dagblog - Comments for "A Scientific Look at One Solution to Poverty — circa 1911"

No disagreement on that--with

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 15:38:40 +0000

No disagreement on that--with that comment I was not attempting to elaborate on what gentrification conflicts are about. My point was just that cultural tensions are hardly uni-directional, with only one group seeking to exclude other groups.

"Gentrification is just a

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 06:38:00 +0000

In reply to If I were running for

"Gentrification is just a fancy word for neighborhood long-timers saying we don't want you rich people moving in and taking over." - well, no - it indicates a complete cultural makeover at a completely different price bracket, by which the original inhabitants are often forced out or have their standard of living diminished and familiar activities and services taken away. And can include a different ethnic group ti make things more chaotic.

If I were running for

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 01:44:22 +0000

In reply to I havent read it, but the

If I were running for something that isn't how I would talk about the issue. Certainly not unless and until a local effort was met with opposition which made it apparent that attitudes were present which many locals would find not only ugly but damaging to the community. And then probably only if I thought a community level anti-snob zoning frame was winnable and more helpful than not. I do think that is part of the dynamic in some communities. No, actually, we know it is.

It runs in multiple directions, of course. Gentrification is just a fancy word for neighborhood long-timers saying we don't want you rich people moving in and taking over.

If you believe an insufficiency of affordable housing is not a significant concern in many communities, that isn't my perception. The NY Times real estate section writer who wrote Snob Zones cited downsizing baby boomers and millennials as demographics in New England towns she profiled for whom this is a major issue.

I havent read it, but the

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:56:13 +0000

In reply to I didn't think that was what

I havent read it, but the point is elites are walling themselves off and not rubbing elbows with the common people, no?

I didn't think that was what

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:50:23 +0000

In reply to And ridiculing people's

I didn't think that was what I was doing. In cases where affordable housing efforts have prevailed, overstated or unfounded security concerns based on dubious or false assertions have been successfully addressed.

If you're talking about candidates for federal office, what candidate do you know of who lost an election because of their support for more affordable housing? I can't recall a mention of the issue. At the local and state levels, as a candidate you may test the waters, see if there is any organized support for it before you decide how you're going to handle the issue, no?

And ridiculing people's

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 23:43:40 +0000

In reply to Quick addendum. I learned a

And ridiculing people's security & safety needs may be one big reason we keep losing elections.

Quick addendum. I learned a

AmericanDreamer — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 22:59:41 +0000

In reply to Interesting exchange. A few

Quick addendum. I learned a lot from New York Times reporter Lisa Prevost's 148 page Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice and Real Estate. In it, she profiles six New England communities. The book's title is unfortunate in one way. It suggests that the author approaches this issue only from a moral point of view when in fact she identifies a number of pragmatic, self-interested considerations that may lead some heretofore exclusive communities to conclude that changing their policies would be in their community's interests.

I can see why you ask--poorly

AmericanDreamer — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 22:24:15 +0000

In reply to "Many among those of us with

I can see why you ask--poorly put on my part. What I had in mind are mainly exclusionary zoning policies adopted in some affluent areas, to fence out "undesirables" who are believed to increase crime risks and lower property values.

I fully understand the mindset which leads to such practices. It is, roughly, "I paid a boatload of money to live here. I bought the right to send my kid to my local public school and the range of other services I pay for. Why *should* I be ok with permitting affordable housing into my community when all that does is lower my property values, maybe take away from the schooling advantages I'm paying for for my kids, maybe increase the local risk of crime, maybe raise my taxes because of less revenue flowing in from others in my community?"

That mindset sits just fine with many people, clearly. There is nothing troubling about it. So I'm ok with entrusting the development of my kid with her single mom teacher, it's just that she doesn't have enough money for me to be open to allowing her to live in my community. Affordable housing reduces my property values. If they have a lengthy commute, well, that's just the way it goes.

Others might be led to wonder if such mindsets may be based, in addition to personal wealth-building and preserving concerns, on stereotypes or prejudices about various "others", what sort of people they are, whether they are good or ok folks or not.

I don't think it's healthy for us to have communities as segregated by class as we have in many parts of the country. Among other things, kids growing up in such communities can end up with limited interaction with people of ordinary means, who also not so coincidentally often correlate heavily with people of color in our society in this age. So the opportunities for them to learn about and learn from people from a broader swath of life circumstances may be absent or limited. Their fellow citizens may seem remote, almost alien, to them. The opportunities for wrong assumptions and presumptions about various "others" are less likely to be challenged, modified, or nuanced through actual face to face interactions with other people. They may develop a sense of special privilege or superiority over others on account of preconceptions they have imbibed and never had seriously challenged.

I would be the first to acknowledge that the sorts of considerations I am raising are not prevalent ones in our society. I also think that if we look at how we are getting along with one another in our communities and our society, and the consequences of some of the issues we have in that regard, we might be prompted to reflect on some of the reasons why such may be the case.

I don't know if that helps but that is what I was trying, poorly, to say on that point.

"Many among those of us with

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 20:55:40 +0000

In reply to Interesting exchange. A few

"Many among those of us with means construct and live in bubbles which insulate us from contact with "others" with whom we feel uncomfortable, or who we feel hinder or endanger us in some way." - isn't this a bit presumptious?

Interesting exchange. A few

AmericanDreamer — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 19:26:04 +0000

In reply to I would throw back atcha the

Interesting exchange. Random observations:

*re single payer: It was noted recently, I forget by who, that one of the risks of going to a single payer health insurance approach is that of a part of the government--highly susceptible to leaks and hacks as are pretty much all other entities these days, it seems--having aggregated, highly sensitive health information in hand. And what happens if the confidentiality of that data is breached?

Very true, that is a risk. One of the arguments for single payer, relevant to this thread, is that it separates what access to what be life-saving medical treatment from a person's employment status. People still need to find a way to provide for other necessities. But a single payer system would provide some measure of relief from having to take into sometimes major consideration the relative health insurance plans for various employers one is considering.

In this sense it can partially liberate people to more seriously consider pursuing for a living what they like and want to do, free from worry about whether they will have help when it comes to potentially life-or-death, or bankrupting, medical situations. It seems to me that is likely only to promote human happiness, and meaningful and productive activity. And OBTW, efficiency, for the economists out there.

*guaranteed basic income: There seems of late in these radicalizing times to be somewhat more receptivity to considering the merits of a guaranteed basic income, as limitations and threats to wage labor as a potentially viable way to earn a living wage and benefits become increasingly apparent. For example, this work by a Brit, Guy Standing, revealingly subtitled, Basic Income: A Guide for the Open Minded https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230840/basic-income .

I am reminded of a reader comments thread at amazon.com in response to a 2009 book by Martin Ford, The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, in which I participated. Ford, I gather (I have not read the book) was questioning whether there will be enough living wage jobs to, you know, have something like a passably functioning society, as robotization continues.

One "Julian Jaynes" made the predictable comment that, to those concerned about this, such concerns have always accompanied increased use of machines and the threat they pose to employment; see, for example, Kirkpatrick Sale's 1996 Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age (Sale updated his 1982 Human Scale last year with his Human Scale Revisited: A New Look at the Classic Case for a Decentralist Future, so he has been thinking about alternatives).

"Mr. Jaynes" averred that, in the past, new jobs to replace the old ones have always been created. And living standards have steadily improved. So what's the worry? It's the same old kind of stuck-in-the-mud, nattering nabobs of negativity fretting about robotization's impacts as have done so in earlier eras, and, in his view, they were proven wrong.

Well, not so fast. First, I believe it was David Hume who made a thing about how the future does not necessarily resemble the past. We cannot assume that it will be, even if we were to accept Jaynes' view of how things worked out in the past. As if we needed a philosopher to remind us of this.

But beyond that, I thought Jaynes sold short the matter of power as a factor impacting the ability to secure a livelihood through wage labor. Re the old utopians' dreams (Keynes, too) that material abundance would obviate, or at least greatly reduce the need for income-generating work, it seems to me obvious, common sense questions are who will own, and who will control, the enterprises generating the abundance? They will need to employ and presumably provide for the livelihood of some number of individuals, to be sure. Perhaps those employees will even be paid an attractive enough wage and benefits package to permit them to stay healthy enough to work and minimize turnover for the employer.

But what of the rest of the people? Will they be provided with the necessities of life regardless of whether they have paid employment? Out of the goodness of heart of the employers producing those necessities? If there is a governmental entity with authority to mandate something like a living wage for those unable otherwise to secure living wage employment, and it does so, well, anything done through through public policy by one government can also be undone by another, as we know.

At this point, with labor unions having been put on their heels over decades in countries such as ours, employers in most contexts hold a lopsided upper hand, to say the least. In many enterprises they can scare their employees into submission by threatening, credibly or not, to relocate elsewhere. Current labor laws in our country are such as to make any attempt at unionizing a workforce an act of either incredible bravery or foolhardiness, depending on your point of view, so easy is it simply to fire such employees and incur the slap-on-the wrist penalties.

*growing interest in anarchism and radical alternatives as our system flails: It may be that the existential threat posed by climate change and growing awareness of other natural resource constraints humankind is bumping up against, coupled perhaps with a growing sense of despair that the current governing structures can be made to respond effectively enough to problems we face, has encouraged more radical thinking about alternatives to the dominant global economic system we have now.

This may not be so far-fetched if one believes that Charles Koch is probably the most powerful person in the world, able to implement a long-term plan that has led to infecting the currently ruling congressional Republican party with his crackpot, anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, deeply antisocial view of the world--see Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains.

A resurgence of interest in principled anarchism is evident, perhaps most obviously so with the Occupy Wall Street emphasis on "prefiguring" small scale communities operating with a kind of coop mindset.

Themes of more decentralized, participatory cooperative enterprises as alternatives to the system of predominantly wage labor are hardly new: in our own 19th century history, see, for example, Alex Gourevitch's From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century, as well as the aforementioned Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale Revisited, the work of Robin Hahnel and Richard Wolff, and of course E. F. Schumacher in Small is Beautiful.

If the current system continues, very visibly, to be unable to respond to the real problems, disaffection will grow, more people will give up on (at least our form of) republican government, and more radical alternatives will generate greater attention and traction.

I doubt many of the folks who are taking these ideas seriously, and in some cases seeking to live them, are in any way envisioning relatively orderly adoption of them under the current system, i.e., with public policy support. They've made their peace with the current reality and are just trying to carve out a space for themselves to live a life they can find acceptable. They've concluded (correctly or not) that representative government as it actually functions in our day is not a viable option--and cannot, or at any rate will not, be made into one. By and large they will seek to implement their ideas in small scale, voluntary communities that "get back to the land." They may believe that the system of global capitalism, as unstable as it clearly is, with little governmental will to address the sources of its instability or make provision to meet threshold needs of many more ordinary people, and soon, will collapse, with the question being only when, not if.

It's only in a society as anxious and doubting about the present and the future as ours that someone like Trump could have ended up with even a possibility of being where he is now. There is a real crisis of faith in our system now among very many, I believe. Ask around among your acquaintances, "Do you believe in democracy as it operates in our day (or, more accurately, representative government, our republican, not democratic, system, though we like to think of ourselves as a democracy)?"

That is one reason I write about the responsibility of elites, in politics and corporate America, many more of whom need to act with some vision and prudence and concern for humanity, realize there is an increasingly visible crisis of confidence in our system, and organize to make it work for many more of our people, and for our future. Instead of doing just the opposite, or going along for the ride with current trends. The patrician Franklin D. Roosevelt was no radical. He acted to save the system from itself, by taking action to ameliorate what ordinary people were going through. Also critical was that he attended in some serious way to societal morale. He expanded trust, among many struggling ordinary people, that our government really can be recognizably our government, responsive to the needs of ordinary people and willing to confront and bring to heel the truculent powerful where necessary to do so.

*a major challenge if representative government is to work in a society as diverse as ours, and with our history: One necessary condition for a resuscitation of the viability of representative government, as I see it, is a societal commitment to pursuing intentional school and residential integration. (I wondered whether Hillary, with her campaign slogan, of "Stronger Together", might have more to say about what she meant by that.) In this country, to an alarming degree we do not presumptively respect or value one another. To an alarming degree we do not really even know one another.

Many among those of us with means construct and live in bubbles which insulate us from contact with "others" with whom we feel uncomfortable, or who we feel hinder or endanger us in some way. We haven't made nearly as much progress figuring out how to live together with our differences and our diversity as we need to, to make our society work inclusively and tolerably well.

To far too great an extent, we are allowing our diversity, which can be and often is a great strength, to weaken and further fragment us. Former Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote: "unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Milliken_v._Bradley/Dissent_Marshall Those words sound prophetic to me.