Society
-
Links
Rounder, Sun Expose Archives Digitally
Add Google Maps’ Directions to Your Site
And this thought from Will Wilkinson
My hunch is that these folks aren’t really utilitarians after all. They have a prior intuition about the injustice of inequality, and the justice of progressive redistribution. Then, they attempt to undermine resistance to higher tax rates on the wealthy by pointing to research that they interpret to say that this won’t make the wealthy any less happy, and so, Why worry? The trouble is, it won’t make the poor (in a country like the US where the poor are already rich) much happier either, and won’t do anything to change relative position in the distribution. So what’s the point? The point is more progressive redistribution, to which many folks are committed to prior to and independent of utilitarianism or their interest in happiness.
-
While I’m waiting for files
The Baby Name Generator – a very nice java app that shows where names show up throughout history
-
The NYT Alpharetta article
I probably won’t have time to post on this tonight, but here it is
The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life -
Continental Drift
While at last night’s Boo Hoo Rambler’s show, my friend Beth said something about “The country getting more conservative” which I wonder about. She was grouping the politics and the society but the general thought can be either true or false. More Republican certainly, but by what measure is the country getting more conservative? I thought I’d make a list:
Top moves to the left
- Massive Federal Spending
- Wars for Democracy (this has been adopted by the Republicans, but the idea has been on the left for quite some time)
- Gay marriage on horizon
- Government involvement all aspects of the medical system
- Abortion available for minors without parental consent, paid for by the feds in some cases. This is something that has stayed the same, but it’s a huge red flag for a lot of the right.
- Central planning for education under the guise of No Child Left Behind.
- The income tax actually becoming more progressive under Bush
- Campaign Finance “Reform”
Top moves to the right
- A push for Social Security privatization
- A move to end the death tax
- Assault Weapons ban NOT being renewed
- Higher defense spending (Bush was proposing this before 9-11 so I’ll include it here)
- Over 55 speed limits remain in effect
- 3 rounds of tax cuts
I’m sure I’ve missed a lot but that is something of a gist. Certainly the Republicans have been doing much of the above (on both sides) but where is the country actually drifting? IMHO the Democrats have not been following an Evolutionary Stable Strategy for quite a while which allows the Republicans play both sides of the street.
-
Affordable Family Formation
This article by Steve Sailor (via Mickey Kaus) is will worth reading. Put simply, it explains the current American Red State/Blue State gap largely in terms of self selection and children. It’s much more expensive to have children in a blue (Democratic) state compared to a red (Republican) State. Throw in some freedom of movement and self selection and you’ve got a bifurcated America.
A few quibbles. He seems to throw in Atlanta as a “Red City” which is very much not the case. While metro Atlanta is a very red metro area, the city itself is quite blue. Also, the areas with the most recent and illegal immigrants (here in the Atlanta metro area anyway) seem to be the most Republican areas, which is seemingly at odds with his theory.
He also does not mention the Roe Effect, payroll taxes, the total tax burden, the actual cost of a mortgage (I got the full spiel from my mortgage broker when I refinanced, the cost of the mortgage itself can really vary quite a bit.)
On the whole, well worth reading though.
-
A good article from Landsburg
I stumbled across this on Cafe Hayek.
“Diversity” has always been my least favorite Shibboleth of the left. In fact, nothing else even comes close, although the right wing habit of appending “of faith” at the end of ever sentence is rapidly closing catching up.
That was why I liked this piece by Steven Landsburg. Initial Paragraph:
I was invited to speak about “diversity” to an audience of about 80 students, roughly half black and half white. Most of the blacks sat on the left side of the room and most of the whites sat on the right—as good an indication as any that nobody really cares very much about diversity.
How much of life is taken up with these self-conscious display of piety? If you removed all of the man-years that people have spent talking about “diversity”, “sexuality”, “culture of life”,”family values” I wonder what, if anything would be lost.
5-30-2005 Updated for Clarity (verb tense)
-
20 Predictions
Bearing in mind the Pundit’s Fallacy, here they are:
- Iran will work itself out fairly peacefully.
- Executions will increase in the US as people realize that DNA testing and soon to be omnipresent surveillance makes it ever more likely to be executing the right person.
- Surveillance cameras will proliferate, people will complain, but they will not alter their behavior at all.
- Animal right and environmental groups will turn violent.
- As the legacy of campaign finance reform grows ever uglier, term limits for politicians will make a comeback.
- Social Security will not be altered in the next five years. It will transform into a general welfare programs for the elderly in 15 years
- Marijuana will be legalized on the state or county level as a tax product when some interest group like education or seniors discovers a way to exclusively reap the tax receipts.
- Jews will leave Europe for America and Israel.
- Saudi Arabia will become increasingly isolated in the world.
- China will buy or “assume responsibility” for part of Siberia.
- Japan will change it’s constitution to re-arm itself.
- India will overtake China as the dominant Asian economy, though China will be a very significant player.
- Chechnya and Russia resume their very ugly war.
- Indian Medical Vacations kick off the start of a thriving global medical treatment market as people travel to lower cost medical treatment. Also a domestic medical black market will develop for surgery and treatment.
- While their democracy holds the Palestinians don’t accomplish much. On the other hand, the Lebanese will thrive.
- The US government will forcibly medicate all of it’s prisoners with mood altering and tranquilizing drugs.
- The battle over abortion will be overtaken by legal fights over decisions made at the beginning and end of life.
The beginning of life will start with prohibitions on smoking by pregnant women, unapproved prenatal care, etc and will end with genetic testing and an “approved” lifestyle for pregnant women.
The end of life fight will begin when government picks up more than 80% of the cost of health care and someone discovers the disproportionate amount spent on health care for the last few months of life. The right to die question becomes the number one question at this point.
- Many forms of congenital birth defects and diseases vanish from the population as genetic testing improves and people selectively abort non-optimum fetuses. This will have the unintended consequence of a vicious generational conflict down the road.
- Higher energy prices prompt a move to nuclear power and the importance of Middle Eastern oil is diminished slightly.
- The EU will be largely irrelevant, the UK and Eastern nations will eventually move away from binding commitments to the larger whole..
-
In place of a longer thought
Songs for John Doe was an anti-war record put out in the early 40’s by dutiful Soviet apparachiks the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie and the rest). For a brief period Stalin and Hitler were allies (and invaded Poland together, a little known fact). This record was their take on the matter, taking the position that America should not go to war for US Steel and JP Morgan, which was of course the only possible reason it would. They changed their tune the moment Operation Barbarossa began.
I have quite a few thoughts about this topic, but in general it would seem that the human condition is indeed timeless. I’ve got a quite a few thoughts on the matter that I’ll get into words over the next week or so.
-
This should be our national motto
As I wait for the Outlook repair tool to truncate my email file, here’s some stuff I’ve been meaning to get on the web. The below should be our national goal.
From Between the Devil and the Dragon by Eric Hoffer, the diary entry from February 11, 1959
I live in a society full of blemishes and deformities. But it is a society that gives every man elbow room to do the things near to his heart. In no other county is it so possible for a man of determination to go ahead, with whatever it is he sets his heart on, without compromising his integrity. Of course, those who set their heart on acclaim and fortune must cater to other people’s demands. But for those who want to be left alone to realize their capacities and talents, this is an ideal county. It is incredible how easy it is in this county to cut oneself off from what one disapproves–from all vulgarity, mendacity, conformity, subservience, speciousness, and other corrupting influences and infections.
Perfectly put.