Category: Uncategorized

To Endorse, or not to Endorse

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Both the Washington Post and the LA Times refused to endorse a candidate in the current presidential election.  I don’t know much about the Times, but I have been a faithful subscriber to the Washington Post ever since it became available online. I like their games, their news coverage, their columnist. Their owner’s cowardice, not so much.

Jeff Bezos is a bottom-line kind of guy.  He knows that Harris is the only person fit to serve in this office. If he doesn’t know that, he’s too dumb to own a major newspaper, and I don’t think that’s the case. It’s a matter of pure self-interest.  If Harris is elected, she will not take it out on him because—unlike Trump—she is a fully functioning adult. She doesn’t suffer from toxic masculinity. If Trump is elected, he will make sure that Bezos pays for his failure to make the Nazi salute.

Unbridled capitalism is a recipe for societal disaster.

Saving Social Security

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There are a lot of small steps that could be taken to save Social Security.  Raising the retirement age is not such a hot idea. It penalizes workers who work in more strenuous and low wage jobs, often accompanied by lower life expectancy. It assumes that all potential retirees ae equally able to continue working even if they are in declining health (but not bad enough to qualify for disability). 

Let’s explore a couple of options that would shift more of the cost to those who need Social Security least. First, remove or at least greatly increase the cap on how much of your wages and salary are subject to social security taxes.  Second, put a cap on the amount of your income that is counted toward determining your benefits.  And finally, rethink the COLA.

The first two are not complicated.  There has always been a cap on the amount of earnings that are taxed, although there is no good reason for it. Higher income workers often have additional non-wage, non-salary income that is only subject to ordinary income tax, not Social Security taxes.  Average workers seldom do. Those who don’t work at all but live off their income from capital don’t contribute anything. Whatever happened to the social part of Social Security, which suggests we are all in this together?

For 2024, that cap on social security taxes is set at a wage and salary income of $168,600, adjusted each year based on the percentage increase in average wages. I don’t see any particular need for a cap, other than lobbyists for wealthier citizens appearing to have the ear of Congress. But if there is a cap, it should be set at something like 80th percentile of wage and salary income. (That’s the amount that has 80% making less and 20% making more.)  That way, when people get outrageous salaries for heading a nonprofit, a corporation, a university, or a football program, they will be carrying a fairer share of the cost of keeping our old folks out of poverty.

We don’t want the very wealthy to get more benefits just because they increase their contributions, so the wage /salary base used to compute the monthly check should be capped at some at something like the 60th percentile of the individual’s average wage and salary income used to determine benefits.

Lastly, the COLA or cost of living adjustment , which is based on the inflation rate for the 12 months ending the previous June 30th.  COLAs are a great engine of inequality.  In South Carolina, pension reform a decade ago included a cap on increases..  We state retirees get a one percent increase every year regardless of actual inflation, but there is a cap is of $500. That’s one percent of $50,000. Any pension greater than that gets the same $500 a year raise.

Think about it.  Jane’s Social security benefit check is $2,000, just a shade above the average of $1907.  average, about $1900.  Dick’s check is the maximum of $4873, which we will round down to $4800 for easy calculation. . Both must contend with higher prices for housing, groceries, and insurance. This year’s 2.5% COLA gives Jane $50 more a month while Dick gets an extra $120.  The percentage gap between their incomes is unchanged, but percentages don’t pay the electric bill. The dollar gap has risen from $2800 to $2870, and that gap grows year after year.A cap on the COLA like South Carolina’s (about $5 a month) would be more equalizing. Or setting the cap at the COLA percentage of the average benefit and give that to everyone, which would do ven more fot those at the bottom of the scale. Let’s think creatively here!

After we survive the election, let’s go back to thinking about how a civilized society that believes in fairness would shore up Social Security with more revenue and slower growth of overall benefit, with the scales tipped toward the lower half of the income spectrum.  And January is not too soon to get started. We can call it The Other Project 2025.

Voting Matters

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There is a meanness in our world

Driven by lust for power, greed for wealth,

Is life a zero sum game

Which we can only win when others lose?

Collaboration, once an honored act

Now seen as sleeping with the enemy.

This pettiness is armed

With powers of destruction and confusion

Never known before.

Technology weaponized in the media

Can destroy social networks

A nuclear blast to the web of community.

Where is the yellow brick road

To lead us through the evil wood

into a world of peace and harmony?

Elections matter.

Five Pieces a Day

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

My mother was not a very good housekeeper or cook, but she did pass on some interesting habits. A fine seamstress, she was attched to the care of fabrics, and one of her passions was that everything–even my brother’s underwear–should be ironed.. That was a lot of ironing for a family of four, especially when you had to sprinkle the clothes and heat the iron on the stove. (Eventually she was able to afford a steam iron.)

Facied with this perpetual task, she committed herself to ironing five pieces of ironing a day. She probably had a similar way of dealing with other repetitive tasks, but that is the one I remember. When she would visit my brother after he married and moved away with his wife who hated to iron, our mother would tackle the ironing basket and perhaps exceed her daily quota,

I carry that habit into my daily life, and it has served me well. Faced with readinga 500 page book, I assign myself 25 or more pages a day. I set a goal for how much to write in a day, or walk,. When I co-authored a book with my friend Fran on downsizing and decluttering, I picked up a similar household maanagement trick from her. set a task, any task.. Organizing the kitchen drawers. Cleaning the pantry shelves. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and keep working at the task until the timer dings. Whether it is five pieces or fifteen minutes, breaking down a very large challenge to a manageable series if pieces is a very helpful, very effective way of getting things done.

I was reminded of my mother and my friend Fran this week as I worked on sending postcards to voters in rural North Carolina, There were cards to address, add a stamp on the front and a sticker in the middle of the back, , writing the message in multiple colors of ink. It was a very tedious task for the 60 postcards I had taken as my share while recruiting friends to do the rest of our 200. I broke the task down to various parts–address, stamp and sticker, followed by writing theteext as instructed in various pen colors, one color at a time. First step was the address and stamp and Dear Mr/Ms blank on the other. Break. Later in the day , or the next day, same twenty cards with a line iin a the top iand another halfway down with blue pen. Third installment, perhaps in the evening, or the next day, 20 cards with a second line and a fifth line in red. Final installment, finish with the purple pen..

My mother’s way stuck with me through years of grading papers, writing textbooks, preparing letures. I would grade one question at a time on all the papers so they were each held to the same standard. And take a break in between. As I started my own home downsizing project 12 years ago, I was faced with 5000 slides in carousels to sort through. I did two carousels each night, until I had reduced the stash from 5000 to 1000, and could send the survivors off to be digitized.

Occasionallhy, I rebel. This spring I was watching The West Wing (I somehow missed it in its original airing), IObe eouside a day, That worked for the first six seasons,, but my the seventhseasn I started binge watching to see howw ended. The value of self-discilpline does have limitations !

Five pieces a day was one of the must useful lessons I learned from my mother. What useful habit did your mother install in you?

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What are your ‘isms?”

~ purplesage41 ~ 4 Comments

When I was in college, back in ancient times (the early 1960s), I was an economics major.  One of the most popular courses was called comparative economic systems—communism, socialism, capitalism. Despite the then-recent history of World War II, we did not discuss fascism, which is another form of economic governance, a governing structure based on an alliance of industry and authoritarian control.  Today capitalism seems to have triumphed, although triumph always reveals the greatest flaws of the victor. Socialism, communism, and fascism are thrown around indiscriminately in public dialogue as objects of scorn.

There are lot of other kinds of isms out there, some not as easily adopted or hurled as identifiers. Schools of art—-Cubism, impressionism, romanticism.  Prejudice also has isms—racism, sexism, ableism, and to borrow an “ism “from Spanish, machismo. But the ones that I am focused on here are those that reflect a positive world view, The way we  choose to experience, process, and participate in the world around us.  Those ”isms”  come from religion, philosophy, and personal experience.

Most but not all religions end in ism, from paganism to Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and animism.  (Look that one up if you need to.)  Exceptions are two of the world’s most popular religions, Islam and Christianity. Although some of their subsets are described is isms. (Sufism, Wahhabism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Methodism, etc.). This usage of “ism” is more what I have come to think of as a category, a set of shared beliefs or values as well as rituals, holidays, and practices. My own chosen faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism (at one time before merging, Unitarianism and Universalism) is grounded in shared values and rituals. I started down that path by embracing the heresy of Arianism, the early Christian doctrine denying the trinity.

After much soul searching, I have concluded that my values and my actions, my vocation and my worldview partake of three positive isms. (Meaning that they would always be used, at least by me, and an affirmation or compliment and never as an insult or criticism.)

The first one that entered my life, as It does for many of us, was mysticism—a sense of reverence, awe and wonder, of the presence of the holy in and around us. That experience can come through traditional religion, private spirituality, or the natural world. Of my three, this one is probably the most universal.

The second “ism” began to form in late adolescence as I rejected the standard options for careers for women–ideally, a homemaker and mother, but possibly a nurse, teacher, or secretary. My feminist self took shape and form as new options opened up with Sputnik, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem. As I left my home town, intending never to return, I echoed the words of Miranda in The Tempest, “Oh, breve new world, that has such people in it!.” College was an invitation to rethink everything I believed, thought, or was taught.  I became a Democrat, an economist, and an academic. When my beloved husband (also a feminist) and I were blessed with three girls we had a good opportunity to pass on our feminist values, which they have lived with far more sense o discovery than I did. Also became deeply involved in the League of Women Voters, found feminist heroines to admire (including a great-grandmother who marched for women’s suffrage).  Over time, I built friendships and communities among women that have sustained me over my very long life as a feminist.  Feminism is not sexism, which would discriminate against men as a class. It is an affirmation of both quality and uniqueness, and a commitment to support future generations to preserve, protect and defend our equality and our specialness..

When I went off to college, having begun my long embrace of feminism, I intended to be an engineer.  There I discovered a third -ism, utilitarianism.  Utilitarianism is one several ethical schools in philosophy, one that is easily summed up as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” It is the foundation of economics as an academic and policy discipline, and it was there that I found my vocational home as a mystic feminist utilitarian. I caution that in my view and that of many of my fellow economists, utilitarianism is more suited to be a guide to how to govern a city, state country, or community than for individual and household/family behavior. In the family I tried to be a good Marxist– ’’from each according to her abilities, to each according to her needs.”

In my retirement years, I discovered that I had over the years adopted without realizing it a personal philosophy of stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that is often lightly summarized by the prayer associated with Alcoholics Anonymous—the courage to change the things you can change the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Stoicism requires daily practice and reflection on your interactions with others  It is well worth the effort.

I am ready to order my customized T-shirt, regretfully leaving off my beloved utilitarianism as a public and not a private ism. Here is what it says:

I believe in

Mysticism

Feminism

Stoicism

How about you?

Ready for the Counter-Revolution?

~ purplesage41 ~ 4 Comments


Today is  the end of a month with three famous revolutions—American, Cuban, and French.  Did they make things better? Sometimes, for some people, at a very high cost. We are the heirs and progenitors of many revolutions.  The digital revolution. The industrial revolution. The printing press, which revolutionized 16th century Europe. The Green revolution, which was at the time believed the answer to world hunger but wasn’t. The Protestant Reformation, at least the left wing of it, which threw out lots of bathwater and several babies in the process.

 Actual armed battles were the chosen format for many of these revolts. One of my heroines is Boudica, Queen of the Iceni in Britain, The Iceni and their allies, led by Boudica, revolted against Rome in 60 AD and even won some major battles before finally being defeated by a more disciplined Roman army.  The Iceni and their Celtic relatives practiced democracy, unlike the Romans, which is good for peacetime but not so much in the military,

England’s Civil War began by beheading King Charles I and led 12 years later to restoring the monarchy. Twenty-eight years later, the Glorious Revolution ousted The Old Pretender, ran off the Young Pretender. and created animosity between Scotland (homeland of England’s Stuart kings) and England that persists to this day.   The bloody and endless French Revolution. The American revolution. The US Civil War (civil wars are also revolutions). The Spanish Civil War. The many revolutions against colonial domination in Asia, Africa, and South America.

In the 18th century, Americans tried to create a workable government to manage the public affairs of 13 very diverse colonies once they were free from the oppression of British rule.  That utopian vision is always the delusion of revolutionaries, the faith that keeps them going through Valley Forge and other calamities.  But no one ever anticipates a counter-revolution.

 The Roman Catholic Church officially launched a counter Reformation. The American Civil War was definitely a counterrevolution to protect the privileges of the while male hierarchy of the Southern slave states. France had so many counter-revolutions I can never keep track.

We citizens of the United States are in the throes of an attempted counter-revolution, long in the planning, detailed in its vision for post-democracy in America, and banking on this year’s election to bring it about, whether peacefully or with violence. It is a vision of what its proponents thought life used to be like when men (white ones) were men and women know their place and so did the lower classes, especially African Americans and native Americans. These counter-revolutionaries believe that an earlier America was a society in which we were only responsible for ourselves (we=men), women lived lives a modified version of he Handmaid’s Tale, teaching a dubious version of Christianity was mandatory in public schools, equality of opportunity and respect were lacking, and violence was the answer to everything. Rule by a privileged minority at the expense of a resentful majority.

And yet…there are increasing signs that democracy, like the phoenix, can rise from the ashes—maybe even put out the flames! We are all called neither to unwarranted optimism or to deep despair, but to active, engaged hope to keep our fragile democracy alive for the generations yet to come. Like the Minutemen of the original American Revolution, you are not called to violence but to support, act, and vote for democracy to survive.  As my fellow economist Eugene Steuerle says, “We get the government we deserve.”

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Please Don’t Tell Me Otherwise (Confirmation Bias)

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As an economist, I am baffled about the discrepancy between how economists think our brains work and how other behavioral scientists, especially psychologists, offer a different view.  Economists think we are very good calculators of costs and benefits and make the best possible choices. They also assume that we make our decisions based on our understanding of what is in our best interests.  I will just look at the first of these two assumptions today, saving the second one (do we really care about anybody else?) for another blog.

Sorry , folks, while we are flattered by all this admiration from economists for our reasoning and decision-making competence, it isn’t borne out by empirical research.  Our time horizons are short. (That’s called over-discounting the future, or inability to defer gratification.)  We also get confused by too many choices and make better decisions in our own self-interest when we are offered fewer choices. (That’s called bounded rationality, as opposed to President George Bush’s excess of choices in his prescription drug program.) We do care about others, not just ourselves, and for future as well as current generations. (That’s altruism, as opposed to pure self-interest).

The psychological defect I particularly want to focus on today is our tendency to accept information that confirms what we already believe to be true and reject any news that contradicts our intuition, our gut, our vision of how things ought to be rather than how they really are. And with the help of social media, we are seeing drastic and often harmful effects of confirmation bias in our choices of all kinds.

There are three predominant sources of confirmation bias in contemporary American culture. Two are old, one is relatively new. One is a herd mentality, driven by the desire to belong. A second, related source is social segregation, taking refuge in silos of like-minded people. The third, aided and abetted by the skills of artificial intelligence in recreating “reality.y.”

Was January 6, 2021, an insurrection or a slightly overheated tourist event?  Was the economy better under Trump or under Biden?   Is selling your insurance policy to support current consumption in retirement really such a good idea? Is climate change a hoax? Is Social Security going to end in 2034? Is the opposite of being woke being asleep? Differing answers to these questions are supported multiple “alternative facts” that feed off confirmation bias.

There are no simple answers to these flaws in the workings of our otherwise amazing brains.  It’s probably a good idea to step out of your silo every now and then and give your brain a chance to regroup..  MSNBC-ers, watch Fox now and then, and vice versa.  Talk to your neighbors whose world view is different from yours and try to understand why as well as seeking common ground. Support balanced media where you can find them.

Becoming more of our own cognitive limitations is a good place to start. If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we be honest with each other?  Asking ourselves, for example, why we should doubt the reality of climate change should consider the self-interest of fossil fuel companies and other sources of harmful changes in the atmosphere. Climate change also caters to our short time horizons and procrastination when the benefits are long-term and the costs are immediate. Exploring, alone and with others, the underlying questions of who reaps the benefits and who bears the costs of any particular policy choice should take you a long way toward deciding what you believe to be true, and why.                                                                                

Autocracy, Democracy,–Geriatocracy?

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

Beneath the heated debate over whether Joe Biden is too old for another term as president is a more fundamental question.  Why do we let all these old people hang on to their jobs and make decisions about a future that they will not experience, while those with the most to lose are underrepresented. (Full disclosure: I am a certifiable “too old to govern person at age 83.”)   A younger president and a younger Congress would be less moored in the past and present and more attuned to the big challenges of the future—climate change, clean energy, artificial intelligence, depletion of fossil fuels, species extinction, water shortages, pollution, income inequality, political polarization, etc. What I propose is a modified form of term limits that is well worth considering.

What would it take? First, it would require a Constitutional amendment that adds the words “and not or over 75 at the time of election” to the minimum age qualifications for president and vice-President.  AND to members of Congress.  It’s a much better, fairer way to get some needed turnover and fresh air in both branches of government. It would mean that we never again have senator over the age of 81, or a present over the age of 79. No more 100-year-old senators like the late Strom Thurmond!

 Having imposed it on themselves, these two branches could then extend a similar requirement for all federal leaders whose appointments must be confirmed by one of both branches of Congress. That legislative age ceiling should apply to all current as well as future appointments in the executive branch and the federal judiciary and should require departure when one turns 75. It is not unprecedented at the state level.  My home state of South Carolina already requires state Supreme Court judges to step down at age 72, and I know there are other states with similar restrictions.

It’s long past time to empower younger people to have a greater say in their future.

Joy at Midsummer

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

This week is the Celtic holiday of Litha, the summer solstice when the Sun God is at the height of his powers and the mother goddess is ripe with child.  The festival of first harvest is still six weeks away, because these are Northern European understandings of the seasons, and they aren’t harvesting much yet.  Here we are enjoying blackberries and blueberries, watermelon and corn.  Lammas, the first of August, is the second harvest in my part of the world, and also a time to plan for  for fall planting..

l the Celtic holidays are occasions for joy, singing and dancing and enjoying the unique gifts of each season in community.  So today, descended from lots of Celts on my mother’s side, I want to celebrate two sources of Litha joy for me: my communities, especially communities of family and close friends, and my little garden with its lantana and larkspur, blackberries and zucchini. 

My mother loved to garden. My sister developed new day lily hybrids. My brother owned a farm in Vermont where he raised cows and Christmas trees.  My grandfather had an apple orchard and various relatives had dairy farms.  I do not aspire to their breadth and depth as farmers, but my birth family nurtured a fondness for gardening.As the last surviving member of that family. I carry on their love of plants and a desire to see them
prosper, not just as a family heritage but also a source of joy and solidarity with nature.

My friends are a different source of joy, much of it in conversation interspersed with adventures, like walking on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and seeing a Broadway musical last weekend with my middle daughter, her husband and my oldest granddaughter.  Some of those conversations are deep, especially those with my oldest son-in-law and my youngest granddaughter. Others are light, funny, joyful, sad, affirming, challenging.

Reflecting on the joy of family and friends and of making, or at least abetting, the growth of plants, I find these two joys joined together in a charming poem written by retired Unitarian Universalist minister Max Coots.

A Harvest of People by Rev. Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting,
and though they grow like weeds
and the wind too soon blows them away,
may they forgive us our cultivation
and remember fondly where their roots are.

     Let us give thanks:
For generous friends . . . with hearts as big as hubbards
and smiles as bright as their blossoms,
For feisty friends, as tart as apples,
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we’ve had them.

     For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible,
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants
and as elegant as a row of corn;
And the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you,
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts
and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes,
And serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers
and as intricate as onions.

     For friends as unpretentious as cabbages,
As subtle as summer squash,
As persistent as parsley,
As delightful as dill,
As endless as zucchini,
And who, like parsnips,
can be counted on to see you through the winter.

     For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time
And young friends coming on as fast as radishes,
For loving friends, who wind around us
like tendrils and hold us,
despite our blights, wilts and witherings,

And, finally, for those friends now gone,
like gardens past that have been harvested,
but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.
For all these, we give thanks.

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