the generosity of philosophers

Check out an interesting blog post on data showing that philosophy students tend to be more generous than other undergraduate students. The data also suggests, however, that the students don’t become generous as a result of studying philosophy but rather start out so.

why generation next should remember to care about poverty in america

“Ultimately, global and domestic poverty are interconnected, as are the solutions to these challenges.” – Center for American Progress

Global poverty is the scourge of our generation. At a time when wealth is dilating at a blistering pace, many of the world’s poor are doing just as badly as ever and their plight is arresting. The students of my generation—Generation Next—those who have come to age with the ease of the Internet and earned their college degrees in the new millennium—have become doughty champions of a fecund global anti-poverty campaign. They are a cadre of well-educated, clever, and entrepreneurial young adults showing deep commitment toward ending the debilitating indigence in the developing world. Generation Next is a group of promising consummate cosmopolitans, making strides in the moral dilemmas posed by their increasingly connected world; what philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah calls the challenges of cosmopolitanism.

But, as Appiah also points out, cosmopolitanism is not just a challenge. It is a mindset that proclaims that we have obligations to others outside of our close network of kin and clan and that we take seriously the value of individual human lives, not just the aggregate value of human life. Just as cosmopolitanism is a challenge for the moral individual, global poverty is a moral challenge for the cosmopolitan individual.

Concern for the global poor has not only become a waxing moral demand; it has become a mainstream cause. A recent issue of Vanity Fair, guest edited by Bono, asked the 2008 presidential candidates what they’d do for Africa. Celebrities are adopting AIDS orphans from Sub-Saharan Africa, lobbying for pro-poor policy change, trumpeting their indignity on the cover of popular magazines, and touting the feel-good product lines of fair trade coffee, sweat-free T-shirts, and (PRODUCT) RED iPods, all in which consumers can indulge with a sense of pride.

But Generation Next isn’t just a generation of moral consumers; it’s a generation in which devoting one’s career to the world’s toughest cases is widespread. Jobs and degrees in sustainable and international development are on the rise; recently the University of California at Berkeley approved a new minor for undergraduate students in global poverty and practice. Harvard and Columbia both have renowned graduate programs in sustainable development. A career in international development offers our generation the opportunity to rectify the injustice etched into many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Generation Next has exhibited extraordinary compassion and commitment to vanquishing global poverty. But Gen Nexters ought to remember that poverty at home, although in many ways less severe, is just as much a moral obligation.

Jeffrey Sachs has forcefully argued that there is no extreme poverty in the United States. While 2.5 billion people in the developing world live on less than $2 per day and 970 million live on less than $1, Americans rarely know such extreme deprivation. Our poverty line for a single individual, at or below which are 37 million Americans, is right around $10,000 per annum, about 12 times that of she at the $2 per day threshold. Even the income of the two million Americans living below half of the poverty line is still in the stratosphere compared to most developing countries.

But income statistics can be, in some ways, misleading. As Amartya Sen shows, African American men, who make on average many times more than a man from China or Kerala, India, even after controlling for differences in costs of living, have a noticeably lower chance of surviving past the age of thirty-five. Similarly, an African American from Harlem has a much lower chance of living past the age of forty than a man from Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries. Although this is not convincing evidence that poverty among certain demographics in America is as bad as in the poorest countries, it does illustrate the complexity of the poverty phenomenon and suggests that income statistics don’t paint a complete picture. Poverty in developing countries is atrocious, but poverty in America is still real. And the severity of international poverty does not free us from the need to address the troubling blight of poverty in urban, suburban, and rural America.

The American poor are citizens of our own country. To them we are bound by an explicit and implicit social contract that entails particular obligations. The strictest of utilitarians would, of course, disagree. She would argue that we have obligations to whomever has the greatest need. National boundaries, at least when it comes to the issue of poverty, are morally irrelevant. But this requires an extension of the traditional concept of a state.  As it stands, governments, by definition, and unlike individuals, are limited in scope by national boundaries. There may be a utilitarian case to be made that a state ought to offer more aid to developing countries but this in no way entails the dissolution of particular obligations to citizens. Part of what makes our country work well is the idea that we can both meet our most demanding obligations and that we give special attention to those with whom we are closest—fellow Americans.

But most of the champions of the campaign to end global poverty are not strict utilitarians; they prioritize ending global poverty, but don’t necessarily think that domestic poverty should be ignored by policymakers. For these Gen Nexters, as the global anti-poverty movement grows and the 2008 presidential election nears, they should not forget about poverty in America. Domestic poverty entails both a serious material lack—although our incomes are higher and welfare state larger—and inequality that can be psychologically debilitating to the poor.

Some scholars argue that what we look for in determining our well-being is not how well-off we actually are, but how well-off we are in comparison to others. When it comes to inequality, research by Thomas Pikkety and Emmaneul Saez has shown that the top one percent of the income distribution in America now takes in the largest share of the nation’s income—19.3 percent—since 1929. The top ten percent now earns more than 400 times, per person, that of the average individual in the bottom half. Such an unequal distribution of wealth would lead to a lower level of subjective well-being for the worse-off even if they were just as well off in absolute terms. And subjective well-being—happiness and psychological health, broadly conceived—matters.  Researchers have shown that there is a tight correlation between poverty and personality disorders and mental illness. Mothers on welfare in the United States are much more likely to be clinically depressed than mothers with higher incomes. These mothers have a harder time getting a job and will raise their children on welfare; these children will, in turn, be much more likely to experience depression. In order to make progress against poverty, it’s necessary to make progress against the psychological impediments associated with poverty and inequality that prevent individuals from moving upward.

Social mobility and equal opportunity are the cornerstones of our social fabric—the bedrock for the American Dream—and neediness inhibits both opportunity and mobility. Our current situation is like a cartoon in which a character fleeing a growling, slobbering mastiff tries his luck climbing a ladder to escape but is cursed by his inability to even reach the bottom rung. As a result, the character is time after time nipped by the dog, running across the screen, and too preoccupied with avoiding bites to worry at all about how to get onto the ladder.

But perhaps the 2008 presidential election will bring the ladder within reach.

The election will be one in which the plight of others matters enormously, both in itself and as a matter of national security. A February poll from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development shows that 62 percent of Americans believe that poverty here at home is a threat to security.

Poverty is indeed ravaging the world and our country, but it can be brought under control. Raising and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to include non-custodial fathers and single men, offering universal medical coverage, and offering high-quality universal pre-kindergarten and early childhood education are a few of the many sound policy proposals that scholars widely agree would make an impact on poverty.

But 2008 will ultimately be about more than just poverty. For Generation Next and the general population, the 2008 presidential election will turn on the interests of others, broadly conceived. How successfully a candidate stands up to worldwide poverty, the humanitarian crises in Darfur and Iraq, the disproportionate burden borne by the developing world of global warming, and other issues will be a strong measure of his or her success in the election and as a president. And so, no matter your vantage of the 2008 political landscape, the interests of others matter. Generation Next has shown impressive commitment to furthering this cause abroad. We should make sure to remember that the bite can be just as devastating here at home.

the beneifciaries and victims of asymmetric warfare

Barack Obama argued in a recent piece published in Foreign Affairs that one of the major challenges facing our military is our general lack of preparation to engage with foes that fight “asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.” That the United States faces this military vulnerability is upsetting evidence of our inability to learn from the past.

Do I mean the war in Vietnam? No, I’m referring to the Revolutionary War. The army of King George was, at the time, the largest, best-trained, and best-equipped of all the armies in the world. They had triumphed in some of the most sophisticated and arduous battles of their time, both on land and sea. But their military style was conventional–history would later show that it was in fact sclerotic.

The formal tactics of warfare used by the British in the Revolutionary War were based on conventions followed in previous British engagements. But much of the American successes were attributable to asymmetric warfare; Generals Washington and Greene used a strategy of progressively grinding down British forces rather than seeking victory in a single, decisive battle. Southern militias, who were largely independent of the American army, held firmly against the British by employing guerilla warfare tactics.

So it should surprise us that we, who owe our national freedom to the advantages of asymmetric warfare, have become the sclerotic bunch at the door of defeat by the hand of a rag-tag militia adept in asymmetric battle tactics? If you believe religious fundamentalist terrorism to be a serious threat to the well-being of American citizens and sovereignty then you should be disturbed by the portentous signs of the shortcomings of our present military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the wider Middle East. As they say, history sure must be due to repeat itself.

the persistence of poverty

Below is a summary of a new book out called The Persistence of Poverty by Charles Karelis. It’s an interesting read and I’d certainly recommend it. Even if you don’t buy the arguments he presents a novel way of thinking about the issue of ‘irrational’ behavior amongst the poor.

Views about the behavior of the poor traditionally fall into two camps: dysfunctionalism and non-dysfunctionalism. The former holds that the poor engage in poverty-worsening behavior as a result of psychological dysfunctions such as pathological apathy, a fragmented self, or a weak will. Non-dysfunctionalists believe, by contrast, that the poor remain poor not because of dysfunction but because of unduly limited opportunities or perhaps perverse incentives created by public policy.

 

Conventional economics argues that the poverty-worsening behavior exhibited by the poor (e.g., non-work, non-education, crime, alcohol abuse, non-savings) are irrational because of marginalism; the poor ought to exhibit ‘good’ behavior since the marginal benefit of, say, income or education is greater than it is for the non-poor. But Charles Karelis argues that the poverty-worsening behavior is actually rational behavior for the poor, although it is irrational for the non-poor. He claims that the poor face increasing marginal utility below levels of basic needs rather than decreasing marginal utility from the outset.

 

Karelis postulates that there are three different types of goods: relievers, pleasers, and goods that function as relievers at low levels of consumption and pleasers at high levels. Pleaser goods, such as a glass of fine wine or a rich dessert, always exhibit diminishing marginal utility. But reliever goods, such as basic food needs or salve for a bee sting, exhibit increasing marginal utility. Imagine that you’ve been stung six times by a bee. The salve that you put on the first sting won’t make as much of an impact as the salve that soothes the very last sting. Likewise, quieting a shout in an otherwise silent room will make a much greater impact than quieting a shout in a riot. Karelis argues that this is true for all goods that function as relievers.

 

When we ask, then, why the poor don’t work (the argument can be applied to other poverty-lessening behaviors), we see that their increasing marginal utility curves suggest that they have little to gain from working initially and the marginal income that they will receive. They will require larger incentives in order to jump into the work force. The poor don’t refrain from work because they are irrational, but rather because they are rational but face increasing marginal utility functions for all goods that can serve as relievers.

 

This, naturally, has strong implications for anti-poverty policy. Karelis, for example, thinks that conventional economics lead us to underestimate the positive effects of wage-supplements, such as the EITC, on incentives to work. If marginal utility of income rises amid true scarcity then supplementing income will encourage workers to work more. He diverges from the mainstream view on the positive effects of toughening welfare by arguing that those who cannot benefit from the EITC, those who are not in the formal labor force, will not be encouraged to work through “tough love” policies. Rather, it’s just the opposite. By providing no-strings assistance we increase the marginal utility of income and therefore make it more likely that they will work. Now, no-strings assistance is obviously politically unfeasible. But we should bear in mind the general point that poverty itself will not be a motivator to join the work force since marginal utility slopes upwards for the poor.

In conclusion, Karelis touches on issues of economic justice, of which there are two widely-held theories: the first claiming that people are entitled to whatever they produce or trade for and the second stating that an allocation is just only when it is proportional to an individual’s needs. Utilitarianism says that we should strike a balance between these two poles by finding out which system of redistribution maximizes total welfare. Karelis’ hypothesis regarding increasing marginal utility suggests two deviations from this utilitarian approach. In the first, according to traditional utilitarianism the moderately poor should give to the worst-off as that would maximize total welfare. Karelis argues that since both are under the threshold of basic needs, the worse-off won’t gain more. In fact, the opposite is true: the better-off poor would lose more than the worse-off would gain by giving it away under an increasing marginal utility curve. Second, utilitarianism suggests that redistribution will decrease the work incentives for both the rich and the poor—the rich because of smaller returns on their work due to taxation and the poor because they can get by without having to work. Karelis’ hypothesis suggests that redistribution will increase the work incentives for the poor. He concludes that this suggests that, at least in the U.S., we should favor a theory of economic justice that favors the second theory of justice, need-justice, more than is conventionally appreciated.

flitch day

Today’s flitch day! Read more.

map the candidates

I highly recommend checking out the website Map the Candidates. Although still in its nascent form, the website does a fantastic job of visually displaying the campaign stops of all the candidates in the 2008 presidential election. You can choose to limit the presentation of the map by candidate and date, of which many can be included. A great additional feature is the left-hand column that displays up-to-date media coverage relating to the presidential campaign. This site will no doubt be useful for both pundits and the general public. Check it out regularly.

quantum entaglement and causality

My friend Henry sent me a link to this article on the possibility of reverse causality: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/17/274531.aspx

Yowzers!

cap-and-trade or carbon tax

Human activity is unequivocally responsible for the warming of the planet. Over the last century, the average temperature has gone up by 1 degree Fahrenheit. Although this might not sound like much, it is half the average increase from the end of the last ice age up until the beginning of the 20th century. Sea levels have risen and will continue to do so. Ecological habitats are strained and unable to adapt quick enough to the temperature. Agricultural systems are becoming more and more strained. In short, we need a solution.

The two most common policy proposals circulating are a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system. A carbon tax simply levies a tax on carbon output. Different taxes measure carbon emissions in different ways, but the tax generally works by charging per ton or per kilogram of carbon output.

A cap-and-trade system allows firms to trade carbon emissions allowances on the market. The government sets an overall emissions ceiling for the entire economy, prints the equivalent amount of emissions allowances, and then lets firms buy and sell them. A lower-emitting firm can sell its allowances to a higher emitting firm. The amount emitted is still at the set level, but the distribution is based upon needs and determined through the market. The U.S. successfully adopted a cap-and-trade system to limit the emissions responsible for acid rain in the 1990s.

As said previously, a cap-and-trade system sets a ceiling for emissions but there will never be any incentive for firms to emit, in sum, less than the ceiling. Imagine firm A emits less than their share and sells their emissions passes to firm B who emits more. This system is efficient since there is no cash left on the table, as it were; no firm could make any more money by selling emissions permits and no firm could emit more. But imagine that the sum of firms emit less than the ceiling. This will mean that there is cash on the table; there are emissions permits with economic value that are going unused. On the assumption that firms would economically prefer to emit than not, it will be to a firms advantage to emit more until equilibrium is reached at the ceiling. This is traditional supply-and-demand reasoning. Any total emissions point below the ceiling which is the government-set equilibrium point will be economically inefficient.

Now consider a carbon tax system. The government can set a tax rate for which firms will want to lower their emissions until the benefits and costs of emitting and paying the tax are roughly equal. This will be different for different firms. The government can perform market research to find the market equilibrium for a carbon tax and set the rate so that the emissions level will be sufficiently low.

In effect, the level of emissions can be capped just the same through a cap-and-trade system as with a carbon tax system.

evolutionary moral psychology

In evolutionary moral psychology–the field that wonders about the biological evoluation of our ability to moralize–there are three general positions. The first is that people have evolved specific moral rules, such as ‘don’t marry your kin,’ or ‘don’t kill members of your clan.’ A good number of scholars think this approach to be false. Sufficient anthropological research will show that the enormous amount of variety in moral systems makes it very hard for this to be correct. The remaining two positions are both plausible, in my mind.

The second position, supported by Marc Hauser in his book Moral Minds, is that people have evolved general moral rules. These moral schema give a framework for prohibited actions, such as ‘don’t harm a memeber of the in-group’, but leaves variable the notions of ‘harm’ and ‘in-group.’ Morality, according to this position, is innate. Hauser argues vigorously that the mechanisms of human development, such as the evolution of emotion and moral intuition, allows us to develop a system of morals within a quite limited range.

The third position is advocated principally by Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at UNC. Prinz believes that morality is in no way innate. In other words, it is not specifically evolved for. Instead, we tend to moralize certain things (read claim that something is moral or immoral) because of certain pragmatic reasons we have for succeeding in the world. Our ability to moralize is evolved but it is not specifically evolved for (this is what evolutionary theorists call a ’spandrel.’ For another example, Duke philosopher Owen Flanagan thinks that dreams are spandrels.). We can moralize because of capabilities we have that were evolved for other reasons.

There are numerous arguments to be made in favor of Prinz and probably just as many in favor of Hauser. Without staking myself to one position or the other, I want to note briefly a point made implicitly by Hauser that I think is quite interesting. Were Prinz’s theory right, we could reasonably evolve any moral system that we like and have that be a coherent one. What determines a pragmatic reason is by no means restricted. Yet, as Hauser shows in his book, human moral systems, although varied, are quite similar and share a good number of both end-state characteristics (result) and developmental processes. This suggests, on first glance, that Hauser may be on to something. If our actual moral systems are similar, then there may be reason to think that there’s an evolved reason for this.

an urban explosion

According to a new UN report, half of the world’s population–3.3 billion–will soon be living in urban areas. The explosion of urban growth is occuring mostly in developing regions, such as in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. By 2030, developing countries are expected to have 80 percent of the world’s urban population. The massive growth is explained by high birth rates in poor urban areas rather than by a large migration out of rural communities. 

There has already been lots of concern about overcrowded slums in Kenya, Nigeria, Delhi, and all over the developed world. Trash, human excrement, and other health dangers are prevalent. Further urban growth would complicate this even more and require some new policies on the national level.

I also wonder what the implications will be on trade policy. As I noted in a previous post, lower commodity prices are good for consumers in urban areas but can be harmful to growers in rural areas. If there is an urban explosion as the UN report suggests, what can and should policymakers do to preserve fair standards of living for the rural population?