicator, but he is thoroughly entertaining. Yes, he’s the same guy who used to write for The New York Times but recently moved to Yahoo.

As serious readers have long known, good writing has an astonishingly powerful impact and constitutes a great deal more than ‘escapism’ or ‘entertainment.’ It informs, energizes, arouses, motivates, and uplifts—and can, literally, be life-changing. 

But, as you may have noticed, most people aren’t serious readers—so don’t really believe us.

Science is supplying some supporting evidence at last. The following is a brief extract from The Independent of December 28 2013:

Brain function 'boosted for days after reading a novel'

Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading, scientists have said.

• by Tomas Jivanda

The new research, carried out at Emory University in the US, found that reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory.

The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain.

Neurons of this region have been associated with tricking the mind into thinking it is doing something it is not, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition - for example, just thinking about running, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” said neuroscientist Professor Gregory Berns, lead author of the study.

21 students took part in the study, with all participants reading the same book -  Pompeii, a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris, which was chosen for its page-turning plot.

#32 / JAN 1 2014:THAT WONDERFUL SITE BRAINPICKINGS.ORG HAS DONE IT AGAIN. HENRY MILLER’S 11 RULES FOR WRITING

Life was simpler before Social Media and Self Publishing came on the scene. How would Miller have dealt with those distractions? Today, a writer is supposed to be both wordsmith and self-promoter. For many of us, it’s an uneasy mix. On the other hand, the fact that one can bypass traditional publishing is wonderful—as is blogging.

I particularly like Miller’s Eleventh Commandment.

“Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”

The world conspires to distract the writer. As a consequence, you have to be ruthless, or you’ll spend your time doing what others think of as being the right thing rather than writing. 

Doing what others think of as being the right thing is probably wrong if you are a writer. The right thing for a writer is to write.

I have long recommended that if a writer has a baby, it should be kept in the washing-machine (saves time) and if you have a dog, it should be dead and stuffed (less distracting). The point is not that I have anything against either babies or dogs—I’m fond of both—but that writing has to be your priority.

As for your wife, husband, mistress, lover or whatever…I’ll leave that to your imagination. Probably better to have a mistress or equivalent(better sex and less time-consuming). That said, I know some writers who have wonderful marriages. But being married to a writer cannot be easy. After all, we are held to be moody, obsessional, and debatable bread-winners—though we can be interesting. We are also absent a great deal of the time—in spirit, if not in the flesh (that’s pretty creepy, now I think about it).

In compensation, of course we are lovable—entirely lovable! And we are faithful except in the interests of research.

  MILLER’S COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Under a part titled Daily Program, his routine also featured the following wonderful blueprint for productivity, inspiration, and mental health:

MORNINGS:
If groggy, type notes and allocate, as stimulus.

If in fine fettle, write.

AFTERNOONS:

Work of section in hand, following plan of section scrupulously. No intrusions, no diversions. Write to finish one section at a time, for good and all.

EVENINGS:

See friends. Read in cafés.

Explore unfamiliar sections — on foot if wet, on bicycle if dry.

Write, if in mood, but only on Minor program.

Paint if empty or tired.

Make Notes. Make Charts, Plans. Make corrections of MS.

Note: Allow sufficient time during daylight to make an occasional visit to museums or an occasional sketch or an occasional bike ride. Sketch in cafés and trains and streets. Cut the movies! Library for references once a week.