Offspring of Abraham

Historically the differences between the three major branches of religion that all trace their roots to Abraham through the Old Testament have been a continuing source of major conflict.  From the Crusades of the middle ages, through Hitlers blaming all of Germany's problems on Jews to the current ever expanding madness in the middle east, no one seems to have a more difficult time avoiding conflict than Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Ambitious people convinced what they personally feel emotionally is the true reflection of God's will extrapolate from their own emotions and believe their thoughts are the voice of God.  

So one is left with the conclusion either God encourages this on-going battle for the supremacy of one view of the nature of God over all others, or the adherents of the various views have a significant lack of understanding about some of the basic underpinnings of their religious certainty.  Like exactly what is the nature of God?

Does God really think like humans, or more specifically male humans?  (Brain science has now pretty clearly established that our balance of sex hormones shapes the way our brain is organized and functions and the differences in the sexes are reflected in differences in the way men and women see and perceive the world).  More specifically, does God have a brain like ours, that shapes our thinking through the peculiar organizational structure whereby old brain parts that are similar to the brains of rats or lizards are overlain with layer upon layer to new systems to modify the rat/lizard instincts?

Does God have emotions?  Does God feel rage (and thereby lose his ability to be fair and dispassionate)?  Does God feel jealousy?  Of whom?   Is God sexual?  Does he experience lust?  Does God have sex hormones and organs?  Sex hormones drive so much of our emotional behavior, but what would be the point of sex hormones for a power that is eternal?  

One of the factors that make these views of God descended from Abraham so popular is the promise we can beat death if we believe.  Some are more invested in this belief than others.  I suspect many Christians and Jews don't believe a Muslim fighter who dies in battle is going to go to heaven where he will have 70 virgins at his disposal (I wonder what the reward is for the female suicide bombers?).   

Where exactly is Heaven?  Clearly not in the clouds, to dangerous up there with airplanes, or at higher elevations satellite?  Is Heaven on the Moon?  Mars?  What do they do in Heaven to fight off the boredom of having no responsibilities?   

Just saying.

Democracy as America's Religious Ideology

Democracy is really a problem for most religions and some ideologies.   For a democracy to function everyone must be entitled to believe as they chose in so far as how they live their own lives (within the constraint of limitations on how their choices impact others).

Most religions or ideologies are, or evolve to, top down organizations where the leaders dictate reality to the followers.  If the leadership acknowledges that other realities are anything other than wrong they undermine their position as leaders.

So combining Democracy and Religion or ideology is tricky.   It will inevitably produce periods of tension where particular religions or ideologies cannot accept ideas that do not fit their beliefs.  We have particularly seen that happen in the "Arab Spring" in the middle east the last few years as fledgling democracies stumble over problems with religion.

The lesson we should keep in mind is democracy can't just be grafted onto a society.  The majority of the society must not only want it, they must be able to allow others to hold different religious or political views.  It  has to develop from within, it can't be imposed from without.

Videos of Police Beating Suspects

Seems like every couple days now we see some video of police apprehending a suspect where one or two officers have the suspect on the ground, face down, arms behind his back - pretty clearly under their control, while other officers come rushing up and start kicking the suspect, or trying to find room between all the police bodies to reach in and throw a punch at the suspect.

Is this official police policy?  To inflict as much physical pain on a suspect as they can get away with - presumably on the theory it will discourage the suspect from running from them next time?

Or is it a reflection of poor training - perhaps a lack of emotional maturity and self restraint by some officers, coupled with a culture of unwillingness to criticize other officers who are out of control?

If it is official policy is it based on some research that shows this is an effective deterrent?  Or is it just because some guys in management feel in their gut this is the way to go.  I'd be surprised if there was any actual research.  It seems to me this may deter a few suspects from future bad behavior, but it is really bad community relations, and for many suspects, and their associates it is just going to make them more angry and defiant, and probably more likely to pull out a weapon the next time they encounter a police officer.

As a taxpayer I have to say it makes me concerned.  I know being a police officer can be a difficult job.  Long periods of boring patrols, or investigating silly stuff punctuated by occasional moments of potential danger.   But from what I understand here in much of urban Northern California police salaries are over $100,000 a year.   Are we ending up paying people for policies that are stirring up resentment and anger instead of quelling it?

Hypotheticals - The Impact of Raising the Minimum Wage

Here are a couple of hypotheticals to illustrate how the current fashion for across the board increases in the minimum wage will often do more harm than good.

X company has revenues of $1,000,000 a year, a line of credit with the bank and a well established business.  After all other business costs have been paid the company has $400,000 left to divide up between owners and workers.   The owner pays himself $200,000 and pays his top manager $80,000 a year (pay, payroll taxes and workers compensation) leaving $120,000 a year for other employees.  He has four other employees, he pays them at minimum wage, $10 an hour, with mandatory other payments such as payroll taxes, sick leave and workers compensation that takes up the last $120,000.

Y company has revenues of $250,000 a year.  After other business costs have been paid Y company has $170,000 to divide up between the owner and workers.  Y company also has 4 employees paid the minimum wage, $10 an hour.  As with X company that takes up $120,000 leaving $60,000 for the owner.

The city enacts a minimum wage ordinance bumping the minimum wage up to $15 an hour.   For each company their new cost for their 4 employees will now be $160,000 a year.

X company will grumble, but will be able to adapt.  It has the cash flow and the bank connections to deal with the disruption.  Perhaps the owner reduces his annual take to $160,000 to cover the new costs.  The increase in the minimum wage as to this company will probably be good for the city wide economy, more money will be in circulation from people who spend most of what they earn, and less money will be driving up asset prices.

Y company, on the other hand, will be in severe financial straights.  If the owner absorbs the cost of the additional wages he will now be making $20,000 a year, less than the old minimum wage, much less the new one and less than any of his employee's make.  His only other options are to fire someone, or make substantial cuts in employees hours, or close the business.  It is a lose / lose situation for everyone, including the economy of the city.

In any given city it is hard to know how many companies are more like X company, and how many are more like Y company.   If 95% of the companies are like X company, the minimum wage hike will certainly be a net plus (although hard on the Y companies and their employees).  If 95% of the companies are like Y company the minimum wage hike is going to cripple the cities economy.

A relatively simple solution is to create an exception to the minimum wage hike.  Any company that can demonstrate that owners and management are not making more than, say 300% of the average earnings for full time workers in the company is exempt from the new minimum wage (although still subject to the old minimum wage).

The NY Times Magazine and Child Porn

In the New York Times Magazine for April 19, 2015 there is an article by Sally Mann, a photographer, about pictures she took of her naked children and published in a book in 1992.  To me this article and the surrounding circumstances seem to be utilizing borderline child porn to promote book sales, under the guise of Art.  

I'm not much in favor of government censorship, but I do believe citizens in a free country need to exercise some self censorship to protect core values.

This current NY Times article is promoting a book to come out in May.  The excuse for the new book (besides making more money) seems to be to allow the author to make her case that, in publishing the 1992 book, she was innocent and naive.

The 1992 book, the current article, and evidently the new book appear to me to simply exploiting photo's, that would probably be of greatest interest to pedophiles, to generate controversy and sell books.

The Times Article is illustrated by a picture promoting the article on the Table of Contents page of the magazine.  The picture is titled "The Perfect Tomato" and the picture's focus is on a naked girl of perhaps 8 to 10, standing sideways to the camera on a picnic table in a dancers pose, with what are apparently a few barely visible tomatoes at her feet.   

The article itself contains a number of small pictures and three large pictures.  Some of the small pictures are innocuous but some, and all the bigger pictures seem to me to be featured for their implicit sexual suggestiveness.

The first is of a young girl, maybe 5 to 10 years old, naked face down, although her head is turned sideways so a profile of her face is visible, laying in the grass with grass cuttings scattered over her body.  

The second of a young girl, again maybe 8 to 10 years old, standing in front of the camera wearing nothing but roller skates, but looking away from the camera towards activities on the deck behind her, with her hand down blocking the view of her crotch, with the hand curling in toward her crotch.  

The third photo I have no problem with, it is not of a child, it is a self portrait of the photographers upper torso, and head, head turned away from the camera so the face is not visible but one breast and an erect nipple are prominent.  But it does seem to confirm the underlying use of sex for artistic and commercial advantage.

The article is long and Ms. Mann is eloquent (or glib?), essentially trying to make the case she was simply recording innocent pictures of her family and didn't expect to generate so much publicity when she published the book in 1992.  However, I find the photo's chosen for publication, particularly the larger ones, seem to be chosen explicitly for their implicit sexual suggestiveness.  

Certainly a child can strike any of the poses inadvertently and innocently, because children can be innocent about how they might be perceived.  But Ms. Mann and her husband are adults.  I am left with the sense they are either incredibly oblivious to the risk of sexual abuse many children face or they is scarily dishonest and glib.   Given the new publication of these pictures it is hard to avoid concluding they chose provocative pictures to create controversy and sell copies of her book, and are perfectly aware of what they were doing.

A bigger concern is why the New York Times is promoting this book.  The Times not only choose to publish an article about a person that, to me, is using photo's that could be viewed as child porn to promote her book and career, but featured the article in the Table of Contents of the magazine.   
The brutal truth is the buzz generated by this controversy will probably sell lots of books, both the author and the NY Times will make a lot of money of it.  

But I for one want to express my displeasure.  I urge everyone to not buy the book and let the NY Times know you we find it disturbing they are promoting a book that seems to be trying to build a following by skirting the line between childhood innocence and child porn.

If you share my concerns spread the word.  

Requiring Paid Sick Leave - Republicans have some valid points - but...

Last year California enacted legislation that requires every employer in the State, even little guys like me with just a couple employees, to provide a couple days of paid sick leave to employees each year (it takes effect July 1).

The Democrats who pushed it through argued how hard it was for employees to balance family and health needs with jobs, that people couldn't afford to take time off to go to the Doctor, or could get fired for taking a sick kid to emergency.  Working people problems, some perhaps overblown, but still real issues.

Republicans argued vociferously that this bill would be a job killer, that it would make California less competitive with other states, that it would drive employers out of the state.  

Republicans are right, all that will happen to some degree.  When I look at my business balance sheet it is a problem to build in that extra cost.

But, for me, Republican policies of the last 30 years are the reason we have a poor solution to the problem rather than a better solution and they offer no alternative to the not very good Democratic solution but the status quo.

The biggest problem facing our economy is inequality.  Ever since Republicans took control of the economic agenda in the early 1980's our government has been about cutting taxes on the wealthy, cutting the power of labor unions and cutting regulation on business.   The end result has been a rise in income inequality over the last 30 years to the point a very small percentage of people own most of the wealth in this country.

Rich people don't really buy that much.  Sure they have to do something with their money, so they buy and sell art, and houses and expensive cars, and stocks and sell businesses back and forth, for ever increasing prices.  So they drive up the price of investable assets.  But it is regular people that don't have all they need that really drive a consumer economy.   After 30 years of trickle down economics, regular people just don't have that much money to spend.  It was all masqueraded in the late 1990's and early 2000 because people were borrowing against their home equity to spend for things they couldn't actually afford, and some are doing that again, but that path is not sustainable.

So each year the economists tell us this is the year the economy is finally going to turn around, but then it doesn't.  Because all the wealth in this country is in the hands of people who have no real need for consumer products, so there is no increasing demand to feed business growth. 

As a country our economy has continued to grind forward because of debt financed spending coupled with the fact we still can sell stuff to other countries, so big international businesses have been doing fine, but smaller businesses and main street businesses are shriveling up and disappearing.  New business starts ups are at the lowest point in decades because there isn't consumer demand to support a new business.  (Unless you are a tech start-up aiming at a world wide consumer base)

But Republicans are still believers that trickle down economics is the answer.   On California's sick pay law the only alternative the Republican opposition would offer was tax breaks to businesses to make it economically beneficial to provide sick leave.  Basicly their solution was to use public funds to buy cooperation from business by helping their bottom line.  

That's the Republican way these days.  There is always political hay to be made in criticizing what the other guy is doing, and lots of pitfalls in actually proposing things and opening yourself up to criticism.  But lately Republicans seem to feel like once they have figured out a way to criticize their job is done.  They just want to maintain the status quo.  If powerful business interests want to pay people peanuts so they can take home millions of dollars a year, well, we should thank them for creating jobs. 

Slaveholders on the plantations in the south created a lot of jobs but eventually we figured out there was something morally repugnant about their business model.

Sure our current system is vastly better than the slave economy of the south, but we are still stuck in that historical philosophical rut where we fail to address the fact many of the people most driven to acquire wealth are most interested in relative wealth, not absolute wealth.  They want to set themselves apart by being way richer and more powerful than everyone else.  So if their activities make most folks poorer, even if they also end up somewhat poorer in the long run, they are even more rich in comparison.  Greater equality is exactly what they don't want.  (There are psychological studies to support this notion by the way). 

Economic data, and simple common sense, suggests that the way to sustain long term economic growth in a free market is by setting rules that spread the wealth broadly across society.  When we allow wealth to concentrate new ideas and youthful energy tend to stagnate because the wealthy and powerful are interested only in their agenda and many creative people have no outlet for their talent.  

For those of us who think greater equality is the better choice there is a little to offer from the Republican party.  Seeking greater income equality doesn't seem to be a notion that fits anywhere in the Republican rear view mirror view of reality.  

Inequality in South America

A recent Economist article provided a lot of detail about inequality south of the Border.  Although income inequality in the United States has ballooned in the last 30 to 40 years it is even worse in Central and South America.

To me the inequality is caused by simple human nature.  Bosses control who gets paid how much, but bosses are competing with other companies.  So in a competitive market the most selfish and exploitive bosses are going to force everyone to bring wages down to their level to compete.

Conventional economics relies on the minimum wage to mitigate the damage.  That's like trying to do heart surgery with a meat cleaver.  Because raising minimum wages in one country disadvantages that countries industries competing against other countries it is very hard to get a minimum wage passed that is not minimal.  On top of that minimum wages generally apply across the board, so very small businesses where the owner makes little money won't be able to afford the higher wages so will lay people off and perhaps go out of business.

A better approach would be to focus on using tax policy to make companies more like teams and less like kingdoms.  Each companies median wage is the base and wages that deviate to much above the median would be taxed heavily.  So the way management makes more money is by bringing the median up, not by driving it down.