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Nov. 25, 2009

pro-market, pro-business and public health

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Economics, Politics | Tags: , |
1 Comment 

In a recent article in National Affairs, University of Chicago finance and entrepreneurship professor Luigi Zingales maps out the following distinction between pro-business and pro-market and its relationship to entrepreneurship:

When the government is small and relatively weak, the way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources. Starting a business is difficult and involves a lot of risk — but getting a government favor or contract is easier, and a much safer bet. And so in nations with large and powerful governments, the state tends to find itself at the heart of the economic system, even if that system is relatively capitalist. This tends to confound politics and economics, both in practice and in public perceptions: The larger the share of capitalists who acquire their wealth thanks to their political connections, the greater the perception that capitalism is unfair and corrupt.

In other words, when the government is constrained, but with a pro-market orientation, entrepreneurship can flourish because there is some link having the right idea and the right initiative and market success, however tenuous. In contrast, with greater government involvement, market success is primarily facilitated by government support, thus giving greater weight to having the right connections, having the right financial support, etc.

In the United States, a system which Zingales calls highly pro-market without being pro-business until recently, 1 in 4 American billionaires were self-made in 1996. In contrast, in many other countries with a capitalism mix more pro-business than pro-market, “the wealthiest people tend to accumulate their fortunes in regulated businesses in which government connections are crucial to success… energy, real estate, telecommunications, mining. Success in these businesses often depends more on having the right connections than on having initiative and enterprise.”

Zingales

As of late, I have been thinking a good bit about this idea of systems that enable or constrain entrepreneurship, and its application to specific social sector markets. Take health care as an example. Stripped down to the basics, health care quality is jointly a function of 1) access, and 2) quality of care. Debates on the merits of different systems center on the right or wrong mix of these two factors, with people seeing overall quality by differently weighing one factor over the other. “People can’t get care!” scream those calling for health care reform, to which the opposition says “but we have the highest quality services out there, and our innovation is off the charts.” Other countries are praised for their universal coverage, but criticized for lower quality of care, treatment, and services.

David Brooks recently framed the trade-off as such:

Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.

Apart from the contrast in values, the question still remains how the system enables movement towards (or away) from each of these goals. Put simply, the question remains how each of these systems enables or constrains the emergence of innovation related to the goals of access and/or quality.* For an organization like Partners in Health, who works in Haiti, Peru, Russia, USA, Rwanda, Lesotho,  and Malawi, are there specific aspects of certain markets that allow innovation to flourish over others, and if so, what are these, and towards what end do they allow growth?

Starting with Zingales’ guiding framework (pro-market, pro-business as related to ease of entrepreneurship), in the next post I will attempt to map out some thoughts on what such a framework might mean for entrepreneurship and innovation related to health care access and quality.

* By systems, I mean the mix of government, culture, incentive structure, etc that all might influence the ability of a system to improve in health care access or quality.

 

Sep. 9, 2009

An Orthogonal Health Care Option

Posted by petertuuk under Economics, Politics
[4] Comments 

“On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.”

Barack Obama 9/9/09

I’m not sure this is such a right-wing idea since it would be accomplished by raising taxes and regulating insurance markets. But it is a good idea. Here’s why.

It seems like there are two complaints with our current health care system.

The first is that we are spending too much on health care. This is a funny problem to have. We never get this with food or cars or anything. In those markets when people spend too much they start buying less smoked salmon and more potatoes or less Acuras and more Hondas. Or maybe they keep driving the old clunker. These decisions are made on a person-by-person basis. The funny thing about health care is that nobody feels like they are paying for it. Everyone understands, after a two-year campaign to beat it into our skulls, that we spend too much on health care. But few feel like they use too much.

There is too much psychic distance between consuming these services and paying for them. Doctors get paid by health insurers, health insurers get paid by employers, and the employers pay them by not paying us. Since folks never see the money they never miss it. The normal means of cost control, people thinking about how much they can afford, is gone. It’s people at Medicare, Aetna, or some new government agency who look at the costs but regular folks in Grand Rapids who decide whether or not to consume the service. If we want to save money on health care, we need to use less of it. Since we’d like to use infinity amount of health care, it’s either markets or rationing keeping us below that bound.

This comes up because our health insurance system is not really risk pooling so much as obfuscation. When every office visit (even the predictable one) is paid for by “insurance,” the only effect is to trick people into thinking they’re not paying for their own health care. But somebody has to pay for it. And that somebody is everybody. We pay in the form of lower wages and higher taxes. Insurance ought to be for the unexpected. If people know they’re going to use a certain amount of health care we’d be better off if they just saved the money and paid the doctor instead of the employer giving to the insurance company which will in turn give it to the doctor for us.

I have something crazy in mind: I need some medical care. I see some advertisements. One doctor offers the best care in town. Maybe a PA or NP promises close to the same quality at a lower price. I call around and ask what it would cost to have my thing done. They give me their price. I pick the one I think is the best deal, because I know and care how much my consumption costs. To get to this point is tricky. It would take something like taxing employer provided health insurance (getting rid of this removes one roadblock between consumption and cost), a tax-free, rolling-over health savings account for most everything, and a high deductible health plan for emergencies. Throw in a no-discrimination-for-preexisting-conditions regulation and you’re starting to get there. The point is we need people to know and think about how much health care they buy.

I guess this raises the second problem with what we’ve got today; that of distributive justice. Some people are poor and because of their poverty they are unable to buy much health care. If we think poor people are too poor, maybe we should just give them money. Or maybe seed their HSA and pay their HDHP premiums. Just as food stamps help people eat without the need for government farms (except for farm subsidies, but let’s not go there) and a U.S Grocery Service, so too we can provide for the poor without resorting to tax-paid doctors and treasury-backed insurance plans. Sure this gives people extra incentive to be poor, but the same is true for any redistribution program. Given the choice between people dying in the streets and people suckling at the taxpayer teat, I guess the moral hazard is something we have to live with.

Though the incessant red-blue squabbling obscures it, the future does not have to belong to some point between status quo and government-provided care. This doesn’t have to be a one-dimensional problem.

 

Jun. 15, 2009

health, health care, and rights

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Economics, Politics | Tags: |
[7] Comments 

Picture 1My basic argument, rather crude in hindsight though it does reflect my gut instincts, is that a right to healthcare implies a right to health. Consider the ongoing debate concerning the cost and efficacy of medical care. If decency demands that the state provide medical care, this inevitably raises the following question: if the state is left holding the bag, so to speak, surely the state can demand that one lead a basically healthy life, hence the ever-expanding imperatives of public health. A right to healthcare implies a right to health, or rather an entitlement to health. If this isn’t a recipe for an unlimited state, what is?

-Reihan Salam

Reihan makes some good points, but I am not sure I buy his coupling of the right to health care and the right to health. While I am by no means a health care expert, I think it is important to nail down some of the philosophical starting points of a health care debate before the nitty-gritty policy details. So, here goes one feeble attempt.

First, it seems as though there is a range of potential claims when talking about rights, health, and healthcare, all with different policy implications. Specifically:

  • Everyone has a right to health
  • Everyone has a right to the best health care
  • Everyone has a right to sufficient health care
  • Some people have a right to the best care, some people have a right to sufficient care
  • No one has a right to health care, but people can get care to the extent they can afford it

As Reihan helpfully argues, the first point is difficult both theoretically and pragmatically.  On the theory side, its hard to know what equal ‘health’ really entails. If taken to imply actual health equality, the point is complicated in that people start with different levels of baseline health, and make different healthy life choices given this freedom (what to eat, whether to smoke, if and when to work-out). The state cannot guarantee that all individuals will be equally healthy in so much that outcome is contingent on a number of factors outside the guarantor.  You can guarantee me the right to play in the NBA, but if I am not that athletic by birth and sit around all day and eat sour patch kids and super-sized fries, this ‘right’ will be violated when David Stern doesn’t call out my name on draft day.

Perhaps this could effectively be re-stated as a right to not have one’s ability to live a healthy live infringed upon.  This would be broader than health care coverage, in that it deals directly with the state providing healthy conditions for living, basic services, etc., but not so broad as to assume that all people will be equally healthy at end end of the day.

The difference between the second and third premises is tricky, because its hard to know what care is ‘best,’ and what is just ‘sufficient.’  This point is helpfully explored by Atul Gawande in his recent New Yorker article, which Peter Tuuk linked to in a recent post.  We often assume that more care is better care, thus validating its extra cost; unfortunately, the comparison of average healthiness between areas that pay a lot for care and those that do not is tenuous at best.

Our current systesm seems couched somewhere between the 4th and 5th premise.  It is similar to the former in that there are currently differences in “quality” (or at least quantity) of care for people in different systems. Certain providers cover a wider variety of treatments than others, and others limit the doctors who you can see, thus controlling ‘quality’ if certain doctors and treatments are better than others. We are closer to the 5th premise in that the government does not formalize a rights system like we do with public education, for example.

In an ideal world, I would argue that the state should build a system off of some sort of combination of the first, third and fourth premises. Specifically, I think the government should look to create environments for its citizens where health is most possible, if pursued appropriately (1st premise).  I also think the state should move to providing universal care for its citizens, even if that does not take a fully public system (3rd premise).  So, perhaps the state should find a way to provide appropriate care (which, as shown in the McAllen article, might actually be better), while acknowledging that there should be options for increasing this coverage (4th premise).

I am less sure on what this might look like in practice. Tyler Cowen makes some pragmatic suggestions to deal with the false cost/effective trade-off in Medicare, some of which could be applied more broadly to a universal coverage system:

If we are willing to take comparative-effectiveness studies seriously (me- which imply most cost does not equal better treatment), we could make some significant cuts in Medicare costs right now. We could cut some reimbursements rates, limit coverage for some of the more speculative treatments, like some forms of knee and back surgery, and place more limits on end-of-life-care.

Reihan, on the other hand, takes his argument to an economic outcome based perspective. He writes, “we’re more likely to keep the role of state limited if we eschew rights-talk and instead think of the state’s role in healthcare as fundamentally about managing economic risk.” Thus, in line with Graetz and Mashaw and their thesis in “True Security”, he suggests “no family will go bankrupt due to an economic shock caused by serious illness.”  While not a bad alternative, I wonder if we can really discount the fact that this ‘shock’ is not primarily about the economics, at least for the families involved. Why not try to implant a system where adequate (read: not necessarily most expensive) care can be provided during the shock, which limits both the health and economic shock footprint for the individuals/families in question? Doing it in a cost-effective manner however is still an issue…

 

Apr. 9, 2009

The Cost of Community: Diversity at What Cost?

Posted by John Boumgarden under Education, Miscellaneous, Politics, The World
1 Comment 
St. Louis Shaw Neighborhood Home

St. Louis Shaw Neighborhood Home

In my first post in this series, I introduced the ten principles of New Urbanism and posed the following question: how can we best explain the rationale behind this intent to live in community with a diversity of individuals? In the following post, I offer a few tentative proposals for expanding the diversity of interactions in communities which, though already statistically diverse, lack much interaction across this diversity.

First off, what do I mean by diversity? Diversity signifies different things for different groups of people. For example, some people might consider a diverse community as a group of people that have varied background experiences living together. Another person might ignore the experiences component, and value a commitment to racially mixed neighborhoods. Taking this into account, I will structure the definition for this post after the New Urban principle (since the initial conversation started from an examination of New Urban principles): diversity of people – of ages, income levels, cultures, and races.

So what does diversity in the US look like along these dimensions?  The 2008 United States Census Bureau estimates racial division in this country as follows: non-Hispanic whites 68%, Hispanics 15%, African American’s 12%, and Asian Americans 5%. Given racial segmentation by community, few if any cities fall exactly into this pattern, as this percentage emerges only in the aggregate.

What about diversity of income and age? Though the US demonstrates significant income disparity, the amount of interaction across financial diversity is limited in so much as people are stratified across income levels. Wealthy families often isolate themselves in exclusive neighborhoods, and lower socioeconomic groups have to find neighborhoods affordable from an income perspective (hint: these two neighborhoods don’t overlap). Nursing homes, retirement communities and the small number of cross-generational households families in the US — as compared to hispanic cultures, for example– show similar clustering patterns across age groups.

There are, however, communities that exemplify the diversity principles of New Urbanism. For example, my current neighborhood in Saint Louis, Missouri, partially follows this model. The Shaw Neighborhood has slowly gentrified as a group of young non-Hispanic white families have moved into a neighborhood that was largely African American following the white flight of the 1960′s. Age diversity remains as these young families are juxtaposed to a relatively large contingent of older African American residents. Today, the racial composition of Shaw is 50% African American, 50% non-Hispanic white, and incomes range from those of the upper class to residents living in Section 8 subsidized housing. On paper, the Shaw Neighborhood has achieved something unique in the American landscape – a racially heterogeneous, multi-tiered income community.

However, in moving beyond the demographic statistics, my experience in Shaw has not felt that diverse. I have been disappointed by the lack of activities between neighbors and saddened by segregated streets, all leaving me somewhat confused as to how this experience matches up with the “stats” on paper. Though I live in a statistically diverse community, I rarely interact with my neighbors through any social or public forums, and I have not had experiences that have enriched my understanding of other cultures and races.

This experience leads me to two disparate conclusions about the ongoing debate for diverse communities. First, it is possible to structure and live in diverse communities as defined by the New Urban principles. These communities, whether organic like the gentrifying Shaw, or planned through zoning and regulation in New Urban communities, can physically be accomplished. Second, this planned and realized diversity does not necessarily lead to more diverse interactions at an individual level.

One way to create diverse interaction within diverse communities (somewhat which doesn’t flow as easily as I expected) is to structure in a commitment to the public institutions present in our everyday life– what Richard Beck calls informal third places in a recent blog post. Schools are one such institution.  Because the St. Louis Public Schools are significantly below public standards, families in the Shaw Neighborhood separate by those who can afford to send their children to the private Catholic schools and those who send their children to the local public schools– either as a result of financial or principled reasons, or because it serves as a natural default position.  Though the public school system have the potential to be a common social space that all families share, its performance problems have left it as another wedge expanding the gap between the financial “haves” and the “have nots”. Outside of improved schools, we need more large scale events available for residents regardless of income or age, such as farmers markets that cater to both affluent clients and those who need to use EBT food stamps. Finally, James Howard Kunstler’s critique of suburban sprawl at TED provides an interesting proposal of what social spaces must look like to create this type of diverse interaction– architectural techniques for creating ‘outdoor public rooms’ for interaction.

The previous points are but a few ways that an already ‘diverse’ community can come together in interaction, rather than remain a segregated across races, ages and incomes. Though diverse neighborhoods have the potential to enrich the social fabric of communities, it will take certain intentional practices at both the individual and policy level to reshape our everyday life experiences and facilitate such interaction.

 

Feb. 27, 2009

Economic Impact: The City as a Social Portfolio

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Economics, Politics | Tags: |
[13] Comments 

Richard Florida’s article in this March’s Atlantic is an interesting take on the variety of ways of ways US cities will be hit by the current economic crisis.  Starting with the example of New York, Florida suggests that despite the prevalence of these financial institutions, NYC should be hit relatively less hard than other more homogenous cities hard given the diversity of industries it contains (finance, art, high technology, etc.).

Florida’s argument rests on two assumptions.  First, cities with greater industry diversity are less likely to be hit hard given economic recessions.  This is akin to a portfolio argument where diversity lowers risk as you no longer bank (literally)  on one industry doing well (finance for example).  The problems with cities more likely to struggle, such as Detroit, is that they drove (literally) too hard into one industry (automotive).   In these cities, when things go well, they go exceptionally well.  It’s easy to forget that for a time Detroit was considered the Paris of the West for its architectural beauty and economic prosperity.  But, when they go poorly, the world comes crashing down.  For Detroit, unemployment rates are currently over 10%, its major industry players are at risk of bankruptcy, and it has some of the nations highest violent crime statistics.

The second assumption is much more interesting.  Summarizing the research on urban development, Florida writes:

Although the specialization identified by Adam Smith creates powerful efficiency gains… the jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. And innovation, in the long run, is what keeps cities vital and relevant.

What this means is that cities are not just portfolios that emerge segmented for risk, but also social entities that respond positively to this differentiation with increased generativity.  Cities are not only portfolios, but also social entities where diverse individuals interacting results in additional benefits for the growth of that city, over and above the lower risk of economic failure.  In this way, a city might best be conceived a social portfolio.

What you have in a city like Detroit (or unfortunately, many mid-major Midwestern cities, St. Louis included) is a poor social portfolio- resulting from a significant lack of industry diversity, and a lack of concentrated interaction among any diversity. Taken together, these cities are both at higher risk of collapse given the right conditions, and a lower ‘risk’ of growth and innovation.

In tracing out policy recommendations, Florida argues for a decreasing emphasis on homeownership (so people are more fluid in living, moving, changing work), and an increased social commitment to urban over suburban living for its resulting intermingling of ideas. He concludes that these changes will help many cities — thought not beyond repair —  produce generative communities of entrepreneurship.

I can see how some people would look at Florida’s article and only see another articulation of the benefits of growth. While I resonate with critiques of growth for growth’s sake (see Georgetown political theorist Patrick Deneen for one such take), the growth Florida speaks of is in many ways refreshing to me for its emphasis on creation and individuality.

For example, while Deneen does not explicitly take this as his primary critical stance, one powerful argument against capitalism is that it often results in self-alienation for the worker, a stance articulated poignantly in Marx’s earlier work.*  Essentially, Marx argued that as individuals lose control of their work, they lose control of their lives.  This seems like a fair point, and it underlies many of the contemporary critiques of capitalism in popular culture. Take the recent award winning film “Revolutionary Road.”  In this film, we see how work transforms Frank Wheeler from a dreamer, and “the most interesting person” that his wife April ever met, into the corporate cog, all in the pursuit of being first rate, or more appropriately, a fear of being anything less.

But is the creative class growth of Richard Florida easily categorized as something alienating, or might it be best seen as artistic in form?  Might it not be argued, as Florida made the case on NPR’s ‘On Point’ a few nights ago, that this current economic crisis presents opportunities to ‘reset’ the economy into more creative pursuits– things more internally differentiated and away from the process of alienation for workers.  Perhaps that is the flip side of the coin in this recession; While there will be inevitably be a drop-off of many traditional jobs, perhaps those spots will be filled with creative pursuits in both the for and not-for-profit sectors, and consequently, at least for some, a movement away from work as a form of personal alienation.

*- Though not explicit in Deneen’s work, this assumption of capitalism’s alienation seems to underlie many such critiques, especially when the behavioral recommendations often involve greater community investment, closer involvement with customers, small-business approach, captured imaginatively in many of Wendell Berry’s novels.

 

Feb. 23, 2009

Overlooking Democracy

Posted by Dave Ellis under Politics, The World
[3] Comments 

Democracy is being overlooked in the field of international development. Take a look at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG); strengthening democratic institutions is simply not a priority. Not that this list is the end-all-be-all, it simply represents an important trend. As discussed in this recent NY Times article by Peter Baker, even President Obama has not yet made democracy abroad a top priority.

We could invest billions in education, health, gender equity, and other important initiatives, but without a foundation of accountable and responsive democratic government, funds may be spent inefficiently and used to maintain corrupt (and mostly ineffective) structures of resource distribution. In my estimate, democracy one of the most powerful forces for social good in the world and is being entirely underutilized.

My guess is that democracy is being undervalued for two main reasons. First, large international organizations like the UN, World Bank, World Vision, etc. attempt to be apolitical and categorically nonpartisan in their work. In many developing countries, working for free and fair elections is essentially the same as working against the regime in power,  thus being perceived as partisan behavior.

Second, the severe degree of need in the developing world seems to legitimize a myopic strategy for change. When making choices about allocating scarce resources, it’s difficult for nonprofit/international organizations to invest in long-term democratic transformation in the midst of the “urgency of now.” When given the choice, they will ensure that bellies are full before working toward contested and inclusive elections. This is despite the fact that, in the long run, a well-functioning democracy may be a far better mechanism for filling bellies.

To optimize the efforts of global philanthropy, we ought to make democratization a priority among donors, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations working in the field of development. We must  invest more seriously in building the civil and political societies of fledgling democracies if we are to move beyond the aid ineffectiveness that has plagued the efforts of the West for the past 50 years.

 

Feb. 15, 2009

Ideology, policy and bipartisanship

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Economics, Politics | Tags: |
[3] Comments 

Ross Douthat, in a characteristically smart post, takes on the existence of an empirically-driven, ideological-free policy (what Chait suggests is the basis of liberalism):

But this is one of the many, many cases where the Chait thesis breaks down, because of course the empirical conclusions that undergird the pell-mell rush to spend as much money as possible are eminently contestable, and the contest tends to break down along, well, ideological lines. So smart liberals are more likely to find the Keynesian model persuasive (and crack jokes about the need for“Keynesian reeducation camps” to get the voting public on board), smart libertarians and conservatives are more likely to raise doubts about its track record – and the question of which comes first, the ideology or the empirical analysis, is essentially unanswerable. Some people are Keynesians because they find the case for stimulus persuasive, presumably; some people find the evidence for Keynesianism persuasive because they’re liberals, and thus predisposed to support government spending in general; and many people fall somewhere in between. And the same goes on the other side: I like to think that I’m interested in evidence-based policymaking, but I’m sure that I wouldn’t find Tyler Cowen and Greg Mankiw’s stimulus skepticism half so persuasive if I weren’t already predisposed to tilt against trillion-dollar boosts to big government. In either case, where you place the burden of proof - about the stimulus, or about any government intervention to come – depends on the philosophical premises you start with. 

This argument that policies will seem more plausible to the extent that we already buy into certain base assumptions is important.  This is not to say that our beliefs/ policy perspectives are non-rational… but it does underscore the point that it may be difficult to come to some type of coherent foundation that we can all agree on, and argue from. Here, Will Wilkinson has some interesting things to say about disagreements among economists (and by extension, social scientists more generally):

When I see Delong more or less indiscriminately trashing everyone at Chicago, or Krugman trashing Barro, etc., what doesn’t arise in my mind is a sense that some of these guys really know what they’re talking about while some of them are idiots. What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. 

While I think Wilkinson is taking a overly hard line approach here, he does make some points worth noting. Specifically, that it is nearly impossible to remove the ambiguity around these debates, and, going back to Douthat’s earlier point, that disagreement often emerges from different fundamenetal starting points that are not easily amenable to comparison.  

It isn’t difficult to move from these points to make a compelling case for what is inherently misguided in the current approaches for bipartisanship, as demonstrated in the economic stimulus debates thus far.  The argument for bipartisanship is based on an assumption that neither party has it correct in its entirity (agreed), and that the way to reach the best agreement is to blend a set of policies into a centerist position (disagreed).  When two sides have different assumption sets, middle ground often becomes a cafeteria style meshing of policy pulled together with a side of ’scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ mentality. Rather than attempting to find mutual overlap in positions, it often becomes policy building through satisfying mutual interests built up over years of politicking.  

So, is this just a reality of politics? Is it true that, as Mark Twain writes,  ”in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s”? On many days, I tend to be a bit Twainian, but let me try to sketch out an alternative path to ‘bipartisanship’ based on overlapping consensus, humility, experimentation and adjustment.  By overlapping consensus, I mean that it is possible for individuals with fundamentally different starting assumptions to find common ground where the premises flowing from their assumptions converge (for a more systematic and philosophically compelling case for this approach, see Charles Taylor’s argument here). By humility, I mean an acknowledgment that disagreements– often, but not always– rest more on different worldviews than differing levels of accuracy (e.g. different interpretation of facts more so than facts v. falsity). And finally, experimentation and adjustment in the sense of explicit attempts at policy married with adjusment as more information confirms or disconfirms the original case on which it was founded.  

How would this work in policy? I have no idea! And that is why I am an unemployeed PhD student blogging the case to a few internet browsers rather than a Brookings expert powerpointing to a room full of congress-people! But, let’s try it by considering Derek’s earlier piece on the educational stimulus.  Surely a place of overlapping consensus can be found on this issue- perhaps the importance of education, and the necessity but non-sufficiency of proper facilities for this end.  While disagreements will arise on the financial need, source, and control for achieving these end (e.g. localized v. centralized control in allocating funding), there should be a way to realize that the other side at least raises some valid points (e.g. that significant funds may be wasted with bureaucratic centralized control, or that the failure to centralize control may result in underfunding of the most needy areas).  Finally, while a policy must be chosen that commits to a certain political ideology, I would argue that it can be constructed in a way that attempts to deal with the potential weaknesses of this approach, coupled with reevaluation and adjustment based on active monitoring of the earlier acknowledged potential problems in this approach.  On the educational issue, given the power of a demoncratically controlled house, senate, and white house, this will naturally become a set of ed-policies rooted in a significantly amount of centrally raised funding, but perhaps enacted with a blend of localized and national control, kept in check with points of policy reevaluation over time. 

Is this a perfect solution? No.  Is there a better way to do ‘bipartisanship’? I am not so sure…

 

Feb. 7, 2009

Economic Stimulus for Fat Cats, Not Kids

Posted by Derek Jansen under Economics, Education, Politics | Tags: |
[3] Comments 

(I retitled this post, per the note I left in the comments. The old title didn’t zing the way I intended.)

So, I was just reading about the economic stimulus package that the “Democratic leadership and two centrist Republicans”  agreed to on Friday afternoon. Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania can now be tagged as anti-education and anti-kids. I don’t follow either of these two senators particularly closely, but it is clear that neither of them have the best interests of our nation’s children at heart, or undestand the point of an economic stimulus bill (spend money!). According to the same article as above, their negotiations with Democrats to get that 60 vote fillibuster-proof majority means the final bill will ”cut nearly $20 billion proposed for school construction [and] $1 billion for the early childhood program Head Start.”

Just because I didn’t want to jump the gun, and because I know firsthand how bad some of our schools are (after teaching in New York City 2005-2007), I wanted to make sure the school construction section of the bill wasn’t outrageous. It isn’t. Here’s are a few key items in the version of H.R.1 that we sent from the house to the senate:

  • repairing, replacing, or installing roofs (water dripping on our kids? no problem – build character!)
  • repairing, replacing, or installing heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems (until you’ve tried to teach a class of fourth graders division while the air conditioning is on full blast and it is still 85 degrees in the classroom, you don’t understand how crucial this measure is for our kids)
  • bringing public schools into compliance with fire, health, and safety codes (yeah, obviously THAT would be a bad idea…)
  • modifications necessary to make public school facilities accessible to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (how can they be so cruel?)
  • asbestos or polychlorinated biphenyls abatement or removal from public school facilities; implementation of measures designed to reduce or eliminate human exposure to lead-based paint hazards (don’t worry kids, you’re young enough that all those nasty chemicals won’t hurt you. or something like that.)
  • upgrading or installing educational technology infrastructure (we all know that technology is for rich kids. quit whining.)
  • modernization, renovation, or repair of science and engineering laboratory facilities, libraries, and career and technical education facilities (this is cearly a bad idea for our kids and the economy. What do YOU think would happen if we suddenly spent a bunch of money on expensive stuff? Obviously the kids would break it.)
  • other modernization, renovation, or repair of public school facilities to–
    • (A) improve teachers’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn;
    • (B) ensure the health and safety of students and staff;
    • (C) make them more energy efficient; or
    • (D) reduce class size
    • (I’m reduced to tears. The Collins and Specter are truly evil.)

There’s more, and some of it sucks, like the American-made-only rule about steel, but some of it is good, like a rule that none of the funds can be used for contruction of athletic facilities that will charge admission to the general public. Overall, it’s really good, and I’m angry that it is being tossed. It is good for kids and good for the economy. When did economic stimulus turn into not spending money? And when do we do spend money, spend it on rich bankers so that they can throw parties? Do they think this money is going to end up sitting in teacher’s closets? What happens when you spend money? It stimulates the economy! I understand why Obama (via Rahm) said it would be okay to drop this section, because we can fight the education fight another day, and win, but the fierce urgency of now isn’t just for our economgy, it is for our kids. The fact that they are also cutting $1 billion for Head Start is upsetting. Where do they think that money goes? Into the economy! For our kids who are youngest and most vulnerable! It is upsetting that two Republican senators can hold the entire Democratic party and this economic stimulus plan hostage to the tune $21 billion dollars that is for kids. The headline should be “Collins and Specter Deny Children $21 Billion in LifeEconomic Stimulus.”

 

Jan. 12, 2009

Grown Up President

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Politics | Tags: , |
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What is most remarkable about him as a person is that he is a grown-up.  Growing up is a task for everyone in every society and most of us don’t do a very good job of it.  Even highly gifted people, in the arts and sciences as well as politics, are often not very grown up, or have obvious personal flaws, even when we admire them.  I’m not saying that Obama is perfect—no one is.  But he shows the quality of maturity that the great classical philosophies, Confucian or Stoic for example, tried to inculcate in their followers.  Extraordinary intelligence helps but we know many brilliant people who are not very grown up.  Extraordinary ethical sensitivity is closer to the core of what it means to be grown up.  

-Robert Bellah

Bellah, sociologist at Cal Berkey, identifies one lens for understanding Obama as a person and as a leader; I think it is an appropriate one, but what does it really mean?

In an email tonight, Peter Tuuk pointed me to a quote today from a 1996 New Yorker interview with Obama before he entered politics. I think it demonstrates a bit of what this ‘ethical sensitivity’ might look like.

In responding to a question about his wife Michelle, he says:

… she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely,

Obama, circa 1996

Obama, circa 1996

 but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person 

Ethical sensitivity is openness to another person/ country/ political group/ etc. Ethical sensitivity requires, even for a moment, a suspension of the self as the central focus of one’s attention. The ethical sensitivity we typically offer offer is usually impermanent and conditional.

I tried to explain to Peter the part of me that is cautiously optimistic about this next phase of national leadership.  I am cautious for fear of being disappointed by the lack of alignment between our ideal versions of who Obama is, and who he ends up being.  But I am optimistic because I believe that Obama demonstrates a sensitivity to others and the nuance of their situations that is a core part of his decision making. I am cautiously optimistic that this man, even with all his faults, stands grown up and ready to lead in a time when ethical sensitivity is deeply needed.

 

Jan. 7, 2009

Rethinking Youth Engagement in Israel-Palestine

Posted by Dave Ellis under Politics, The World
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This post was originally published on the Newsweek/Washington Post “Faith Divide” blog.

This past summer in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to meet two young Israelis who were backpacking across America. They had just completed their mandatory military service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a three year (two years for women) requirement for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, and had decided to delay their studies to see the world. After sharing travel stories and talking about the future of electronic music, I posed a question very near to my heart: “Do either of you have any Muslim or Arab friends back home?” The lively spirit that had colored our conversation vanished and, after an awkward pause, one of them stated, “No, it doesn’t really work like that. We’ve just spent three years fighting Arabs; do you really think we could all go to the clubs together at night?”

This encounter and recent events in Gaza have forced me to think seriously about the consequences of militarizing, year after year, entire generations of young people in Israel and Palestine. Young peoples’ identities and worldviews are deeply shaped by the experiences they have and the institutions of which they are a part. What, then, happens when the vast majority of youth in Israel and Palestine are asked to serve in military roles that further embed an “us vs. them” mentality? Is it possible that the institution of compulsory military service cements an oppositional identity between the very people on which peace in the Middle East depends?

What if there were an alternative institution shaping how young Israelis and Palestinians perceive one another? Given the serious security threats to the people involved, I am not arguing for an elimination of mandatory military service. Instead, the respective governments should create a parallel opportunity where young Palestinians and Israelis could legitimately fulfill part or all of their civic duty by serving in a joint Israeli-Palestinian interfaith “Peace Corps.” This initiative would facilitate interfaith peace exchanges, cooperative service immersion experiences, and constructive dialogue among thousands of young Israelis and Palestinians each year. Instead of pitting Israeli and Palestinian young people against one another during their most formative years, this initiative would help them form constructive relationships based on positive interactions, shared values, and common goals.

This initiative would be effective in fostering peace for two main reasons. First, it would bring adversarial groups together to work toward common goals (e.g. regional peace, quality of life for refugees, access to health and education) that could not be reached without the cooperation of both groups. In his classic “Robbers Cave” experiment on conflict and cooperation, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif forcefully shows that social tensions are significantly reduced when groups in conflict jointly pursue and achieve shared goals; the same lesson applies to peace in Israeli-Palestine.

Second, this initiative would teach and train future foreign ministers, faith leaders, and policymakers to partake in constructive dialogue, be empathetic toward the circumstances of others, and utilize nonviolent and cooperative strategies for building a more stable and peaceful region. This model is the same one used by Teach for America (TFA) in their efforts to reform the education system in America. TFA is effectively equipping future leaders in all fields to be lifelong advocates for educational change. For evidence of the effectiveness of this model, check out the impact of TFA Alumni.

Young people will make an impact in the world. If we want them to leave a legacy of peace in Israel-Palestine, then they must be shaped and empowered by nonviolent leadership opportunities. Peace in Israel and Palestine depends on whether both governments can find a more constructive way to engage their youth.

 

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