Reflections in an airport

Posted on by
Reply

A stylish, sterile cafe in the anonymous airport terminal of a busy, European city. Nothing in the decor reveals the nationality of this place, not the signs in English, not the illuminated lighting of the fast food kiosk to my left. Not even the people – they come from all over, though they sometimes seem to melt into one single well-groomed identity, which wheels a Samsonite suitcase through a maze of mirrors.

It’s nearly peaceful in this cafe seating area. Such a contrast to the check-in jungle below, where the stress hangs heavy in the conditioned air the way smoke used to in bars, in the bad old days when the only thing international about bars was that veil of smoke.

I say ‘nearly’ peaceful because of two slight irritations. One, a memory from the just completedd check-in ordeal; of a well-groomed woman who pushed in front of me in the queue, using her Samsonite for leverage. She had pointy shoes and a pointy nose, and when I tried to break her ice with a casual hello, she just turned her back and blended into the mass of international clones.

The second irritation is contemperanous to my writing. These dreaded table cleaners who prowl about armed with cloths of questionable cleanliness, eager to snatch away any tray or cup approaching emptiness. With a sweep of streaks across the lamenated wood-like surface of my table, they define the moment when a customer becomes a loiterer. Better leave a bit of coffee in that cup, and guard it with the hand that isn’t writing just now.

Still, one can live with these slight evils, and with a yawn and a redundant glance at my boarding card, I recongnise I’ve reached the moment when I am starting to relax.

Debt, deficits and its natural limits

Posted on by
Reply

Most people are aware of the fact that governments owe a startling amount of money, and that this is commonly referred to as a “National Debt”. People are also generally aware of the fact that the numbers of dollars or euros involved are so staggering that they are in fact meaningless, when quoted in isolation.

For instance, the US national debt currently stands at about $15,500,000,000,000 which to you (and me) just looks like 1,55 with a lot of zeros attached to it. If I told you it was
$15,500,000,000,000,000 you would not have been any more or less shocked.

Which is why debt is often expressed as a proportion of GDP. We are alarmed when we hear that debt has reached 75% of GDP, or even 100% of GDP. Some people even panic when they hear this.

Then we find ourselves asking: Is such a level of debt sustainable? Is it time for me to build a bunker and stock it with canned food, backup generators and shotgun shells?

Well, as for the second question, canned food is always a good thing to have in the house, but please check local laws regarding the shotgun shells.

As to whether debt is sustainable, it makes more sense to think of it this way:

GDP is the value of everything the country produces in one year. Debt is the money it owes. As long as new creditors can be found, debt can be rolled over infinitely. The only cost of doing this is the interest the government has to pay on the debt.

So, if debt were a really high 100% of GDP (Italy, Belgium,…) then the debt servicing costs would amount to 4 or 5% of GDP.

Is that alot? Well, yes and no. In proportional terms, the US spends more on its military (6.8% of GDP) than Belgium spends servicing its very high debt.

You may say: “Hold on, you are not comparing like with like. Paying interest on rolled over debt is like throwing money out the window, while the US military is providing jobs, and defending our country from evil-doers.”

Without getting into a debate on the efficacy of defense spending, let me just point out two things: paying interest on debt is NOT like throwing money out the window. It is much more like rewarding investors who have placed their trust in the government as a good investment for their money. And the interest rates are generally very low. Before the govenment goes paying down the principal, you have to consider the opportunity cost of doing so. Paying off debt is like investing in something with a very low interest rate. The government has to ask, is there anything else we can spend that money on (like education or infrastructure) that will provide a higher return than the 4% dividend we save by buying back our own T-bonds?

Moreover, think about this: if every taxpayer owned an share of the debt equal to his tax obligations, the level of public debt would have no impact on the country whatsoever.

Natural limits to debt

What is the highest debt can go? I have heard people say, 100% of GDP. Of course that is a logical error. Beyond the fact that the GDP tells you the size of a country’s economy, debt and GDP have no direct relationship, and GDP is only picked as a denominator out of convenience.

The thought exercise of what the real limit of debt is can be useful when we want to put the overall debate into perspective. So how high can it go?

The answer is actually 2,000% of GDP.

In the case of the US government that would be $2,900,000,000,000,000 (which I think is 2.9 gazillion!); a staggering eighteen times the current debt level. This is because this is the maximum amount of money the government can roll over continuously by paying interest (at 5%) using all of the country’s GDP to do so.

At this limit, all of the countries GDP would have to be taken in tax and used to service the debt.

Here’s the thing: even at this debt level, if the money is distributed perfectly evenly, there is no real burden to the economy of having so much public debt. (Obviously though, any small distortions in the structure of capital holdings will lead to radical pro-capital / anti-labour outcomes.)

So for those of you fretting about the high levels of debt, don’t worry, be happy. We still have gazillions of irresponsible government spending to go before we reach a hard theoretical limit!

Another ode to joy (because she’s worth it!)

Posted on by
Reply

Joy is the space between events
The light that illuminates activity
The unseen thing – like air –
That fills our lungs with life.

If you always have it
You can easily forget it’s there.
But take it away,
And it’s then you’ll learn its value.

Once she is lost, you fumble in
the darkness of depression
Desperate to find the switch,
Gasping for one clean gulp of her.

For many years I sang your ode, oh Joy,
Basking in your light
Without truly knowing
what a daughter of heaven you are!

Confounding kindness with weakness

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I was in a situation in which a person of casual acquaintance, but who did not lack for honesty, told me that I came across as a bit of a pushover.

When it was said, the remark offended me, and shocked me to some extent. But afterwards I started reflecting on it and this led me to wider thoughts on how the pushover impression might have affected many of my relationships in the past.

As I thought of it, much of what was being perceived as weakness was meant by me to be kindness. And as I considered ways of altering behaviours so as not to give off this impression, I realised those would be things that made me less kind.

And so the question in my mind is this: How can we deliver kindness, without seeming weak and inviting behaviours which are long-term unsustainable?

For instance, if a spouse asks you to take extra special care of her after the birth of the baby you agreed to hurry up and have with her, how can you ensure that she understands that this attention is not permission for her to force you to give up on your family, and becoming her emotional slave?

Because, if she sees your kindness as ‘the norm’, and moreover reads a trend value into your ‘weak’ behaviours, you are not only pushing yourself into an increasingly untenable situation, but you are also setting her up for disappointment too.

Maybe the good advice is for us to be ‘firm but honest about our needs’. But honestly, that sounds to me too much like something out of Dr Phil’s relationship manual. It ignores the trends issue, and brushes over how unbalanced compromises quickly turn into retreats, then into routs.

Maybe though, the answer is as simple as accepting that kindness is just too close to weakness, and becoming a bit of a bastard….

Tiny Plays for Ireland

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday evening, Ribbit and His Young Apprentice went to see the first production of Tiny Plays for Ireland at the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar. The place was sold out and the atmosphere was very good.

It has to be said, seeing the plays come together like that on stage was highly educational, as Ribbit had attended the first reading a few months ago and with several of the scripts had remained quite sceptical. In particular, Ribbit had been not at all sure about the piece with the Polish girl and the Traveller girl (‘Broken’). From the script, it had seemed a bit cheesy and politically correct. But the two actresses – both were excellent – really made it come alive. And what appeared as schmalz on paper transformed into a really touching expose of two girls in modern Ireland who were, well, broken.

The 25 odd plays painted a very vivid picture of modern Ireland. But they did more, they entertained, they informed, and they made us laugh.

No doubt audiences duly impressed will come back for more next year for the second Production!

Equality for women – celebrating international women’s day

Posted on by
1

With international women’s day just gone and past, I would like to add my voice to the calls for equality for women. But what specific inequality can I pick up on, given that the Gender Pay Gap has already been talked about; quotas for women in public office have already been advanced by various women’s groups? Is there anything else a progress, pro-woman man like me can suggest to achieve true equality of outcome between the sexes.

I know: Quotas for murder convictions!

Currently, 85% of all convicted murderers are men. This is unacceptable. For one thing, it denies women the right to freeload off the state by serving the same lengthy prison sentences as the opposite sex; not to mention the fact that those females who do get convicted tend to serve much shorter prison sentences for the same crimes.

We need to put a stop to this. Starting with murder investigations, police officers should be instructed to have an equal gender balance in terms of suspects and arrests; judges must take into account their quota when advising the juries and the perfectly gender balanced juries themselves must consider the equality statistics before passing a verdict. And of course, in passing sentences, judges must look at their prison sentence balance to ensure they are not giving more years behind bars to one gender or the other.

Now, I know what you misogynists out there are thinking: “Hold on, men commit a far greater number of murders. THAT’S why more of them get convicted. Justice should be about punishing actual crime, not making some point about equality of the sexes.”

Well, that’s just what you woman-haters would say, isn’t it? Next of all you’ll be telling me men earn more money because they are more risk-prone, smarter and harder working in the marketplace. You’ll probably go on to say the free market is perfectly capable of rewarding enterprise without any discrimination whatsoever, achieving economic justice in the way a well-functioning legal system should aim to achieve criminal justice.

But that’s just the sort of thinking that has kept women oppressed for centuries.

At this rate you’ll be wanting an equal amount of public funds spent on promoting international men’s day…wait, hold on a second, I’m confusing myself…

Should poetry be verbose or plain?

Posted on by
4

Of course, it is a matter of taste whether you like your furniture in the bland colonial style, or the pompous, baroque French parlor style.

But can we say more about the relationship between the complexity of language and the quality of a piece of fiction, such as a poem?

On the most basic level, complexity in language allows us to communicate more sophisticated meaning. If the only adjective with positive connotation you know is “good”, then you will not be able to reach the nuances of “impeccable”, “virtuous”, “content”, etc. It might therefore be argued that wordsy poems permit more complex meaning.

And yet, at some level this relationship becomes non-linear, and the ability of the poem to transmit emotion and meaning to its audience depends as much on what is not said as what is said.

A way to understand this apparent contradiction is to compare the written word to fine art. Fine art in Western Europe developed from the middle ages to the late nineteenth century in a way that was ever more representational. The additional elements which allowed visual images to approach the photographic – use of light and shadow, vanishing points, complex applications of pigments, etc. – can be likened to added complexity in language.

Thus, up to a certain point, verbosity augments the art by making the written word more precise, more real and more understandable.

Then, in the 19th century a breakthrough occured with artists such as Monet, who realised visual meaning could also be achieved by omitting pigments from a canvas, by allowing the viewer’s eye to blend and fill in the gaps.

So it is with poetry, I think. Instead of overloading the audience’s senses with adjectives, truly sublime poems give the audience just enough to construct the meaning themselves.

Just as paintings are not (at least no longer) principally designed to provide graphical data in the form of true representations of images, but rather are there for the pleasure of the eye and the enlightment of the soul, so poetry is not principally about a precise mapping of information from the poet to the audience. It is about inspiring emotion.

And so I argue for the colonial furniture.

The social trinity

Posted on by
1

Political economy often presents as its main debate an axis from Left to Right.

On the left, we have the State; on the right, we have the Market. Most economies function somewhere in between, with European countries being – say – slightly further to the left and the US slightly off the the right of centre. On the extreme left we might place North Korea; further out on the right some microeconomies or perhaps certain US states. In the US, people tend to think of Fox News as on the right, along with the Tea Party; while Obama and CNN are a little off to the left. And so forth and so on.

Of course, once you construct such an axis and start explaining the world that way, you are in effect forcing reality to fit into those two dimensions. This is the essence of any model; It willfully surpresses extraneous knowledge in order to focus the attention on a basic truth contained in the model. If the model is a “good fit”, that basic truth does a good job of explaining the broader reality. However, if the model is a bad fit, the things that have been left out are too important, and the model fails to pick up too much of what is going on.

Is the left-right axis a good enough model of reality for us to work with? I argue that it is not. Libertarians like Ron Paul have long argued against the simple two-dimensional approach. They would prefer to have an economic left-right axis, along with a civil rights north-south axis, with perfectly free personal liberty at the north pole, and total social codification to the extreme south. In their world, of course, the place to be is the positive quandrant, with lots of liberty and lots of market freedom.

While I have a lot of time for American-style libertarianism, or liberalism as it is sometimes construed in Europe, I don’t like the geometry of the debate.

I would prefer to model society as a table, with three legs. This Trinity table’s three legs are the State, the Market and the Community. Like any table, all three, I argue, must be in balance in order for the eggs not to roll off and break.

But by presenting the debate as a trade-off between more State or more Market, most political economists miss the importance of Community altogether.

This has important consequences when you consider, for instance, the ideology of globalisation, which is underwritten by economic trade models that take no account of the importance of community.

Fact is, it is very hard to feel a sense of Community with Chinese factory workers. You simply don’t care about them. Not because you are a bad person, but because it is humanly impossible to feel much empathy for people you have never seen, with whom you share practically nothing in common, and whose lives you know nothing about. Even the attempts to make us care – through disaster reporting from the Third World – have done little more than make people numb not only to the Chinese, but also to their own neighbours.

The Specialisation of Labour argument misses this. It takes account of market failure (in particular in relation to labour market rigidities that affect reskilling of workers displaced by gains from trade) and thus addressed both the State and Market legs of the table. But it does nothing to address the Community aspect.

The same is true of the supremacy of the State in legal family affairs, notably in marriages and divorces. There, a Statist approach is adopted which takes account of the market factors to some extent, but the prevalence of no-faults divorces is a willful denial of the role of Community in shaping family outcomes.

Imagine a world in which divorce courts were co-abjuticated by the clergy, or by a jury of the couple’s families and friends. Sounds shocking, doesn’t it? But is that really such a shocking idea, given that marriage is, fundamentally, a social contract which depends on the support of the Community and (usually) the blessing of a clergyman to take full effect?

And doesn’t the very fact that religious divorce courts seem so outrageous tell us something about how imbalanced our society is?

Why are we so willing to accept the power of the State and the power of the Market, and so unwilling to accept the power of the Community, on which just as much depends in order for us to live in a balanced society?