McCain’s adviser had it about right

An important adviser to US presidential hopeful John McCain was reported last week as saying that the U.S. had become a nation of whiners. Naturally, there was a fuss and the guy’s remarks were disowned by McCain. And while that shows how politically inexpedient they were, it doesn’t prove that they were wrong.

If you follow the media and listen to people talking around you, I believe you’ll also come to the conclusion that the most typical sound in our society today isn’t muzak, or TV commercials, or the latest pop blockbuster. It is indeed whining.

We’re talking ourselves into a recession. Not just a ‘mental recession’ but a real one. One that will truly hurt a great many people. Some have already lost their jobs. Some have lost their homes. All this is undoubtedly real. But what got us here has mostly been a failure of intangible things: trust, confidence, willingness to offer credit, belief in the soundness of certain investments. In that sense, we are in a mental recession: a recession primarily caused, not by tangible problems of supply and demand, but by the panicky reactions of thousands of dealers and speculators in the world’s stock markets. Continued

Why the pundits are so often wrong

One of the more annoying aspects of modern life is the way we are subjected to the constant prognostications of various forecasters: the so-called experts who tell us what is going to happen — to the economy, in politics, in the world of technology, in fashion, and, it seems, just about anywhere else.

You can’t get away from these irritating nuisances. Turn on a news program on the television and you hear more about what is going to happen that what has just come about. The newspapers are the same: endless forecasts and speculations displace real news, let alone reasoned comment designed to help the reader understand the implications of current events.

That’s I applauded this brief article by Matthew Parris in the London Times newspaper (“The trick: forecast what happened yesterday”). As he says, “I suspect that economic forecasting owes more to a mirror held up to yesterday than a crystal ball held up for tomorrow. ” Continued

Is loyalty always admirable? Is faith always a virtue? Perhaps not.

An Antebellum era (pre-civil war) family Bible.
Image via Wikipedia

Loyalty has long been prized by leaders of every kind, from business moguls to politicians and church leaders; to be disloyal is typically seen as an obviously negative trait. Yet too much emphasis on loyalty can cause real problems, like stifling dissent, dulling people’s willingness to tell the truth and blunting their creativity. If no one is willing to rock the boat by pointing out problems or suggesting new ideas, how many opportunities, mistakes or instances of questionable practice will be missed? When does loyalty become misplaced?

It’s a problem of balance. Too much disloyalty is disruptive and destroys trust. Too much loyalty — especially of the unquestioning kind — means important questions may be ignored or suppressed until it’s too late. Should you put loyalty above ‘outing’ misbehavior or dishonesty? Should you stay loyal to a polticial party, a candidate, or a point of view even if you now believe they have it all wrong?

What about patriotism? Is ‘my country, right or wrong’ an admirable attitude — or one that prevents nations from making the changes they need to protect the very values they claim to stand for? What if my country is wrong? Isn’t it more loyal, in the true sense, to stand up and say so, than keep my mouth shut out of misplaced qualms about what others may think? Continued

A world without trust is a world most people don’t want to live in

Part of what makes life livable is a sense that there are some people whom you can trust pretty much all the time. We all know that there are cheats in the world, as well as confidence tricksters, liars and many other kinds of untrustworthy people. Nevertheless, we have to trust others to make it possible to trade, govern and be governed and know what to believe and how to live our lives. If no one is trustworthy, any kind of civilized life becomes impossible.

That’s what this report by The International Herald Tribune on the incidence of scientific fraud in the United States is so worrying (“Scientific Fraud: There’s more of it than you think”). Most of us believe that one mark of being a ‘professional’ is adherence to a set of ethical standards. Scientists are honor-bound to report their results truthfully, abide by proper standards of research and objectivity, and provide an honest statement of their findings. Since their findings can have a massive impact on many aspects of people’s lives, from health to career direction, we need to trust them. Indeed, in our technology-obsessed world, people and governments seem to place almost an unquestioning reliance on the statements of the people in white lab coats. Continued

Too much safety may be bad for you

Human beings have an odd tendency to evaluate risk as much by whether they feel safe before they start as by the inherent nature of the risk, or the chances that something will go wrong. We evaluate risk intuitively, and intuition is often a poor guide in this area.

That’s the conclusion of research by Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book “Government Failure versus Market Failure,” as reported in The Washington Post (“Taking More Risks Because You Feel Safe”).

“The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse.”

“There is a tendency for people to say, ‘If things are safer, then I will take more risk,’ ” he added. “It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, ‘Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.’”

Continued

Moralists have long been too obsessed with sex when handling money is often far more obscene

Image via WikipediaIn today’s New York Times, David Brooks writes a powerful piece lambasting the way tht the United States has slipped from being “industrious, ambitious and frugal” in handling prosperity into losing any social conscious about financial inequalities and the way people are seduced into excessive debt (“The Great Seduction”).

Here’s a sample of his views:

The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.
Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.

Continued

As so often, the forecasters appear to have created a doomsday scenario out of nothing

As a Baby Boomer, I have more than a passing interest in the forecasts of catastrophic breakdowns in healthcare and social security as the people of my generation all start to retire. So this article from Harvard Business Publishing piqued my curiosity (“The Baby Boomer Retirement Fallacy and What It Means to You”) by showing that most of the doom is based on fallacious reasoning.

It seems that, if you do the numbers correctly, you find far fewer will be dependent on social security benefits that the doomsters claim — and that’s without factoring in the increasing tendency of people to work until well past their ‘retirement date.’ In the area where I live, finding older people working in stores restaurants and other businesses is very common. I’m sure some only do it from necessity, but I suspect for many others what motivates them is the interest they get from working. As people live longer and stay fitter, many don’t want to spend their days in the rocking chair or on the golf course. They know they still have much to contribute and want to go on doing it. Continued

Most people today strongly advocate sincerity. Here’s an opposing viewpoint

I recently came across this challenging viewpoint in an article on a British blog called “Stumbling and Mumbling” (“Against Sincerity” ). The writer bases his point on the idea that what’s true is true, regardless of what anyone else believes about it. Taking the argument round the other way, what’s false is simply false, even if you believe it to be true.

I can’t help agreeing that there’s altogether too much emphasis being based today on personal belief — faith, if you like — as the basis of correct actions. It’s obvious that even the strongest belief can be mistaken, where truth is always true (if it’s mistaken, it’s no longer truth). Using belief as justification absolves people from the need to seek further after what is factual. It erects emotion as a sign of correctness (belief is, after all, as much or more emotional as rational). It removes much of the need to find firm evidence to support what you assert. Continued

Is it possible that we need recessions for the economy to stay healthy?

That’s the message from this article by Drake Bennett for The Boston Globe’s blog (“The good recession”). While most people focus on the harm recessions do to earnings, employment and consumer spending, Bennett takes a look at some potential long-term gains.

Amongst the benefits he finds: a slowing economy, some economists suggest, can help you live longer. During recessions people drink and smoke less, get sick less, and even die less than during boom times. People who worry about losing their jobs do things to keep them from getting laid off — they drink less, they fight less, they become less risk-taking. If they have less disposable income, perhaps they will spend less on drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Cut-backs in driving and car ownership should mean less traffic and fewer accidents. Continued

Does America (and other countries) suffer from a nasty strain of anti-intellectual ‘elitism’?

Photo credit: D. B. King

When is being part of an elite — or having an ‘elite’ level of knowledge, attainment or expertise — a handicap? It seems the answer is “when someone wants to denigrate your ideas without having any evidence to support them.”

To be accepted as part of an elite used to be a source of pride: a recognition that you had finally arrived amongst the best in some field (which is what ‘elite’ means). Now it’s an insult — branding people as “not one of us” and therefore to be treated with suspicion or disdain. That’s the message in this article by Susan Jacoby in The New York Times (” “Best Is the New Worst”)

What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.

It looks to me as if the causes of the problem are a potent mix of envy and fear: envy of anyone who seems to be ‘better’ than us in some way, and fear that we will lose out in some way if their superiority is recognized. Continued