Finding Happiness

November 2, 2011

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 43.0 million Americans lived in poverty in the fall of 2010. That’s about 14 percent, or one person out of every seven. For a family of four, poverty “officially” means that the household has an income level of $22,000 or less. For a family of two, it’s $14,500 or less.

Questions: How many of us who are not in “official” poverty status think we could live with those levels of income? And, if we think we can survive on those levels of income, how well would we be living? How much money would we be able allocate to (1) housing, (2) food, (3) clothing, (4) transportation, (5) education, (6) insurance, (7) savings, and, dare we add, (8) entertainment and recreation?

Most of us would conclude, after buying a few groceries or a few gallons of gas, or after paying our health insurance premiums or our monthly rent or mortgage… most of us would conclude that the “official” poverty levels are, if anything, far too low.

But not to worry!

Those in the official poverty category are doing just fine. Or, so says a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, in a “Notables & Quotables” piece published by The Wall Street Journal recently. According to this Heritage notable, these are the pertinent facts about the officially-poor:

• Computers in the home – 50 percent.
• Air conditioning – more than 75 percent.
• Cable or satellite TV – more than 66 percent.
• Microwave ovens – more than 90 percent.
• Wide screen TV – more than 33 percent.
• Xbox or PlayStation – “typical”
• Homeless – one in 70.
• Living in a trailer home – 10 percent.
• Children with very low food security (per the USDA) – 988,000 in 2000.

The notable says he is quoting data “the most recent government data.” Sure! And he adds: “The rest live in houses or apartments, many of which are in good repair. The poor are rarely overcrowded. …Ninety-nine percent of children did not skip a single meal because of lack of financial resources.”

Sooo… not to worry! The poor are doing just fine. They have computers, TV’s, housing (many of which are in “good repair”), microwaves, and play stations. And only a million of so of their children are “very low food secure.”

This is the gospel of the Heritage Foundation. This is deemed worth reprinting in The Wall Street Journal. And you wonder why the U.S.is in the condition it’s in! Why the rich refuse to pay more taxes! What budgets must be balanced with cuts only. This same “poor doing just fine” gospel also preaches indifference to mass layoffs, underfunding education and training, the wisdom of sending jobs overseas. It preaches individual responsibility along with some kind of Ayn Rand apathy. It presumes inevitability and predestination as an alterantive to community harmony and compassion.

 I have an idea—let’s swap lives for awhile. Let’s have the rich live as the “officially” poor live for just six months or so. Then let’s see what might be “notable and quotable” after that. The six-month swap should be no problem for anyone; after all, the “officially” poor have television and air-conditioning, and there are only about a million “officially” hungry children in the neighborhood.

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Another “notable” wrote something somewhat related to this subject in the London City A.M. following the recent riots in England. These were riots that somewhat shocked Americans because our impression of the Brits is that they’re quite sedate, well-mannered, and “stiff upper lip” about most things. There was little that was sedate or accommodating about these riots!

What were the circumstances of the rioters? Try poverty. Try unemployment. Try the impeding difficulties of austerity measures to solve national fiscal problems. Try the fact that England is a leader in economic disparity; its gap between rich and poor is one of the developed nations largest. The gap, of course, is something certain “notables” in America think is as it should be in a harmonious community; that is, as long as the poor have television sets.

How to develop a harmonious community? The British government thinks austerity measures and tougher police action will do it (though they’re cutting police budgets at the same stroke). Greece is trying to move to the same austerity programs; and there’s been abundant discord in the streets there too.

The London City notable wrote: “I cannot remember anything like it; the atrocities of the 7/7 terror attacks, the shock from 9/11 and the IRA’s repeated terrorist attacks had a chilling, devastating effect… but it felt different this time. Usually peaceful suburbs were under siege; meanwhile, there was increasing violence in other towns. The government belatedly appeared to regain control in London but the electorate’s trust that the cavalry would show up if you call 999 has been shattered.”

 Is that it? Is that what keeps us calm here in the U.S.–the sense that the “cavalary will show up” if the poor get too demanding? Will the cavalary soon sweep the OSW gatherings from the streets and parks of U.S. cities?

Is there more riot to come in the struggling economies and the communities of the developed nations where inequality, debt, deficits, austerity proposals, high unemployment, and unsympathetic fantasies of how the poor really live abound in the vacuum of paralyzed and polarized politics and opinion? Were the demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, just the beginning?

“It no longer feels that we live in a civilized country,” the notable wrote. Civilized–as in harmonious, caring, collaborative, and compassionate? Or civilized–as in condemning, apathetic, uncaring, ruthless, and dependent on the power of police? What kind of civilization are we talking about?

The latter approach arrogant approach of the presumed superiors is implicit in the echoes left by the first notable’s fantasy of the poor living quite well, thank you, with their TV’s and air conditioning in their “many of them in good repair” housing units. Survival of the fittest right!

The latter approach is also implicit in the second notables comment: “Fear. Debilitating fear. The country held to ransom by feckless youths…. The cause of the riots is the looters; opportunistic, greedy, arrogant and amoral young criminals who believe that they have the right to steal, burn, and destroy other people’s property. There were no extenuating circumstances, no excuses.”

Violence is not to be sanctioned. That should be clear to all at all times and in every circumstance. Violence is a lose-lose! Yet there are always extenuating circumstances to be seen by anyone with open eyes, and a caring heart; and there are various kinds of violence.

There is the violence of being discharged from your job, from having your paycheck taken away, from having your savings evaporate due to the greed of bubble-building-and-bursting insiders. These are distant and cold evil kinds of violence that the powerful can perpetrate on the powerless with impunity.

There is the violence of being bullied by the rich and strong. There is the violence of condescension and the violence of misrepresentation (as in the notables discussion of how well the poor live above).

There is the violence of presumed social and intellectual superiority, the violence of bullying, the violence of Social Darwinism, and the violence of Creative Destruction. There is the violence of those who believe that Thomas Hobbes was more of a prophet than those who spread messages of truth, compassion, peace, and communal responsibility.

There are the violent ones in the streets where they dare to go to burn and loot when no other course seems to be working in their “civilized” society. And there are the other violent who created the conditions that cause the rioters to do what they do. And, most likely, there is much more such violence coming because the rioters are more empowered than ever today and more connected, and the causes that motivate them are more deeply entrenched.

Feckless? The word means unthinking and irresponsible. Clearly, there are many more feckless among us than just those rioting in the streets. But, hey, why look in a mirror when it’s so much more entertaining to look at your telly? There they are, and they’re burning things; there you are smugly blaming them for their feckless behavior without an ounce of any sense of connection. That too is—feckless.

But the passive feckless must go one step further. They must blame. They must point to a warped sense of context, ergo: “The context was two-fold: first, decades of failed social, educational, family and microeconomic policies, which means that a large chuck of the UK has become aliented from mainstream society, culturally impoverished, bereft of role models, permanently workless and trapped and dependent on welfare or the shadow economy.

“For this the establishment and the dominant politically correct ideology are to blame: they deemed it acceptable to permanently check welfare money at sink estates, claiming victory over material poverty, regardless of the wider consequences, in return for acquiring a clean conscience.”

Here we have it, the reason why The Wall Street Journal printed this diatribe as a “quotable.” It attacks “politically correct ideology” (whatever that is). What jumps out more specifically is “welfare money at sink estates.”

Can we finally agree that no one likes “welfare money,” not those whose taxes pay for it, and not those who have to “beg” for and depend on it? And, will we ever agree that there are circumstances where welfare money is required to sustain the survival of the weakest?

No one that I know of has claimed victory over poverty, except perhaps those too remote from reality who are severely cocoon-bound in prejudice. No one that I know of has a clean conscience, except those who deny and distance themselves from the reality of need, or, as the notable notes, the failed policies of society’s guides.

People need to feel as though they are needed. They need jobs. They need opportunities to contribute. And people need to feel secure. This is Psychology 101. Communities need balance, heterogeneous and harmonious balance. And both individuals and communities need mutual support, collaboration, trust, and unselfishness. These are the hallmarks of true civilization.

What we’ve been given by quotable notables in The Wall Street Journal is, instead, finger-pointing, blaming, condescension, and misdirection. Without such misdirection the real culprits, causes, inequities, and fecklessness might come to light. And that light will be shining at levels of income and wealth higher than the “officially” poor. 

Meanwhile dispense with the notion that the poor are doing just fine. Walk among them with your eyes (and heart) open. Or, prepare for more riots and upward pressure on the police and prison budgets. It’s only going to get worse.

Sources:

Notable & Quotable, The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2011.

Notable & Quotable, The Wall Street Journal,July 26, 2011.

August 14, 2011

Something happened to American business in the 1980’ s.  What happened was a subtle and gradual change, but the consequences of that change were enormous.

The change represented a major shift in priorities. The shift was rather imperceptible at first, but it is obvious today to even the most casual observer; and that shift slid across the landscape of U.S. business like a glacier withdrawing from another time. We have still not reckoned with or come to understand what that glacier left behind.

First, there was the emergence of Wall Street as a new power.

No longer would Wall Street merely raise and allocate capital. No longer would Wall Street be the residence of private partnerships expert in funding American enterprise and entrepreneurs. The new Wall Street itself would be corporatized. The new Wall Street would become preoccupied with the pursuit of its own profit, and with the reward of sits professional managers and executives.

Second, there was the emergence of a new ethic.

Wall Street redefined the risk/reward relationship. It was no okay to accept more risk on the hope that there would be outlandish reward. Hostile takeovers, junk bonds, “concept stocks, the electronics bubble, and a “let’s get rich” partnership with the White House, were among the primary manifestations of this new underlying ethic.

The outlandish rewards for Wall Streeters, of course, could come only with a cost, mostly a major social cost.

Business, once  upon a time, was thought to serve diverse and multiple constituencies (shareholder, customer, employee, and community). That diversity of constituents was now given only lip-service. The sole concern was the service to the shareholder; and that meant profit, profit, profit as the focal point of all business energies. Profit at any cost. Profit maximized in the short term, regardless of the long-term consequences.

Business schools taught their students that profit was the only corporate responsibility.

Business sociologists taught their students that survival of the fittest was the only corporate mandate. Social Darwinism was back wearing Brooks Brothers suits, cuffed shirts with embroidered initialing, and wide-banded galluses.

And Fortune magazine, in the 1980s, dropped the listing of Number of Employees from the data it reported on its famous Fortune 500. Was Fortune prescient? Did the bible of business publications see it all coming?

***** Read more »

August 22, 2011

America is (or was) a jobs-machine. As such it is the envy of the world. But these days when it comes to our jobs-machine we have to speak less in absolute terms. The world has changed; and much of that change has been our doing.

We live now in a globalized economy. We live now in a corporatized America. We live now in a digitized age. We live now in a world of instant connectivity. But we’re still using the same old economic and social theories; and, stubbornly, we’re using them as if they were well-established truth.

Today, we have to be more cautious in our prideful assertions. In fact, it would be well for us to forget about hubris and stir up a good pot of common sense mixed with a hearty dose of humility, and more than a pinch of a sense of community.

The excesses of the Roaring 20’s, the struggle of the Great Depression, the economics of the Second World-War II are all instructive; but they are no longer entirely relevant. Still, we keep looking to these periods for answers. The world of work, globally, has been restructured by the dynamics noted above, and many others as well. Yet we continue to believe that the world of work, nationally, is somehow immune to that restructuring.

We don’t like to admit to restructuring because it, generally, means painful and prolonged change. The Agricultural Revolution, and then the Industrial Revolution were restructurings. The transition from coal to oil was a restructuring. The Automation Revolution (technology displacement) was a restructuring. The transition from manufacturing to service in America was a restructuring. Creative destructive is an advocacy theory of restructuring.

Yet, we prefer to idle our time away fantasizing about our jobs-machine and our economy as a cyclical phenomenon; and we apply cyclical remedies when we should be taking out a clean sheet of paper and writing the true realities of our restructured jobs environment. We argue about the past priesthoods of Keynes versus Friedman when we should be developing an economic and social theory of the future. And our idling, our blind and stubborn attachment to old ideas and irrelevant happenings of long age, is leading us down a distrastrous path.

I’ve posted 18 times on the subject of work here on Finding-Happiness.com. (A list of those posting, and navigation, can be found on the left sideboard of this website.) Work/jobs continues to be one of the primary concerns of America, and of the world. For many if not most Americans today, work/jobs is theonly concern. We talk about debt and deficits; we should be talking about jobs, jobs, jobs! We talk about taxes and entitlements; we should be talking about work, work, work!

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There were 69.4 million workers in the U.S.workforce in January 1969. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (the source of the data in this posting) refers to them as NFE’s (Non-Farm Employees). Steady growth produced by the American job machine increased that workforce to a peak of 138.0 million in January 2008.

 69.4 million to 138.0 million in 39 years! That’s an awesome record! In 39 years, our workforce almost doubled. The average annual rate of workforce growth over this period was just under 1.8 percent. That has been the good news. Read more »

July 28, 2011

Excerpt From:

Chapter 3 – Peace, Pleasure, and Participation – Grazing Cattle and a Herd of Swine

Another legendary entertainment group, also of iconic status, is Pink Floyd—David Gilmore, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright. Their 1973 album, The“Dark Side of the Moon,” is one of the best selling albums of all time, going above the 35 million copies mark. One of the hit songs from that album is “Money,” which contains these lyrics: “Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today.” Too few listeners really listened.

Or as ABBA sings, “Money, money, money, it’s so funny, in a rich man’s world.” Too few got the message. And so we speculate and daydream and fantasize about “all the things we could do” if we had more of the root of all this evil.

With enough money, we could conquer the world. But we forget, conquering the world, well—it’s been done; and it was done long ago by a young man who was counseled to kick back and spend more time with his friends, as we’ll see later; but sadly he died before he could do so and all his conquests came to naught.

Comments
If only we’d really listen to the lyrics that are all around us. Michael Jackson singing about the “man in the mirror.” John Lennon asking us to “imagine.”

I used to start my ethics classes at Ramapo College with a recording of one of these, or similar, songs. Not a standard teaching technique in an ethics course I imagine; but doing so helped make some points. Like: Our poets are reminding us of reality all the time. Like: we aren’t really listening to our poets. We hear them. We even memorize the lines. But, are we really listening?

Rather than conquering the world, as Alexander the Great attempted more than 20 centuries ago, the new measure of having “made it big,” perhaps, is to own a professional sports team or to fly around in your own private jet.

The icon of success today is the Mercedes hood ornament, and so these ornaments are in danger of being ripped right off the front of the car by those who want their piece of “happiness.”

Most everyone wants money to be shared “fairly.”  But no one wants that sharing to come from “a slice of my pie.”

Cocoon-bound thinkers see happiness and pleasure as ends in themselves. They want to take the direct route to happiness. They want the journey to be quick and smooth. But, wanting that quick and smooth trip to happiness and pleasure, the cocoon-bounds are always frustrated. And, they’re often very angry. Beware those who get in their selfish path!

Albert Einstein said, “In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.”

Einstein’s “herd of swine” talk was no harsher than what Aristotle said.  The great philosopher thought that those who accepted happiness-as-pleasure concept were nothing more than “grazing cattle.”

Grazing cattle? A herd of swine! Tough talk from some very smart people. Politically dangerous talk in a plutocracy like the one we have today.  We have to be far more circumspect these days. Yet we cannot but wonder at the humanity that allows the social tensions, the hate, the crime and injustice, the suffering and sense of hopelessness that is far too pervasive. Maybe we need to go back to the kind of talk Einstein and Aristotle provided–straightforward and honest.

Most of us aren’t made for the life of monasticism or the role of the ascetic. Some self-indulgence is fine, and necessary. Some rest, some recreation, some search for beauty and order in our lives, some focus on proper nourishment of the body and soul, some rigorous examination of our values and purpose, some dedication to exercise and entertainment—these are basic requirements.

But self-indulgence cannot be in excess, and cannot become a preoccupation—as too often it does. The basic requirements for the care of self must be met in moderation. Short-term needs must be balanced with longer-term needs. Individual needs balanced with the needs of the community. We are far too “out of balance” today! The Golden Mean is relevant, even, or especially, in the pursuit of pleasure.

We might worship science above all today. But we must listen carefully to our poets as well.

 March 7, 2011

Excerpt From: 

Chapter 3 – Peace, Pleasure, and Participation – Happiness as Pleasure

Money can’t buy happiness. But money can buy pleasure, for a moment or two here and there along the way. Therefore, we have to ask whether the two—happiness and pleasure—are the same thing. Hedonists argue that they are the same thing, and some of them suggest that pleasure is the ultimate end of life itself. For the hedonist, a life lived without pleasure is an unhappy life. For the hedonist, the more pleasure the better, now and for as long as possible.

In fact, happiness as pleasure may be the quintessential modern view. Consume now, and forget thrift. As Professor Parten declared, people who spend and who are able to spend are a “higher type.” Deficits don’t matter because another generation will pay off the debt, or not; but that’s their problem.

The dilemma of the short-run versus the long-run is always to be resolved in favor of the short-run. And, somehow, the measure of gain is not a function of production but of consumption, even if that consumption can be facilitated only by rising mountains of debt. Hence we find apologists writing that recessions simply don’t exist as long as people keep spending more.
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