Political Irony

As usual, in America there is a market for just about everything. Do you think you know who will win the Republican nomination? Then you can bet on it!

For example, as I write this shares in Carly Fiorna are down two cents to 20 cents, continuing their recent slide. Looks like the shine of her debate performance has already worn off. The leader is Jeb Bush at 37 cents and Marco Rubio at 34 cents.

At least, that’s what people willing to put their money where their mouth is think.

Right now it is probably way too early to predict, but if I had to guess I’d say Rubio will win the nomination, and if not him probably Bush.

Either would lose to Clinton. Speaking of Clinton, she is currently at 65 cents, with Sanders at 33 cents and Biden at 30 cents.

The Census Bureau just released their annual report on poverty, and Vox took a close look at the details, revealing information that may come as a surprise to many people.

Some people like to paint the poor as shiftless, lazy freeloaders, who refuse to work or otherwise make bad choices. But the numbers say otherwise. Of the people whose incomes fall below the poverty line, 68.6% are children (24.2%), elderly (27.7%), or disabled (15.7%). So the (super)majority of the poor are completely outside the job market (unless you are in favor of bringing back child labor).

An additional 19.2% are students (5.7%), caretakers (7%), or were involuntarily unemployed (e.g., laid off) for at least part of the year (6.5%). And another 4.9% are fully employed, but their wages are lower than the poverty level. That leaves just 5.4% in the “other” category. Why these last people are not earning a living is not specified, but even if nearly all of them are lazy freeloaders, that’s still just around 5% of the total poor, which corresponds to close to 1% of the US population.

The second interesting fact is that our “welfare state”, which is actually pretty weak compared to other industrialized nations, still manages to pull quite a few people out of poverty. Most successful is our Social Security program, which manages to reduce the poverty rate among the elderly from 43.7% to only 10%. Less effective are our programs for the disabled (blind, deaf, crippled, etc.) where government programs reduce their poverty rate from 49.9% to 30.7%. Even with government assistance, a third of all blind people live in poverty.

Increasing programs even a small amount can reduce our poverty rates even more. Canada – under a conservative government no less – recently expanded their benefits for children and saw a significant reduction in poverty.

So does this mean I’m advocating for a socialist welfare state, where everyone is guaranteed an income above the poverty line? Not at all. I think things can swing too far in the other direction. I lived in England during the 80s (the height of their dalliance with socialism), and I met people who had simply decided to leave their jobs and go on the dole, for no particular reason other than they didn’t feel like working for a while. But people like that are no reason to demonize the vast majority of the poor, who currently have no alternatives.

There is a reasonable middle ground. At the very least, we should be able to eradicate poverty among the elderly, children, and disabled populations – those people who are outside the labor market entirely. Having senior citizens, children, or seriously disabled people starving or homeless is obscene. Unemployment insurance should help people temporarily unemployed. The minimum wage should keep track of inflation, and I would eliminate the exemption for restaurant waitstaff. We should also have a discussion about financial aid for students, and assistance to help with care for the elderly and disabled (healthy people shouldn’t have to quit their jobs in order to care for an elderly parent or disabled child).

Then, after we establish a real working social safety net for these people – who are legitimately poor – then we can do something about any remaining freeloaders we keep hearing about.

So how do we pay for all this? There are plenty of ways. We could switch to a single-payer healthcare system. Every single-payer health insurance system in the world is less expensive than the current American health insurance system. Even with Obamacare saving us money while insuring more people, a single payer system would save us around $5 trillion.

Don’t like that? There are plenty of other ways to save money. Like reducing corporate welfare, the $217 billion we spend on subsidies and tax breaks to big corporations. Speaking of freeloaders, how about taxing inheritance fairly so we aren’t subsidizing lazy rich kids? Or avoid starting any new stupid wars, like the one in Iraq that cost us over $2 trillion and will cost an additional $4 trillion over the next four decades. And that’s not counting what it is costing us to fight terrorism (like the radical Islamist militants who were reinvigorated by the war in Iraq).

Bernie Sanders appeared at the ultra-conservative Liberty University to give a speech and answer questions. Here, Sanders answers a question about abortion:

I love the fact that Sanders is not afraid to stand up for his convictions, nor does he mince words or play the politician and say what his audience wants to hear.

You can watch the full event here.

This is in Swedish, but there are English subtitles.

Hans Rosling points out what too many people seem to be completely unaware of – if you get your news from the media, you will have an extremely distorted view of the world. In a few cases this distortion is intentional (cough, Fox News) but even without malicious intent there is an implicit and overwhelming distortion in the news.

News, by definition, reports on events. Events like war, death, and disease. Things that catch your attention. Things that change slowly are not news (again by definition). Most people think the world is becoming worse, but by almost all measures (life expectancy, number of wars, violent death) the world has been and continues to improve dramatically. But that isn’t news, it is just facts.

Take one example, transportation. Every time there is an airplane crash it is all over the news, with photos and much wringing of hands by survivors and the relatives of casualties. But 1.3 million people die in car crashes every year (and an additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled). Do those make the news? Usually only if it is someone famous. As a result, far more people are afraid of flying than they are of driving. Even though flying is a hundred times safer than driving, and has been steadily getting safer over time.

I doubt that there is any deliberate conspiracy to make people more afraid of air travel (even at Fox News). However, airplane crashes are news, and car crashes are usually not. The result is the same.

Rosling’s point is that war and revolutions are news, but peaceful elections are not. Famine and disease are news, but steady improvements in living conditions are not.

Many Americans think the world is a scary and dangerous place. We are afraid of immigrants, calling them criminals and rapists. We go to war based on the flimsiest of excuses, against people and governments we are afraid of. We don’t trust Iran to honor the agreement to not develop nuclear weapons, because we think they are state sponsors of terrorism. When in reality our fear drives us to sponsor far more terror than Iran does.

Yes, we are surrounded by terrorism and terrorists, but much of it is self inflicted. We have met the enemy, and he is us.