Partisanship - Don't Become What You Despise

Democracy is fundementally rooted in compromise - it is the ability to protect what we perceive to be our own interest while acknowledging the validity of other interests.  It is seeking a win-win solution to legislative problems - where the solution probably doesn't give every viewpoint everything they want, but it strikes a balance that protects all interests as much as possible.

Our two party politics makes that sort of solution really hard.  Most voters are busy with their lives with little time for the intricacies of finding a public policy that serves all Americans.  Ambitious politicans find it much easier to cultivate votes by criticism.  If voters don't feel compelled to pay close attention a politican with no real understanding of the complexities of public policy who is aggressive with criticism will usually beat a politican who tries to speak truthfully about the complexities.

But even beyond the issues arising from incentives to aspiring politicians that run counter to good decision making, there are more basic issues that, if we do not all keep in mind, undermine by-partisan action.

We all have no problem accepting that people are vastly different physically.  There are tall people, not so tall people, stout people, skinny people, black people, white people, a wide variety of eye colors, hair colors.  We see it and experience it every day.

We have much more difficulty not falling into the trap of thinking that everybody's brain should work just like ours.

Our Brains Are As Different As Our Bodies:

We all have in our brains various levels of messenger chemicals - nuerotransmitters.  Each individuals mix of brain chemicals shapes their view of the world.

Science has not yet figured out how to study variations in the the chemical nature of the brain in living people.  Brain scans only detect gross electrical activity.  They cannot distinguish between different chemical messenger systems using the same nueral pathways.  However, science has known for over 100 years the amount of many nuerotransmitters in the brain fluctuate over the course of a day, the monthly moon cycle, a calender year.  We all know Melotonin. We buy Melotinin at the drug store to help us sleep.  Melotonin is high at midnight and low mid-day, low in Summer, high in Winter.  Some nuerotransmitter levels fluctuate in opposition to melotinin, others appear to run in cycles not directly related to melotonin.

At this point we can only speculate about the impact on belief differences in nuerotransmitter levels may lead to given sciences inability to directly study the impact of those fluctuations in a living brain.  But it seems almost self evident that, given how quickly a developing embryo's brain develops, the relative level of each particular nuerotransmitter at conception will have a strong influence on the balance between different nuerotransmitters systems in adulthood.

One of the brains messenger chemicals (Oxytocin) is linked to a community outlook, to balancing, or even choosing community over individual interests.  Animals that live in communties usually have way more Oxytocin than animals of the same species that live a solo existance. 

Another of the brains messenger chemicals, Vasopressin, the levels of which some evidence suggests seems to fluctuate in a cycle in opposition to Oxytocin - tends to make people more likely to be loners, to be focused on their own well-being. 

Sounds suspiciously like folks with more Oxytocin than Vasopressin are more inclined to be comfortable in the Democratic party, and folks that see the world from the Republican viewpoint are folks with more Vasopressin than Oxytocin.  Oddly this correlates with gender data.  Women generally have more Oxytocin and less Vasopressin and are more likely to be Democrats, men tend to have more Vasopressin than Oxytocin and are more likely to be Republicans.

We can only speculate at this point because science is woefully ignorant about the impact on our thinking of nuerotransmitter variation in living humans.  But the point to take away is we do not all think the same, and our differences are not because anyone knows some absolute truth, they stem from biological differences in our brains.

Avoiding Partisanship

Partisanship is rampant when one or both political parties make decisions based primarily on ideological notions rooted in the particular individuals emotional belief system, in turn rooted at least in part on their particular mix of nuerotransmitters, and dismiss facts that do not fit with their world view.

It seems to me that at the moment we are reaping the harvest of 40 years of Republican ideologically based problem solving that puts the individual above the community in all things.  We are now going through our second financial collapse in little over a decade.  In the 40 years of Republican ideological dominance growth in the National debt has outpaced economic growth.  

The rest of us need to keep our perspective.  We need to recognize that other people see the world differently through no fault of their own, they just have a different mix of brain chemicals.   We must laser focus on facts, not ideological notions and emotional outrage.  Having the pendulum swing far to the left is not in the long term interest of our country.  We need to bring it back to a balance that respects individual rights while recognizing the benefits and needs of community.

Buy Backs and Student Loans - We Can Do Better

The Stock Market reached all time highs a month or two ago.  Most of the increase over the last couple years hasn't been because investors thought corporations were a good investment. For years the stock market has been driven to new high after new high not by extra investor interest, but by corporations using their profits to buy back their own stock. 

Wall Street and CEO's promoted stock buy backs as a way to "add to shareholder value."   

Where is all that shareholder value now?  The only folks whose profit was not wiped out by the stock market crash were the CEO's who got paid more because of the increase in stock price, and Wall Street folks who collected trading fees for the transactions.  

Since 1996 Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress 14 years, Democrats 2.  Republicans have controlled Congress and economic policy ever since Ronald Reagan.  They sit by complacently and do nothing but encourage whatever Wall Street wants.  We are now in the midst of the second major economic collapse in the last 24 years, and for that period growth in the national debt has exceeded growth in the economy. 

Now the Fed wants to start buying bundled student loans to address the economic collapse.  What it will accomplish is protect all those loan sharks that buried students in unaffordable education debt, and Wall Street, who then bought the loans to bundle groups of loans into investment vehicles.

Its 2008 all over again.  In 2008 it was bundled mortgages from all those fly-bynight lenders who sold houses to people who couldn't afford them by pitiching it as a surefire investment that would increase in value.  Wall Street bought those mortgages and bundled them into investment vehicles to sell.  Waves of foreclosures caused the financial world to freeze up with fear over who was going to have to take the loss.

Voters need to figure out that Republican economic theories are stupidly simple - business - any way people can figure out to make a buck- is good, government is bad.  It is almost criminal complacency rooted in the idea if someone is making money by exploiting other peoples situational fears or difficulties - more power to them. 

Share this, don't just like it.  Republicans get away with their stupid ideas because voters generally don't understand markets - polls consistently say voters think Republicans are better at managing the economy.  

Education about how Republican economics actually plays out will insure a better future for our kids and grandkids.  

Bailouts, CEO Pay & Stock Buybacks

Many huge Corporations in this country are facing almost immediate bankruptcy as a result of the Corono virus.  Letting them go bankrupt would torpedo our economy for years, maybe decades.

But if these companies had been using their profits to build up a rainy day fund they wouldn't need goverment intervention.  Apple has enough cash stuck away to finance operations for something like three years.  The problem is so many companies have been using their profits for stock buybacks - going into the financial markets to buy their own stock - instead of funding an emergency operations fund.  

The airlines are the poster boys for this practice, 96% of their profits over the last decade went into buying back their own stock instead of socking money away for a rainy day.  But buy backs have been endemic across publicly traded corporations in almost all industries.

From an operational standpoint it makes no sense for a big company to buy its own stock back.  But it makes sense for enriching CEO's.  Part of CEO pay is tied to the companies stock price - so even though using corporate funds to buy the companies own stock makes the corporation a little poorer (although not on paper because it drives the stock price up briefly) it makes the CEO paycheck bigger.

From World War II up until 1980 CEO pay averaged about 20% higher than the pay of the average worker.  Since then CEO Pay has increased nearly 1000% percent while worker pay has increased 11%.  

This vast CEO pay increase has little relation to increasing the value of the corporations CEO's run.  Since 1980 CEO pay has grown 70% faster than the value of the corporations CEO's run.  The extraordinary rise in CEO pay is a direct result of corporate directors who set pay, and CEO's who appoint directors, effectively scratching each others backs to advance their own interestes rather than the corporations.   (see footnote 1)

The House Democrats want to link Corporate bail-outs to eliminating Corporate stock buybacks, and limiting CEO pay while the corporations are operating on government money.

Should be a no-brainer, but the Republican Senate and President believe business can do no wrong - their policies over the last 40 years created the CEO pay boom and the mediocre economy that has accompanied it - and the the exploding national debt that is about to go into warp speed debt accumulation with trillion dollar bail outs.

(Footnote 1) - “The CEO Pay Machine” by Steven Clifford, a former CEO.  Blue rider press/Penguin Random House LLC, published in 2017.