My 2015 post on why Trump was a sign of a healthy democracy

I'm on the way to writing about what I think should be Biden's #2 priority (#1 is undoing Trump's executive orders). Three previous in this series include: 

1. How I think about the Trump voter (and America)
2. What is middle class and why can't half of American voters get there?
3. Biden's lost agenda

This fourth post is about something I wrote in 2015. Back then I thought Trump was a bad joke. I thought that American politics was a compromise between corporations, powerful (wealthy) individuals, and the voting masses. Clearly corporations and the wealthy would prefer many GOP candidates over Trump, and the masses alone would not be enough.

Yay masses.

Now, amidst the smoldering wreckage, I'm going to quote from that old misguided post (emphases added): 

Donald Trump is a sign of a healthy democracy. Really.

... I’m a fan because Trump appears to be channeling the most important cohort in the modern world — people who are not going to complete the advanced academic track we call college. Canada has the world’s highest “college” graduation rate at 55.8%, but that number is heavily biased by programs that can resemble the senior year of American High School (in Quebec, CEGEP, like mine). If we adjust for that bias, and recognizing that nobody does better than Canada, it’s plausible, even likely, that no more than half of the population of the industrialized world is going to complete the minimum requirements for the “knowledge work” and “creative work” that dominates the modern economy.

... This [never-college] cohort, about 40% of the human race, has experienced at least 40 years of declining income and shrinking employment opportunities. We no longer employ millions of clerks to file papers, or harvest crops, or dig ditches, or fill gas tanks or even assemble cars. That work has gone, some to other countries but most to automation. Those jobs aren’t coming back.

The future for about half of all Americans, and all humans, looks grim. When Trump talks to his white audience about immigrants taking jobs and betrayal by the elite he is starting a conversation we need to have. 

It doesn’t matter that Trump is a buffoon, or that restricting immigration won’t make any difference. It matters that the conversation is starting. After all, how far do you think anyone would get telling 40% of America that there is no place for them in current order because they’re not “smart” enough?

Yeah, not very far at all.

This is how democracy deals with hard conversations. It begins with yelling and ranting and blowhards. Eventually the conversation mutates. Painful thoughts become less painful. Facts are slowly accepted. Solutions begin to emerge.

Donald Trump is good for democracy, good for America, and good for the world.

"Good for democracy" except, of course, the white non-college masses spoke clearly back in 2016. An actual "President Trump" was unthinkable, but it happened. I do not underestimate him now.

So that part of the post did not hold up so well. But I stand by the part about making the never-college 40-50% of Americans a political focus. More on that when I write the fifth post in this series.

See also

• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes (Jan 2011)
• Rubio, Sanders and the President Gordon agenda (Mar 2016)

Piketty's latest work on inequality is wrong about education.

The NYT has a readable summary of Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s US income research. Much of it is familiar, but I was struck by this paragraph:

[since 1979] … Younger adults between 20 and 45 years old have seen their after-tax incomes flatline.

But over the same period, seniors in the bottom half have seen their after-tax incomes grow by over 70 percent. The bulk of that gain represents increased health care spending through Medicare.

Growth rates of a few percent a year do add up; health care is eating everything. Maybe it’s time to reread my old health care post.

Their findings are very important, but one of their recommendations falls flat (emphases mine) …

… improving education and job training, equalizing distribution of human and financial capital, and increasing labor bargaining power, combined with a return to steeply progressive taxation

No, education and job training aren’t the answer. Roughly 40-50% of the US population has an IQ of less than 100. People with an IQ of under 100 have many skills, but they are not going to succeed in an academic program. Canada has the world’s highest “college” (includes 2 year vocational programs) graduation rate, and even they top out at around 56% of the population. I’m not sure why economists struggle with this basic arithmetic, my guess is they spend too much time with the cognitive elite.

What is the answer? We need to flip our thinking. We can’t change people to fit the work available in the natural post-industrial economy. We need to change the work to fit the humans. We need to incentivize work that is meaningful and rewarding across the cognitive spectrum. Germany did some of that by biasing their economy towards manufacturing. We can do some of that too (sorry Germany, that’s going to hurt you!), but we’re going to have to think more broadly. We’ll need to provide direct or indirect subsidies for work that’s productive even if it can’t compete with automation. We’ll have to apply work support lessons from the US military (long history of productive work across cognitive spectrum) and from traditional disability work support programs.

 

How does the world look to Trump's core supporters?

Set aside the neo-Klan-Nazi minority. Set aside the truly despicable - Coulter, Hannity, Falwell and the like. Forget the hell-spawn who think only of their personal wealth.

Think about the white non-college male voter:

… Trump’s fortunes rest on his core supporters, white men who lack a four-year college degree … He leads Clinton among them by 76-17 percent, an enormous 59-point advantage. That’s widened from 40 points early this month; it’s a group Mitt Romney won by 31 points -- half Trump’s current margin -- in 2012.

Whatever happens with this election, that 60% gap is a staggering fact.

How does the world look like to these non-college white men of the 4th quintile?

I have limited exposure to this cohort. A few Facebook friends — but they don’t post much about Trump. A family member with a cognitive disability claims to like Trump. That’s about it.

I need a journalist-anthropologist to falsify my story. I can’t help imagining a story though. It goes like this …

• I have no hope of a secure economic future with savings, stable employment, good healthcare benefits and a pension.
• I have limited marriage opportunities. I really miss the patriarchy. I feel that in my bones.
• I watch Fox. I can understand it. Fox approves of me. Nobody else cares what happens to me.
• I don’t understand economics, but I’ve lived through the past ten years. I’ve heard a lot of broken promises. Maybe nobody understands economics. Maybe the people who understand economics are lying to me. I definitely don’t understand borrowing from a wealthier future.
• I don’t like academics.
• I don’t care about the damned polar bears. I like warm weather. I don’t like bugs. I like motors and pavement. I don’t care about CO emissions.
• I watch reality cop shows, where every criminal is a black man. I directly encounter crime and it’s always black men. I am afraid of black men. [1]
• I don’t have a lot to lose.

None of this is going to go away. If we want to keep civilization going we need to give this cohort hope.

See also:

• In defense of Donald Trump 7/2016
• Donald Trump is a sign of a healthy democracy. Really. 8/2015 (Where the alternative is the french revolution…)
• Trump explained: Non-college white Americans now have higher middle-aged death rates than black Americans 11/2015
• Trumpism: a transition function to the world of mass disability. 8/2016

- fn -

[1] As a pedestrian and cyclist I am far more likely to be injured or killed by a white woman on a phone than a black man. FWIW.

Trumpism: a transition function to the world of mass disability.

We know the shape of the socioeconomic future for the bottom 40% in the post globalization post AI  mass disability world.

But how do we get there? How does a culture transition from memes of independence and southern Christian-capitalist marketarianism to a world where government deeply biases the economy towards low-education employment?

There needs to be a transition function. A transform that is applied to a culture. With the anthropology perspective I’ve long sought Arlie Hochschild makes the case that Trump is, among other things, a transition function that erases Tea Party Marketarianism and embraces the heresy of government support (albeit for the “deserving”).

In a complex adaptive system we get the transition function we need rather than the one we want. No guarantee we survive it though.

See also:

• Trumps is a Politics of Loss and Revenge 8/2016: Marshall demolishes false dichotomy between economic distress and white racism.
• Gordon's Notes: Donald Trump is a sign of a healthy democracy. Really. 8/2015. Well, today I’d write “a desperate democracy”, but my tough love take on why we have this pathologic human being contending to more or less destroy civilization.
• Trump explained: Non-college white Americans now have higher middle-aged death rates than black Americans 11/2015. Marshall does a better job in his 2016 post.

What socioeconomic support will look like in 20 years

This is what I think socioeconomic support will look like in 2040 based on cognitive [2] quintiles.

The bottom quintile (0-20%, non-voters) will have supported work environments and direct income subsidies; an improved version of what most [1] wealthy nations do for the 0-5% of adults currently considered cognitively “disabled” [1].

The second quintile (20-40%, Trump base if white) will have subsidized employment (direct or indirect).

The fifth quintile (80-100%) will live much as they do now.

I don’t know what happens to the 3rd and 4th quintile.

- fn -

[1] The US is currently “mainstreaming” the cognitively disabled into relatively unsupported work, a well intentioned and evidence-free project by (my) Team Liberal that is going to end in tears.

[2]  In US male euros (avoid racism/sexism effects) maps to academic achievement which tests learning, social skills, temperament and the like.

Donald Trump is a sign of a healthy democracy. Really.

I’m a liberal of Humean descent, and I’m a fan of Donald Trump.

No, not because Trump is humiliating the GOP, though he is. Of course I enjoy seeing the GOP suffer for its (many) sins, and it would be very good for the world if the GOP loses the 2016 presidential election, but Trump won’t cause any lasting political damage. Unless he runs as a third party candidate he’ll have no real impact on the elections.

I’m a fan because Trump appears to be channeling the most important cohort in the modern world — people who are not going to complete the advanced academic track we call college. Canada has the world’s highest “college” graduation rate at 55.8%, but that number is heavily biased by programs that can resemble the senior year of American High School (in Quebec, CEGEP, like mine). If we adjust for that bias, and recognizing that nobody does better than Canada, it’s plausible, even likely, that no more than half of the population of the industrialized world is going to complete the minimum requirements for the “knowledge work” and “creative work” that dominates the modern economy.

Perhaps not coincidentally about 40-50% population of Canadians have an IQ under 100. Most of this group will struggle to complete an academic program even given the strongest work ethic, personal discipline, and external support. This number is not going to change short of widespread genetic engineering...

This cohort, about 40% of the human race, has experienced at least 40 years of declining income and shrinking employment opportunities. We no longer employ millions of clerks to file papers, or harvest crops, or dig ditches, or fill gas tanks or even assemble cars. That work has gone, some to other countries but most to automation. Those jobs aren’t coming back.

The future for about half of all Americans, and all humans, looks grim. When Trump talks to his white audience about immigrants taking jobs and betrayal by the elite he is starting a conversation we need to have. 

It doesn’t matter that Trump is a buffoon, or that restricting immigration won’t make any difference. It matters that the conversation is starting. After all, how far do you think anyone would get telling 40% of America that there is no place for them in current order because they’re not “smart” enough?

Yeah, not very far at all.

This is how democracy deals with hard conversations. It begins with yelling and ranting and blowhards. Eventually the conversation mutates. Painful thoughts become less painful. Facts are slowly accepted. Solutions begin to emerge.

Donald Trump is good for democracy, good for America, and good for the world.

See also

• For American adults are poverty and disability the same thing? 10/2013
• The Post-AI era is also the era of mass disability 12/2012
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2011
• Deficits, climate, BP and immigration: Saving America is suspiciously easy 7/2010
• Dynamic stability: struggle and balance in minds, brains, genomes, pregnancy, politics, ecosystems and economies 1/2015
• Mass disability and Great Depression 2.0 3/2008
• Mass disability goes mainstream: disequilibria and RCIIT 11/2011
• Salmon, Picketty, Corporate Persons, Eco-Econ, and why we shouldn't worry 4/2014
• Civilization is stronger than we think: Structural deficits and complex adaptive systems 5/2010

Riots

Over the past few decades developed world growth in wealth and income has been captured by a small segment of the population.

Globalization and information technology have reduced demand and opportunity for the majority of Americans. We don’t have jobs filing papers, we don’t have jobs filling gas tanks, we don’t deliver mail, we don’t hand out cash at the bank. We can barely service cars any more. Computers/smartphones can’t be serviced. I call this mass disability.

America was built on slavery; the civil war was only 150 years ago. We’ll be working on our slavery issues for at least another hundred years. Black America has been, and will be, our most vulnerable and stressed population. Euro-americans are in denial about the work remaining. (We’ve made progress, but it’s one hell of a long crawl back from that abyss.)

So, riots.

For American adults are poverty and disability the same thing?

[Preface 9/6/13: I am enjoying the app.net discussion thread on this with @duerig and @clarkgoble. When reading this, try substituting TRREP - Trait that Reduces Relative Economic Productivity for the word "disability". Also, please note disability is not inability. In my experience parenting/coaching two children with disabilities I think of managing disability like building a railroad across mountainous terrain. Sometimes reinforce, somethings divert, always forward.]

-- 

Anosmia is not a disability.

Well, technically, it is. Humans are supposed to come with a sense of smell. For most of human existence anosmia was a significant survival problem. At the least, it helps to known when food has gone bad. So Anosmia is a biological disability.

In today's America though, there's not much obvious economic downside to anosmia. Diminished appetite is more of a feature than a defect. There are many jobs where a keen sense of smell is a disadvantage -- including, I can assure you, medical practice. Anosmia is a biological disability, but it's not an economic disability. Not here and now anyway -- once it would have been.

Disability is contextual, it's the combination of variation, environment and measured outcome that defines disability.

What about if I lose my right leg? Am I disabled then? Well, if I delivered mail I'd have a problem -- but in my job an insurance company would snort milk out its proverbial nose if I tried to claim longterm disability.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Stephen Hawking is an extreme example -- you can have a lot of physical disability and not be economically disabled.

So how can I become disabled? 

Probably not through my "risky" CrossFit hobby,  but my benign bicycle commute is another matter. Until that glorious day when humans are no longer allowed to drive cars, I'm at risk of a catastrophic head injury. An injury that may impact my cognitive processing, my disposition to use cognition ("rationality"), my judgment and temperament -- and leave me as completely disabled for high income work as if I were 85 [1]. At that point, barring insurance, I'm economically disabled and impoverished.

Clearly, acquired cognitive injury can be disabling. So what of congenital cognitive disorders like low functioning autism or severe impulse disorders? Impulsivity, inability to plan, very low IQ ... Clearly disabling. Without income support from family or government, extreme poverty is likely.

Ahh, but what of those born with average IQ, average rationality, average judgment, average temperament? Employment is likely -- but earnings will be limited. To be average in the economy of 2013 is to sit on the borderline of poverty -- and of disability. The difference will be decided by other factors, factors like race, location, and family wealth. An average person who looks and acts "white" and is born to a middle class family in Minnesota may make it into the dwindling middle class (for a time), an average person who looks and acts "black" and is born to a poor family in Mississippi is going to be impoverished.

Which brings me to my question - for American adults are poverty and disability the same thing? Not entirely -- race, residence, and family income have an impact, particularly within some ill-defined "middle range" of "native disability". Not entirely -- but they are clearly related. 

How related? Consider this OECD graph of poverty rates across nations with very different cultures, attitudes and histories:

 

Across Finland, Denmark, Sweden and the US we see a "natural" or baseline (pre-transfer) adult poverty rate of 24-32%, with Swede and the US both at 28%. Not coincidentally, 30% is what I suspect our baseline rate of mass disability is today.

We can and should deal with poverty-enhancing factors like racism, unfunded schools and the like. That will make a difference for many -- and, if all goes well, we might get the US baseline poverty rate to be more like Denmark's. We'll go from 28% to 24%. Ok, maybe, in a perfect world, we get our baseline rate from 28% to 20%. Maybe.

To really deal with poverty though, we need to understand what real disability is. Economic disability in 2013 isn't a missing leg, it's poor judgment, weak rationality, low IQ, disposition to substance abuse. To conquer poverty, we will need to conquer disability - either with Danish style income transfers or with something better.

I think we can do better.

- fn -

[1] Social security is simply a form of insurance for age-related disability with an arbitrary (but pragmatic) substitution of chronology for disability measurement.

See also

• The Post-AI era is also the era of mass disability 12/2012
• Mass disability and the middle class 9/11
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2011. There are things we can do. Ok, maybe not the US, but maybe China.
• ADHD, CDD, and Related Conditions 2002. I just came across this. This was one of the last old-school web pages I did before I started writing blog posts. It anticipates a lot of what I've written since.
• Disability and poverty - Wikipedia - yes, this isn't original :-).
• Various Supports for Low-Income Families Reduce Poverty and Have Long-Term Positive Effects On Families and Children — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 7/2013 

 

Poverty in the west

For much of human history slavery, rape, abuse of children and women, heavy drinking, murder, cruelty, and animal torture were commonplace and accepted.

Not so much now, at least in wealthy nations. Humans are immensely imperfect and prone to regression, but we are better than we were. Progress happens.

Progress happens, but then the bar goes up. We clean the air of LA and the acid rain of the Northeast, so we get global CO2 management as our next assignment. We work through a chunk of our racist and genocidal history, and we get to work on gay marriage. Fifty years from now we won't eat animals. And so it goes.

Poverty elimination is also on the list. Might be an even harder problem than CO2 emissions. The good news is that worldwide poverty is improving very quickly...

US intelligence agency sees world poverty in sharp drop, rising fight for resources by 2030 - The Washington Post

Poverty across the planet will be virtually eliminated by 2030, with a rising middle class of some two billion people pushing for more rights and demanding more resources, the chief of the top U.S. intelligence analysis shop said Saturday.

If current trends continue, the 1 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day now will drop to half that number in roughly two decades, Christoper Kojm said...

I don't think 'virtually eliminated' means what Kojm thinks it means - but this is good news all the same.

The bad news is that poverty in America isn't going away.  Peter Edelman runs the numbers  on our brand of poverty ...

Why Can’t We End Poverty in America? - Peter Edelman - NYT NYT

... The lowest percentage in poverty since we started counting was 11.1 percent in 1973. The rate climbed as high as 15.2 percent in 1983. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back down to 11.3 percent, and yet 15 million more people are poor today...

... We’ve been drowning in a flood of low-wage jobs for the last 40 years. Most of the income of people in poverty comes from work. According to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau, 104 million people — a third of the population — have annual incomes below twice the poverty line, less than $38,000 for a family of three. They struggle to make ends meet every month.

Half the jobs in the nation pay less than $34,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A quarter pay below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually. Families that can send another adult to work have done better, but single mothers (and fathers) don’t have that option. Poverty among families with children headed by single mothers exceeds 40 percent.

Wages for those who work on jobs in the bottom half have been stuck since 1973, increasing just 7 percent...

Addressing these problems will be challenging. Children are very expensive in a post-industrial society, yet much of American poverty is concentrated in father-free families managed by a single mother. Their poverty would be easier to manage if they had made different fertility choices; simplistic income subsidies could incent politically unsustainable behaviors.

Fortunately there are strategies which eliminate perverse incentives. Tying income to managed work, providing health and child care (including easy access to contraception), and quality educational programs alleviate poverty and provides the means and incentives to make thoughtful fertility choices.

A different slice of our poverty comes from a mismatch between post-industrial employment and human skills. This isn't going a way, 3D printing of manufactured goods will do to manufacturing what full text search did to the law. Meanwhile six percent of Americans suffer from a serious mental illness every year and twenty-five percent of Americans have a measured IQ less than 90. Given changes in technology, and the automation of many jobs, is it conceivable that 20% of Americans are relatively disabled?

Again, the strategy for this community is subsidized work -- the same strategy used for the "special needs" community. (Since I won't get to retire ever, I assume I'll be in this community sooner or later.) 

We know what we need to do. We even know where the money will come from -- from taxing CO2 emissions, financial transactions, and the 5% (ouch).

Sooner or later, we'll do it.

See also:

• Median male earnings - declining since 1969? 3/2011
• Mass disability and Great Depression 2.0 3/2008
• Employment in the Great Stagnation 8/2010
• Post-industrial employment: adjusting to a new world 5/2010
• Plan B - Skip College - NYTimes.com 5/2010
• Why your daughters should be roofers -- not architects 3/2004
• Causes of the Great Recession: China, GPSII and RCIIIT. Now for Act III. 4/2010
• Neo-Feudalism: Return of the Trades 2/2004
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2010
• Is labor lumpish in whitewater times? 7/2012

Is labor lumpish in whitewater times?

Krugman is famously dismissive about claims of structural aspects to underemployment (though years ago he wasn't as sure). DeLong, I think, is less sure.

Krugman points to the uniformity of underemployment. If there were structural causes, wouldn't we see areas of relative strength? It seems a bit much to claim that multiple broad-coverage structural shocks would produce such a homogeneous picture.

Fortunately, I fly under the radar (esp. under Paul's), so I am free to wonder about labor in the post-AI era complicated by the the rise of China and India and the enabling effect of IT on financial fraud. Stories like this catch my attention ...

Fix Law Schools - Atlantic Vincent Rougeau  Mobile

... the jobs and high pay that used to greet new attorneys at large firms are gone, wiped away by innovations such as software that takes seconds to do the document discovery that once occupied junior attorneys for scores of (billable) hours while they learned their profession..

Enhanced search and discovery is only one small piece of the post-AI world, but there's a case to be made that it wiped out large portions of a profession. Brynjolfsson and McAfee expand that case in Race Against the Machine [1], though almost all of their fixes [1] increase economic output rather than addressing the core issue of mass disability. The exception, perhaps deliberately numbered 13 of 19, is easy to miss ...

13. Make it comparatively more attractive to hire a person than to buy more technology through incentives, rather than regulation. This can be done by, among other things, decreasing employer payroll taxes and providing subsidies or tax breaks for employing people who have been out of work for a long time. Taxes on congestion and pollution can more than make up for the reduced labor taxes.

Of course by "pollution ... tax" they mean "Carbon Tax" [1]. The fix here is the same fix that has been applied to provide employment for persons with cognitive disabilities such as low IQ and/or autism. In the modern world disability is a relative term that applies to a larger population.

If our whitewater times continue, we will either go there or go nowhere.

[1] They're popular at the "Singularity University" and their fixes are published in "World Future Society". Outcasts they are. Their fan base probably explains why the can't use the "Carbon" word, WFS/SU people have a weird problem with letter C. 

See also:

• Slavery, technology, and the future of the weak 2/2012. What do you do with a labor surplus?
• DeLong, Mankiw and the Problem of the Weak 10/2006. When Mankiw was almost readable.
• Mass disability and the middle class 9/2011

Escape from North Korea's Camp 14

Life in the empire of the Kims:

How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp | Books | The Guardian

... The South Korean government estimates there are about 154,000 prisoners in North Korea's labour camps, while the US state department puts the number as high as 200,000. The biggest is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. Numbers 15 and 18 have re-education zones where detainees receive remedial instruction in the teachings of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, and are sometimes released. The remaining camps are "complete control districts" where "irredeemables" are worked to death...

... One day, Shin joined his mother at work, planting rice. When she fell behind, a guard made her kneel in the hot sun with her arms in the air until she passed out...

.. in June 1989, Shin's teacher, a guard who wore a uniform and a pistol on his hip, sprang a surprise search of the six-year-olds. When it was over, he held five kernels of corn. They all belonged to a slight girl Shin remembers as exceptionally pretty. The teacher ordered the girl to the front of the class and told her to kneel. Swinging his wooden pointer, he struck her on the head again and again. As Shin and his classmates watched in silence, lumps puffed up on her skull, blood leaked from her nose and she toppled over on to the concrete floor. Shin and his classmates carried her home. Later that night, she died...

... Trust among friends was poisoned by constant competition. Trying to win extra food rations, children told guards what their neighbours were eating, wearing and saying...

... On the morning after he betrayed his mother and brother, uniformed men came to the schoolyard for Shin. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven in silence to an underground prison...

... chief's lieutenants pulled off Shin's clothes and trussed him up. When they were finished, his body formed a U, his face and feet toward the ceiling, his bare back toward the floor. The chief interrogator shouted more questions. A tub of burning charcoal was dragged beneath Shin, then the winch lowered towards the flames. Crazed with pain and smelling his burning flesh, Shin twisted away. One of the guards grabbed a hook and pierced the boy in the abdomen, holding him over the fire until he lost consciousness....

... Uncle nursed Shin, rubbing salty cabbage soup into his wounds as a disinfectant and massaging Shin's arms and legs so his muscles would not atrophy. "Kid, you have a lot of days to live," Uncle said. "They say the sun shines even on mouse holes."...

... The new teacher sometimes sneaked food to Shin. He also assigned him less arduous work and stopped the bullying. Shin put on some weight. The burns healed. Why the new teacher made the effort, Shin never knew...

... In the summer of 2004, while he was carrying one of these cast-iron machines, it slipped and broke beyond repair. Sewing machines were considered more valuable than prisoners: the chief foreman grabbed Shin's right hand and hacked off his middle finger just above the first knuckle...

... In December 2004, Shin began thinking about escape. Park's spirit, his dignity and his incendiary information gave Shin a way to dream about the future. He suddenly understood where he was and what he was missing. Camp 14 was no longer home; it was a cage. And Shin now had a well-travelled friend to help him get out...

... Without hesitation, Shin crawled over his friend's body. He was nearly through when his legs slipped off Park's torso and came into contact with the wire....

... Shallow and frozen, the river here was about a hundred yards wide. He began to walk. Halfway across, he broke through and icy water soaked his shoes. He crawled the rest of the way to China.

Within two years, he was in South Korea. Within four, he was living in southern California, an ambassador for Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an American human rights group.

His name is now Shin Dong-hyuk. His overall physical health is excellent. His body, though, is a roadmap of the hardships of growing up in a labour camp that the North Korean government insists does not exist. Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight – 5ft 6in and about 120lb (8.5 stone). His arms are bowed from childhood labour. His lower back and buttocks are covered with scars. His ankles are disfigured by shackles. His right middle finger is missing. His shins are mutilated by burns from the fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

I don't generally think that Hell is a good idea, but it is tempting to make an exception for the Kims.

North Korea is China's great shame. In a just world, for the sin of North Korea alone, China's leaders would join Dick Cheney in prison.

See also:

• You too can visit North Korea 1/2010
• The harshness of mortal life - hidden refugees from North Korea 3/2005
• North Korea 2/2011

Slavery, technology, and the future of the weak

Reading 9th grade world history as an adult I read over the names of the wicked and the great. I round years to centuries, and nations to regions.

Other things catch my eye. Reading of slavery in ancient Rome and Greece, I think of India's untouchables. The theme of surplus built upon slavery runs constantly through human history, until it blends into an industrial model of market utilization of the "The Weak".

Yeah, progress happens. I'd choose a minimum wage job in Norway, or even in Minnesota, over slavery.

So what's next? In a globalized post-industrial world, does the labor of the "Weak" have sufficient value to support a life of health and balance? If it does not, if within the framework of the post-AI world 20% of the population is effectively disabled, then what do we do?

Slavery was one answer to the problem of the weak. Industrial and agricultural employment was another. If we are fortunate, we will provide a third answer.

See also:

• Slavery and religion - Wikipedia
• A taxonomy of American politics 2/2011
• Mass disability goes mainstream: disequilibria and RCIIT 11/2011
• The AI Age: Siri and Me 12/2011
• Gordon's Notes: Life in the post-AI world. What's next? 9/2011
• The subprime mortgage story: a problem of the weak 11/2007
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2011
• Median male earnings - declining since 1969? 3/2011
• Political theory and the original position (Rawls) 6/2006
• DeLong, Mankiw and the Problem of the Weak 10/2006
• Noblesse Oblige and the Problem of the Weak: Buffett and Gates 6/2006
• French universities and the revenge of the weak 5/2006
• The market answer to dementia: Soylent Green 9/2007
• Attacking Inequality: Redistributing wealth 9/2006
• The WSJ, the American Right, and the Protestant view of sinful poverty 6/2006
• Seeking Dickens: mental illness and prisons 1/2007
• What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? 2/3005

In fifty years, what will our sins be?

In my early years white male heterosexual superiority was pretty much hardwired into my culture. I grew up in Quebec, so in my earliest pre-engagement years add the local theocracy of the Catholic church.

Mental illness, including schizophrenia, was a shameful sin. Hitting children was normal and even encouraged. There were few laws protecting domestic animals. There were almost no environmental protections. Children and adults with cognitive disorders were scorned and neglected. Physical disabilities were shameful; there were few accommodations for disability.

Our life then had a lot in common with China today.

Not all of these cultural attitudes are fully condemned, but that time is coming.

So what are the candidates for condemnation in 50 years? Gus Mueller, commenting on a WaPo article, suggests massive meat consumption and cannabis prohibition.

I am sure Gus is wrong about cannabis prohibition. Even now we don't condemn the ideal of alcohol prohibition; many aboriginal communities around the world still enforce alcohol restrictions and we don't condemn them. We consider American Prohibition quixotic, but not evil.

My list is not far from the WaPo article. Here's my set:

• Our definition and punishment of crime, particularly in the context of diminished capacity.
• Our tolerance of poverty, both local and global.
• Our wastefulness.
• Our tolerance of political corruption.
• Our failure to create a carbon tax.
• The use of semi-sentient animals as meat. (WaPo just mentions industrial food production. I think the condemnation will be deeper.)
• Our failure to confront the responsibilities and risks associated with the creation of artificial sentience. (Depending on how things turn out, this might be celebrated by our heirs.)

The WaPo article mentions our isolation of the elderly. I don't think so; I think that will be seen more as a tragedy than a sin. This is really about the modern mismatch between physical and cognitive lifespan.

The article is accompanied by a poll with this ranking as of 5800 votes:

• Environment
• Food production
• Prison system
• Isolation of the elderly.

Democracy in crisis: Not all votes are equal

This surprised me:

Notes on income inequality - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post

... Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton University, has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s, looking for evidence that when opinions change, so too does policy. And he found it—but only for the rich. Policy changes with majority support didn’t become law except when that majority support included voters at the top of the income distribution. When the opinions of the poor diverged from the opinions of the rich, the opinions of the poor did not appear to matter. If 90 percent of the poor supported a policy change, its chances of passage were no better than if 10 percent of the poor supported it...

American democracy is in poor health.

Mass disability and the middle class

My paper magazine has another article on the Argentinification of America - Can the Middle Class Be Saved? - The Atlantic.

I'll skim it sometime, but I doubt there's much new there. We know the story.  The bourgeois heart of America is fading. In its place are the poor, the near poor, the rich and the near rich.

I have thought of this, for years, as the rise of mass disability. In the post-AI world the landscape of American employment is monotonous. There's work for people like me, not so much for some I love. Once they would have worked a simple job, but there's not much call for that these days. Simple jobs have been automated; there's only room for a small number of Walmart greeters. Moderately complex jobs have been outsourced.

Within the ecosystem of modern capitalism a significant percentage of Americans are maladapted. I'd guess about 25%; now 35% thanks to the lesser depression.

There are two ways to manage this - excluding the Swiftian solution.

One is to apply the subsidized employment strategies developed for adults with autism and low IQ. Doing this on a large scale would require substantial tax increases, particularly on the wealthy.

Another approach is to bias the economy to a more diverse landscape with a greater variety of employment opportunities -- including manufacturing. This is, depending on whether you are an optimist or realist, the approach of either modern Germany or Nehru's India. This bias compromises "comparative advantage", so we can expect this economy, all else being equal, to have a lower than maximal output. Since in our world the benefits of total productivity flow disproportionately to the wealthy (winner take all), this is equivalent to a progressive tax on an entire society.

So, either way,  the solution is a form of taxation. Either direct taxation and redistribution, or a decrease in overall growth.

I suspect that we will eventually do both.

See also:

• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes (1/11)
• Post-industrial employment: adjusting to a new world (5/10)

Opposition to redistribution - two causes

Three weeks ago a typically anonymous article in The Economist reviewed two of the less obvious obstacles to reducing inequality and poverty in America ...

Economics focus: Don’t look down | The Economist August 13th, 2011

... America is far less inclined than many of its rich-world peers to use taxation and redistribution to reduce inequality. The OECD, a think-tank, reckons that taxation eats up a little less than 30% of the average American’s total compensation, compared with nearly 50% in Germany and France...

... Broadly speaking, countries that are more ethnically or racially homogeneous are more comfortable with the state seeking to mitigate inequality by transferring some resources from richer to poorer people through the fiscal system...

... A new NBER paper finds evidence for an even more intriguing and provocative hypothesis [about why the poor may not support poverty reduction]. Its authors note that those near but not at the bottom of the income distribution are often deeply ambivalent about greater redistribution....

... Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions...

The claimed relationship between tribal homogeneity and support for progressive taxation is hard to prove, but it feels consistent with the humanity I know. The second claim, that poor Americans may fear assistance that may make them "better but last", has some college-student experimental evidence (for what that's worth) -- but it also feels familiar. Pratchett called this "Crab Bucket" in his novel Unseen Academicals.

These obstacles don't make progressive taxation and poverty reduction impossible, but they do make it harder. It's worth understanding where resistance comes from.

Get your international transpant with MedToGo

It occurred to me that a custom Google news section would help me track the worldwide retail organ business.

The results were more impressive than I'd expected.

Here's one ...

Desperate Americans Buy Kidneys From Peru Poor in Fatal Trade - Bloomberg

... Medical tourism company MedToGo LLC, based in Tempe, Arizona, says it will offer kidney transplants in Mexico and Costa Rica for about $50,000, a fifth of the cost in the U.S...

MedToGo has an agreeable web site. Owned and operated by US physicians, who are facilitating trafficking in the organs of the poor. I wonder; are there any state licensing board issues?

The organ trade is one of those curious stories that get little press attention.

Update 5/19/11: MedToGo's CEO wrote to object to the way they were portrayed in the Bloomberg article. They say they provide access to transplants performed in Mexico to Americans and Canadians, but only with American and Canadian donors. I am curious how that can be done, since I am sure they are bypassing North American transplant boards. They also say they do not pay donors, but they do not say the donors are unpaid. Based on MedToGo's response I've modified my post title and content as above.

See also:

• Organlegging Neuromancer style – China’s liver trade 5/10
• Enlightenment 2.0 and a Hong Kong student post on the Chinese organ trade (5/07)
• Niven scores: The organ trade grows (4/06)

Care of special needs adults in post-employment America

The Dow is doing very well, though some expect that to change shortly. For most Americans, however, the Great Recession grinds on. The percent of employed adult Americans (employment-population ratio) is now back to where it was in 1976, when most women weren't in the workforce. The annual incomes of the bottom 90% of US families has been flat since 1973.

Against this, we see about 50 million Americans with a disability and 24 million with a severe disability. Looking forward, barring US adoption of Canada's brilliant solution, intractable American demographics means fewer workers supporting more disabled persons -- even as those workers are faced with decreasing employment options and stagnant or falling wages.

So it's not surprising that societal care for the weak is being withdrawn ...

When Children With Autism Become Adults - Goehner 4/13/11 - NYTimes

... As the explosion of children who were found to have autism in the 1990s begins to transition from the school to the adult system, experts caution about the coming wave.

“We estimate there are going to be half a million children with autism in the next 10 years who will become adults,” said Peter Bell, executive vice president for programs and services of the advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Services for adults with autism exist, but unlike school services, they are not mandated, and there are fewer of them. Combined with shrinking government budgets, the challenges are daunting.

“We are facing a crisis of money and work force,” said Nancy Thaler, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services. “The cohort of people who will need services — including aging baby boomers — is growing much faster than the cohort of working-age adults that provide care.”

To help parents navigate this difficult journey, in January Autism Speaks introduced a free Transition Tool Kit for parents and their adolescent children with autism. The kit includes information about such critical issues as community life, housing, employment and developing self-advocacy skills...

... Many young adults with autism have transitioned into large residential systems, whether group homes or institutions, offering round-the-clock services. But waiting lists can be long. And increasingly, in an effort to stem costs, states are moving away from the group home model into family-based care, a trend that started about 10 years ago.

... Nationwide, 59 percent of people who receive autism services are living with their families, according to Mr. Lakin.

Living with one’s family may not always be best for a person with autism. Nor is it what many families, who assume their grown child will move into a group home, for example, envision for their future. But options are limited, and given the high demand for out-of-home residential services, Mr. Lakin said, “families really need to think about a longer and more central involvement in their adult child’s life than they have in the past.”

The good news is that many states are providing more support for people with autism who live with their families. They are also giving families greater flexibility and control over budgets with so-called consumer-controlled services, which reimburse families that hire friends or relatives, rather than outside caregivers, for regular care.

Connecticut and Arizona, for example, pay for care provided by family members, a growing trend. Other states, like Pennsylvania, have programs in which contracts are issued for people with autism to live with other families. And Vermont and New Hampshire pioneered a model of providing funding directly to families.

Some families have pooled their own money and entered into cooperatives with other families, a challenge that can take years...

.. Among the most powerful advocates are siblings of those with developmental disabilities. “Sibs have always played a really important role; we just haven’t identified them as sibs,” Mr. Lakin said. “We’ve identified them as agency leaders and social workers occupationally. But the real impulse of their work is that they were a sibling.”

Don Meyer, the founder and director of the Sibling Support Project and the creator of Sibshops, a network of programs for young siblings of children with special needs, said: “Parents need to share their plans for their special-needs child with their typically developing kids. After Mom and Dad are no longer there, it is likely it will be the brothers and sisters who will ensure their sibling leads a dignified life, living and working in the community.”...

It doesn't require a lot of imagination to predict how this will turn out. Among other things, we should expect a return to orphanages (esp. for special needs children) and the return of longterm institutions for the destitute disabled.

This might be a good time to consider the Canadian Solution for immigration. Maybe we should even take a look at where America's trillions are going. Just saying.

The Legless and the Lazy - a parable

There are two racers.

Jane is legless. Since the age of two she has excelled.

Jill is apathetic. She has trouble getting started. She gives up easily. Jill is lazy.

Each is invited to race one mile without devices. Jane rolls. She somersaults. She walks on her hands. She is relentless. The odds are invigorating.

Jill is disinterested. She starts slowly. She complains about her sore foot. She stops to rest. She doesn't like her shoes.

Jane finishes bruised, scraped, dirty and sore. Jill finishes first.

Who is the better person? Who do we praise?

Jane and Jill are identical twins. Jane lost her legs after a childhood infection. Jill's personality changed after a brain tumor was removed at age 17. Jill has spent years relearning speech and ambulation.

Who is the better person? Who do we praise?

Jane and Jill are not identical twins. Jill was born lazy.

Who is disabled?

Jack is a sociopath. He was born unable to form connections to other persons ...

See also ...

• A taxonomy of American politics - how attitudes to the weak define America (3/2011)
• Free Will RIP - The Economist on preemptive punishment (12/2006)
• Calvin, free will and me (3/2010)
• Addiction and disease: My comments on the TIME Science blog (7/2007)
• Lurching towards wisdom: neurodiversity and the morality of abnormality (5/2004)
• Bad genes, bad people and a crisis of punishment? (11/2009)
• Diminished responsibility: the next cultural battleground (9/2005)

A taxonomy of American politics

The weak are inescapable. Live long enough? Probably weak. Child? Weak. Wrong genes? Not so strong. Blacksmith post-horses? Tribe out of power? Parents not wealthy? Don't own a Senator? Organic in the machine age? Ok, so you get it.

In America weakness and poverty trend together. and, to a first approximation, American political tribes can be classified by their attitudes to the weak...

Branch I The strong should help the weak because ...

• I need help -> Weak person, not in denial
• My religious tradition tells me I will be rewarded for compassion -> Theist
• Seeing suffering makes me feel bad -> Normal human
• I choose to assume this obligation because ...
  • I am perverse [3] ->  liberal secular humanist
  • Some of those I love are weak -> Social interest
  • I may be weak some day -> Rational self-interest
  • I favor civilization and prosperity -> Rational social interest
  • My tribe is defined by its service -> Noblesse obliges

Branch II The strong should not help the the weak because ...

• I am strong because I am of the strong tribe, non-tribe is non-person -> Weak person, in denial
• Misfortune is the will of God/The Market which I must support -> neo-Calvinist [1], Marketarian
• I am strong, and the weak serve me -> Authoritarian
• I don't care about the suffering of others -> Sociopath
• I like seeing others suffer -> Psychopath
• Obligation is an infringement on my liberty ->  Libertarian
• The health of the tribe requires the sacrifice of the weak -> Social Darwinist [2]
• Charity makes people weak, for weak must win or fall on their own -> Tough Lover

I guesstimate that about 70% of Americans belong in Branch I and 70%of them vote Democrat. Of the 30% of Americans in Branch II about 95% of them vote GOP. Branch II defines the heart of the GOP, though Branch II alone can't win elections.

Of all the twigs of this tree there are three that are in play during elections.

• non-Calvinist theists can vote Democrat or Republican. They are why we can have a Black President, but never an atheist President.
• GOP voters who are weak,  but yearn to be of the strong tribe. They may realize they are dupes, that they are sheep funding wolves. They can then change sides. (Today many of these are Beckians.)
• The Tough Lovers

The last are the most interesting. From my secular humanist perspective, they have a point.

Sure, some TLs are just sociopaths in denial, but most of us are capable of more than we, or others, imagine. Sometimes hunger or homelessness helps someone overcome a social phobia and accept an unpleasant public facing job. Sometimes loss of child care benefits leads to rational choices about contraception. Parents in particular know that children love to win by their own ends against the odds (although we rig the game in the child's favor).

Tough love has its limits though. Sometimes people break. They become homeless. Their dependents suffer. This is why Food Stamps are usually a very good thing. Even the core GOP voters of Branch II often support some sort of publicly funded education, thought they want it to be locally funded and thus favor the strong [5].

The trick for those of us who want to help the weak be stronger, but also recognize that humans are not not rational actors, is to fake "Tough Love". We need systems and solutions that allow the weak to seem "win on their own" , perhaps by rigging the game in a way that seems 'fair'. So instead of doing affirmative action on the basis of ethnicity, we achieve similar ends to by providing affirmative action on the basis of poverty. Instead of directly subsidizing employment, we make it easier to create a viable startup company.

Political systems are good at finding solutions like these, which is why politics is the worse form of governance save for all the alternatives. We'll need to get very good at this form of kindness, because the 21st century will soon be seen as the age of mass disability, when fewer skills are needed, and more skills are as redundant as blacksmithing in the age of the automobile ...

[1] Calvinism is the best "Christian" example I know of, but this is common to many traditions. It is perhaps the only rational answer to the "problem of evil" in a religious tradition.
[2] Apologies to Darwin, who was a remarkably compassionate human being.
[3] It's a "worker Bee thing". Some are programmed this way. It isn't perverse if you think as humans as bipedal naked mole rats.
[4] It's been a long time since I'd given this much thought. I'm indebted to a substantially younger person for refreshing topics I'd internally settled long ago. 
[5] Note to foreigners. Americans typically fund education through local property taxes. Shocking, isn't it? The most shocking thing is that Americans think of this as a good idea.