MoDo is off today. The Pasty Little Putz, in “What Tax Dollars Can’t Buy,” gurgles that soaking the rich can’t fix a broken government. Apparently he’s still fapping over Mitch Daniels. Pitiful… The Moustache of Wisdom has a question: “Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?” He says that while the world watched the demise of Qaddafi, some unsettling news from Wall Street helped explain why all those protests are resonating. Mr. Kristof asks are you “Addicted to Exercise?” He says brain scans suggest that everything from sugar to sex lights up the brain’s pleasure circuitry similar to the way cocaine does in an addict. And altruism does, too. Mr. Bruni, in “Pizzas and Pessimism,” says the disconnect between the seriousness of our angst and the silliness of our politics defies belief. Here’s The Putz;
Over the last 30 years, the U.S. economy has generated more large fortunes and more stress for the middle class. While the rich have grown extraordinarily rich, median wages have barely increased, the costs of health care and higher education have jumped, and socioeconomic mobility has lagged behind that of other developed nations. Americans have never begrudged the wealthy their success, as long as they had a chance to rise higher than their parents, and perhaps get rich themselves. But our era of diminished expectations is putting that in doubt.
From the drum circles of Zuccotti Park to the hustings of Barack Obama’s re-election push, a suddenly invigorated liberalism thinks that it has the answer to this angst: a renewed demand for higher taxes on America’s richest 1 percent. And if all you care about is reducing measured income inequality, then the Occupy Wall Streeters and their Democratic admirers have it right. Tax millionaires sufficiently and you’ll end up with a more equal society. The tallest poppies will be trimmed, and some of their income will find its way to someone’s else pocket.
But true social mobility and broadly shared prosperity are not so easily achieved. Remember that those tax dollars, once collected, would not be disbursed with perfect effectiveness to the most deserving members of the American middle class. Instead, they would be used to buy a little more time for our failing public institutions — postponing a reckoning with unsustainable pension commitments, delaying necessary reforms in our entitlement system and propping up an educational sector whose results don’t match the costs.
More spending in these areas won’t necessarily buy us more mobility. The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers. Some on the left have convinced themselves that this “success” can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival. But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door.
Our entitlement system, meanwhile, is designed to redistribute wealth. But this redistribution doesn’t go from the idle rich to the working poor; it goes from young to old, working-age savings to retiree consumption, middle-class parents to empty-nest seniors. The Congressional Budget Office’s new report on income inequality points out that growing Medicare costs are part of the reason upper-income retirees receive a larger share of federal spending than they did 30 years ago, while working-age households with children receive “a much smaller and declining share of transfers.” Absent reforms, this mismatch will only grow more pronounced: by the 2030s, Medicare recipients will receive $3 in benefits for every dollar they paid in.
Then there’s the public education system, theoretically the nation’s most important socioeconomic equalizer. Yet even though government spending on K-to-12 education has more than doubled since the 1970s, test scores have flatlined and the United States has fallen behind its developed-world rivals. Meanwhile, federal spending on higher education has been undercut by steadily inflating tuitions, in what increasingly looks like an academic answer to the housing bubble. (If the Occupy Wall Street dream of student loan forgiveness were fulfilled, this cycle would probably just continue.)
The story of the last three decades, in other words, is not the story of a benevolent government starved of funds by selfish rich people and fanatical Republicans. It’s a story of a public sector that has consistently done less with more, and a liberalism that has often defended the interests of narrow constituencies — public-employee unions, affluent seniors, the education bureaucracy — rather than the broader middle class.
The alternative to this liberalism should not, however, be the kind of reverse class warfare currently being championed by the not-Romney candidates in the Republican field, whose flat-tax fantasies would ask working Americans to bear more of the burden for public institutions that have been failing them for years.
Rather, it should be a kind of small-government egalitarianism, which would seek to reform the government before we pour more money into it, along lines that encourage upward mobility and benefit the middle class. This would mean seeking a carefully means-tested welfare state, a less special interest-friendly tax code, and a public sector that worked for taxpayers and parents rather than the other way around.
This was the potential message that had some of us excited about the prospects of either a Mitch Daniels or a Chris Christie candidacy. Given his background and his bank account, Mitt Romney is an unlikely champion for a more egalitarian conservatism. But it wouldn’t be the first time that an American patrician has emerged as a champion of the common man.
Cripes. He defies description. Here’s The Moustache of Wisdom:
Citigroup is lucky that Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed when he was. The Libyan leader’s death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.
It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn. “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” The Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.”
Citigroup, which is under new and better management now, settled the case without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. James Stewart, a business columnist for The Times, noted that Citigroup’s flimflam made “Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. In settling its fraud charges for $550 million last year, Goldman was accused by the S.E.C. of being the middleman in a similar deal, allowing the hedge fund manager John Paulson to help choose the mortgages and then bet against them without disclosing this to the other parties. Citigroup dispensed with a Paulson figure altogether, grabbing those lucrative roles for itself.” (Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case demanded that the S.E.C. explain how such serious securities fraud could end with the defendant neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing.)
This gets to the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of Hosni Mubarak, and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.
But, then, what happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.”
Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.
We can’t afford this any longer. We need to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement. 1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-dollar bailout. 2) If your bank’s deposits are federally insured by U.S. taxpayers, you can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period. 3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another A.I.G. is building up enormous risk. 4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.
Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. We lost that balance in the last decade. If we don’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — we will have another crisis. And, if that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.
Now here’s Mr. Kristof:
For decades, scientists have studied areas deep within the brain that seem associated with pleasure and addiction.
Put an electrode in that part of a rat’s brain, and it will become obsessed with stimulating those areas. When rats are allowed to push a lever in exchange for a mild current that produces a “high” in the “pleasure centers,” they will press the lever up to 7,000 times per hour.
These rats forget to eat or drink, and they must be unhooked to prevent self-starvation. Male rats ignore females in heat to get a fix, and nursing mothers ignore their babies.
“Pressing that lever became their entire world,” David J. Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University medical school, writes in his fascinating new book, “The Compass of Pleasure.”
Professor Linden explains how drugs such as cocaine that light up these pleasure centers (there are several interconnected areas) actually rewire the brain to increase cravings. You can look at magnified photos of rat brains and tell which animal was given cocaine and which wasn’t.
Yet it’s not just drugs. Brain scans suggest that everything from sugar to sex lights up the brain’s pleasure circuitry. These all can have neurological consequences that correspond to what we think of as addiction. For example: exercise.
As a pathological runner since my days as a high school cross country athlete in Oregon, that struck a chord. Am I addicted to running?
“Exercise addicts display all of the hallmarks of substance addicts: tolerance, craving, withdrawal and the need to exercise ‘just to feel normal,’ ” Linden writes.
O.K., I confess. I might be an addict.
Exercise seems to trigger the release of chemicals called endorphins and enkephalins (the brain’s version of opium) and endocannabinoids (the brain’s version of marijuana). In the lab, rats can develop an addiction to exercise on a wheel.
Brain researchers are finding many similar patterns. Who knew that orgasms, in men and women alike, light up the pleasure centers much like cocaine? (And who knew that researchers immobilize subjects in a lab, hook them up to a brain scanner, and then instruct them to engage in sexual activity?)
Linden argues that there is such a thing as a genuine biological addiction to sex. The public’s failure to recognize this, he says, means that people often don’t receive treatment.
“Sex addicts are among the least likely to seek help among all sufferers of addiction,” he writes, adding that this is tragic because sex addicts may be more likely than drug addicts to take others down with them.
Brain chemistry research also suggests that gambling and overeating can be addictive behaviors, analogous to narcotics addictions. In particular, foods with sugar or fat seem to trigger cravings that then rewire the brain’s pleasure circuitry to amplify that craving.
One study found that rats fed foods like cheesecake and chocolate showed differences in brain circuitry after just 40 days. The impact was that the pleasure centers of their brains were numbed, so they apparently needed to gobble even more cheesecake to generate the same satisfaction. Whether it’s sugar or heroin, the body steadily ratchets up the quantity necessary to provide the same high.
Does this mean the end of free will?
Of course not. But it’s a reminder that cravings are complex phenomena with strong ties to brain chemistry and genetics. Maybe that’s why President Obama has shown astounding self-discipline in his political career while enduring a long struggle with nicotine.
Moreover, our brains impel us not only toward vices, but also toward virtues. In recent years, researchers have found that generosity isn’t always a sacrifice; instead, it often exhilarates us.
One set of experiments at the University of Oregon involved young women hooked up to brain scanners as they were presented with modest amounts of money. Sometimes the money was then “taxed,” sometimes they were given the chance to donate to charity, and sometimes they were given additional money.
Their pleasure centers lit up when they received money, as one might expect — but also when they gave money away.
There were considerable variations among individuals. About half of the women seemed to derive as much pleasure, based upon their brain patterns, from giving money as from receiving it. The other half enjoyed receiving money more. Not surprisingly, the latter contributed less to charity.
Maybe the research will lead to new tools to fight drug addiction, alcoholism or obesity. Maybe I’ll be able to get a runner’s high without the sweat. But, to me, the most fascinating insight is that for at least half of humans it truly does seem to be as blessed to give as to receive.
On the basis of the latest brain research, as well as practical experience, let’s acknowledge this profound truth: altruism and generosity can be hedonistic pleasures.
Last but not least here’s Mr. Bruni:
Being surprised by something nutty from Herman Cain’s presidential campaign is like balking at an autopsy in a “CSI” episode: certain things go with the territory. Still, you had to pause and peel your jaw off the ground after watching an Internet ad for Cain that prompted considerable conversation last week.
In it Cain’s chief of staff, who comes across mostly as an untidy salt-and-pepper mustache with a rumpled politico attached, delivers the needless reminder that Cain has “run a campaign like nobody’s ever seen.” To prove the point he glowers meaningfully at the camera while sucking manfully on a cigarette. Alligators as border-patrol agents and nicotine for all: that’s the Cain agenda. The candidate appears in close-up at the end of the commercial, flashing a grin that’s two parts demented to one part demonic. Were there a thought bubble attached, it would say, “In my wildest dreams I never thought you people would actually buy this pizza.”
Meanwhile Rick Perry, who would trade his five best pairs of custom-made cowboy boots for just one of Cain’s percentage points in the polls, tried to steal the dubious thunder of the Herminator’s 9-9-9 tax hallucination by announcing an either-or, multiple-choice tax phantasm of his own. It would compel you to hire an accountant to figure out whether you’re best served by the existing code or by a 20 percent flat tax designed to spare you the accountant. If you go the 20 percent route, Perry said, you can file your returns on a postcard. I think he should add a deduction for taxpayers whose postcards promote national pride. I’ll pick one with the Statue of Liberty. You can do Mount Rushmore or the Washington Monument.
In the midst of all this, two attention-commanding sets of numbers were released. One, from the Congressional Budget Office, confirmed an increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in this country, noting that the inflation-adjusted incomes of the most affluent Americans had grown much, much faster over the last three decades than the incomes of the middle class. The other, from a New York Times/CBS News poll, showed that 74 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and 89 percent do not trust that government will do the right thing.
That’s a chilling and extraordinary pessimism, grafted onto a 9.1 percent unemployment rate and projections of a grim economy for some time to come. And it makes the kookiness of the Republican primaries all the more disquieting. As the (later disputed) story goes, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Cain’s chief of staff smokes while the citizenry smolders.
The disconnect between the seriousness of our angst and the silliness of our politics — between how big our problems are and how hopeless or just plain stuck the people who are supposed to address them seem — defies belief. Right now the system isn’t working, and a recognition of that is one of the ties that bind Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. They don’t identify the same villains or promote the same solutions. But they’re flowers of a shared frustration.
And neither movement is a marginal, renegade phenomenon. A recent Time magazine poll found that 54 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Occupy Wall Street, while 27 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party. Even assuming some overlap, that translates into a great many people supportive of movements railing against the status quo. These Americans have lost faith in business as usual and government as usual. Small wonder, then, that the Times/CBS poll showed an approval rating for Congress now at 9 percent. Nine percent. I bet a higher percentage of Americans believe that Elvis and Michael Jackson are still alive and honeymooning on Lake Como after a wedding — to each other — in upstate New York.
REGARD for Congress isn’t likely to rise over the 12 months until the election, given that Republicans and Democrats have largely slipped into campaign mode. For a while, over the summer, President Obama seemed to resist that, and came across as cool-headed and big-minded, his desire to legislate keener than his itch to agitate. But his newly frequent trips outside Washington and newly fiery rhetoric suggest that he has partly given up. In terms of real progress on jobs creation, infrastructure and other matters central to our economic predicament, we could be looking at a solid year of nothingness, and therein lies another of the moment’s disconnects. Our need is urgent, but the possibility that it will be meaningfully addressed is remote.
The Congressional supercommittee charged with whittling down the national debt will hold a public hearing Tuesday. The heart beats faster. Already there are reports of a Democratic insistence on significant new taxes and a Republican opposition to same, which basically brings us back to where Obama and John Boehner left off. We’re looking at an interminable November.
At least we’ll have the Republican presidential candidates to marvel at. And Perry had a marvelous week, in the strict sense of the word. He revived questions about Obama’s birth certificate. He also blamed his wretched debate performances on formats that denied candidates adequate time to “lay out your ideas and concepts.”
Was it your impression that all he needed was a few more acres of oratorical stamping grounds and eloquence would be his? It was my impression that short-form or long-, Perry is to oratory what Weird Al Yankovic is to balladry. Only the humor isn’t intentional.
Elsewhere in the Republican field, Jon Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, told a Chinese-food joke of questionable taste; Michele Bachmann started peddling Bachmann-campaign fleeces in exchange for $75 donations; and the Cain campaign announced that even without promises of commemorative clothing, it had raised $3 million this month. Cain was in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney, according to the Times/CBS News poll.
Some observers say that the absurdity of that is indeed a mirror of our distress — that Americans are grasping at simplistic straws. But Cain’s support won’t last or turn out to have been all that meaningful. The poll’s more consequential findings were that 6 in 10 Republican primary voters weren’t paying close attention yet and 8 in 10 said it was too early to decide on a candidate.
What worries me isn’t the Cain surge or the Bachmann boomlet before it, but the likelihood that when Americans do focus, more and more will see nothing hopeful happening and a motley crew of politicians who are merely blowing smoke.
What happens then?
