Dick Martin Blogs

What's Newt up to?

2012-01-25T11:20:28-05:00

Newt Gingrich likes to call Obama "the food stamp president."

He did it last August and he's been repeating it ever since, most recently yesterday.

What's Newt up to?

Clearly, he's pandering to the same resentment Reagan exploited when he complained about "welfare queens."

But there may be more to it. Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler has done a great deal of research showing that racial attitudes are still very strong predictors of how people feel about Barack Obama. It even spills over into attitudes toward initiatives like his healthcare reform and his Supreme Court appointments.

These racial attitudes contributed to what Tesler calls "the 'otherization' of Barack Obama by his political opponents."

Indeed, it shows itself in the so-called "birther" movement. More than half of GOP primary voters still believe Obama was born outside the U.S. And accusations that Obama is a closet Muslim still pop up from time to time at Republican campaign rallies.

Is it merely a coincidence that Gingrich has been calling Obama "the food stamp president" while also implying that African-Americans would rather be on food-stamps than get a job?

Hardly. Newt is playing a subtle race card, appealing to people who are OtherDim or OtherDumb.

Trust

2012-01-24T12:33:49-05:00

PR giant Edelman conducts an annual survey of public trust in government, business, the media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

It may have started as a way to promote the firm, but the findings have been consistently insightful.

This year's wave (the twelfth) is no different:

Trust in governments declined precipitously around the world in 2011.
For the first time, nearly half of the public says it doesn't trust governments to tell the truth.
Trust in business fell everywhere except in China, where nearly three-quarters of the public have confidence in it.
CEO credibility fell even more precipitously than trust in the institutions they lead.
Although business is more trusted than government, nearly half the public believe governments don't regulate businesses enough.
The media was the only institution trusted more in this wave than in the last.
But social media saw the biggest rise in trust, surging by 75 percentage points.
NGOs remain the most trusted institutions overall.

For more, see Edelman's web site or this executive summary.

Alinsky lives

2012-01-23T09:14:55-05:00

In a victory speech following his win in the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich called President Obama a "Saul Alinsky radical."

But ironically enough Gingrich can credit one of Alinsky's core precepts for his victory.

"The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression," Alinsky wrote.

That's exactly what Gingrich did when he took on the national media for asking him about ex-wife's accusations of infidelity. Instead of responding to the charge, he tapped into the resentment a lot of small-town conservatives feel towards the Washington-New York-Hollywood elite who mock their values.

I'll bet Gingrich rides that horse all the way to the GOP convention.

He told CBS's Bob Schieffer that Romney wasn't connecting with voters because the governor-turned-private-equity-king didn't appear "authentic." That's true. An essential element of authenticity is not only being true to who you are, but sending a clear signal that "you're one of us."

For better or worse, as far as thousands -- maybe millions -- of Americans are concerned, with all his faults and weaknesses, and despite his PhD and swelling bank account, Gingrich is one of them.

Disappearing common ground

2012-01-21T13:11:06-05:00

A friend who is a retired AP staffer and an astute observer of journalistic trends drew my attention to an article in the Washington Post.

In it, columnist Marc Fisher reveals at least one reason our politics are so divisive.

"Polarized news market has altered the political process in South Carolina primary," declares the headline in the web edition.

Fisher followed three people in South Carolina and documented how they get their news on public issues. Not surprisingly, accessing campaign news and commentary is not particularly challenging. South Carolina is at the business end of a fire hose of campaign rhetoric.

Much of it splashes onto voters' own PCs and smart phones. Fisher followed one voter who awoke to more than 100 postings from Facebook friends, forwarding stories they thought she'd like. And, of course, the web gives South Carolinians access to campaign news from around the world.

But all those news sources have one thing in common -- they all tend to share the voter's own worldview. "More and more citizens are tucking themselves inside information silos where they see mainly what they already agree with," Fisher writes.

''The result," he says, "is an electorate in which conservatives and liberals often have not only their own opinions but also their own sets of facts, making it harder than ever to approach common ground." A raft of studies support Fisher's observation.

"The more clearly defined a voter’s political leanings, the more likely that person is to identify a few trusted news sources," Fisher writes. "Moderates and independents are much more likely to view a relatively broad array of news outlets as trustworthy. And, according to surveys of news consumption, the less ideologically rigid voters are, the more likely they are to take in news that may not match their point of view."

Since people with a well-defined political ideology are also more likely to dominate the political process, I guess we can look forward to ten more months of this. At least.

The power of metaphorical thinking

2012-01-18T11:51:21-05:00

There's nothing like a good metaphor to get a complicated idea across.

Small businesses are the "engine" of economic growth. The middle class is "treading water." Etc.

We like metaphors because they make abstract ideas concrete and easier to understand.

So we think of "time" as having physical properties -- it "flies" or it's "running out." Or we think of peronalities in terms of temperature readings -- people are "warm" or "cold." Etc.

The metaphors people use can give us an insight into their thinking. Research suggests metaphors can even unconsciously shape their behavior.

People asked to remember a past event leaned backwards; people asked to think about the future leaned forward. People holding a cup of warm coffee were more likely to think an interviewer was warm and friendly than people holding a cold drink. Etc.

Journalist Julia Graf wrote a great post on the phenomenon back in April.

And one of her points -- that metaphors can mislead -- is worth remembering in this political season.

So what?

2012-01-17T11:29:10-05:00

Okay, say that inequality is real, and it's worse than it used to be. So what?

Well, it's more than a matter of one group envying another. Inequality seems to be related to the fundamental functioning of society.

Consider these correlations.

Economists measure inequality using what is called the "Gini Index," named after the Italian who invented it.

A country with perfect equality, where everyone has the same income, would have an index of 0. If only one person had all the country's income, the index would be 1. Measures between 0 and 1 indicate how evenly distributed a nation's income is.

It's generally acknowledged that incomes in the U.S. are less evenly distributed than in most other countries. In fact, many people take pride in that. Thet believe it's the natural consequence of our freedom of opportunity.

But look at the implications for levels of trust. The countries with the highest proportion of citizens who believe "most people can be trusted" tend to be those with less inequality.

Now look at the same measure within the United States.

It's pretty much the same pattern. So it can't simply be a function of the capitalist system versus European and Latin American welfare states.

And now look at the same correlation over time in the U.S.

In years when incomes were more evenly distributed, such as in the 1960s, trust was higher than in years with a more concentrated share of incomes, such as in the 1990s.

So does inequality matter? Only if you think it's important for people to trust each other.

And these levels of inequality in the U.S. may help explain why so many people see the world as warring camps of "us" and "them."

Is it real?

2012-01-16T13:36:08-05:00

Is income inequality real?

If it's real, is it any different now than historically?

An economist at the University of California has probably produced the most complete data on those questions.

Based on tax records from 1907 to 2008, Emmanuel Saez unearthed a U-shaped pattern in the share of incomes going to people in the top 10 percent of incomes.

From 1907 to 1940, the top 10 percent earned about 45% of the total. During the war years, their share dropped to about 33%, and it stayed there until the 1970s when it rose back to the mid-40s (e.g., 48% in 2008, the highest share since 1928).

What's most interesting is that when Saez took these figures apart, he discovered that most of the fluctuation in the top ten percent's share of incomes occurred within the very top one percent's share. (The top one percent's share went from the low 20s in the 1920s to less than 10 percent in the 1960s and back to the low 20s in 2008.)

By the way, the top one percent of incomes started at $368,000 a year in 2008.

The stark differences become even clearer in Saez's anlysis of recent household incomes. Between 1993 and 2008, average real incomes for the lowest 99 percent grew less than one percent a year (i.e., an average of 0.75%). In contrast, during the same period, incomes for the top one percent grew 3.9 percent per year.

Thanks to the benefits of compounding, over that 15-year period, that's a 12 percent increase for the 99 percent and a 79 percent increase for the top one percent.

In other words, in that 15-year period, the top one percent captured more than half of all income growth.

But, as they say on TV, wait there's more!

Saez went even deeper into that period and broke out the periods of expansion and recession. All incomes declined during the recession periods of 2000-2002 and 2007-2008, even the top one percent's. And all incomes grew during the expansionary periods of 1993-2000 and 2002-2007, even the 99 percent's.

But what's interesting is to contrast the four periods.

During the 2000-2002 recession, people in the one percent highest income category bore 57 percent of the decline. During the 2007-2008 recession, they bore less than half (47%) of the decline.

Saez's findings on what happened during the expansions deserve to be quoted because they shed so much light on the current controversy:

"While the bottom 99 percent of incomes grew at a solid pace of 2.7 percent per year from 1993–2000, these incomes grew only 1.3 percent per year from 2002–2007. As a result, in the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth.

"Those results may help explain why the dramatic growth in top incomes during the Clinton administration did not generate much public outcry while there has been an extraordinary level of attention to top incomes in the press and in the public debate since 2005. Moreover, top income tax rates went up in 1993 during the Clinton administration (and hence a larger share of the gains made by top incomes was redistributed) while top income tax rates went down in 2001 during the Bush administration."

So yes, it's real. And it's different.

Not class warfare

2012-01-14T10:05:47-05:00

Want to know why the rich owe something to the less well-off?

Elizabeth Warren gave the best answer I've heard so far:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

You can see her for yourself on YouTube.

Everything's connected

2012-01-12T11:23:04-05:00

In the old spiritual, Ezekiel reminded us that the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone's connected to the shin bone, etc.

That's worth remembering. Everything's connected, even the fact that we're increasingly disconnected.

Yesterday, a Pew Research Center survey showed that divisions between rich and poor are the greatest source of social conflict. That shouldn't be too surprising given that income inequality now is higher than it's ever been in U.S. history. Indeed, the U.S. is now on a par with Uganda.

Meanwhile, some politicians refuse to talk about it. Mitt Romney, for example, says it's simply a matter of "envy." His competitors for the GOP nomination seem to agree, decrying Democrats for trying to stimulate "class warfare" whenever they bring up the issue of rising inequality.

Indeed, some political scientists see a strong connection between income inequality and political polarization. In fact, it's the subtitle of one of the best books I've read on the topic -- Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches.

In it, the authors show how political polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and then rose together dramatically from 1977 on.

Part of the reason, they claim, is that Republicans increasingly moved away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. They suggest that rising immigration in the 1970s made this shift possible. Non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, can't vote. So there was less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there was from the top against it.

In what they call "the choreography of American politics," inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

Interestingly, Pew's last report showed that immigration was the greatest source of conflict and it's still a close second, pretty much within the margin or error.

So there you have it -- inequality, immigration, political polarization, they're all connected. Just like Ezeckiel said.

You are what you read

2012-01-11T10:24:44-05:00

Every day, I see more evidence that people filter information through the lens of their political beliefs.

Case in point:

Yesterday, the White House announced the appointment of Cecilia Muñoz as director of the Domestic Policy Council, making her one of the president's top advisers.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times covered the appointment with straightforward stories, describing her background and the significance of her new position.

In its online headline, the Journal highlighted her role as an advisor on immigration matters; the Times positioned her as an "Hispanic advisor."

By 10 a.m., the Times' story had generated exactly one comment, suggesting that the president should further reshuffle his senior staff by asking Joe Biden to step aside as candidate for vice president in favor of Hilary Clinton.

The Journal story, meanwhile had generated 158 comments, compared to just nine comments on the appointment of a new White House chief of staff, announced the same day and also reported in the paper.

Most of the Journal comments were similar to this beaut from James Jenkins: "And while they are at it, how about turning Homeland Security over to Al Quada? Unbelievable, does this appointment come with a full surrender to Mexico? King Obama is showing his true colors; Anti-USA! When do the treason trials begin? Or has Mexico successfully bought off Congress as well?"

Apparently, Mr. Jenkins, who wisely chose to keep his online profile private, is concerned that Ms. Muñoz was once a senior officer of La Raza, the nation's largest Latino advocacy group. She also advised the Obama administration on immigration policy, though her previous job was to oversee inter-governmental relations. Her parents are immigrants from Bolivia, not Mexico.

I will probably dig into this a little more when I have the time, but my general impression is that the Journal's readers tend to comment on the paper's stories at a higher rate than the Times' readers. If that's true, it would be fun to figure out why.

Meanwhile, it's becoming increasingly clear that we are what we read and we read what we are.

Do the Rich Have Feelings, Too?

2012-01-08T10:33:41-05:00

Does having piles of money make you less compassionate?

According to a U.C. Berkeley study, well-off individuals show less empathy and sensitivity to distress in others than working-class individuals do.

The rich “seem to be more absorbed in their own lives,” says the study’s co-author, Michael Kraus. He also notes, “Thinking about the self a lot, it becomes easier to ignore those around you.” Feelings are kind of 99 percenty, anyway.

Or so says Heather Havrilesky in a super-brief piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. But didn't at least two of the three people pitcured with the piece (above) give a big chunk of their cash to others? (I have no idea who the guy in the armless tee is, but he seems to be assocoated with the Heat, whoever they are.) I'm told the guy in the armless tee is Le Bron James, a basketball player with the Miami Heat basketball team. He apparently made $14.5 million last year and has a host of lucrative endorsement deals. Like Facebook's Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey, he supports a host of philanthropic endeavors. Maybe they're the exception that proves the rule?

Anyway, isn't the Times' "One Page Magazine" feature terrific? It reminds me of some front-of-the-book material in the old Harper's magazine before Lewis Lapham got his hands on it.

Another chief

2012-01-05T12:02:07-05:00

Continuing to be optimistic, I want to draw attention to an article in today's Wall Street Journal.

It describes a relatively new corporate trend -- the appointment of Chief Diversity Officers.

Corporate headquarters may be in danger of occupation by too many "chiefs," what with Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Communications Officers, etc. But even the Journal seems to think this particular version could be a timely addition to the rolls.

"Having a diverse work force no doubt helps a company's image," it writes, "and some say it can also impact the bottom line by reducing employee turnover, boosting innovation and attracting new business."

The paper cites a PriceWaterHouse Cooper's finding that some 60% of Fortune 500 companies have appointed CDCs, a quarter reporting directly to the CEO. Most have traditional human resource responsibilities, but interestingly some are also responsible for marketing.

Sadly, not all the paper's readers see the value. For example, Dan Freeman, president of a NJ- based marketing firm of all things, considers it "a total piece of rubbish." He accuses the reporter who wrote the piece of sounding "much more like the mouthpiece of the Democratic-Government establishment than a journalist."

Building up a righteous head of steam, he writes, "Workplace diversity is institutionalized racism against white men. Nothing more. No better than the KKK and perhaps worse, since it is sanctioned by the state. ... Diversity is something to be tolerated; not worshiped."

On his web site, Mr. Freeman claims an impressive list of blue-chip clients. Apparently, they are unaware of the country's changing demographics. (Dan, if you see this, contact me. I have reserved a free copy of OtherWise for you.)

But, back to the bright side, only about half a dozen people had commented on the Journal article by mid-morning. Some might consider this a sign that there is little interest in the subject. In my new optimistic mode, I prefer to think most of the Journal's readers saw the headline and said "Duh?"

Let's be less crazy

2012-01-04T13:03:13-05:00

Sustaining an optimistic note for the new year, let's consider some remedies for my oft'-cited finding that people are crazy.

We are, but we don't have to wallow in the craziness of the cognitive errors that are the legacy of our stone-aged brains.

If someone disagrees with us, instead of looking for evidence that our view is correct, why not look for evidence contrary to what we believe? It might be a bit uncomfortable, but it could lead to more accurate information.

When someone sends us email that is too good to be true in terms of proving a long-held belief, why not check it out on Snopes.com or FactCheck.org before forwarding it to someone else? It could kill a delicious bit of gossip, but YouTube videos of some kid trying to skate board on a two-story railing can be entertaining too.

If someone pontificates on an issue we know little about (except what our political leanings would suggest is the correct position), why not ask questions instead of taking sides? A couple of good questions to ask: what do people on the other side of the issue say? Why do they say that?

If we have a favorite right- or left-wing columnist, why not try reading someone on the other side of the political fence once in a while? NPR often teams David Brooks and E.J. Dionne, and they almost always manage to be informative and entertaining without resorting to name-calling, insults, or sarcasm.

Finally, why not adopt as a motto the sign posted in many of those Republican caucus rooms last night? "Good manners are practiced here."

The road ahead

2012-01-03T11:59:55-05:00

Let's start the new year on an optimistic note.

We may not yet live in a "post-racial" society, but inexorable forces are pushing us in that direction.

For example:

Genetic studies have conclusively established that categorizing people by features like their skin color, the shape of their nose, or the texture of their hair has no scientific basis.
Immigration and multi-racial marriages are making such categories increasingly problematic and irrelevant in day-to-day life.
And younger generations, while not yet completely free of unconscious stereotyping, are less driven by prejudice and suffer less attendant rage and guilt.

Taken together, these forces are inexorably lowering the social and economic boundaries between groups.

Indeed, even in the debris of the Great Recession, researchers have discovered a new vein of optimism among people of color. More than two-thirds of Black and Hispanic Americans believe their economic situation will improve over the next ten years.

According to another study, Black Americans' perception of racial bias has declined by more than a third since the 1950s.

Unfortunately, the same study indicates White Americans think such progress was at their expense. Their perception of anti-White bias has more than doubled.

I suspect perceptions of anti-White bias reflect a generalized resentment of affirmative action and the social imposition of political-correctness. As the researchers noted, "by nearly any metric — from employment to police treatment, loan rates to education — statistics continue to indicate drastically poorer outcomes for Black than White Americans."

The factual data support neither Black optimism nor White resentment. But in time the former may be justified. And once White Americans realize that economic and social equality is not a zero-sum game, the latter may dissipate.

Ironically, real progress depends on both.

Meanwhile the road ahead may be bumpy, even if we can be rightfully optimistic about the destination.

To be OtherWise

2011-12-23T05:55:00-05:00

I'm ending 2011 with a few thoughts on what we might do about the issues discussed in some of my previous posts.

The traditional approach to difference in most pluralistic societies is the cultivation of tolerance.

But tolerance is the cheapest virtue, if it’s a virtue at all. At best, it’s a cease-fire that allows each side to retain, and even cement, its hostile attitudes.

One party can agree to put up with the Other and still look down on him or her. Keeping one party at a distance nearly always fosters misunderstanding and suspicion.

Tolerance may promise non-interference and facilitate peaceful co-existence, but it doesn’t lead to understanding. And certainly not to joint action. On the contrary, it’s built on a willful ignorance that leaves the other party unknown.

Productive societies need more than what one philosopher called a “benign indifference to difference.” Tolerance is only the first – and arguably lowest – step in becoming wise in the ways and why of others – to be OtherWise. Sometimes, it may be all that is attainable; but it should never be a satisfactory goal.

The opposite of “intolerance” is not “tolerance” but “hospitality.” Hospitality requires us to welcome and to make room for the Other, without any judgment beyond recognizing our common humanity.

It’s seeing the Other as a person and not simply as a totem of difference. It’s engaging that person in conversation, fueled not only by curiosity, but also by the conviction that he or she can teach us something of value. It’s sharing that person’s experience emotionally as well as intellectually.

That doesn’t mean we have to set aside our own beliefs in favor of cultural and political relativism. But such an encounter forces us to surface and examine our own preconceptions and biases.

We are each embedded in the particular history and culture that shaped us. Being OtherWise means treating others as individuals, with their own unique story.

Paradoxically that requires keen self-awareness. Only then can we be free of our preconceptions and unspoken fears. Thus unencumbered, we can discover all the ways we are the same – in our interests and our destiny, if not in our experience and our ancestry.

Why bother to acquire the wisdom of relating to the Other? Not because it’s the nice – or even right – thing to do, but in order to be more effective in our increasingly diverse and global society.

Becoming OtherWise is a critical management requirement of the 21^st century. It entails intellectual, as well as emotional, development:

Expanding our worldview to include news of other countries,
Increasing our cultural literacy of other people,
Increasing our religious literacy of other faiths,
Challenging our biases and assumptions about the “Others” in our lives,
Educating our emotions and developing our sense of empathy,
Engaging with people outside our immediate circle in meaningful ways.

To be OtherWise is to be open to others and to see them as fellow human beings of dignity and worth. It is to hear their story and to share our own with them. It is appreciating their differences while finding in them common interests and values.

The OtherWise are not naïve and gullible. They realize that some people would take advantage of them, even do them harm. But they try not to make such judgments based on stereotypes; they evaluate people as individuals. And they don’t paper over real disagreements; they confront differences of opinion honestly without thinking less of the person who holds them. They try to find a way to respect the perspective of other people, even if they can’t share it.

To be OtherWise is to see ourselves as others see us and to see ourselves in others. It is to understand the hidden forces that shape others’ behavior, as well as our own. Only then will we see the others, not as something apart, but as someone who is part of our world and our life. Only then, will we be OtherWise.

That's my wish for you in 2012. See you next year.

Our fractious nation

2011-12-22T05:05:00-05:00

How has an expression of extreme annoyance become the slogan for our time?

Most Americans are pretty close to the center on almost every issue – including the emotional third rails of abortion and gay marriage. But those at the extremes, we're told, have sufficient fervor to drown out the center if not each other.

It's merely difficult to see the center through the heat waves rising from the fiery arguments around its periphery.

America is not fractured, we're told, just increasingly fractious.

Sadly, I think there's little practical difference. As the center deludes itself into thinking it need not concern itself with fights at its edges, its political, social, and economic choices relentlessly narrow.

These new levels of fractiousness have their roots in two relatively recent developments -- the moralization of politics and the politicization of communications media.

1. The line between ethics and politics has always been fragile, but in the 1980s it was breached in a far-reaching way. That was the year that the Republican party recognized the motivating power of moral absolutism and included an anti-abortion plank in its campaign platform.

The Democrats, kowtowing to feminists in their ranks, took precisely the opposite view and positioned their stance as a blow for women's rights. Similar battles over "cultural values" such as gay rights ensued. The GOP adopted the mantle of a family-friendly, religious party; Democrats allowed themselves to be positioned as ir-, if not anti-, religious.

Both parties adopted a fundamentalist or relativist approach to documents like the Constitution and the Bible. Republicans profess belief in free markets and absolute moral standards, while Democrats are more inclined to moral relativism and tightly regulated markets. Political debates became emotionally charged, generating more heat than light.

Those who have policy differences aren’t simply wrong, they’re morally corrupt. Politicians in both parties have to genuflect before the arbiters of political morality to get nominated. The media worship at their altars to get ratings.

2. At around the same time, communications media went through tectonic shifts, first from a broadcast to a cable platform, then from an analog and wired environment to one that is digital and wireless.

The days when almost everyone dined on the same diet of evening TV news gave way to a multiplex of 24-hour cable programming that eventually tailored itself to the agendas of the right and left.

The Internet enabled on-the-fly filtering so people could avoid opinions at odds with their own, creating a decidedly anti-social network that isolates and divides.

Wireless technology took that network to the streets. Today’s kids spend more time texting than talking on their cell phones. The give and take of actual communication has been replaced by bursts of telegraphic text, heavy on snarky observation and commentary, but devoid of content more thoughtful than curated web links.

The product of these developments has been an increase in the volume and reach of differences if not their substance. Evidence contrary to accepted dogma is ignored or devalued. Rumors, gossip, and rants consistent with one's views are swallowed whole like a sacramental host. And if non-controvertible evidence later rebuts it, the original source is quickly forgotten, leaving only the emotional impact, sometimes with even greater virulence. Once engaged, hot cognition continues to glow even when the fuel is turned off.

Public discourse is fueled by passion, rather than facts and data. Every partisan is a self-appointed Prophet, whether on a picket line, in letters columns, or in blogs and Tweets.

The public square has become an echo chamber, full of walking and talking exclamation points. It is noisy, raucous, and powered by deep-seated resentment.

Today’s right and left are really two sides of same coin. Both target preference. One sees it in the underclass, the other, in the upper class.

For centuries, new communications technologies helped bring people together. Every innovation – from tribal drums to telephones – collapsed geography a little more, making the world smaller. Now it seems that the most powerful of those innovations are doing the exact opposite: geography is actually folding in on itself, like a digital black hole from which nothing can escape.

The result has been an historic deficit in the lubricant of civic life – trust.

In decline since the 1960s, tust in nearly all institutionsis now at its lowest point ever. In fact, it has evolved into a cloud of free-floating anger not seen since the French Revolution.

Bite that.

A classical education

2011-12-21T10:51:11-05:00

A classical education left me with three Greek and Latin phrases, two useful and one that initially appeared supremely irrelevant.

The phrases worth remembering are "There's nothing new under the sun" in Latin and "Know yourself" in Greek. The third phrase is also Greek and may have broader application than I used to think -- "The animals are running."

Indeed, all three phrases apply to America today.

In the category of "nothing new," is America's increasing diversity.

We started life as a prediminantly Protestant Anglo-Saxon country, but became more diverse even before the Revolutionary War had ended. And now we are told that by 2042 the U.S. will be a minority-majority country.

In other words, non-Hispanic White Americans will soon be in the minority. It's already true in several states and in a growing number of large cities.

Of course, that has raised alarms in some quarters, reflected in the current hysteria over immigration, mosque-building, and foreign-language signage. All of that also falls into the "nothing new" category.

Emma Lazarus to the contrary, many Americans have had misgivings about foreigners on our shores ever since boats docked from anywhere but England. Ben Franklin had truly obnoxious things to say about the Germans settling in Pennsylvania, the Brahmins of Boston considered the Irish a separate race, and California sold Chinese people at auction if they couldn't pay a monthly head tax.

On one level, such fear of people who are different reflects the animal instincts that still run through our genes. When our primordial ancestors dropped from the trees and started walking across the African savannah on two legs, survival favored those who had an innate ability to work in small groups, as well as a deep hostility towards anyone not of the group.

Those characteristics were so critical that, over a number of generations, they became the norm. And they survive to this day.

All of which suggests that the best way of dealing with diversity is not only to try to understand others, but also to understand ourselves. Or as my old Greek text put it, γνῶθι σαυτόν.

Q & A on income inequality

2011-12-20T12:15:43-05:00

Q. Why should we worry about income inequality?

A. Because it erodes trust -- the social capital on which on well-being and economic growth depends.

Q. Isn't income inequality the natural result of our free-market system?

A. Some level of income inequality is motivational and is not only to be expected, but a positive force in society. But current levels in the U.S. are unprecedented and dangerous.

Q. Has inequality really gotten worse?

A. The Congressional Budget Office recently took a comprehensive look at household after-tax incomes for the period between 1979 and 2007. Both years reflected similar economic conditions, each coming before a recession. In addition to wages, bonuses, dividends, interest, capital gains, and other forms of earned income, the CBO auditors took into account government payments such as social security and welfare. They also subtracted all federal taxes paid, including payroll taxes. And they adjusted all data to account for inflation.

After crunching the data, the CBO concluded that after-tax income for households at the higher end of the income scale rose much more rapidly than income for households in the middle and at the lower end of the income scale.

For the 1 percent of the population with the highest incomes, average real after-tax household income grew by 275% between 1979 and 2007.
For the 20% of the population with the next highest incomes (those in the 81st through 99th percentiles), average real after-tax household income grew by 65% over that period.
For the 60% of the population in the middle of the income scale (the 21st through 80th percentiles), the growth in average after-tax household income was just under 40%.
For the 20 percent of the population with the lowest income, average after-tax household income was about 18% higher in 2007 than it had been in 1979.

Q. What accounts for these differences?

A. The CBO concluded that the principal reason is that all major sources of income became more highly concentrated in the very highest-income households.

Wages and bonuses are by far the largest source of income, accounting for about three-fourths of total income across all households in 1979 and two-thirds in 2007. But whereas in 1979, 60% of wages and bonuses went to people in the lowest 80% of incomes, in 2007 less than 50% did.
There are different theories to account for this, ranging from the impact of salaries paid to a relatively small number of superstar athletes and entertainers, to the outsized compensation given to corporate CEOs, and the increasing concentration of the economy in higher-paying financial, legal, and medical industries, as well as the general increase in jobs requiring higher levels of education and technical skill.

An important secondary cause of increasing income disparity is that non-wage income became a larger piece of the total income pie over this period. Capital income (i.e., interest, dividends, and rents), business income (i.e., an owner or partner's share of busines profits), capital gains (i.e., profits realized on prior investments), and private pensions became a larger piece of the total income pie over this period.

All of these sources tend to be concentrated in the upper income households. But the biggest change in this period was the share of business income concentrated in the top one percent of households.(Business income increased partly because business earnings increased in this period. But it was also due to tax changes that caused many businesses to redefine themselves as "S Chapter" corporations that pass their earnings on to their owners or partners, avoiding double taxation at the corporate and individual levels.)

But an unexpected reason, at least to me, is that government transfers across most income groups declined as a share of total income.

For example, Medicare payments -- which are not means-tested -- grew, shifting more government payments to middle- and upper-income households.
On the other hand, spending on federal means-tested programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children declined. As a result, households in the lowest-income quintile received 54 percent of federal transfer payments in 1979 and only 36 percent in 2007.

Finally, average federal tax rates went down by two percentage points in the period, but payroll taxes increased. The result was a less progressive federal tax system.

Taken together, nearly all households' share of income after government payments and federal taxes either went down (for the bottom 80%) or stayed the same (next 19%), while the share to the top 1% more than doubled.

According to the CBO, higher after-tax incomes for the top 1% of households accounted for more than half of the increase in income inequality.

In sum, it seems that income inequality is due to a less progressive tax system, decreases in government benefits for lower income groups, higher compensation for occupations requiring more education and technical skill, and CEO compensation that has grown faster than the economy.

Q. So what can we do about income inequality?

A. I think at least part of the solution requires action on four fronts:

Restore the progessivity of our tax system, especially on the 0.1% highest-income households,
Apply more means-testing to government benefits, including Medicare and Social Security,
Improve corporate governance to get more control over executive compensation,
Make major investments in education to equip people with the skills needed to compete for higher-paying jobs.

Q. What are the chances of any of this happening?

A. It all depends on people like us deciding to do something about it.

Merry inequality

2011-12-17T12:48:18-05:00

It may not have been totally in the spirit of the season, but I got into an interesting discussion about income inequality at a holiday luncheon yesterday.

I am against it; my luncheon companion has no problem with it.

He's especially concerned that President Obama wants to fix the problem by redistributing the bank accounts of the wealthy to the poor because it's not "nice" that some people have a lot of money.

My friend isn't unique in holding that opinion.

A Gallup report issued yesterday found that most Americans think income and wealth inequality isn't a problem but merely an acceptable part of our economic system. And if we must do something about it, a large majority believe we should grow the economy and increase equal opportunity so people "can get ahead if they want to."

In other words, a lot of Americans believe wealth inequality is a matter of choice. I suspect my friend is one of them.

So here are a couple of thoughts.

First, opportunity is not as equally distributed in the U.S. as it should be even though we've been at it since the country's founding (and redoubled the effort about 50 years ago). As I've written in other posts, lots of people still suffer from unconscious bias. And the legacy of past racism is evident in our cities, suburbs, schools, workplaces, shopping malls, and highways. In other words, everywhere.

Second, re-balancing wealth in the U.S. is not an issue of being "nice." A long litany of studies has established that wealth inequality reduces people's well-being, results in fewer public goods, and even lowers overall economic growth. (See, for example, this report from the International Monetary Fund.)

Third, while people certainly are entitled to what they earn honestly, our progressive tax system is designed to ensure that rich people pay a higher tax rate than poorer people. That helps to offset the regressive nature of other taxes, such as sales taxes and social security taxes that have income ceilings. But it's also designed to inject more fairness in our tax system.

Rich people have benefited from the U.S. economic system at least as much as from their own talent and luck. In fact, their luckiest break was being born in the U.S. As Warren Buffet admits, he probably wouldn't have been as successful had he been born in Bangladesh.

Unfortunately, the U.S. tax system now has so many loopholes and preferences that it is not nearly as progressive (or fair) as it once was. Fixing that problem would go a long way towards reducing income and wealth inequality.

I suspect that's what Obama has in mind. His political opponents, on the other hand, will undoubtedly portray it as increasing taxes on "job creators." Or, as my friend did, a Soviet-style form of wealth redistribution.

It's nice to be White

2011-12-15T17:33:14-05:00

I've written before about implicit bias, the unconscious attitudes that lead to discriminatory behavior.

An on-going Harvard University study revealed a pattern of discrimination against darker-skinned people among Whites and also among Blacks and Hispanics. But it doesn't take a statistical study to realize that it's nice to be White.

Worldwide, skin lightening products outsell self-tanning products 20 to 1. Preference for lighter skin colors are deeply embedded in our unconscious, resulting in bias in everyday transactions from shopping to hiring. Not to mention arrests and convictions.

To that list, thanks to an investigation by ProPublica, we can add presidential pardons. The investigation's title says it all: "Presidential pardons favor Whites."

Indeed, the ProPublica study shows that "White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities."

For example, all of the drug offenders forgiven during the Bush administration at the pardon attorney's recommendation - 34 of them - were White. A Black, first-time drug offender -- a Vietnam veteran who got probation in South Carolina for possessing 1.1 grams of crack - was turned down. A White, four-time drug offender who did prison time for selling 1,050 grams of methamphetamine was pardoned.

Overall, although Blacks account for 38% of federal inmates, only 2 to 4% of those who applied for a pardon received one. That compares to 12% of Whites and 10% of Hispanics.

Apparently, when President Bush turned the pardon process over to career Justice Department lawyers in reaction to the controversy surrounding his predecessor's pardon of a big campaign contributor, it didn't remove implicit bias from the equation.

According to ProPublica, by the end of his term, the pardon process had moved President Bush himself from "frustrated" to "disgusted." A sentiment we can all share.

Right way, wrong way

2011-12-08T11:21:56-05:00

Philosphers have had a corner on morality for eons. But now, they need to make room for exerimental psychologists.

Jonathan Haidt is a philosophy major turned psychologist who never lost his taste for exploring the Big Questions.

He has some trail-blazing experimental research on the nature of morality, i.e., why people have a sense of right and wrong and what shapes it. That's the subject of his upcoming book, The Righteous Mind. And it shows up in his highly informative web site.

I refer to some of his more interesting findings in OtherWise. Many are particularly relevant to my exploration of the forces that seem to inexorably divide us.

One would think that a moral sense would make it harder to divide people. After all, nearly every culture and religion purports to embrace the Golden Rule as an ideal -- treat others as you would like them to treat you.

But as Haidt (pronounced "height") observes, morality too often "binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups.” It seems believing something is wrong carries a corollary obligation to demonize anyone who disagrees.

That's not an argument against morality. It's a plea that people who purport to follow high standards of morality reexamine their own behavior.

And it's a suggestion that anyone who truly wants to understand others must "respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own."

Cognitive illusions

2011-12-07T12:19:36-05:00

Daniel Kahneman dedicated his career to understanding how we make decisions.

The theme of his new book, Thinking Fast and Slow, is that many of our judgments and decisions are less the result of careful thought as the product of unconscious bias and intuitive feeling.

We all suffer "cognitive illusions," the rational equivalent of optical illusions.

Kahneman unearthed so many insights on the source and consequences of those illusions that he won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.

He believes that people's brains have two separate systems for organizing knowledge.

System One is blazingly fast and probably evolved so our prehistoric ancestors could survive in a world of hungry predators. It allowed them to react to shadows in the bush quickly enough to stay one step ahead of venemous snakes and saber-tooth tigers.

We call those quick judgments based on limited and fragmentary information "intuition." They allow us to act without waiting for our conscious awareness to catch up.

System One works because it has immediate access to a vast store of memories and impressions, especially those tied to emotions like fear, pain, and hatred. It's often wrong, but in the jungle it's safer to be wrong and quick than right and slow.

System Two is the slow process of forming judgments based on conscious tought and the critical examination of evidence. Kahneman believes System Two was probably a relatively recent evolutionary adaptation, arising from the need for prehistoric tribes to make plans and coordinate activities.

In theory, System Two allows us to evaluate System One's conclusions, correcting and revising them. Unfortunately, it uses more calories and is more time-consuming. It's hard work. So we're less likely to use it. And even when we do, it's not immune to illusions.

A long litany of cognitive illusions afflict it, from “availability bias” (judgment based on memories that just happen to be quickly available or have strong emotional content) to "zero risk bias" (a preference to reduce a small risk to zero rather than attempting a smaller reduction in a bigger risk).

The problem is that System Two seldom operates independently of System One, which is faster and has greater emotional content. And as Kahneman ruefully points out, simply knowing of the existence of cognitive illusions doesn't free us from their effects.

For example, if you got this far, you've now read 391 words on the subject. What is pictured in the following photo?

That's right -- two eggs. But some people can be tricked into thinking the photo pictures something else as Systems One and Two battle furiously within their brains.

Keep that in mind the next time you're dealing with other people, especially if you're arguing over a contentious issue.

Neither of you is really listening and evaluating the available data. You're probably operating off a whole host of cognitive illusions.

What's PR?

2011-12-05T14:43:45-05:00

One of the national PR associations is sponsoring an online effort to redefine "public relations."

Good luck with that.

To most people, the practice of "PR" exists somewhere between the harmless hype of P.T. Barnum and the toxic smokescreen of a Nixonian cover-up. To many people, at its least offensive, it amounts to word-smithing, party-planning, glad-handing, and pitching (as in trying to convince some hapless reporter to write or not write something).

At a more objectionable level, PR is "spinning," which is a term of art for "lying;" or it's "influence," which can easily de-generate into outright bribery.

One of the most dangerous trends I noted when I was active in the field was the way the tactics of lobbying and political campaigning were bleeding into the practice of public relations.

Many CEOs are captivated by lobbyists who prowl the corridors of power on what appears to be an equal footing with our elected representatives. Of course, their way is greased with gobs of well-placed PAC and corporate money. But they seem to have clear goals, and they can be ruthless in achieving them. That appeals to the typical alpha-dog CEO.

I don't mean to suggest that lobbying is inherently evil and PR is pure. (My beloved son-in-law is a lobbyist, after all.) But the two functions are fundamentally different. Lobbyists and political operatives are basically transactional. They're all about getting a vote (or avoiding one).

Public relations, on the other hand, should be about building enduring relationships. And that has to start with understanding a broad range of stakeholders, not so much to influence them, as to help shape an institution's policies and practices.

If I had one suggestion for the folks trying to redefine PR, it would be this: whatever you come up with, put less emphasis on advocacy and more on the kind of listening that can inform corporate decisions.

A new business model

2011-11-16T10:11:12-05:00

A friend recently put me on to Larry Lessig.

Or perhaps I should say "reintroduced" me. I knew Lessig as an expert in intellectual property law. But once again, the world had moved on when I was busy somewhere else.

Lessig had retired his IP blog and had redirected his prodigious intellect toward reforming our very system of government.

See, for example, a recent talk he gave to promote his new book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan To Stop It. Lessig is determined to upend a political system that perpetuates itself by polarizing people and driving wedges between them.

He described his goal quite succinctly in the Huffington Post:

"We Americans are diverse. We have different views. Some of us want more government. Some of us want less. Some think the state has done enough to achieve equality. Some think it's not begun to do its job. Some want flat taxes. Or no taxes. Some want progressive taxes. Or at least more taxes. We are different in a million ways, we Americans, but we are all equally Americans. And if you're leading a movement that won't acknowledge that difference (or more frighteningly, that believes that mere rhetoric is going to erase that difference), then you're not looking for fundamental reform. You're looking for a putsch."

Finding common ground would be a much more productive alternative, he says. That doesn't mean abandoning your principles. It does mean refusing to operate from bias and stereotypes about others. It means really trying to understand people's real-world situation and motivations.

"We can't afford to simply indulge the passion of our differences," he says. Particularly because the money interests that have captured Congress want to keep us fixated on our differences, whether political, religious, racial, social, cultural, or ethnic.

It's time we refuse to operate within that business model.

Dare I say it's time to be Otherwise?

Person of the year

2011-11-15T17:03:43-05:00

Over at Time, they held a round-table to brainstorm candidates for their annual selection of "person of the year."

The panel was predictably esoteric, ranging from the verbose earnestness of Brian Williams to the incisive wit of Seth Myers, with stops for the thoughtful contributions of chef Mario Batali, law professor Anita Hill, pledge-enforcer Grover Norquist, and actor Jesse Eisenberg.

The discussion was actually pretty interesting. All the panelists -- except Williams, who picked Steve Jobs -- selected someone connected with the populist movements in America and the Middle East.

But it was left to Seth Myers to put the right label on the people behind these movements, whether Arab Spring, Tea Party, or Occupiers.

They're angry.

Their incandescent anger shows up in survey after survey. Any institution that ignores or minimizes the strain of anger that animates them does so at its own peril.

And they, more than any other individual or group, "influenced the news most, for better or worse," in 2011. (Time's criteria.)

But Time magazine is unlikely to follow the advice of its own outside panel. So I put together my own cover to memorialize Myer's acumen.