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The issue of “packing up and moving” has been on my mind for some months, now. Actually, as I have come to realize, a number of up-sticks-ing-related issues have been on my mind, which may ultimately be too disparate to synthesize into one grand, unified-field-theory post.

The loose theme of “I don’t like it here and I’ll leave” touches on a lot of concepts and phenomena. Immigration. Capital flight, broadly including such things as mega-profitable sports teams and other corporate gorillas extorting money and favorable laws from communities with the threat of relocating, as well as the notion that if we dare try to tax back any of the growing portion of society’s wealth which financiers are soaking up, they’ll go overseas and we’ll be sorry. And the benefits of freedom to leave one’s surroundings for a new start and how to weigh them against the risk of an ignorant, indifferent, “throw-away” social attitude.

There’s also my personal struggle with whether and moreover how to bail out on my home country, of course. Which got unexpected company, recently, with a declaration of similar ambition from my younger brother. And this, finally, gave me what seems like a useful perspective from which to consider at least some of these relocation issues. (more…)

I would like to make one or two observations about poverty, prompted by some specific recent arguments, but general in their character and application.

First, though, I suppose I should acknowledge that I myself am not poor. I’m certainly not wealthy, at least within American society, where I’m not even median-income. But I’m not really one of “the poor.” And I haven’t made extensive studies of the issue for academic publication either.

On the other hand, I have known some very lean times; I’ve probably been about as poor as it’s possible for a college-educated American without a terminal disease or a gambling addiction or some other real financial disaster to be. Not that this should be a necessary qualification within a “reality-based community” wherein, presumably, sound ideas are sound regardless of who proposes them. Within “practical reality,” however, a lecture about poverty coming from the upper tax-brackets probably risks being drowned out by reflexive protests about the  inappropriateness, or insensitivity, of the source’s perceived condescension.

I think that I should at least be safe from that, though.

So anyway, the points I would like to make have been on my mind occasionally for years, but recently returned to my attention when I read this Chronicle item about how “a central piece of [California's] plan to reduce greenhouse gases is now under fire by an unlikely source: environmentalists in the state.” (more…)

Another in a series of posts which I basically wrote and finished except for putting them in WordPress or actually, y’know, posting them, and then forgot about as weeks became months. In this instance, I multiply two of my worst most-endearing habits by posting a “deleted scene” in which I argue back at The Economist. Which really makes you glad to be alive, I’m sure.

So, our friends at The Economist have apparently decided to argue inequality out of existence, by combining a number of inequality-related issues into an artificial whole which is so broad and complex they can easily lose sight of any particular section they don’t feel like dealing with. Their assembly of a giant straw-man complaint is obvious to even rudimentary critical analysis, and frankly it’s embarrassing, particularly relative to the generally high standard of insight and commentary which they produce. (Interestingly, the cover art seems to tell a much simpler and much more believable story; perhaps the editors intended it as “tongue in cheek.”)

Residency restrictions in China, and growth in Latin America, don’t really have much direct relevancy to a tiny portion of America’s populace hoovering up nearly all growth in the country’s overall wealth. But if you don’t notice the conjurer’s trick of tying them all together because they are in some way associated with the word “inequality,” then you might be convinced that inequality is a complex story which seems to be getting better to as-great if not a greater extent than it’s getting worse. Likewise, if you accept some flippantly tossed-out alternative explanations for various social ills attributed to inequality, then you might add that to the suggestion that aside from a very small number of “outliers” Americans are clumped relatively closely together and not actually getting poorer, and might thus be satisfied with the noble-sounding suggestion that “inequality itself [is] less important than ensuring that those at the bottom were becoming better-off.”

Well, yes and no. (more…)