It is that time of year again: time to write about Black Friday. Yesterday, my wife came across a video contrasting Black Fridays in the '80s with Black Fridays now. The difference is huge. Thirty years ago, there was not some frenzied rush to get to the stuff first. There was no brawling, shoving, or snatching items from other people's carts. In fact, it looked like any normal shopping day, except with around five times as many people. Modern Black Fridays are actually dangerous, and people have died in the rush to get marginally good deals nearly every year for the last decade (a recent study has shown that Black Friday deals are not typically the best you can get).
The average American is Christian, according to polls. Christians should, according to The 10 Commandments and other Biblical passages, be generous, respectful, kind, charitable, and a host of other virtuous things. Christians should not be greedy, rude, mean, or otherwise harmful to others. In the 2013 movie, The Purge, the government mandates one almost entirely lawless day each year (there are some exceptions, mostly with regards to the safety of high ranking government officials and ordnance or explosive weapons). The unofficial goal of this is population control, though the government does not admit to it. Anyhow, in the movie, normally good people do or attempt to do completely horrendous and evil things during the yearly purge. This is what Black Friday is becoming. People who profess to be good Christians (or other denominations that have similar values), and who act like good Christians, the rest of the year turn into evil, conniving jerks on Black Friday.
I want to compare the events of Black Friday to another kind of completely immoral activity: an orgy. Instead of sex, the orgy that Black Friday has become focuses on greed, pride, complete self absorption, and abandonment of the most basic self discipline. Almost equally sinful, this is not an activity that good Christians should be taking part in. Any Christian willing to take part in such an activity, even only once a year, is a hypocrite the rest of the year. Just like The Purge, people's true colors come out during Black Friday. Don't kid yourself: The person you are on Black Friday is the person you are the entire rest of the year as well. Maybe you hide it really well the rest of the year, but during Black Friday, the truth is revealed.
28 November 2014
27 November 2014
Pulling Your Own Weight
The idea of pulling your own weight is based on the idea that each person incurs costs for upkeep, including food, water, clothing, and shelter. In the U.S., we might add things like internet and electricity to this, but really it comes down to the fact that every person has an upkeep cost, and someone has to pay it. The idea of pulling your own weight is a very old idea, but also a conditional one. Each person in a society that is capable of doing so is expected to pull their own weight. Of course, there have been some deviations from this, but it is largely the most common way of running an economy.
There are some occasional historical exceptions to this, but there are also some chronic exceptions. Historical exceptions almost always involve slavery. Greek philosophy and math were built by people who did not pull their own weight. In fact, if they had not had slaves to pull their weight for them, we would probably not have modern technology and science as we know them. Slavery has been common off and on throughout history. In the U.S. and most of Western civilization, slavery (overt slavery, anyhow) has been abandoned and replaced with an economic philosophy very common to cultures that reject slavery. This philosophy is the idea that every person must pull their own weight. Chronic exceptions to this are very common and will never go away. Babies, young children, elderly people, and disabled people are not expected to pull their own weight, because they cannot. Stay-at-home mothers are treated as not pulling their own weight in many parts of modern society, however this is a filthy lie. They may not be producing goods, but stay-at-home mothers are doing work that is far more important than most of the work done outside the home. Now, the slavery exception is becoming an unusual one that is likely to overturn how we view economy, probably within the next half century.
In older economies, the pull-your-own-weight ideology was a fairly sound one. While it is possible for a small number of people to provide for a large number, the work involved has been excessive. One slave working 16 hours a day might be able to provide the needs of ten or twenty other people, but that slave cannot have any freedom because there is just no time for it. Modern technology has changed this though. Besides finding more efficient ways of producing, it has also provided ways of replacing human labor with mechanical slaves. Mechanical slavery is completely ethical. The machines can work 24 hours a day, and they never need time off or personal time. The only down time is time spent on repairs and maybe upgrades. Experts estimate that this ethical form of slavery will replace about 50% of the human workforce by 2050. This presents a very serious ideological problem.
Here is the problem: The U.S. economy is based on this pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are in the process of rapidly replacing human workers with mechanical slaves. These two things are completely incompatible. If we replace half of the human labor force with slaves and then still expect the humans to pull their own weight, we are expecting the impossible. Actually, we are perhaps doing something worse. We are missing something important. What is the actual weight of a human?
The "weight" of a human is the amount of labor required to meet that human's needs. Slavery with human slaves does not change the weight of a human; it just displaces the labor. Some human still has to pull the weight. Slavery with machines slaves, however, does change the weight of humans. Replacing human labor with machine labor directly reduces the human labor required to meet the needs of humans. This is what we are missing: As we automate more processes, we are reducing the weight of humans. The problem is that we are not accounting for this. We have high unemployment largely because we have reduced the weight of humans, and those humans that are still doing the same amount of work are now pulling more than their own weight. The result is that there is not enough work left for everyone else, because their weight is already being pulled. Unfortunately, because we have not noticed this problem, we are not distributing the results of the work appropriately. The consequence is that some people are pulling more than their own weight, and they are getting the proceeds of that. The people that are not able to pull their own weight are stuck without enough to survive, because their portion is being given to the people that are pulling their weight for them.
This is complicated, and it is not obvious that this is what is happening. Further, there is a very important reason that this is happening: We have reached a point where it is actually substantially less efficient for each person to pull their own weight. When each person's weight costs 2 to 4 hours of work per day (and, when that burden is centralized to one or two people per family), it is fairly efficient for businesses. Each employee spends enough time working to easily keep up with overhead. Now, however, each person's weight comes out to around 1 or 2 hour per day, or even less. When centralized, this comes out between 10 to 20 hours a week. Having every employee work half time doubles the overhead, because the number of employees are doubled (reducing hours does not reduce overhead). In addition to that, higher end jobs often have warm up and cool down time that results in unproductive hours on each end of a shift. This means, in an 8 hour shift, if an hour at each end is unproductive, 75% of the work time is productive. In 4 hour shifts, productivity is reduced to only 50%. In lower end jobs this effect is dramatically lower, but in high end jobs (especially in problem solving work like engineering and science), this is a major obstacle to reducing hours (note that in these jobs, longer time between shifts tends to increase the unproductive warm up time, so 8 hours three days a week is not an efficient solution either). This is an efficiency problem that is never going to go away. It is just not efficient at current human "weight" for each person to pull his or her own weight.
Is there a solution to this? Yes, but it is not a very popular one. It is incredibly unpopular among conservatives, and it is at least mildly unpopular among liberals. The solution is abandoning the pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are quickly becoming a slave state, just like Greece was, except that we are doing it ethically. If we do not abandon this pull-your-own-weight ideology, we are going to either let the majority of Americans starve as their jobs are replaced by machines, or we are going to have millions of Americans working workweeks so short that they are costing more overhead than the value they are generating. Neither of these is a good long term economic plan. One short term solution might be long vacation time, where each employee works "normal" hours, but only for 1/4 of the year, and the rest of the year is vacation time, however, that only partially mitigates overhead costs. The most efficient solution is for some people to work 20 to 40 hour weeks at least 50% to 75% of the year, while everyone else lives off of the proceeds of that work. Some kind of motivation would be necessary for those who work, and this would probably be complicated and difficult to do without resulting in an overprivileged working class and an underprivileged non-working class (ironic, given that historically the opposite happens). Ultimately though, it is going to eventually become necessary, or we are going to have an epic economic crash when so many consumers starve to death that consumption drops below an economically sustainable level.
Things are changing rapidly. Technology continues to advance faster than we can keep up with. In the past, the impact of this has been primarily limited to the tech industry itself. In the near future, however, this is going to have a massive economic impact. If we are not prepared, we are going to suffer. In some degree, the consequences are not predictable, but there is one thing that is predictable: If a large portion of human labor is replaced with machine labor, we cannot have a sustainable economy that is based in the pull-your-own-weight ideology.
There are some occasional historical exceptions to this, but there are also some chronic exceptions. Historical exceptions almost always involve slavery. Greek philosophy and math were built by people who did not pull their own weight. In fact, if they had not had slaves to pull their weight for them, we would probably not have modern technology and science as we know them. Slavery has been common off and on throughout history. In the U.S. and most of Western civilization, slavery (overt slavery, anyhow) has been abandoned and replaced with an economic philosophy very common to cultures that reject slavery. This philosophy is the idea that every person must pull their own weight. Chronic exceptions to this are very common and will never go away. Babies, young children, elderly people, and disabled people are not expected to pull their own weight, because they cannot. Stay-at-home mothers are treated as not pulling their own weight in many parts of modern society, however this is a filthy lie. They may not be producing goods, but stay-at-home mothers are doing work that is far more important than most of the work done outside the home. Now, the slavery exception is becoming an unusual one that is likely to overturn how we view economy, probably within the next half century.
In older economies, the pull-your-own-weight ideology was a fairly sound one. While it is possible for a small number of people to provide for a large number, the work involved has been excessive. One slave working 16 hours a day might be able to provide the needs of ten or twenty other people, but that slave cannot have any freedom because there is just no time for it. Modern technology has changed this though. Besides finding more efficient ways of producing, it has also provided ways of replacing human labor with mechanical slaves. Mechanical slavery is completely ethical. The machines can work 24 hours a day, and they never need time off or personal time. The only down time is time spent on repairs and maybe upgrades. Experts estimate that this ethical form of slavery will replace about 50% of the human workforce by 2050. This presents a very serious ideological problem.
Here is the problem: The U.S. economy is based on this pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are in the process of rapidly replacing human workers with mechanical slaves. These two things are completely incompatible. If we replace half of the human labor force with slaves and then still expect the humans to pull their own weight, we are expecting the impossible. Actually, we are perhaps doing something worse. We are missing something important. What is the actual weight of a human?
The "weight" of a human is the amount of labor required to meet that human's needs. Slavery with human slaves does not change the weight of a human; it just displaces the labor. Some human still has to pull the weight. Slavery with machines slaves, however, does change the weight of humans. Replacing human labor with machine labor directly reduces the human labor required to meet the needs of humans. This is what we are missing: As we automate more processes, we are reducing the weight of humans. The problem is that we are not accounting for this. We have high unemployment largely because we have reduced the weight of humans, and those humans that are still doing the same amount of work are now pulling more than their own weight. The result is that there is not enough work left for everyone else, because their weight is already being pulled. Unfortunately, because we have not noticed this problem, we are not distributing the results of the work appropriately. The consequence is that some people are pulling more than their own weight, and they are getting the proceeds of that. The people that are not able to pull their own weight are stuck without enough to survive, because their portion is being given to the people that are pulling their weight for them.
This is complicated, and it is not obvious that this is what is happening. Further, there is a very important reason that this is happening: We have reached a point where it is actually substantially less efficient for each person to pull their own weight. When each person's weight costs 2 to 4 hours of work per day (and, when that burden is centralized to one or two people per family), it is fairly efficient for businesses. Each employee spends enough time working to easily keep up with overhead. Now, however, each person's weight comes out to around 1 or 2 hour per day, or even less. When centralized, this comes out between 10 to 20 hours a week. Having every employee work half time doubles the overhead, because the number of employees are doubled (reducing hours does not reduce overhead). In addition to that, higher end jobs often have warm up and cool down time that results in unproductive hours on each end of a shift. This means, in an 8 hour shift, if an hour at each end is unproductive, 75% of the work time is productive. In 4 hour shifts, productivity is reduced to only 50%. In lower end jobs this effect is dramatically lower, but in high end jobs (especially in problem solving work like engineering and science), this is a major obstacle to reducing hours (note that in these jobs, longer time between shifts tends to increase the unproductive warm up time, so 8 hours three days a week is not an efficient solution either). This is an efficiency problem that is never going to go away. It is just not efficient at current human "weight" for each person to pull his or her own weight.
Is there a solution to this? Yes, but it is not a very popular one. It is incredibly unpopular among conservatives, and it is at least mildly unpopular among liberals. The solution is abandoning the pull-your-own-weight ideology. We are quickly becoming a slave state, just like Greece was, except that we are doing it ethically. If we do not abandon this pull-your-own-weight ideology, we are going to either let the majority of Americans starve as their jobs are replaced by machines, or we are going to have millions of Americans working workweeks so short that they are costing more overhead than the value they are generating. Neither of these is a good long term economic plan. One short term solution might be long vacation time, where each employee works "normal" hours, but only for 1/4 of the year, and the rest of the year is vacation time, however, that only partially mitigates overhead costs. The most efficient solution is for some people to work 20 to 40 hour weeks at least 50% to 75% of the year, while everyone else lives off of the proceeds of that work. Some kind of motivation would be necessary for those who work, and this would probably be complicated and difficult to do without resulting in an overprivileged working class and an underprivileged non-working class (ironic, given that historically the opposite happens). Ultimately though, it is going to eventually become necessary, or we are going to have an epic economic crash when so many consumers starve to death that consumption drops below an economically sustainable level.
Things are changing rapidly. Technology continues to advance faster than we can keep up with. In the past, the impact of this has been primarily limited to the tech industry itself. In the near future, however, this is going to have a massive economic impact. If we are not prepared, we are going to suffer. In some degree, the consequences are not predictable, but there is one thing that is predictable: If a large portion of human labor is replaced with machine labor, we cannot have a sustainable economy that is based in the pull-your-own-weight ideology.
26 November 2014
Overtime
It turns out that the average working American is working around 50 hours a week. Almost 12 percent of Americans work more than 60 hours a week. This is a problem, for several reasons. First, we still have a high rate of unemployment, and I have said before that people working more than 40 hours a week are effectively stealing work from those working less than that (who want to work 40 hours a week). Second, many of these workers are salaried, which means that no one is getting paid for this extra work. In these cases, the extra hours are being stolen, without any benefit to the thief. Some workplaces even mandate that salaried employees work more than 40 hours a week. Hourly employees are legally entitled to extra pay for overtime hours, but this does not justify stealing work that is needed by others. Ironically, hourly overtime costs the employer more, in addition to increasing unemployment. This free labor and poorly distributed work is a big problem, even though it may not be obvious. Given current unemployment as well as the 50 hour a week average of most U.S. workers, a redistribution of labor could easily solve unemployment entirely.
The first thing that needs to be done is the elimination of any unpaid labor (within an employer/employee relationship). Salaries should only apply for the first 40 hours a week of work. Even salaried workers should be entitled to overtime pay for any hours beyond 40 in a week. This by itself would push businesses to hire more employees, instead of expecting free labor from salaried employees.
The second thing that needs to be done is fines for overtime. Many states' labor laws technically forbid overtime, but they include clauses stating that overtime must paid at a higher rate when it does occur. Federal labor law does not forbid overtime, but it also requires a higher pay rate for overtime. In all cases, however, salaried employees are exempt. Federal labor law needs to remove the salaried employee exemption, and it needs to turn the 40 hour a week limit into a hard limit. No states with a hard limit actually enforce it, and there is no set penalty for violation of the limit (though, the limit does entitle an hourly employee to refuse to work overtime without threat of retribution). In addition to a Federal hard limit, penalties need to be set and enforced for violation of that limit. Fines for overtime would accomplish two useful things. First, it would encourage employers to hire more employees instead of facilitating the theft of work. Second, it would provide a source of funding for welfare to support those who are not able to find work because that work is being stolen by other people working overtime.
A more extreme third thing that could be done is fines for employees working more than 40 hours a week. The point of this is to combat the likely response of getting a second job for people who loose overtime hours due to the first two things. Again, this would both discourage working more than 40 hours a week, and it would provide a source of funding for welfare when people choose to work more hours anyway.
There is a fourth thing that needs to be done, and perhaps it should have been the first. Overtime labor laws need to be strictly enforced. Wage theft is becoming a major problem in the U.S., and a majority of it comes from unpaid work and overtime paid at a non-overtime rate. There is a local business where I live that has a strategy for avoiding overtime pay that happens to be highly illegal. This business logs hours based on client projects. Employees are forbidden from working more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week on any one project. The business owners seem to think that overtime pay is only necessary if overtime is worked all on one project. This business has employees (as well as ex-employees) who are owed thousands or tens of thousands of dollar in unpaid overtime. At least one has tried to report the situation to the state labor board but was told that they are too far behind to do anything about it. Evidently this situation is common across the U.S. In many cases, employees do not know their right, but in other cases, they fear retribution (also illegal) or state labor boards are understaffed (or, possibly, just lazy).
It is absurd that our country has set a 40 hour work week, but we have a high rate of unemployment largely because the average work week is actually 50 hours. Enacting and enforcing laws that push this back down to 40 hours could increase the amount of available work by up to 20%, which would completely cover our unemployment with some to spare. This would tip the economy to favor employees over employers, which would go a long way in increasing wages and reducing poverty. Our economy needs us to eliminate unpaid overtime and dramatically reduce overtime overall.
The first thing that needs to be done is the elimination of any unpaid labor (within an employer/employee relationship). Salaries should only apply for the first 40 hours a week of work. Even salaried workers should be entitled to overtime pay for any hours beyond 40 in a week. This by itself would push businesses to hire more employees, instead of expecting free labor from salaried employees.
The second thing that needs to be done is fines for overtime. Many states' labor laws technically forbid overtime, but they include clauses stating that overtime must paid at a higher rate when it does occur. Federal labor law does not forbid overtime, but it also requires a higher pay rate for overtime. In all cases, however, salaried employees are exempt. Federal labor law needs to remove the salaried employee exemption, and it needs to turn the 40 hour a week limit into a hard limit. No states with a hard limit actually enforce it, and there is no set penalty for violation of the limit (though, the limit does entitle an hourly employee to refuse to work overtime without threat of retribution). In addition to a Federal hard limit, penalties need to be set and enforced for violation of that limit. Fines for overtime would accomplish two useful things. First, it would encourage employers to hire more employees instead of facilitating the theft of work. Second, it would provide a source of funding for welfare to support those who are not able to find work because that work is being stolen by other people working overtime.
A more extreme third thing that could be done is fines for employees working more than 40 hours a week. The point of this is to combat the likely response of getting a second job for people who loose overtime hours due to the first two things. Again, this would both discourage working more than 40 hours a week, and it would provide a source of funding for welfare when people choose to work more hours anyway.
There is a fourth thing that needs to be done, and perhaps it should have been the first. Overtime labor laws need to be strictly enforced. Wage theft is becoming a major problem in the U.S., and a majority of it comes from unpaid work and overtime paid at a non-overtime rate. There is a local business where I live that has a strategy for avoiding overtime pay that happens to be highly illegal. This business logs hours based on client projects. Employees are forbidden from working more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week on any one project. The business owners seem to think that overtime pay is only necessary if overtime is worked all on one project. This business has employees (as well as ex-employees) who are owed thousands or tens of thousands of dollar in unpaid overtime. At least one has tried to report the situation to the state labor board but was told that they are too far behind to do anything about it. Evidently this situation is common across the U.S. In many cases, employees do not know their right, but in other cases, they fear retribution (also illegal) or state labor boards are understaffed (or, possibly, just lazy).
It is absurd that our country has set a 40 hour work week, but we have a high rate of unemployment largely because the average work week is actually 50 hours. Enacting and enforcing laws that push this back down to 40 hours could increase the amount of available work by up to 20%, which would completely cover our unemployment with some to spare. This would tip the economy to favor employees over employers, which would go a long way in increasing wages and reducing poverty. Our economy needs us to eliminate unpaid overtime and dramatically reduce overtime overall.
Upper Class Blindness
In America, we do not like to see poor people. We do not want to see homeless people. We do not want to see people living in poorly maintained low income housing. We would prefer not to see the hungry. So, what do we do about it? Evidently, we try to hide it. Within the last year, at least 21 U.S. cities have passed laws forbidding the feeding of homeless people in public. Some cities have replaced park benches with new models that include separators designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them. Businesses have placed obstacles on sidewalks to make sitting on them painful, to deter the homeless from loitering near their stores. In many cities, construction projects have been approved that destroy or renovate low income apartments to become classy higher income housing. In some cases, low income housing has been replaced in response to higher income residents that live nearby, who feel that the nearby low income housing damages their property values and forces them to see things they would rather not. In the U.S., our solution to our discomfort at seeing poor people is to create laws to drive them away.
This is a major ethical problem. We have plenty of poor in the U.S., and the number is only increasing. Hiding the problem is not fixing it. All of these laws and other solutions are actually making the problem worse. Now, hungry homeless people are being forced to starve, because they cannot be fed where they are, and they have nowhere else to go. Tearing down low income housing is putting more people on the streets. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that all of these efforts to hide the problem are making it less obvious, which makes it easier to ignore the suffering.
There is a solution. It is a painful one, and the upper class will certainly be opposed to it. It needs to be done though. The problem has been ignored for so long that there seems to be no other reasonable way. First, I think we need an amendment to the Constitution offering Federal protection for the poor. No law should be allowed to persist which is designed specifically to discriminate against the poor. When a city tries to enact a law designed to hide the fact that the city is tolerating the pain and suffering of its poor, Federal courts should have the legal backing to come down hard on that city. Building projects designed specifically to relieve the rich from the burden of seeing the suffering of the poor should also be shut down. In fact, the truly ethical city would deliberately zone such that every large, expensive house looked out at cheap low income housing. The homeless shelter should be right next to the highest income mansion. The soup kitchens should be right across from the country clubs. Not only should it be legal to feed the homeless right out on the streets where they live, it should be encouraged to feed them in prominent locations where the rich can observe, and the right to feed them in those places should be legally protected. The point of all of this is that the people with the greatest capacity to improve the situation should be the people who have the greatest exposure to the problem. Yes, this will be very emotionally painful. It should be. Imagine the pain and suffering of those poor people. If we think we cannot bear to feel at least a part of their suffering, we deserve to feel the full impact of their fate for ourselves.
Upper class blindness needs to be cured. If this requires the poor to be shoved in the faces of the rich, then this is what needs to be done. Perhaps if the rich were forced to realize what their money games are doing to our nation's poor, they would think twice about how their business deals and profit strategies might be causing harm to others.
This is a major ethical problem. We have plenty of poor in the U.S., and the number is only increasing. Hiding the problem is not fixing it. All of these laws and other solutions are actually making the problem worse. Now, hungry homeless people are being forced to starve, because they cannot be fed where they are, and they have nowhere else to go. Tearing down low income housing is putting more people on the streets. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that all of these efforts to hide the problem are making it less obvious, which makes it easier to ignore the suffering.
There is a solution. It is a painful one, and the upper class will certainly be opposed to it. It needs to be done though. The problem has been ignored for so long that there seems to be no other reasonable way. First, I think we need an amendment to the Constitution offering Federal protection for the poor. No law should be allowed to persist which is designed specifically to discriminate against the poor. When a city tries to enact a law designed to hide the fact that the city is tolerating the pain and suffering of its poor, Federal courts should have the legal backing to come down hard on that city. Building projects designed specifically to relieve the rich from the burden of seeing the suffering of the poor should also be shut down. In fact, the truly ethical city would deliberately zone such that every large, expensive house looked out at cheap low income housing. The homeless shelter should be right next to the highest income mansion. The soup kitchens should be right across from the country clubs. Not only should it be legal to feed the homeless right out on the streets where they live, it should be encouraged to feed them in prominent locations where the rich can observe, and the right to feed them in those places should be legally protected. The point of all of this is that the people with the greatest capacity to improve the situation should be the people who have the greatest exposure to the problem. Yes, this will be very emotionally painful. It should be. Imagine the pain and suffering of those poor people. If we think we cannot bear to feel at least a part of their suffering, we deserve to feel the full impact of their fate for ourselves.
Upper class blindness needs to be cured. If this requires the poor to be shoved in the faces of the rich, then this is what needs to be done. Perhaps if the rich were forced to realize what their money games are doing to our nation's poor, they would think twice about how their business deals and profit strategies might be causing harm to others.
17 November 2014
The Little Red Hen
There was once a little red hen. She owned a wheat field. When duck came asking for a job working on the farm, the little red hen told him that she did not need any help, because she had an automatic system for planting, watering, harvesting, and separating the wheat. The little red hen also owned a flour mill, but when pig asked if there was anything he could do to help, the little red hen told him that she had an automatic delivery system from the farm to the mill, and the processes for milling the wheat and bagging the flour were automated as well. The little red hen had a bread factory, but when cow asked if there was something she could do to help, the little red hen told cow that the factory was so well automated that she did not even need someone for quality control. The little red hen had a bakery as well. When horse asked if he could help sell the bread, the little red hen showed him rows of completely automated bread vending machines, and she told him she already had it covered.
When it came time to harvest the wheat, the automatic harvester harvested all the wheat, it dumped it into a thresher, which separated the grain from the chaff. The wheat was then pour into buckets on a conveyor belt, which carried the wheat to the mill next door. Machines at the mill dumped the buckets into the milling machine, and the flour cascaded down a funnel into bags. Another conveyor carried the flour next door to the bread factory, where they were dumped into huge mixers along with water and other ingredients, then divided into loaves, cooked, bagged, and sent to the bakery on yet another conveyor. A complex mechanical system hidden behind the vending machines filled each one with bagged loaves of bread. The little red hen then waited for customers to buy her bread.
After a few hours with no business, the little red hen looked out the front window. Standing outside, across the street, stood duck, pig, cow, and horse, looking longingly at the bakery. The little red hen walked outside and called across the street, asking why they were looking but not buying any bread. One by one, each of them explained that they had been unable to find any jobs, so they had no money. They just could not afford the bread. The little red hen stuck up her beak and went back inside. She did not need friends who were poor, when she had so much. If they did not have any money, then they would not have any bread.
Duck, pig, cow, and horse lived on the streets until they starved to death. Only the little red hen was left in the town, but she was content. She had plenty of bread. Her lack of friends did not bother her. She was rich, so she did not need any friends. Her money and her property could be her friends. At least, this is what she told herself when she started feeling lonely.
(In case someone thinks that this story is about the evils of automation, read my opinion on that subject: Dehumanizing. Automation is not evil. People who succumb to greed are what is evil.)
When it came time to harvest the wheat, the automatic harvester harvested all the wheat, it dumped it into a thresher, which separated the grain from the chaff. The wheat was then pour into buckets on a conveyor belt, which carried the wheat to the mill next door. Machines at the mill dumped the buckets into the milling machine, and the flour cascaded down a funnel into bags. Another conveyor carried the flour next door to the bread factory, where they were dumped into huge mixers along with water and other ingredients, then divided into loaves, cooked, bagged, and sent to the bakery on yet another conveyor. A complex mechanical system hidden behind the vending machines filled each one with bagged loaves of bread. The little red hen then waited for customers to buy her bread.
After a few hours with no business, the little red hen looked out the front window. Standing outside, across the street, stood duck, pig, cow, and horse, looking longingly at the bakery. The little red hen walked outside and called across the street, asking why they were looking but not buying any bread. One by one, each of them explained that they had been unable to find any jobs, so they had no money. They just could not afford the bread. The little red hen stuck up her beak and went back inside. She did not need friends who were poor, when she had so much. If they did not have any money, then they would not have any bread.
Duck, pig, cow, and horse lived on the streets until they starved to death. Only the little red hen was left in the town, but she was content. She had plenty of bread. Her lack of friends did not bother her. She was rich, so she did not need any friends. Her money and her property could be her friends. At least, this is what she told herself when she started feeling lonely.
(In case someone thinks that this story is about the evils of automation, read my opinion on that subject: Dehumanizing. Automation is not evil. People who succumb to greed are what is evil.)
Universal Pre-K
http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2750/navigating-the-research-on-universal-pre-k-overhyped-or-silver-bullet.html
I just read this, and I see so many flaws in the various arguments that I cannot resist writing about it.
First, the argument is about whether the Federal government should devote several billions of dollars to make preschool part of the education system. There is some evidence that poor children are likely to make more money and are less likely to get involved in crime when they grow up, if they attended a preschool. There is also, however, significant evidence that the cognitive benefits of preschool disappear within 2 years of starting elementary school. The cost to the country of doing this is around $15 billion. One side of the argument claims that universal pre-K is the best way to improve education and situation of the poor. The other side argues that the benefits are primarily temporary, and the cost will be more than the return. At this point, I don't actually care who is right. Perhaps we need more research, preferably done by people with mixed opinions, to avoid confirmation bias.
The first problem with universal pre-K is the cost. Our nation is already heavily in debt, and if we cannot prove that the investment will pay off, perhaps we should not do it. The second is reach. While the evidence shows that poor children can gain substantial long term benefits from pre-K, there is no conclusive evidence that middle and upper class children benefit at all. Those supporting universal pre-K say that it will not be taken seriously if it only targets poor people, and they cite Head Start as an example of this. While this is probably true, it is not, perhaps a valid excuse for spending many times what is necessary. What I hear them saying is, "We need to spend $15 billion to get people to take this seriously." That money would probably be more effective spent as a bribe to get the people to pretend to take it seriously than it would to use it to offer preschool to those whom it is unlikely to benefit.
There is also a lot of mud slinging going on in this debate, which makes it very difficult to determine what is fact and what is opinion. There is one study that "was likely underfunded" (yeah, I don't know what that is supposed to mean either) that showed kids who attended pre-K actually did worse in math and language than kids who did not. The "fact" that it might have been underfunded is used to discredit it. Likewise, another study showed impressive long term benefits from pre-K, at a price of $90,000 per child. While this study may have been valid, the price tag for those results is just not an option.
One theory as to why benefits are observed is that preschool provides more social interaction than the home, improving the social skills of the children at an age where it makes a bigger difference. Perhaps (though it is not stated), middle and upper class children have more opportunities to gain social skills at 4 years old than lower class children? If this is not true, then this theory does not account for the discrepancy between lower class children and middle/upper class children. (Supposedly, poor families are actually having fewer children than middle and upper class families now, so maybe social interaction at home can have the same benefits, so long as there are several children.) Regardless, if this is true, we don't need to bother spending $15 billion extra on this. It is already proven that the benefits of the learning go away fairly quickly. If the social interaction is the key, then we could eliminate low income pre-K programs like Head Start and instead provide government funded day care, and it would be far cheaper. Day care provides a very similar social setting, and day care workers don't cost as much as trained educators. In fact, without the learning part attached, and presented as an aid to poor families where both parents work, it would be taken far more seriously than a preschool program justified primarily by limited and unreliable data.
One proponent of universal pre-K asks a question that is stupidly obvious. Discussing some of the problems with programs specifically targeting poor people, Steven Barnett asks, "Why would we do that? Why not just make it open to everyone?" The painfully obvious answer is $15 billion. I guess he just didn't think of that one. In addition to this, there are multiple claims that the $15 billion to $20 billion already being spent on low income preschool programs is being spent poorly. Not everyone agrees with this, but given the state of the rest of our education system, it is hard to believe that significant improvements are not possible.
Ultimately, the situation is complicated. Obama and other proponents of the idea seem to be prepared to throw huge amounts of money at in, just in case it works. There is evidence that it could be beneficial, but there is no evidence that it will be. None of the most influential studies mirrored the reality of the situation well enough to actually trust. The less influential studies all seem to be affected by many uncontrolled factors, as there is really no consensus between them. Studies targeting the middle and upper classes are unlikely to ever be conducted, because no one seems to care. What I see this as is a giant $15 billion experiment that will affect children all around the U.S., to see whether universal pre-K will help them or harm them. Maybe the potential for harm is not that high, but the price tag certainly is. $15 billion is enough money to pull over 1 million Americans out of poverty entirely. This would dramatically reduce the need for a preschool system designed to help poor children, and it would likely do far more for them than preschool ever could.
I don't care who is right in the debate over benefits, but I am opposed to spending huge amounts of money on things that have such a high risk of failure. Instead of arguing over what the data means, maybe we need to spend a fraction of that money doing more research, where the situations are closer to what they would be if universal pre-K was made available on the proposed budget. I might not care about who is right, but I certainly do not want our government to gamble even more money on huge social experiments that have a limited probability of paying off.
I just read this, and I see so many flaws in the various arguments that I cannot resist writing about it.
First, the argument is about whether the Federal government should devote several billions of dollars to make preschool part of the education system. There is some evidence that poor children are likely to make more money and are less likely to get involved in crime when they grow up, if they attended a preschool. There is also, however, significant evidence that the cognitive benefits of preschool disappear within 2 years of starting elementary school. The cost to the country of doing this is around $15 billion. One side of the argument claims that universal pre-K is the best way to improve education and situation of the poor. The other side argues that the benefits are primarily temporary, and the cost will be more than the return. At this point, I don't actually care who is right. Perhaps we need more research, preferably done by people with mixed opinions, to avoid confirmation bias.
The first problem with universal pre-K is the cost. Our nation is already heavily in debt, and if we cannot prove that the investment will pay off, perhaps we should not do it. The second is reach. While the evidence shows that poor children can gain substantial long term benefits from pre-K, there is no conclusive evidence that middle and upper class children benefit at all. Those supporting universal pre-K say that it will not be taken seriously if it only targets poor people, and they cite Head Start as an example of this. While this is probably true, it is not, perhaps a valid excuse for spending many times what is necessary. What I hear them saying is, "We need to spend $15 billion to get people to take this seriously." That money would probably be more effective spent as a bribe to get the people to pretend to take it seriously than it would to use it to offer preschool to those whom it is unlikely to benefit.
There is also a lot of mud slinging going on in this debate, which makes it very difficult to determine what is fact and what is opinion. There is one study that "was likely underfunded" (yeah, I don't know what that is supposed to mean either) that showed kids who attended pre-K actually did worse in math and language than kids who did not. The "fact" that it might have been underfunded is used to discredit it. Likewise, another study showed impressive long term benefits from pre-K, at a price of $90,000 per child. While this study may have been valid, the price tag for those results is just not an option.
One theory as to why benefits are observed is that preschool provides more social interaction than the home, improving the social skills of the children at an age where it makes a bigger difference. Perhaps (though it is not stated), middle and upper class children have more opportunities to gain social skills at 4 years old than lower class children? If this is not true, then this theory does not account for the discrepancy between lower class children and middle/upper class children. (Supposedly, poor families are actually having fewer children than middle and upper class families now, so maybe social interaction at home can have the same benefits, so long as there are several children.) Regardless, if this is true, we don't need to bother spending $15 billion extra on this. It is already proven that the benefits of the learning go away fairly quickly. If the social interaction is the key, then we could eliminate low income pre-K programs like Head Start and instead provide government funded day care, and it would be far cheaper. Day care provides a very similar social setting, and day care workers don't cost as much as trained educators. In fact, without the learning part attached, and presented as an aid to poor families where both parents work, it would be taken far more seriously than a preschool program justified primarily by limited and unreliable data.
One proponent of universal pre-K asks a question that is stupidly obvious. Discussing some of the problems with programs specifically targeting poor people, Steven Barnett asks, "Why would we do that? Why not just make it open to everyone?" The painfully obvious answer is $15 billion. I guess he just didn't think of that one. In addition to this, there are multiple claims that the $15 billion to $20 billion already being spent on low income preschool programs is being spent poorly. Not everyone agrees with this, but given the state of the rest of our education system, it is hard to believe that significant improvements are not possible.
Ultimately, the situation is complicated. Obama and other proponents of the idea seem to be prepared to throw huge amounts of money at in, just in case it works. There is evidence that it could be beneficial, but there is no evidence that it will be. None of the most influential studies mirrored the reality of the situation well enough to actually trust. The less influential studies all seem to be affected by many uncontrolled factors, as there is really no consensus between them. Studies targeting the middle and upper classes are unlikely to ever be conducted, because no one seems to care. What I see this as is a giant $15 billion experiment that will affect children all around the U.S., to see whether universal pre-K will help them or harm them. Maybe the potential for harm is not that high, but the price tag certainly is. $15 billion is enough money to pull over 1 million Americans out of poverty entirely. This would dramatically reduce the need for a preschool system designed to help poor children, and it would likely do far more for them than preschool ever could.
I don't care who is right in the debate over benefits, but I am opposed to spending huge amounts of money on things that have such a high risk of failure. Instead of arguing over what the data means, maybe we need to spend a fraction of that money doing more research, where the situations are closer to what they would be if universal pre-K was made available on the proposed budget. I might not care about who is right, but I certainly do not want our government to gamble even more money on huge social experiments that have a limited probability of paying off.
10 November 2014
Taco Bell App
Taco Bell has come out with an ordering app that allows customers to use their smart phones to put in an order and pay for it. As the customer approaches a Taco Bell location, the app asks if they want the restaurant to start preparing their food. This process can involve almost no human contact (I suppose someone has to pass the food out the window, but ordering and paying is entirely electronic).
As this becomes more popular (Taco Bell is not the first to try this, and it most certainly will not be the last), a lot of jobs are going to be lost. Eventually, most drive through orders will not require a cashier, because most of them will already be ordered and paid for before the customer even enters the drive through. This will allow the drive through cashier position to be combined with another position. It is also likely that the added convenience will reduce the need for inside cashiers. Eventually this is going to spread to all fast food restaurants, because otherwise, they will not be able to compete. This is going to add up to a lot of jobs that are lost.
It is about time! Fast food restaurants severely underpay their employees. They claim that they cannot afford to pay more. I have argued this before, and I will repeat it again: A business that cannot pay employees enough to survive on is not worth existing. Work that is not worth a living wage is not worth doing at all. Pay that is below a living wage is just plain not sustainable. A business that cannot pay a living wage is not profitable enough or valuable enough to justify its own existence. Fast food is practically the bottom of the barrel (ok, agriculture is far worse, but also far less prominent). Current Federal minimum wage, which most fast food places start at, generates well under the poverty level in income, even full time. One of the most effective ways of reducing costs (so that employees can be paid fair wages) is automating processes and eliminating unnecessary employees. Food assembly is hard to automate (though, certainly possible). Automated order taking is now very easy to automate. It is the low hanging fruit. It is nice to see that fast food is finally figuring this out.
There is a catch. The most common response to increased profits through automation is faster expansion and better shareholder payouts (or, even worse, increased CEO salary). If Taco Bell choses to take this route, then not only is it not worth existing, it is actively worth destroying. Why? It is already vastly underpaying its employees. It should take this opportunity to make its employment system more sustainable by raising wages. Admittedly, eliminating maybe two or three employees will not save enough to pay all of the rest a living wage. An effort, however, would be nice. It would show that they care about paying their employees fairly. If, instead, they spend the profits on something else, then they are showing that they could care less about their employees. If this is the case, then the business does not deserve to exist, and additionally, it deserves to die so society no longer has to pay the costs of its freeloading on our unpaid labor (if it pays less than a living wage, then it is not paying for all of the labor it is getting). I hope they do the right thing, but I am not holding my breath.
As this becomes more popular (Taco Bell is not the first to try this, and it most certainly will not be the last), a lot of jobs are going to be lost. Eventually, most drive through orders will not require a cashier, because most of them will already be ordered and paid for before the customer even enters the drive through. This will allow the drive through cashier position to be combined with another position. It is also likely that the added convenience will reduce the need for inside cashiers. Eventually this is going to spread to all fast food restaurants, because otherwise, they will not be able to compete. This is going to add up to a lot of jobs that are lost.
It is about time! Fast food restaurants severely underpay their employees. They claim that they cannot afford to pay more. I have argued this before, and I will repeat it again: A business that cannot pay employees enough to survive on is not worth existing. Work that is not worth a living wage is not worth doing at all. Pay that is below a living wage is just plain not sustainable. A business that cannot pay a living wage is not profitable enough or valuable enough to justify its own existence. Fast food is practically the bottom of the barrel (ok, agriculture is far worse, but also far less prominent). Current Federal minimum wage, which most fast food places start at, generates well under the poverty level in income, even full time. One of the most effective ways of reducing costs (so that employees can be paid fair wages) is automating processes and eliminating unnecessary employees. Food assembly is hard to automate (though, certainly possible). Automated order taking is now very easy to automate. It is the low hanging fruit. It is nice to see that fast food is finally figuring this out.
There is a catch. The most common response to increased profits through automation is faster expansion and better shareholder payouts (or, even worse, increased CEO salary). If Taco Bell choses to take this route, then not only is it not worth existing, it is actively worth destroying. Why? It is already vastly underpaying its employees. It should take this opportunity to make its employment system more sustainable by raising wages. Admittedly, eliminating maybe two or three employees will not save enough to pay all of the rest a living wage. An effort, however, would be nice. It would show that they care about paying their employees fairly. If, instead, they spend the profits on something else, then they are showing that they could care less about their employees. If this is the case, then the business does not deserve to exist, and additionally, it deserves to die so society no longer has to pay the costs of its freeloading on our unpaid labor (if it pays less than a living wage, then it is not paying for all of the labor it is getting). I hope they do the right thing, but I am not holding my breath.
Religion in Politics
Around 49% of Americans seem to believe that it is not only appropriate, but obligatory for churches to be involved in politics. While it is illegal, according to IRS restrictions for non-profit tax status, for churches designated as non-profit organizations to support specific political candidates, it is not illegal for churches to support specific ballot measures, initiatives, or even political movements. While there has been some resistance to churches having any involvement in politics, the percentage of Americans opposed to church involvement in politics is far lower than the percentage for. In fact, the percentage of Americans who support removing the non-profit restriction for supporting specific candidates is even growing.
Mixing politics with religion has been a controversial topic for almost a century, however, there was a time when few questioned it. The American Revolution was driven, in a very large part, by Protestant preachers in the colonies. The religious view at the time was that government was ordained of God, and only He had the right to change it. There are even Bible passages that lend a good deal of support to this argument. Many preachers, however, carefully studied the passages often quoted to support this idea, and they found an interesting loophole. Most of the passages stated or implied that government was ordained of God to serve the people. They reasoned that a government that does not effectively serve the people is not a legitimate government, by that standard. By refusing to give the colonies representation in Parliament, the British government was not doing its job by serving its citizens in it colonies. Many preachers explained this to their congregations, showing that even God could support a revolution against a tyrannical government, because, by His standards, a government that does not properly serve its people is not a legitimate government. The British government did serve the people of England properly, however, it did not serve its citizens in the colonies properly, thus it was not a legitimate government over the colonies. Ultimately, this broke down the barriers preventing the people from rebelling against Britain, and the result is that the U.S.A. is now a sovereign nation in its own right.
Our Founding Fathers were very wary of religious influence in government and government influence in religion. Some groups of colonists had come to the Americas specifically to escape religious persecution, and even much the majority that came primarily for economic freedom and opportunity also had religious freedom in mind. At the time (and even today), Britain had a state religion, which certain government officials were required to be members of. The Church of England was literally owned and controlled by the British government. Certain other religions were banned in Britain (often depending on the mood of the current monarch). Many other European countries also had state religions as well as specific religious bans. Punishments for violating bans or even being a member of a religion not endorsed by the state ranged from public persecution to death, depending on the religion and the current ruler. While Protestantism was the dominant religion in the colonies, there were still some Catholics and Anglicans. In addition, Protestantism was fractured into a large number of different denominations. Almost without fail, any state religion would reduce a significant portion of the population to second class citizens. This did not fit well at all with the philosophy that people should be allowed to worship as they saw fit. The result of this was strict protections for religious freedom, along with strict condemnation of any laws that might favor one religion over the other.
So now we get to a modern application of this knowledge. The first important thing to remember is that religion and politics are strongly related. Government is expected by the people to enforce certain moral expectations. In a large degree, these moral expectation come directly from religion. Rights that are supported by all religions are often called "human rights" and are frequently turned into laws called "civil rights." Even entirely secular laws designed to improve the national economy (including tariffs and such) are based in the Biblical principal that government is ordained of God to serve the people. This "separation of church and state" idea that religion and government should have nothing to do with each other is both wrong and impossible. So long as religion is common in the U.S., it will and must have an impact on government. Likewise, government will always have an impact on religions within the region it governs. The Constitutional protections necessary to ensure religious freedom make these influences largely indirect, but they cannot be reasonably prevented.
Back to the question: Should churches be involved in politics? Separation of church and state as an argument against it is not valid. While direct influence can be eliminated to a large degree, indirect influence cannot. Churches in the U.S. have a historical precedent of political involvement. Our Founding Fathers, who drafted the Constitution never spoke out against this practice, though they were fully aware that it existed. It would thus be unreasonable to assume that they believed churches should not be involved in politics. Perhaps they were wrong though, and maybe we are more enlightened. Of course, this attitude of assuming that past generations were stupider than we are is a strong red flag. This is an egotistical assumption that is often wrong and will cause more trouble than it is worth. Instead we should look at the relationship between government and religion.
What is the appropriate relationship between government and religion? Many people would say that no relationship between the two is appropriate. This argument is impossible to support though. There is no way the government can interact with religious without becoming involved with it. Even wide spread prohibition of religion is a government relationship with religion (and in fact, it is the equivalent of establishing a mandatory state religion). If the government ignores religion entirely, its relationship with religion will come through the people. For example, despite the fact that it is unconstitutional to restrict public official to those of a specific religion, Kennedy's opponents used his Roman Catholic religion against him in their campaigns. So long as religion exists, there will be a relationship between religion and government, and if it is eliminated by government edict, that is, in and of itself, a relationship between religion and government. It is almost pointless to discuss the question of whether such a relationship should exist, because it is impossibly for it not to exist. That said, in a democratic government where some of the citizens have religious beliefs, it is entirely appropriate for such a relationship to exist, because the people the government represents include religious people.
Government involvement of the general public is all about beliefs. A person who supports unregulated abortion typically does so out of a belief that the woman should be free to choose. A person against unregulated abortion may chose to be against it out of a belief that killing even an unborn child is murder. One of the most controversial topics that churches have gotten involved in is same sex marriage. Those who support it believe that homosexuals are otherwise being deprived of rights that are freely available to heterosexual Americans, while those against typically believe that homosexual acts are sinful and may ultimately result in the wrath of God. It does not matter whether the belief comes from religion or supposed logic; neither position really has a strong argument, and it all comes down to opinion and personal beliefs. One group may choose to subscribe to a specific set of beliefs will the other may choose beliefs ala-carte, but ultimately it does not matter. An American citizen has the right to representation, regardless of where they choose to get their beliefs. So long as some of those beliefs may be obtained from religion, religion is an integral part of government. Now, this does not mean that we should strip the Constitution of its protections for religion, but it is something that anyone arguing about the propriety of religious influence in government should be aware of.
During this election season, a much larger number of churches supported specific political candidates than in the past. While this is stated to be illegal, it is technically not. What is illegal is for a non-profit organization to support a specific candidate, and since most churches in the U.S. are registered as non-profits, it is illegal for them to support specific political candidates. Of course, this is actually far more complicated than it seems. This particular law is part of IRS policy for non-profit organizations. It is also legally questionable. While it is not addressed specifically in the Constitution, many believe that it could qualify as persecuting churches to prohibit them from supporting specific political candidates, and the specific argument is that it infringes on freedom of speech. While this argument does seem rather sound, it still has a great deal of opposition. The opposition's primary argument is the "separation of church and state" argument, which we have already established does not apply to this kind of situation. Ultimately though, it may not matter. The 1,600 preachers that have supported specific candidates from the pulpit will likely not face any trouble from the IRS. The IRS policy is primarily in place to prevent attempts to create non-profits designed as campaign engines for specific candidates. Churches, even when supporting specific candidates, are not specifically designed to do this. Churches typically support candidates that agree with their beliefs and that will support their morals in government. This is little different from supporting specific legislation on a state level ballot (which is entirely legal). Further though, the primary goal of these preachers is to gain the ire of the IRS, so they can push a case through to the Supreme Court, in hopes that the IRS non-profit policy will be overturned, at least with reference to religious organizations. So far, the IRS is not biting, and they may never bite, given that these churches are not violating the purpose of the policy.
My opinion on this is simple. I believe that churches have every right, and in fact, they may sometimes even have a moral obligation, to support or oppose specific legislation according to the beliefs they teach. I am ambivalent about the issue of churches supporting or opposing specific political candidates, however, I have a hard time seeing any difference if a church is consistently supporting candidates that will represent their moral beliefs. I do think that churches with non-profit status should not be allowed to make monetary campaign contributions for specific candidates. This could easily be seen as a misuse of tax exempt non-profit funds. I suppose, however, I would not be opposed to a specific exception allowing campaign contributions, so long as they are reported and taxes are paid on the money contributed, but these contributions should be entirely transparent, so their followers know what is going on. (Or, perhaps even better, they could organize a contribution event, where a church official collects and contributes funds for specific campaigns, but where the funds never become the legal property of the church. This would be sort of like how for-profit businesses have charity events, soliciting and collecting contributions for some charity.)
Overall, trying to separate politics from religion is a fruitless task. Religion defines the beliefs of many people, and the people are supposed to define the government. This means, in a large part, religion defines government. Attempting to completely eliminate the influence of religion on government is impossible, and if history is a good indicator, even trying is a prediction that the government is starting to crumble. Democratic politics and religion are both belief based things. This is, in a large part, why religious freedom needs protection from the government. Trying to take the religion out of politics is essentially saying that a majority of the population is not qualified to take part in government, because they are "tainted" by their religious beliefs. This is just not how a democratic government operates.
Mixing politics with religion has been a controversial topic for almost a century, however, there was a time when few questioned it. The American Revolution was driven, in a very large part, by Protestant preachers in the colonies. The religious view at the time was that government was ordained of God, and only He had the right to change it. There are even Bible passages that lend a good deal of support to this argument. Many preachers, however, carefully studied the passages often quoted to support this idea, and they found an interesting loophole. Most of the passages stated or implied that government was ordained of God to serve the people. They reasoned that a government that does not effectively serve the people is not a legitimate government, by that standard. By refusing to give the colonies representation in Parliament, the British government was not doing its job by serving its citizens in it colonies. Many preachers explained this to their congregations, showing that even God could support a revolution against a tyrannical government, because, by His standards, a government that does not properly serve its people is not a legitimate government. The British government did serve the people of England properly, however, it did not serve its citizens in the colonies properly, thus it was not a legitimate government over the colonies. Ultimately, this broke down the barriers preventing the people from rebelling against Britain, and the result is that the U.S.A. is now a sovereign nation in its own right.
Our Founding Fathers were very wary of religious influence in government and government influence in religion. Some groups of colonists had come to the Americas specifically to escape religious persecution, and even much the majority that came primarily for economic freedom and opportunity also had religious freedom in mind. At the time (and even today), Britain had a state religion, which certain government officials were required to be members of. The Church of England was literally owned and controlled by the British government. Certain other religions were banned in Britain (often depending on the mood of the current monarch). Many other European countries also had state religions as well as specific religious bans. Punishments for violating bans or even being a member of a religion not endorsed by the state ranged from public persecution to death, depending on the religion and the current ruler. While Protestantism was the dominant religion in the colonies, there were still some Catholics and Anglicans. In addition, Protestantism was fractured into a large number of different denominations. Almost without fail, any state religion would reduce a significant portion of the population to second class citizens. This did not fit well at all with the philosophy that people should be allowed to worship as they saw fit. The result of this was strict protections for religious freedom, along with strict condemnation of any laws that might favor one religion over the other.
So now we get to a modern application of this knowledge. The first important thing to remember is that religion and politics are strongly related. Government is expected by the people to enforce certain moral expectations. In a large degree, these moral expectation come directly from religion. Rights that are supported by all religions are often called "human rights" and are frequently turned into laws called "civil rights." Even entirely secular laws designed to improve the national economy (including tariffs and such) are based in the Biblical principal that government is ordained of God to serve the people. This "separation of church and state" idea that religion and government should have nothing to do with each other is both wrong and impossible. So long as religion is common in the U.S., it will and must have an impact on government. Likewise, government will always have an impact on religions within the region it governs. The Constitutional protections necessary to ensure religious freedom make these influences largely indirect, but they cannot be reasonably prevented.
Back to the question: Should churches be involved in politics? Separation of church and state as an argument against it is not valid. While direct influence can be eliminated to a large degree, indirect influence cannot. Churches in the U.S. have a historical precedent of political involvement. Our Founding Fathers, who drafted the Constitution never spoke out against this practice, though they were fully aware that it existed. It would thus be unreasonable to assume that they believed churches should not be involved in politics. Perhaps they were wrong though, and maybe we are more enlightened. Of course, this attitude of assuming that past generations were stupider than we are is a strong red flag. This is an egotistical assumption that is often wrong and will cause more trouble than it is worth. Instead we should look at the relationship between government and religion.
What is the appropriate relationship between government and religion? Many people would say that no relationship between the two is appropriate. This argument is impossible to support though. There is no way the government can interact with religious without becoming involved with it. Even wide spread prohibition of religion is a government relationship with religion (and in fact, it is the equivalent of establishing a mandatory state religion). If the government ignores religion entirely, its relationship with religion will come through the people. For example, despite the fact that it is unconstitutional to restrict public official to those of a specific religion, Kennedy's opponents used his Roman Catholic religion against him in their campaigns. So long as religion exists, there will be a relationship between religion and government, and if it is eliminated by government edict, that is, in and of itself, a relationship between religion and government. It is almost pointless to discuss the question of whether such a relationship should exist, because it is impossibly for it not to exist. That said, in a democratic government where some of the citizens have religious beliefs, it is entirely appropriate for such a relationship to exist, because the people the government represents include religious people.
Government involvement of the general public is all about beliefs. A person who supports unregulated abortion typically does so out of a belief that the woman should be free to choose. A person against unregulated abortion may chose to be against it out of a belief that killing even an unborn child is murder. One of the most controversial topics that churches have gotten involved in is same sex marriage. Those who support it believe that homosexuals are otherwise being deprived of rights that are freely available to heterosexual Americans, while those against typically believe that homosexual acts are sinful and may ultimately result in the wrath of God. It does not matter whether the belief comes from religion or supposed logic; neither position really has a strong argument, and it all comes down to opinion and personal beliefs. One group may choose to subscribe to a specific set of beliefs will the other may choose beliefs ala-carte, but ultimately it does not matter. An American citizen has the right to representation, regardless of where they choose to get their beliefs. So long as some of those beliefs may be obtained from religion, religion is an integral part of government. Now, this does not mean that we should strip the Constitution of its protections for religion, but it is something that anyone arguing about the propriety of religious influence in government should be aware of.
During this election season, a much larger number of churches supported specific political candidates than in the past. While this is stated to be illegal, it is technically not. What is illegal is for a non-profit organization to support a specific candidate, and since most churches in the U.S. are registered as non-profits, it is illegal for them to support specific political candidates. Of course, this is actually far more complicated than it seems. This particular law is part of IRS policy for non-profit organizations. It is also legally questionable. While it is not addressed specifically in the Constitution, many believe that it could qualify as persecuting churches to prohibit them from supporting specific political candidates, and the specific argument is that it infringes on freedom of speech. While this argument does seem rather sound, it still has a great deal of opposition. The opposition's primary argument is the "separation of church and state" argument, which we have already established does not apply to this kind of situation. Ultimately though, it may not matter. The 1,600 preachers that have supported specific candidates from the pulpit will likely not face any trouble from the IRS. The IRS policy is primarily in place to prevent attempts to create non-profits designed as campaign engines for specific candidates. Churches, even when supporting specific candidates, are not specifically designed to do this. Churches typically support candidates that agree with their beliefs and that will support their morals in government. This is little different from supporting specific legislation on a state level ballot (which is entirely legal). Further though, the primary goal of these preachers is to gain the ire of the IRS, so they can push a case through to the Supreme Court, in hopes that the IRS non-profit policy will be overturned, at least with reference to religious organizations. So far, the IRS is not biting, and they may never bite, given that these churches are not violating the purpose of the policy.
My opinion on this is simple. I believe that churches have every right, and in fact, they may sometimes even have a moral obligation, to support or oppose specific legislation according to the beliefs they teach. I am ambivalent about the issue of churches supporting or opposing specific political candidates, however, I have a hard time seeing any difference if a church is consistently supporting candidates that will represent their moral beliefs. I do think that churches with non-profit status should not be allowed to make monetary campaign contributions for specific candidates. This could easily be seen as a misuse of tax exempt non-profit funds. I suppose, however, I would not be opposed to a specific exception allowing campaign contributions, so long as they are reported and taxes are paid on the money contributed, but these contributions should be entirely transparent, so their followers know what is going on. (Or, perhaps even better, they could organize a contribution event, where a church official collects and contributes funds for specific campaigns, but where the funds never become the legal property of the church. This would be sort of like how for-profit businesses have charity events, soliciting and collecting contributions for some charity.)
Overall, trying to separate politics from religion is a fruitless task. Religion defines the beliefs of many people, and the people are supposed to define the government. This means, in a large part, religion defines government. Attempting to completely eliminate the influence of religion on government is impossible, and if history is a good indicator, even trying is a prediction that the government is starting to crumble. Democratic politics and religion are both belief based things. This is, in a large part, why religious freedom needs protection from the government. Trying to take the religion out of politics is essentially saying that a majority of the population is not qualified to take part in government, because they are "tainted" by their religious beliefs. This is just not how a democratic government operates.
07 November 2014
What Americans Care About
The job description of the U.S. government is to serve the people, largely by doing the will of the people. It is a Republic, and a Democratic Republic at that. What this means is that the government represents the people and is lead by people who are democratically elected to represent the people. Now that this is out of the way, let us consider what Americans actually worry about.
According to Pew Research, the second biggest concern of Americans is religious hatred. Obviously, this plays directly into religious freedom, and it is, in fact, one of the most major elements of religious freedom. Religious hatred is what ultimately caused our Founding Fathers to be so explicit in protecting religious freedom and in prohibiting preferential treatment of any religion by the government. As the second biggest concern, we should see a lot of discussion in Congress over this issue, given that it is the second most important thing Americans seem to care about. Sadly, Congress is more worried about things that Americans seem to find trivial. This is not the most disturbing part of the situation though.
The research indicates that the first biggest concern of Americans is income inequality. This subject has gotten some attention in Congress, with the most prominent result being a health care law that forces those at the middle and lower ends to spend a larger percentage of their income on health care insurance than those with much higher incomes. Technically, this is making income inequality worse, not better. While this subject seems to come up a lot in Congress and in Presidential press conferences and such, little is being done to actually address it. This is currently the most important issue to Americans, and Congress cannot be bothered to give it serious consideration long enough to actually do something about. Instead, Congress is doing things like harassing our (admittedly poor) education system, repeatedly forcing it to adopt untested techniques to improve test scores. Income inequality has consistently been proven to affect education outcome more than any other factor. Income inequality is the primary reason than a significant percentage of Americans cannot afford health care insurance (and making laws requiring them to purchase it does nothing to fix that problem). Income inequality is also very strongly linked to our recent and current economic problems. It also seems to have strong links to crime as well. Income inequality also has links to many types of self destructive behavior (drug and alcohol abuse, for instance). Income inequality is closely related to a vast majority of the big problems Congress keeps failing to fix.
There is a field of medicine that is starting to get more attention recently called "functional medicine." Traditional medicine treats symptoms. If there is pain, pain killers are administered. If there is skin dryness, lotions are administered. If there is depression, medications designed primarily to make a person feel good are administered. The catch with a vast majority of these treatments is that they treat the symptoms, but they do not treat the cause. Chronic headaches, which are often treated with ever stronger pain killers, are typically caused by something that can be treated to eliminate the problem entirely. Skin dryness, even chronic types, can often be cured by functional medicine, when normal dermatologists would prescribe a life time treatment of lotions and moisture buffers. Instead of treating symptoms forever, functional medicine aims to cure the underlying cause of the symptoms, eliminating the symptoms for good. Now, apply this to income inequality.
Income inequality is a known cause of many of the problems we currently face. It is a likely cause for many other problems that we have either not researched or have not gathered enough supporting evidence to constitute proof of a causal relationship with. The evidence indicates that this one thing could solve nearly all of the big problems Congress has been trying to fix over the last half century. It is also currently the biggest concern of Americans. Congress should be tackling income inequality head on, instead of skirting around it trying to cover up the symptoms. Congress needs to stop flirting with special interests and start taking care of its primary responsibility: The people it is sworn to serve.
According to Pew Research, the second biggest concern of Americans is religious hatred. Obviously, this plays directly into religious freedom, and it is, in fact, one of the most major elements of religious freedom. Religious hatred is what ultimately caused our Founding Fathers to be so explicit in protecting religious freedom and in prohibiting preferential treatment of any religion by the government. As the second biggest concern, we should see a lot of discussion in Congress over this issue, given that it is the second most important thing Americans seem to care about. Sadly, Congress is more worried about things that Americans seem to find trivial. This is not the most disturbing part of the situation though.
The research indicates that the first biggest concern of Americans is income inequality. This subject has gotten some attention in Congress, with the most prominent result being a health care law that forces those at the middle and lower ends to spend a larger percentage of their income on health care insurance than those with much higher incomes. Technically, this is making income inequality worse, not better. While this subject seems to come up a lot in Congress and in Presidential press conferences and such, little is being done to actually address it. This is currently the most important issue to Americans, and Congress cannot be bothered to give it serious consideration long enough to actually do something about. Instead, Congress is doing things like harassing our (admittedly poor) education system, repeatedly forcing it to adopt untested techniques to improve test scores. Income inequality has consistently been proven to affect education outcome more than any other factor. Income inequality is the primary reason than a significant percentage of Americans cannot afford health care insurance (and making laws requiring them to purchase it does nothing to fix that problem). Income inequality is also very strongly linked to our recent and current economic problems. It also seems to have strong links to crime as well. Income inequality also has links to many types of self destructive behavior (drug and alcohol abuse, for instance). Income inequality is closely related to a vast majority of the big problems Congress keeps failing to fix.
There is a field of medicine that is starting to get more attention recently called "functional medicine." Traditional medicine treats symptoms. If there is pain, pain killers are administered. If there is skin dryness, lotions are administered. If there is depression, medications designed primarily to make a person feel good are administered. The catch with a vast majority of these treatments is that they treat the symptoms, but they do not treat the cause. Chronic headaches, which are often treated with ever stronger pain killers, are typically caused by something that can be treated to eliminate the problem entirely. Skin dryness, even chronic types, can often be cured by functional medicine, when normal dermatologists would prescribe a life time treatment of lotions and moisture buffers. Instead of treating symptoms forever, functional medicine aims to cure the underlying cause of the symptoms, eliminating the symptoms for good. Now, apply this to income inequality.
Income inequality is a known cause of many of the problems we currently face. It is a likely cause for many other problems that we have either not researched or have not gathered enough supporting evidence to constitute proof of a causal relationship with. The evidence indicates that this one thing could solve nearly all of the big problems Congress has been trying to fix over the last half century. It is also currently the biggest concern of Americans. Congress should be tackling income inequality head on, instead of skirting around it trying to cover up the symptoms. Congress needs to stop flirting with special interests and start taking care of its primary responsibility: The people it is sworn to serve.
04 November 2014
Time is Not Money
"Time is money." This phrase is used so frequently that it has become a cliché. Clichés like this one are so overused that they quickly become annoying. The worst part about this one, however, is that it is patently false. It may be possible, given the right circumstances, to exchange time for money. On its own though, time is far more valuable than money.
Time is flexible. Money is not. Time can be spent on any number of things, including love and friendship. Money cannot buy friends or love (another common cliché that contradicts the time cliché). Time can be spent on many things that money cannot. In addition, spending time can benefit both parties. Trading time for money always benefits the employer more that the employee (otherwise it would be unprofitable). Time can be spent on intangibles, like worship, while money cannot. In addition, anything worth spending money on requires time to benefit from. Even food takes time to eat. Time is an incredibly flexible resource. Money is an extremely limited resource. Time is, in a sense, more raw. It can be turned into money. It can also be turned into a huge array of other things that money cannot be turned into. Once time is turned into money, all of the other possibilities are lost. So, time is far more valuable than money.
Knowing this, why are we so willing to give up more of our time in exchange for money? Many Americans take work with them wherever they go, even when it is not a required part of the job. Spending part of vacation time working has become a very common practice. Even worse, those who do it the most are on salary, not hourly pay. They are not actually being paid any more for their extra work. Many people who become extremely rich through their "hard work" are trading time for money on a grand scale, and many of them are miserable or at least unhappy without the distractions of work. Consider the relationship between cash and gold. The value of gold typically rises at least as fast as inflation. The value of cash diminishes over time, due to inflation. Time is more flexible than even gold, but like gold, its value rises with inflation. Even as the value of money decreases, the value of time increases. This is not just a function of rising wages (which have actually risen slower than inflation over the past 60 years). As travel becomes easier and cheaper, as knowledge becomes more readily available, and as more activities become available, time becomes ever more flexible and thus valuable. Not only is time more valuable than money, its value is rising.
This begs an important question: When people go into fields where their work is very valuable, why do they put up with long hours at higher wages? I am a computer scientist. Entry level salary in this field pays around $65,000 a year. Some deluded companies expect 50 hours of work a week for this pay (there are plenty that will pay more for only 40 hours a week). This pay is enough for a family of 5 or more to live fairly comfortably in most places in the U.S.. In fact, my family of 7 could do perfectly fine on half that. That much money per year would be nice, but time is more valuable than money, even at that pay scale (in fact, it seems the higher the pay, the more valuable the time becomes, because less time is required to be traded to make enough money to be comfortable; also, more money opens up even more options for spending time). Instead of desiring additional pay for higher quality work, we should be desiring additional free time. If time is more valuable than money, then we should be willing to trade only as much time as is necessary to get enough money to be comfortable. We should not be willing to squander all of our valuable time in trade for more money than we will ever need. That is the definition of waste. Working more than is necessary is literally a waste of our valuable time.
The aggressive, and rather excessive, tax systems in most European countries has driven this point home. People who make too much money end up giving a majority of it to the government. Instead of raising wages, at a certain point, employers increase vacation time and reduce hours, because employees will not accept promotions that will ultimately not benefit them significantly. Those near the top of the pay scale (doctors, lawyers, and some tech industry) only work around 6 months out of the year, and sometimes even less. They get copious vacation time, and promotions for this class of workers generally involve little or no salary increase, but instead involve added weeks of paid vacation time. The time thing aside, this has some other pretty great economic benefits as well. Overall though, wealthy Europeans clearly see that time is more valuable than money, though it may have required oppressive taxes devaluing money to open their eyes.
A major peripheral benefit of valuing time more than money is economic. Employees who value time more than money will prefer reduced hours and increased vacation time to pay raises, once they earn enough to be comfortable. Reducing the amount of time employees work will ultimately increase the number of jobs available. A 30 hour work week would add one job for ever three full time employees. That is a 33% increase in the number of available jobs. A 20 hour work week (many workers in the medical, legal, and tech industries make enough to half their hours and pay and still be able to live better than a vast majority of Americans) would double the number of full time jobs. In addition to all of this, shorter work periods would not significantly reduce productivity in most jobs. Working eight hours a day, five days a week is quite tiring. Even just eight hours in a day is pretty tiring. After around five hours, productivity will drop significantly, as employees begin to experience fatigue. This may also result in increased incidents of mistakes and accidents, which can lead to negative productivity. Likewise, after three or four days in a row working eight hours, fatigue begins to set in and not just physical fatigue but also mental fatigue. This will further reduce productivity and increase potentially costly errors. Reducing hours (while maintaining total pay) of more productive employees will ultimately result in higher quality and more productive work. Added to all of this is morale. Morale has repeatedly proven to have a bigger impact on productivity and work quality than nearly anything else. Economically, valuing time more than money is both healthy and profitable. Not only is time more valuable than money, but treating time as more valuable can lead to higher profits and thus more money.
As our tax system is not as oppressive as that of most European nations, we cannot rely on it to force the truth down our throats. Businesses in the U.S. are not smart enough to recognize that increased free time is more valuable to them and their employees than pay raises, so we cannot rely on businesses to change. Our government is stuck on what was initially a temporary 40 hour work week, and it is unlikely to ever change that on its own, even though it is quickly becoming the only viable option for long term economic recovery. The only way companies will reduce time worked, instead of paying more money, is if the workers refuse anything less.
Most companies will not fire a person for refusing a promotion. Next time a promotion is offered, try negotiating for time instead of money*. It probably will not work the first few times, because business tradition in the U.S. does not recognize time as a negotiable commodity. You can either refuse the promotion outright if your boss will not negotiate time, or if the position really is one you want, attempting to negotiate time may at least increase the amount of raise that is offered. If enough people do this with many different employers, businesses will eventually start to take notice.
* Note that hourly employees should probably do the math for this to make sure that the requested time change will still earn enough money at whatever wage increase is settled upon.
Time is flexible. Money is not. Time can be spent on any number of things, including love and friendship. Money cannot buy friends or love (another common cliché that contradicts the time cliché). Time can be spent on many things that money cannot. In addition, spending time can benefit both parties. Trading time for money always benefits the employer more that the employee (otherwise it would be unprofitable). Time can be spent on intangibles, like worship, while money cannot. In addition, anything worth spending money on requires time to benefit from. Even food takes time to eat. Time is an incredibly flexible resource. Money is an extremely limited resource. Time is, in a sense, more raw. It can be turned into money. It can also be turned into a huge array of other things that money cannot be turned into. Once time is turned into money, all of the other possibilities are lost. So, time is far more valuable than money.
Knowing this, why are we so willing to give up more of our time in exchange for money? Many Americans take work with them wherever they go, even when it is not a required part of the job. Spending part of vacation time working has become a very common practice. Even worse, those who do it the most are on salary, not hourly pay. They are not actually being paid any more for their extra work. Many people who become extremely rich through their "hard work" are trading time for money on a grand scale, and many of them are miserable or at least unhappy without the distractions of work. Consider the relationship between cash and gold. The value of gold typically rises at least as fast as inflation. The value of cash diminishes over time, due to inflation. Time is more flexible than even gold, but like gold, its value rises with inflation. Even as the value of money decreases, the value of time increases. This is not just a function of rising wages (which have actually risen slower than inflation over the past 60 years). As travel becomes easier and cheaper, as knowledge becomes more readily available, and as more activities become available, time becomes ever more flexible and thus valuable. Not only is time more valuable than money, its value is rising.
This begs an important question: When people go into fields where their work is very valuable, why do they put up with long hours at higher wages? I am a computer scientist. Entry level salary in this field pays around $65,000 a year. Some deluded companies expect 50 hours of work a week for this pay (there are plenty that will pay more for only 40 hours a week). This pay is enough for a family of 5 or more to live fairly comfortably in most places in the U.S.. In fact, my family of 7 could do perfectly fine on half that. That much money per year would be nice, but time is more valuable than money, even at that pay scale (in fact, it seems the higher the pay, the more valuable the time becomes, because less time is required to be traded to make enough money to be comfortable; also, more money opens up even more options for spending time). Instead of desiring additional pay for higher quality work, we should be desiring additional free time. If time is more valuable than money, then we should be willing to trade only as much time as is necessary to get enough money to be comfortable. We should not be willing to squander all of our valuable time in trade for more money than we will ever need. That is the definition of waste. Working more than is necessary is literally a waste of our valuable time.
The aggressive, and rather excessive, tax systems in most European countries has driven this point home. People who make too much money end up giving a majority of it to the government. Instead of raising wages, at a certain point, employers increase vacation time and reduce hours, because employees will not accept promotions that will ultimately not benefit them significantly. Those near the top of the pay scale (doctors, lawyers, and some tech industry) only work around 6 months out of the year, and sometimes even less. They get copious vacation time, and promotions for this class of workers generally involve little or no salary increase, but instead involve added weeks of paid vacation time. The time thing aside, this has some other pretty great economic benefits as well. Overall though, wealthy Europeans clearly see that time is more valuable than money, though it may have required oppressive taxes devaluing money to open their eyes.
A major peripheral benefit of valuing time more than money is economic. Employees who value time more than money will prefer reduced hours and increased vacation time to pay raises, once they earn enough to be comfortable. Reducing the amount of time employees work will ultimately increase the number of jobs available. A 30 hour work week would add one job for ever three full time employees. That is a 33% increase in the number of available jobs. A 20 hour work week (many workers in the medical, legal, and tech industries make enough to half their hours and pay and still be able to live better than a vast majority of Americans) would double the number of full time jobs. In addition to all of this, shorter work periods would not significantly reduce productivity in most jobs. Working eight hours a day, five days a week is quite tiring. Even just eight hours in a day is pretty tiring. After around five hours, productivity will drop significantly, as employees begin to experience fatigue. This may also result in increased incidents of mistakes and accidents, which can lead to negative productivity. Likewise, after three or four days in a row working eight hours, fatigue begins to set in and not just physical fatigue but also mental fatigue. This will further reduce productivity and increase potentially costly errors. Reducing hours (while maintaining total pay) of more productive employees will ultimately result in higher quality and more productive work. Added to all of this is morale. Morale has repeatedly proven to have a bigger impact on productivity and work quality than nearly anything else. Economically, valuing time more than money is both healthy and profitable. Not only is time more valuable than money, but treating time as more valuable can lead to higher profits and thus more money.
As our tax system is not as oppressive as that of most European nations, we cannot rely on it to force the truth down our throats. Businesses in the U.S. are not smart enough to recognize that increased free time is more valuable to them and their employees than pay raises, so we cannot rely on businesses to change. Our government is stuck on what was initially a temporary 40 hour work week, and it is unlikely to ever change that on its own, even though it is quickly becoming the only viable option for long term economic recovery. The only way companies will reduce time worked, instead of paying more money, is if the workers refuse anything less.
Most companies will not fire a person for refusing a promotion. Next time a promotion is offered, try negotiating for time instead of money*. It probably will not work the first few times, because business tradition in the U.S. does not recognize time as a negotiable commodity. You can either refuse the promotion outright if your boss will not negotiate time, or if the position really is one you want, attempting to negotiate time may at least increase the amount of raise that is offered. If enough people do this with many different employers, businesses will eventually start to take notice.
* Note that hourly employees should probably do the math for this to make sure that the requested time change will still earn enough money at whatever wage increase is settled upon.
03 November 2014
You Don't Look Sick
Many years ago, when I worked at Lowe's, I came in to get my paycheck on a day when I had called in sick. Rent was due that day, so I had to get my paycheck regardless of how I was feeling. As she gave me my paycheck, the head cashier said, "You don't look sick." I do not recall exactly what I said (I was actually sick; I have never called in sick when I was not), but in my head I was thinking, "Do you expect me to pretend to cough and maybe limp or something to convince you?" I felt nauseous when I got up that morning. I forget whether I threw up (probably not, because I don't usually throw up even with the flu). I also had a headache, and I probably had some bowel irritation. I did not have a cough. I was not excessively tired. I did not show any external signs of being sick, so my boss assumed I was lying, and she implied as much with her inappropriate comment. She was wrong. I was actually sick. If I had not had bills due, I would not even have come in to get my paycheck.
People with PTSD, severe anxiety, and a host of other chronic disorders feel the same way I did that day. Veterans with PTSD are often recommended to get services dogs, who can help them avoid or recover from anxiety attacks better than any human. People who see them with a service animal often give them dirty looks, because they cannot see any disorder that would justify having a service animal. Anxiety (which is a common symptom of PTSD, but a disorder in and of itself as well) can be even worse. A person having a severe anxiety attack should probably not be around other people, however, few employers would consider an anxiety attack a valid reason for calling in sick. In fact, many employers (especially low end ones like fast food) want evidence of sickness before sending a sick employee home (still feel like McDonald's for your lunch break?). Here is a news flash: Most diseases and sicknesses do not present obviously visible physical symptoms.
Just because a person does not "look sick" does not mean that they are not sick. Yes, there are hypochondriacs out there. As a percentage of the population, they are fairly rare. Many people lie about being sick to get out of work, and these people should feel ashamed, because they are part of the cause of this discrimination against the truly sick. That aside though, we would be better off not judging at all. Christian or not, the Bible gives some very valuable advice when it says we should not judge. Even if you believe there is no God to punish us for unjust judgments, most judgments of humans made by other humans are totally wrong. Most poor people are not lazy (in fact, the typical poor person probably works harder than the typical middle class or rich person). People who are sick or disabled do not usually look sick or disabled. Black people are not more prone to crime. Asians are not inherently smarter than everyone else. Judging in this way is not just morally wrong, it is straight up stupid. The odds of being wrong are far better than 50%. Consider this: Our justice system requires a jury of 12 people to make judgments based on substantial evidence and long legal arguments and explanations, and even they still get it wrong sometimes. If you think you can do better on your own with no evidence or explanation, you are a fool.
People with PTSD, severe anxiety, and a host of other chronic disorders feel the same way I did that day. Veterans with PTSD are often recommended to get services dogs, who can help them avoid or recover from anxiety attacks better than any human. People who see them with a service animal often give them dirty looks, because they cannot see any disorder that would justify having a service animal. Anxiety (which is a common symptom of PTSD, but a disorder in and of itself as well) can be even worse. A person having a severe anxiety attack should probably not be around other people, however, few employers would consider an anxiety attack a valid reason for calling in sick. In fact, many employers (especially low end ones like fast food) want evidence of sickness before sending a sick employee home (still feel like McDonald's for your lunch break?). Here is a news flash: Most diseases and sicknesses do not present obviously visible physical symptoms.
Just because a person does not "look sick" does not mean that they are not sick. Yes, there are hypochondriacs out there. As a percentage of the population, they are fairly rare. Many people lie about being sick to get out of work, and these people should feel ashamed, because they are part of the cause of this discrimination against the truly sick. That aside though, we would be better off not judging at all. Christian or not, the Bible gives some very valuable advice when it says we should not judge. Even if you believe there is no God to punish us for unjust judgments, most judgments of humans made by other humans are totally wrong. Most poor people are not lazy (in fact, the typical poor person probably works harder than the typical middle class or rich person). People who are sick or disabled do not usually look sick or disabled. Black people are not more prone to crime. Asians are not inherently smarter than everyone else. Judging in this way is not just morally wrong, it is straight up stupid. The odds of being wrong are far better than 50%. Consider this: Our justice system requires a jury of 12 people to make judgments based on substantial evidence and long legal arguments and explanations, and even they still get it wrong sometimes. If you think you can do better on your own with no evidence or explanation, you are a fool.
01 November 2014
Lazy Career Women
My wife is superwoman. This is according to many of our female friends and some of our male friends. We have five children. We have been married seven years, and we waited until we were married (in fact, it took a year and a half before we got pregnant with our first). In other words, my wife has spend a vast majority of our marriage pregnant. We have had two or three in diapers at the same time for most of the time as well. To make it worse, I have been in school for a majority of our marriage as well. For the last few years, my wife has also been volunteering as a doula (a more involved labor coach). Now, my parents have 13 children, half of whom are still at home, so I have never seen the work my wife does as something epic or huge, though it is still certainly impressive. She is both a great mother and a great wife.
Modern career women work far less than my wife. This is probably what has earned her the title "superwoman" among our friends. I realized something today though: One hundred years ago, most women worked about as hard as my wife. Two hundred years ago, nearly all women worked harder than my wife (imagine doing laundry by hand). Our modern culture paints the stay at home mom as the lazy one (and, I have heard that Obama recently told working moms that they need to get jobs, in a speech; more on this to come, assuming the claim is true). Maybe caring for a single child is easier than a career, once the child is a few years old. Maybe caring for two children is close to equivalent to a career. Caring for more than two children, however, is certainly more work than a full time job. Besides that, mothers have to work in multiple capacities. A career woman might have several common tasks in her work, but they all relate to the same field. A stay at home mom has to be a chef, a laundry woman, a baby sitter, a maid, a therapist, and any number of other things, mostly totally unrelated to each other. A mother of young children has to be on call, even in the middle of the night, and a mother of an infant practically has scheduled interruptions throughout the night. Even a stay at home mom of just one is likely working more than eight hours a day. A stay at home mom of two or more is probably working 12 to 16 hours a day, counting nighttime interruptions. This is how much the average mom has worked for a vast majority of human history. Compared to her, even the most hard working modern career woman is lazy.
Now, I want to clarify something: I am not saying that men are not lazy. In the past, men have traditionally worked 10 to 14 hours a day in hard labor. The modern eight-hour-a-day working man is also lazy in comparison. Men have traditionally done very physically taxing work, and even the most fit man is limited by the capacity of the human body. Modern men, even when they do work 10 to 14 hours a day, are doing much easier work, physically, than ancient men.
I am also not trying to imply that women should work much more. What I am trying to say is that only fools claim that a stay at home mom is lazy. Maybe some, who are neglecting their children, are lazy. Most, however, work harder than any working man or woman. If my wife is superwoman, it is because she works as hard as women used to work, when most modern women are choosing the easier path. She does not deserve derision for choosing to be a stay at home mom. She deserves respect.
Modern career women work far less than my wife. This is probably what has earned her the title "superwoman" among our friends. I realized something today though: One hundred years ago, most women worked about as hard as my wife. Two hundred years ago, nearly all women worked harder than my wife (imagine doing laundry by hand). Our modern culture paints the stay at home mom as the lazy one (and, I have heard that Obama recently told working moms that they need to get jobs, in a speech; more on this to come, assuming the claim is true). Maybe caring for a single child is easier than a career, once the child is a few years old. Maybe caring for two children is close to equivalent to a career. Caring for more than two children, however, is certainly more work than a full time job. Besides that, mothers have to work in multiple capacities. A career woman might have several common tasks in her work, but they all relate to the same field. A stay at home mom has to be a chef, a laundry woman, a baby sitter, a maid, a therapist, and any number of other things, mostly totally unrelated to each other. A mother of young children has to be on call, even in the middle of the night, and a mother of an infant practically has scheduled interruptions throughout the night. Even a stay at home mom of just one is likely working more than eight hours a day. A stay at home mom of two or more is probably working 12 to 16 hours a day, counting nighttime interruptions. This is how much the average mom has worked for a vast majority of human history. Compared to her, even the most hard working modern career woman is lazy.
Now, I want to clarify something: I am not saying that men are not lazy. In the past, men have traditionally worked 10 to 14 hours a day in hard labor. The modern eight-hour-a-day working man is also lazy in comparison. Men have traditionally done very physically taxing work, and even the most fit man is limited by the capacity of the human body. Modern men, even when they do work 10 to 14 hours a day, are doing much easier work, physically, than ancient men.
I am also not trying to imply that women should work much more. What I am trying to say is that only fools claim that a stay at home mom is lazy. Maybe some, who are neglecting their children, are lazy. Most, however, work harder than any working man or woman. If my wife is superwoman, it is because she works as hard as women used to work, when most modern women are choosing the easier path. She does not deserve derision for choosing to be a stay at home mom. She deserves respect.
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