Socialism is an as yet unrealized system of social and economic organization by which the society as a whole controls, and equitably distributes, the yield of human work and machinery for the benefit of everyone. Socialists differ on how to get there.
Karl Marx, one of the first major exponents of socialism, offered an entirely theoretical scenario in which capitalism’s internal contradictions would lead it to a collapsing crisis. The working classes would then take control through a revolution and “dictate” a new social compact under which socioeconomic classes would eventually wither away. He died in the 1880s and did not see any of this come to fruition.
Marx had predicted that the revolution would occur in an industrially advanced capitalist country, he cited his native Germany several times. However, the first politically successful revolution to espouse Marx’s ideas occurred in backward Russia in 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, a polemicist who read Marx as justifying brutal terror and dictatorial rule by a self-appointed “vanguard.” The Marxist-Leninist regime, which in time came to call itself Communist, put together a vast repressive system to defend modest social and economic redistribution of wealth and power; its entirely state-owned economic institutions became internally corrupt and inefficient until Communism collapsed bloodlessly in 1991.
Meanwhile, in western Europe after World War II, the exhaustion of traditional unfettered capitalism and a shared poverty brought on by two vastly destructive wars allowed non-Communist parties aligned with the Socialist International (of which Marx himself had been a member) to eventually gain power in Britain, France, Sweden, the Low Countries and eventually Germany, Spain and Italy. All of these carefully avoided too explicit an identification with Marx, due to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, but they managed to launch a variety of vast reforms that developed what was called “the welfare state.” This was a womb-to-tomb system of social insurance to protect workers from poverty, unemployment and their worst effects, without actually attempting to force the end of private enterprise.
In North America, Canada leans toward the European socialist model although no socialist party has ever won a governing majority. The model is roughly what socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposed for the United States in the 2016 presidential election campaign.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Friday, October 07, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
Do long-term unemployed job seekers deserve what happens to them?
Do long-term unemployed job seekers deserve any of the adverse economic consequences which they may receive?
For example, do they deserve bankruptcy, homelessness and so on?
Let's set aside the philosophical question of deserving. I would ask instead: is what happens to them the consequence of their actions? My answer is no.
Long-term unemployment is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as 27 weeks (a bit more than 6 months) out of work involuntarily.
Who are these people? One big group is workers over 55, known as "older workers"; although it is illegal to discriminate against anyone over 40, the market place is not kind to older workers as a rule. They are more expensive to hire because they know the score and have some experience. They are not blank slates and cannot be molded to do whatever an employer wants. And other reasons.
Another large group is much younger people with little training or skills. You might say they should have stayed in school or gone to college, but in reality the deal you're dealt has a lot more to do with what I jokingly call the family you chose to be born in. If you were born poor in the United States, on average, only your children's children's children's children have a chance of becoming rich. That has been studied and demonstrated.
Lastly, there is a well-known labor market bias against LTUs: employers wonder why no one hired someone who has been looking for a job for six months or more. "Is there something they knew about this person that I am not seeing?" (Many stay unemployed as long as two years.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
For example, do they deserve bankruptcy, homelessness and so on?
Let's set aside the philosophical question of deserving. I would ask instead: is what happens to them the consequence of their actions? My answer is no.
Long-term unemployment is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as 27 weeks (a bit more than 6 months) out of work involuntarily.
Who are these people? One big group is workers over 55, known as "older workers"; although it is illegal to discriminate against anyone over 40, the market place is not kind to older workers as a rule. They are more expensive to hire because they know the score and have some experience. They are not blank slates and cannot be molded to do whatever an employer wants. And other reasons.
Another large group is much younger people with little training or skills. You might say they should have stayed in school or gone to college, but in reality the deal you're dealt has a lot more to do with what I jokingly call the family you chose to be born in. If you were born poor in the United States, on average, only your children's children's children's children have a chance of becoming rich. That has been studied and demonstrated.
Lastly, there is a well-known labor market bias against LTUs: employers wonder why no one hired someone who has been looking for a job for six months or more. "Is there something they knew about this person that I am not seeing?" (Many stay unemployed as long as two years.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Why did God create hell if he claims to love all of his creations so much?
If you are speaking within the context of the Judeo-Christian tradition, let me answer right off that the Bible does not teach that God created hell.
This question is part and parcel of the branch of theology called theodicy, which explores the philosophical or logical problem of the existence of evil, which is a paradox hard to resolve. The best biblical exponent of the problem is found in the book of Job.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is no complete answer. As Jesus says in the gospel "No one has seen the Father but the Son" (John 6:46), which teaches that even believers do not know really know all there is to be known about God. We just have been told the little bit we need to know for our own good.
As to hell, it was adopted by Christians of the 2nd or 3rd century from a few verses in which Jesus or others make reference to the Greek idea of Hades. The Hebrew Gehenna or Sheol is not Hell.
The modern theological answer is that God did not make hell, we did. No one goes to hell, strictly speaking; rather, we make ourselves unfit for heaven.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
This question is part and parcel of the branch of theology called theodicy, which explores the philosophical or logical problem of the existence of evil, which is a paradox hard to resolve. The best biblical exponent of the problem is found in the book of Job.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is no complete answer. As Jesus says in the gospel "No one has seen the Father but the Son" (John 6:46), which teaches that even believers do not know really know all there is to be known about God. We just have been told the little bit we need to know for our own good.
As to hell, it was adopted by Christians of the 2nd or 3rd century from a few verses in which Jesus or others make reference to the Greek idea of Hades. The Hebrew Gehenna or Sheol is not Hell.
The modern theological answer is that God did not make hell, we did. No one goes to hell, strictly speaking; rather, we make ourselves unfit for heaven.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Why don't religious people see that they believe in their God is because they were told to as children?
Belief is not a static thing. Sociological research shows that, at least in the United States, church affiliation (taken as an external indicator of faith) ebbs and flows throughout a person's life. It has become statistically normal for people brought up in a religious household to experience a crisis of faith in adolescence and/or young adulthood and return to the family faith once married and with children in their late 20s or early 30s.
Faith typically springs from one of three sources: revelation (an angel appears to you, which is not very common); reason (your thinking leads you to conclude that the possibility of God, albeit not irrefutable proof, is reasonable -- again, not hugely common); witness (a friend, parent, teacher, etc. tells you about their faith, this is probably the most common). My experience of religious people, which included being in a sociological team surveying on this topic, suggests that most believing people first follow family custom, then face the challenges of reason and sometimes have a revelatory experience (most often quite short of an actual angel).
Thus, believers might legitimately demure when confronted with someone who would pose a question derived from yours, such as: why don't you realize you're just following what you were told as a child? That would be because, in actual fact, their faith has undergone ups and downs and they have drawn on other resources, such as reason and spirituality, to decide to adopt their faith as a matter of conviction.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Faith typically springs from one of three sources: revelation (an angel appears to you, which is not very common); reason (your thinking leads you to conclude that the possibility of God, albeit not irrefutable proof, is reasonable -- again, not hugely common); witness (a friend, parent, teacher, etc. tells you about their faith, this is probably the most common). My experience of religious people, which included being in a sociological team surveying on this topic, suggests that most believing people first follow family custom, then face the challenges of reason and sometimes have a revelatory experience (most often quite short of an actual angel).
Thus, believers might legitimately demure when confronted with someone who would pose a question derived from yours, such as: why don't you realize you're just following what you were told as a child? That would be because, in actual fact, their faith has undergone ups and downs and they have drawn on other resources, such as reason and spirituality, to decide to adopt their faith as a matter of conviction.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Why the rush to make saints?
First it was Karol Wojtyla (aka Pope John Paul II), now it’s Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Theresa).Why does Jorge Bergoglio (aka Pope Francis I) insist on sprinkling saints hither and asking questions later?
We all know that neither Wojtyla (pronounced woy-TEE-wah) nor Bojaxhiu (bo-YAH-joo) will withstand the test of time.
There’s a Rasputin-like murky figure who stowed away evidence of Wojtyla’s hiding pedophile priests in Krakow; that will eventually all come out. Then there’s Bojaxhiu’s little romp with Charles Keating, the 1980s savings-and-loan fraudster whose donations of ill-gotten money she took, then refused to return (perhaps thinking she was paid for the character witness testimony she delivered to a U.S. court on his behalf).
Apparently, there’s more in Bojaxhiu’s dossier, concerning her disregard for needs of poor people in Calcutta and her outrageous celebrity seeking.
There is nothing even remotely redeemable in Wojtyla’s life to warrant putting him up as a model of Christian behavior, even if we dismiss his efforts to avert a scandal he personally did not cause. But Bojaxhiu appears to be downright reprehensible.
Couldn’t the Vatican, which usually thinks in centuries, have waited a tad and investigated more thoroughly?
We all know that neither Wojtyla (pronounced woy-TEE-wah) nor Bojaxhiu (bo-YAH-joo) will withstand the test of time.
There’s a Rasputin-like murky figure who stowed away evidence of Wojtyla’s hiding pedophile priests in Krakow; that will eventually all come out. Then there’s Bojaxhiu’s little romp with Charles Keating, the 1980s savings-and-loan fraudster whose donations of ill-gotten money she took, then refused to return (perhaps thinking she was paid for the character witness testimony she delivered to a U.S. court on his behalf).
Apparently, there’s more in Bojaxhiu’s dossier, concerning her disregard for needs of poor people in Calcutta and her outrageous celebrity seeking.
There is nothing even remotely redeemable in Wojtyla’s life to warrant putting him up as a model of Christian behavior, even if we dismiss his efforts to avert a scandal he personally did not cause. But Bojaxhiu appears to be downright reprehensible.
Couldn’t the Vatican, which usually thinks in centuries, have waited a tad and investigated more thoroughly?
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
How will the life of minimum wage workers change if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour?
How will the life of minimum wage workers change if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour?
An increase of the federal minimum wage to $15, from $7.24 at this writing in December 2015, will mean a 106% increase in pay, effectively a doubling of income for workers at the bottom of the pay scale. Over time, but not immediately, some of it will be eaten up by inflation (just as it has been already); but the hike is necessary to recover the earning power lost since 2009, the last time it was raised, very modestly, from $6.55. People who earn the minimum wage (it is mostly adults, some with families, not just teenagers as the restaurant industry wants you to believe), have had their earnings frozen.
More importantly, a raise in the minimum wage will likely affect all workers, since it raises the floor and for competitive reasons other wages will go up.
The "gold standard" study of the effects of increasing the minimum wage by Andrew Card and Alan Krueger, which has been replicated, proved that raising the minimum wage increases consumption and helps the economy. (The study is available here.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
An increase of the federal minimum wage to $15, from $7.24 at this writing in December 2015, will mean a 106% increase in pay, effectively a doubling of income for workers at the bottom of the pay scale. Over time, but not immediately, some of it will be eaten up by inflation (just as it has been already); but the hike is necessary to recover the earning power lost since 2009, the last time it was raised, very modestly, from $6.55. People who earn the minimum wage (it is mostly adults, some with families, not just teenagers as the restaurant industry wants you to believe), have had their earnings frozen.
More importantly, a raise in the minimum wage will likely affect all workers, since it raises the floor and for competitive reasons other wages will go up.
The "gold standard" study of the effects of increasing the minimum wage by Andrew Card and Alan Krueger, which has been replicated, proved that raising the minimum wage increases consumption and helps the economy. (The study is available here.)
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Monday, August 29, 2016
How is society affected by poverty?
How is society affected by poverty?
Poverty has a broad variety of social effects that are felt by average citizens who are not poor to varying degrees, depending on the percentage of poor people and the palliatives a society offers them.
Scholars differ on how to define poverty, from the ability to “live decently” (Adam Smith) to the ability to consume a basic necessary food basket (Molly Orshansky). Broadly speaking, I would define poverty as a serious, recurrent and life-altering lack of food, clothing, education, housing, transportation and employment in a quantity necessary to develop and thrive on one’s own without chronic and persistent want.
The existence of poverty deprives a society of productive members whose self-sustaining physical well-being and sanity has every potential to help everyone’s lives improve. In societies in which it is accepted as a value that all human beings have a right to live in dignity, poverty costs society expenditures and effort to reduce or eradicate it.
Moreover, poverty has broad ripple effects. People who have dire need, but not the education or means to get self-sustaining employment, often turn to crime and abuse of drugs and other antisocial behavior that, because it is paradoxically inflected mostly on other poor people, makes poverty worse. Poverty also serves the need of some of the rich and powerful people who know that uneducated, needy people are easy to manipulate and control and will work for very little pay; this leads to eventual corruption at all levels of society.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Poverty has a broad variety of social effects that are felt by average citizens who are not poor to varying degrees, depending on the percentage of poor people and the palliatives a society offers them.
Scholars differ on how to define poverty, from the ability to “live decently” (Adam Smith) to the ability to consume a basic necessary food basket (Molly Orshansky). Broadly speaking, I would define poverty as a serious, recurrent and life-altering lack of food, clothing, education, housing, transportation and employment in a quantity necessary to develop and thrive on one’s own without chronic and persistent want.
The existence of poverty deprives a society of productive members whose self-sustaining physical well-being and sanity has every potential to help everyone’s lives improve. In societies in which it is accepted as a value that all human beings have a right to live in dignity, poverty costs society expenditures and effort to reduce or eradicate it.
Moreover, poverty has broad ripple effects. People who have dire need, but not the education or means to get self-sustaining employment, often turn to crime and abuse of drugs and other antisocial behavior that, because it is paradoxically inflected mostly on other poor people, makes poverty worse. Poverty also serves the need of some of the rich and powerful people who know that uneducated, needy people are easy to manipulate and control and will work for very little pay; this leads to eventual corruption at all levels of society.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Friday, August 26, 2016
What are the best Christian criticisms of Elaine Pagels?
What are the best Christian criticisms of Elaine Pagels?
This is a partner question to: What are the best Christian criticisms of Gnosticism?
Let's first note that Elaine Pagels is a distinguished academic who has specialized in the Nag Hammadi Library finds. Pagels has written provocatively titled books for a middle-brow educated audience—among them, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics and Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. Her books tend to discredit the established facile impressions of early Christianity held by pious believers unfamiliar with scholarship older, newer and deeper than Pagels' own.
For this reason, a number of Protestant fundamentalists and orthodoxy monitors of other Christian leanings find Pagels' work annoying and even "anti-Christian." However, her writings and their actual implications do not automatically disqualify nor discredit the Christian faith. I am not aware of any particular anti-Pagels "school" of worthy critics, but I am aware of criticisms, some of which are valid.
In my opinion, Pagels books tend to overcredit herself and undercredit those on whose shoulders she stands. Pagels became interested in Nag Hammadi as a graduate student and was a minor assistant in a team working on the texts. The principal scholar on Nag Hammadi is James M. Robinson, the principal translator of the codices to English, not Pagels.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
This is a partner question to: What are the best Christian criticisms of Gnosticism?
Let's first note that Elaine Pagels is a distinguished academic who has specialized in the Nag Hammadi Library finds. Pagels has written provocatively titled books for a middle-brow educated audience—among them, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics and Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. Her books tend to discredit the established facile impressions of early Christianity held by pious believers unfamiliar with scholarship older, newer and deeper than Pagels' own.
For this reason, a number of Protestant fundamentalists and orthodoxy monitors of other Christian leanings find Pagels' work annoying and even "anti-Christian." However, her writings and their actual implications do not automatically disqualify nor discredit the Christian faith. I am not aware of any particular anti-Pagels "school" of worthy critics, but I am aware of criticisms, some of which are valid.
In my opinion, Pagels books tend to overcredit herself and undercredit those on whose shoulders she stands. Pagels became interested in Nag Hammadi as a graduate student and was a minor assistant in a team working on the texts. The principal scholar on Nag Hammadi is James M. Robinson, the principal translator of the codices to English, not Pagels.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
I am scared I have committed apostasy
I am scared I have committed apostasy and have a seared conscience. I wish to be forgiven before it is too late! Any ideas or advice? I am a Christian believer who is 16 years old.
Just going on your age, which is one in which you are likely to experiment with ideas, I would bet that you are not an apostate. You are simply doubting, perhaps seriously, and in a way that seems at the moment irretrievably, the faith of your parents or your believing community.
To doubt is not the opposite of faith, but can be a part of it. Indeed, a great theologian (Romano Guardini) once stated that "Faith is the capacity to withstand doubt."
Note that this implies that it is normal to experience doubt. That is because faith is not knowledge, it is only belief absent knowledge. The Bible says it, "no one has seen the Father but the Son" (John 6:46). Thus, to have faith is to believe in Someone one has never seen. There may be times in which you may ask yourself how this is possible. That is a way to grow in faith; to ask questions and seek to resolve them. God gave you a brain to use.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Just going on your age, which is one in which you are likely to experiment with ideas, I would bet that you are not an apostate. You are simply doubting, perhaps seriously, and in a way that seems at the moment irretrievably, the faith of your parents or your believing community.
To doubt is not the opposite of faith, but can be a part of it. Indeed, a great theologian (Romano Guardini) once stated that "Faith is the capacity to withstand doubt."
Note that this implies that it is normal to experience doubt. That is because faith is not knowledge, it is only belief absent knowledge. The Bible says it, "no one has seen the Father but the Son" (John 6:46). Thus, to have faith is to believe in Someone one has never seen. There may be times in which you may ask yourself how this is possible. That is a way to grow in faith; to ask questions and seek to resolve them. God gave you a brain to use.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Friday, August 19, 2016
How does a Christian support same sex marriage?
How does a Christian support same sex marriage?
I am now trying to become a Christian. But in the process of learning more about Jesus and the Bible, I found that the Bible actually does not support much of my political view. However, politics is a very important part of my life, so I really want to know if I can still retain my political views after I become a Christian. I do know that the Bible clearly states homosexual is one of the most serious sins. I want to know if it is OK for a Christian to support homosexual rights and how people who have a religion deal with the conflict between their religion and political view?
Nothing in the Christian faith requires that all civil and criminal laws of every country must conform to the teachings of the faith. Only believers must conform; and believers ought not to judge others (Matthew 7:1).
When Jesus was asked whether he thought it was moral to pay Roman taxes, he asked who was on the coin. Told it was Caesar, he said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." (Mark 12:17)
So, embrace the faith with confidence that it will only demand of you to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:30-31) That's hard enough, believe you me.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
I am now trying to become a Christian. But in the process of learning more about Jesus and the Bible, I found that the Bible actually does not support much of my political view. However, politics is a very important part of my life, so I really want to know if I can still retain my political views after I become a Christian. I do know that the Bible clearly states homosexual is one of the most serious sins. I want to know if it is OK for a Christian to support homosexual rights and how people who have a religion deal with the conflict between their religion and political view?
Nothing in the Christian faith requires that all civil and criminal laws of every country must conform to the teachings of the faith. Only believers must conform; and believers ought not to judge others (Matthew 7:1).
When Jesus was asked whether he thought it was moral to pay Roman taxes, he asked who was on the coin. Told it was Caesar, he said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." (Mark 12:17)
So, embrace the faith with confidence that it will only demand of you to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:30-31) That's hard enough, believe you me.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
What is Peronism?
What is Peronism?
Peronism is a movement founded by the late Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974), an Argentine military man who was elected president in 1946, overthrown in 1955 and returned to power in 1973, then died in office. The singularity of Perón is that, although he was a military man and an admirer of Mussolini's capacity to mobilize people (he was military attache in Rome as Mussolini rose to power), he attracted the undying loyalty of industrial workers and the poor of his country to this day. Peronism is the amorphous populist movement that up through 2010 won every election in which it was allowed to field a candidate unfettered.
Peronism is not an ideology and indeed defies classic left-right classification. Peronists have included military men, labor union leaders, some enlightened business executives, middle class left-leaning youth, but mostly the toiling classes. Indeed, every ideological movement from left to right has attempted to call itself Peronist in order to eviscerate the movement, so far without success.
Peronism has no systematic set of doctrines or ideas, largely because, whatever Perón actually believed, he was a pragmatist above all. Perón himself was partly authoritarian, partly a supporter of state intervention in the economy, partly a populist, partly anti-Communist. In brief, an ideological hodge-podge. He liked to say that he was most comfortable running things when they were as messy "as a bordello." He certainly pitted his followers against each other so that he could always be the deciding arbiter.
His policies included modernizing Argentine labor laws by introducing, among other rules, the 8-hour, 5-day work week. He enfranchised women with the vote. He also built up a vast economic state-owned sector of key infrastructural industries, including utilities, railroads and telecommunications, which also served as repositories of employment through political patronage. Thus, when overthrown in 1955 and used as a battering ram by the unions, Perón's legacy was a mixture of military corporativism, laborism, social democracy and civil rights that mixed uneasily.
Indeed, Peronist presidents aside from the man himself, have varied widely. Carlos Menem, president from 1989 to 1999, privatized almost all of the state enterprises in order to sustain the fiction of parity of the national currency with the dollar; Menem could easily be classed as a followed of free market apologist Milton Friedman, whom Ronald Reagan was said to admire. On the other hand, the late Nestor Kirchner (president 2003-2007) and his wife Cristina (president from 2007 to October 2015), who have been maliciously and erroneously called former guerrillas and socialists by their adversaries, have put forth policies definably similar to the government interventionism of John Maynard Keynes, closely identified with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Peronism is a movement founded by the late Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974), an Argentine military man who was elected president in 1946, overthrown in 1955 and returned to power in 1973, then died in office. The singularity of Perón is that, although he was a military man and an admirer of Mussolini's capacity to mobilize people (he was military attache in Rome as Mussolini rose to power), he attracted the undying loyalty of industrial workers and the poor of his country to this day. Peronism is the amorphous populist movement that up through 2010 won every election in which it was allowed to field a candidate unfettered.
Peronism is not an ideology and indeed defies classic left-right classification. Peronists have included military men, labor union leaders, some enlightened business executives, middle class left-leaning youth, but mostly the toiling classes. Indeed, every ideological movement from left to right has attempted to call itself Peronist in order to eviscerate the movement, so far without success.
Peronism has no systematic set of doctrines or ideas, largely because, whatever Perón actually believed, he was a pragmatist above all. Perón himself was partly authoritarian, partly a supporter of state intervention in the economy, partly a populist, partly anti-Communist. In brief, an ideological hodge-podge. He liked to say that he was most comfortable running things when they were as messy "as a bordello." He certainly pitted his followers against each other so that he could always be the deciding arbiter.
His policies included modernizing Argentine labor laws by introducing, among other rules, the 8-hour, 5-day work week. He enfranchised women with the vote. He also built up a vast economic state-owned sector of key infrastructural industries, including utilities, railroads and telecommunications, which also served as repositories of employment through political patronage. Thus, when overthrown in 1955 and used as a battering ram by the unions, Perón's legacy was a mixture of military corporativism, laborism, social democracy and civil rights that mixed uneasily.
Indeed, Peronist presidents aside from the man himself, have varied widely. Carlos Menem, president from 1989 to 1999, privatized almost all of the state enterprises in order to sustain the fiction of parity of the national currency with the dollar; Menem could easily be classed as a followed of free market apologist Milton Friedman, whom Ronald Reagan was said to admire. On the other hand, the late Nestor Kirchner (president 2003-2007) and his wife Cristina (president from 2007 to October 2015), who have been maliciously and erroneously called former guerrillas and socialists by their adversaries, have put forth policies definably similar to the government interventionism of John Maynard Keynes, closely identified with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
What percentage of Europe is under the US poverty line?
What percentage of Europe is under the US poverty line?
The European Union and the United States measure poverty in a different way. The EU takes the income distribution and sets a percentile at which anyone below it is poor. The USA calculates the cost of basic of a basket of necessities, which becomes a threshhold or "poverty line." Because the cost of living varies from country to country, the EU method is more appropriate for international comparisons.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
The European Union and the United States measure poverty in a different way. The EU takes the income distribution and sets a percentile at which anyone below it is poor. The USA calculates the cost of basic of a basket of necessities, which becomes a threshhold or "poverty line." Because the cost of living varies from country to country, the EU method is more appropriate for international comparisons.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Monday, August 15, 2016
Will truck drivers criminally sabotage automated trucks once their jobs are threatened?
Will truck drivers criminally sabotage automated trucks once their jobs are threatened?
Easy enough to do, an impulsive community, not PhD holders, their jobs, livelihood at stake...
(Just thinking out loud, folks. No hate. Breathe deep...)
Not likely. U.S. labor history has very few instances of this sort of thing. They may protest. They may legitimately demand retraining for another occupation. The problem is that work for lower-skilled work is diminishing as machines are made to do such work.
I think the solution is to rethink society as a community of leisure, rather than one of work. We are nearing a time in which a very small proportion of people will be able to make everything everybody needs. Let those people be the ones who like to do the work. Let others learn how to make art and teach children and help one another better.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Easy enough to do, an impulsive community, not PhD holders, their jobs, livelihood at stake...
(Just thinking out loud, folks. No hate. Breathe deep...)
Not likely. U.S. labor history has very few instances of this sort of thing. They may protest. They may legitimately demand retraining for another occupation. The problem is that work for lower-skilled work is diminishing as machines are made to do such work.
I think the solution is to rethink society as a community of leisure, rather than one of work. We are nearing a time in which a very small proportion of people will be able to make everything everybody needs. Let those people be the ones who like to do the work. Let others learn how to make art and teach children and help one another better.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Friday, August 12, 2016
What are the differences between authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism?
What are the differences between authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism?
Totalitarianism and Fascism are forms of authoritarianism, which is governance by an authority without the option of questioning whatever the authority orders. The distinctions between the three are mostly a matter of political theory, applying these labels is usually done very loosely and, in my opinion, badly.
An authoritarian government is any ruling political unit in which the person or group in power tells everyone else what to do, more or less without recourse. Monarchies without parliament and in which the monarch actually rules, as well as military governments and dictatorships of the left and the right can all be correctly identified as authoritarian. Most workplaces are authoritarian, too; the boss tells you what to do, or else. Similarly, most families have an authoritarian streak, as do schools. The basic idea is that what is done is not put to a vote: someone commands, others obey. Authoritarian governments, as you might imagine, can cover a very wide range of power regimes.
Totalitarian rule is called this because the power of those who govern extends to every aspect of life and society; in other words, total rule. They tell you what to say, what to think, where to live, what to study, where to work, etc. Obviously, because of the difficulty of controlling large populations minutely, no pure form of totalitarian government has ever existed. However, Soviet Communism, German Nazism and Italian Fascism attempted to be totalitarian for very different reasons.
All of which brings us to Fascism, which is the historical movement of Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy as a dictator from 1929 to 1943. The word “fascism” comes from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods tied around an ax; the members of the movement conceived of themselves as a tightly wound bundle of people who figuratively chopped down whatever stood in the way of their ideas. These ideas included the revival of Italy's glory as the center of the Roman Empire. It was a nationalist and ultra-conservative movement similar and allied to German Nazism and Spanish Falangism, yet distinctly Italian.
Because Fascism came to power first, its name became a shorthand for any right-wing authoritarian regime and for the supporters of such rule. The concept has also been twisted completely out of shape by rhetorical abuse. For example, Reaganism and Thatcherism (USA and UK in the 1980s), although ideologically in harmony with many fascist ideas, have been called fascist even though they operated in a political environment in which at least a pretense of democratic representation was maintained.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Totalitarianism and Fascism are forms of authoritarianism, which is governance by an authority without the option of questioning whatever the authority orders. The distinctions between the three are mostly a matter of political theory, applying these labels is usually done very loosely and, in my opinion, badly.
An authoritarian government is any ruling political unit in which the person or group in power tells everyone else what to do, more or less without recourse. Monarchies without parliament and in which the monarch actually rules, as well as military governments and dictatorships of the left and the right can all be correctly identified as authoritarian. Most workplaces are authoritarian, too; the boss tells you what to do, or else. Similarly, most families have an authoritarian streak, as do schools. The basic idea is that what is done is not put to a vote: someone commands, others obey. Authoritarian governments, as you might imagine, can cover a very wide range of power regimes.
Totalitarian rule is called this because the power of those who govern extends to every aspect of life and society; in other words, total rule. They tell you what to say, what to think, where to live, what to study, where to work, etc. Obviously, because of the difficulty of controlling large populations minutely, no pure form of totalitarian government has ever existed. However, Soviet Communism, German Nazism and Italian Fascism attempted to be totalitarian for very different reasons.
All of which brings us to Fascism, which is the historical movement of Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy as a dictator from 1929 to 1943. The word “fascism” comes from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods tied around an ax; the members of the movement conceived of themselves as a tightly wound bundle of people who figuratively chopped down whatever stood in the way of their ideas. These ideas included the revival of Italy's glory as the center of the Roman Empire. It was a nationalist and ultra-conservative movement similar and allied to German Nazism and Spanish Falangism, yet distinctly Italian.
Because Fascism came to power first, its name became a shorthand for any right-wing authoritarian regime and for the supporters of such rule. The concept has also been twisted completely out of shape by rhetorical abuse. For example, Reaganism and Thatcherism (USA and UK in the 1980s), although ideologically in harmony with many fascist ideas, have been called fascist even though they operated in a political environment in which at least a pretense of democratic representation was maintained.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Tuesday, August 09, 2016
How different would politics be if elected officials had to spend a few months in the military or poverty?
How different would politics be if every representative had to spend a few months in the military followed by a few months in poverty?
In the post-World War II period, most successful politicians served in war. Some came from poverty (Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton come to mind, but so did Abraham Lincoln).
There is no evidence that those who had seen war were less inclined to send others to war. As for poverty, those who experienced it were more inclined to promote efforts to help poor people; yet no one produced as vast a set of social programs as the very wealthy Franklin Roosevelt.
In sum, I am not sure that there is a hard an fast cause-and-effect dynamic between experiencing war and poverty and leading in a way that avoids or diminishes either.
However, it seems more honorable for a person commanding others to risk life and limb to have done so, just as it seems more equitable that someone who has struggled with need should weigh efforts to alleviate poverty. For that reason alone, it might be a worthwhile requirement in a democracy.
In the post-World War II period, most successful politicians served in war. Some came from poverty (Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton come to mind, but so did Abraham Lincoln).
There is no evidence that those who had seen war were less inclined to send others to war. As for poverty, those who experienced it were more inclined to promote efforts to help poor people; yet no one produced as vast a set of social programs as the very wealthy Franklin Roosevelt.
In sum, I am not sure that there is a hard an fast cause-and-effect dynamic between experiencing war and poverty and leading in a way that avoids or diminishes either.
However, it seems more honorable for a person commanding others to risk life and limb to have done so, just as it seems more equitable that someone who has struggled with need should weigh efforts to alleviate poverty. For that reason alone, it might be a worthwhile requirement in a democracy.
Are there ways to reduce unemployment as social entrepreneur?
Q. Are there ways to reduce unemployment as social entrepreneur?
What are the possible solutions can a social entrepreneur do to counter unemployment in his or her country? Can social entrepreneurship solve unemployment? Is so then what are the ways and methods to do so?
PS: I’m a trader and investor in Malaysia.
I think your question answers itself. Social entrepreneurship is one way to reduce unemployment, first by hiring people to work temporarily in the enterprise and secondly by making designing those jobs as a kind of training and work experience that can serve in the labor market to obtain longer lasting and sustaining work.
The typical social enterprise in the United States is an operation that is a for-profit subsidiary of a nonprofit.
For example, Homeboy Industries began in 1992 as a ministry by a Jesuit priest to help assist high-risk youth, former gang members and young newly released ex-convicts with mental health counseling, legal services and work-readiness training services. Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, the founder, whom I met briefly, realized that the best way to get these young people redirected into sustaining jobs was to develop businesses in which they could work and learn to show up on time, not tell off the boss and also acquire a particular marketable skill.
The group started Homeboy Bakery, Homegirl Café & Catering, Homeboy/Girl Merchandise, Homeboy Farmers Markets, The Homeboy Diner, Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery, Homeboy Grocery and Homeboy Cafe & Bakery, all for-profit outfits that sell goods and services produced by the people Boyle initially intended to help.
Stories such as these are more prevalent in wealthier economies, in which there is a large consumer market, than in poorer ones. However, innovations such as microfinancing, an entrepreneurial idea that I understand has been fabulously successful in Bangladesh, are examples of what can be achieved.
What are the possible solutions can a social entrepreneur do to counter unemployment in his or her country? Can social entrepreneurship solve unemployment? Is so then what are the ways and methods to do so?
PS: I’m a trader and investor in Malaysia.
I think your question answers itself. Social entrepreneurship is one way to reduce unemployment, first by hiring people to work temporarily in the enterprise and secondly by making designing those jobs as a kind of training and work experience that can serve in the labor market to obtain longer lasting and sustaining work.
The typical social enterprise in the United States is an operation that is a for-profit subsidiary of a nonprofit.
For example, Homeboy Industries began in 1992 as a ministry by a Jesuit priest to help assist high-risk youth, former gang members and young newly released ex-convicts with mental health counseling, legal services and work-readiness training services. Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, the founder, whom I met briefly, realized that the best way to get these young people redirected into sustaining jobs was to develop businesses in which they could work and learn to show up on time, not tell off the boss and also acquire a particular marketable skill.
The group started Homeboy Bakery, Homegirl Café & Catering, Homeboy/Girl Merchandise, Homeboy Farmers Markets, The Homeboy Diner, Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery, Homeboy Grocery and Homeboy Cafe & Bakery, all for-profit outfits that sell goods and services produced by the people Boyle initially intended to help.
Stories such as these are more prevalent in wealthier economies, in which there is a large consumer market, than in poorer ones. However, innovations such as microfinancing, an entrepreneurial idea that I understand has been fabulously successful in Bangladesh, are examples of what can be achieved.
Monday, August 08, 2016
What psychological factors lead to poverty, and what factors/beliefs lead to wealth?
The idea that poverty or wealth are based on the psychological makeup of a person is a fallacy. It is amply established that the single most significant factor in poverty or wealth is the socioeconomic status of the family into which each person is born.
Studies on social mobility show repeatedly that socioeconomic status is downwardly “sticky.” That is, most people have a stronger likelihood of sliding downward in the socioeconomic ladder that upward.
Studies about the United States show that it takes at least five generations to climb from the bottom 20% of the income distribution to the top 20%; exception: immigrants. In any case, upward mobility happens to a small minority of people. A recent study of Sweden, recently expanded to Scandinavia and Britain found that a large share of those at the top 20% today were descendants of people in the top 20% in the 1700s.
If the question were rephrased to what traits help the rare few who climb up the socioeconomic ladder, that might elicit a different answer. But beware the Horatio Alger mythology. If hard work made people rich, African bush women would all be billionaires.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Friday, August 05, 2016
Why wasn't I born in a developed country?
Q. Why wasn't I born in a developed country?
A. This is one of those questions that reveals the silliness of patriotism, the pride in supposedly having chosen well one’s birthplace. One might as well take pride in the color of one’ s eyes.
It also begs the question of the term “developed country,” which economists no longer use. When it was, many observed that there are precious few actually developed countries, perhaps the Netherlands or Norway. In reality, the majority of countries fall into the basket of those that are “underdeveloped,” meaning that their systems of political economy fail to deliver basic needs and a degree of transparency to their citizens. A minority of very wealthy nations are actually overdeveloped, with systems that yield pollution, expansionist wars and neocolonial oppression of other countries, plus a measure of internal socioeconomic injustice.
There is no paradise on Earth.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
A. This is one of those questions that reveals the silliness of patriotism, the pride in supposedly having chosen well one’s birthplace. One might as well take pride in the color of one’ s eyes.
It also begs the question of the term “developed country,” which economists no longer use. When it was, many observed that there are precious few actually developed countries, perhaps the Netherlands or Norway. In reality, the majority of countries fall into the basket of those that are “underdeveloped,” meaning that their systems of political economy fail to deliver basic needs and a degree of transparency to their citizens. A minority of very wealthy nations are actually overdeveloped, with systems that yield pollution, expansionist wars and neocolonial oppression of other countries, plus a measure of internal socioeconomic injustice.
There is no paradise on Earth.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, August 03, 2016
Would Christians have better luck at converting people if they abolished their dogma of hell?
Q. Would Christians have better luck at converting people if they abolished their dogma of hell?
A. Believing in something because you will get a reward or for fear of punishment is not genuine faith. The teaching about punishment as one of the possibilities at the end of one’ s life or at the end of history (mileage may vary according to the denomination) is about recognizing that God is merciful bust also just.
Incidentally, while churches have recognized many people as saints, not one single solitary human being has been officially consigned to eternal punishment by any major church body of which I am aware.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
A. Believing in something because you will get a reward or for fear of punishment is not genuine faith. The teaching about punishment as one of the possibilities at the end of one’ s life or at the end of history (mileage may vary according to the denomination) is about recognizing that God is merciful bust also just.
Incidentally, while churches have recognized many people as saints, not one single solitary human being has been officially consigned to eternal punishment by any major church body of which I am aware.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
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