Public Policy and Governance – Page 282

Pursuit of Happiness

Last Sunday’s New York Times ran an op-ed by Arthur Brooks in which he reported the current state of research into that elusive quality we call happiness.

About half of human happiness appears to be “hard-wired”–a genetic inheritance for which we can thank or blame our parents and other forebears. Another forty percent or so apparently comes from relatively evanescent events in our lives–a great new job, an inheritance, divorce ….the sorts of “stuff happens” for good or ill that people post to their Facebook pages.

The remaining 12 percent, Brooks tells us, comes down to four elements: faith, family, community and work.

Actually, while Brooks doesn’t cite it, there is also a fair amount of research suggesting that the first three of those–faith, family and community–are really just surrogates for an underlying data-point: the strength of an individual’s social support system. (It doesn’t matter, for example, what “faith” one cites–the value, and contributor to happiness/contentment, lies in the existence of a supportive congregational community. That need for connection can be met by avowedly secular communities as well as deeply devotional ones.)

It was when he discussed the importance of work that Brooks made a less-appreciated and important observation.

This shouldn’t shock us. Vocation is central to the American ideal, the root of the aphorism that we “live to work” while others “work to live.” Throughout our history, America’s flexible labor markets and dynamic society have given its citizens a unique say over our work — and made our work uniquely relevant to our happiness. When Frederick Douglass rhapsodized about “patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put,” he struck the bedrock of our culture and character.

Brooks uses the data about the importance of rewarding work to emphasize the role of the free market, and that’s fair enough. Certainly, the ability to choose the work we do is an important element in finding that work meaningful. But I took another, darker lesson from his data.

Americans do indeed measure our self-worth in terms of our jobs. That means that people who are unemployed don’t just face financial challenges–they face the loss of self-respect. Despite “makers and takers” talking points and the deeply-seated scorn displayed by comfortable Americans who are sure that “those people” don’t really want to work, decades of research underscore the humiliation and deep despair of most unemployed workers–especially those who have lost their jobs in economic downturns.

Policymakers give great lip-service to job creation, but regularly ignore evidence that contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about which policies actually create those jobs.

Brooks has done us a service by reminding us that high unemployment doesn’t just run up the bill for unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid and the like. It increases human misery, and makes a mockery of the American Dream.

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What Am I Missing?

I have to admit I frequently listen to a political or policy discussion, and have what might be called a “duh” moment–wondering why I see a rather obvious approach that everyone else is ignoring.

This week, Governor Pence announced that state revenues have fallen below budget estimates for the past few months, and the only remedy is to cut funds to education and state agencies and sell the state airplane. Leaving aside the airplane gesture (a one-time, largely symbolic “sacrifice”) why is the administration focusing on cutting services rather than delaying or foregoing its beloved tax cuts?

There are two ways to handle revenue shortfalls, after all–cut expenses or raise revenue.

Despite the fervent belief that lower taxes stimulate the economy and foster job growth, there isn’t an iota of evidence supporting that belief. Indiana is already one of the lowest-tax states in the Midwest, our economic indicators still lag those of our higher-tax neighbors, and the case for continued tax cuts is thin, to put it mildly. (Indeed, research indicates that quality of life drives economic development; continued service cuts that diminish quality of life indicators–far from stimulating the economy– are probably counterproductive.)

Then there was the research report presented at a recent meeting of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Working Families. The subject was paid sick leave, which relatively few Indiana employers offer. When researchers talked to those who opposed a law requiring a sick-leave benefit, they found that the major objection wasn’t to paid sick leave, it was to the idea of a government mandate. (Don’t tell me how to run my business!!)

If the objection is to the use of a stick, why not offer a carrot? Why not give a tax deduction or other incentive to employers who voluntarily decide to offer paid sick leave? Avoid the mandate, but reward the desired behavior. Evidently, such an approach hasn’t been considered.

My grandmother used to say there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

What am I missing?

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Ironies of the Season

A former student of mine, Derek Thomas, is a policy analyst at the Institute for Working Families–a local think-tank that focuses on policies affecting (duh!) working families. He has a recent post at the Institute’s website documenting the toll taken on those families by the ongoing sequester.

I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt as I read the catalog of the sequester’s consequences for my fellow Hoosiers, not because I consider myself culpable (I didn’t vote for those responsible, nor did I support the use of this meat-ax approach to budgeting), but because I hadn’t really thought about the sequester in such concrete terms.

Most Americans who share my good fortune–still middle-class, still employed, still able to make my mortgage payments–think of the sequester in terms of policy, assuming we think of it at all. It was stupid and cowardly, evidence of Congressional dysfunction. We haven’t thought about it in terms of Indiana children thrown out of Head Start, or elderly folks who aren’t getting hot Meals from Meals on Wheels, or the landlords and tenants alike who no longer receive housing vouchers both depend upon…let alone the multiple other hardships detailed in Derek’s report.

Worse still, the full impact of the sequester hasn’t yet hit.

While low-income working families are struggling with the consequences of decisions made by people those decisions wouldn’t affect, our news media has focused on the Black Friday near-riots at big-box stores, as shoppers fought each other for the presumed “bargains” on display.

What was really on display was the disconnect between the “still-haves” and the “no-longer-haves.”

Also on display was the evident lack of concern about the latter category by those of us in the former one.

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It’s More Complicated Than That…

H.L. Mencken famously said that for every problem, there’s a solution that’s clear, simple and wrong.

That’s an observation that has escaped lawmakers and economists for a long time, although in the last several years, many of them have come (grudgingly) to recognize its wisdom.

For a long time, economists predicted human behaviors using a “cost/benefit” framework; incentives were “profit maximizing” and costs were, well, costs. Of course, real human beings aren’t so one-dimensional. We don’t behave as the economists predicted, because what constitutes an incentive or disincentive for any particular person cannot be so neatly identified.

It isn’t that we humans don’t act in our own self-interest–we do. It’s just that “self-interest” means different things to different people. Teachers who could make more money in the private sector are rewarded by making a difference in children’s’ lives; lawyers for public-interest organizations forgo substantial monetary rewards but derive immense satisfaction from “doing justice.”

“Value” and “reward” are inescapably subjective.

The incentives to which people respond–what impels someone to work, or to work at this job rather than that one–is often a matter of cultural values and expectations. That’s why the widespread belief that a social safety net creates a “culture of dependency” has always been flawed. People don’t work just for sustenance; they work for cultural acceptance, meaning, self-esteem and personal pride, among other reasons.

A recent cross-national study has recently confirmed the lack of a relationship between the generosity of a country’s social safety net and the diligence with which unemployed people look for work. (It also found that receipt of social benefits didn’t make people happier or more satisfied. Depending on the kindness of strangers simply keeps folks fed and/or housed, not cheerful.)

In other words, feeding people who’ve lost their jobs doesn’t make them stop looking for work, and providing minimal support to those who are down and out doesn’t make us suckers.

It might, however, make us better humans.

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Pushed Too Far

Remember the old comic book ad in which a bully kicks sand in the face of a skinny guy, and the skinny kid takes a Charles Atlas course, muscles up, and comes back to flatten his tormenter?

I think Harry Reid took that course!

Yesterday, Reid invoked the “nuclear option,” changing the Senate’s rules in order to permit most Presidential nominees to be approved by a simple majority.

If you are old enough, you may remember when such majority rule was the rule. The filibuster–a procedural mechanism devised by the Senate itself and found nowhere in the Constitution–was until recently employed only rarely, and usually by a Senator who actually filibustered, a Senator who talked until he could no longer hold out. During the George W. Bush administration, Democrats used it more frequently, but it was only with the election of Barack Obama that things got seriously out of hand.

As media reports have confirmed, early in the Obama Administration, Congressional Republicans decided to block any and all measures coming from the White House. The merits of the proposals, the bona fides of nominees, the desires of the electorate–none of those things would matter. And they would no longer bother to actually filibuster–they’d just say “we’re filibustering, so you need sixty votes” to pass this bill or confirm this nominee.

There’s a Yiddish word for that: chutzpah.

The GOP’s goal was simple: deny this President any victory, no matter how small, no matter how good for the country, no matter if the proposal had originally been their own.

Case in point: Lawyers and judges have pleaded with lawmakers to fill the mounting and unprecedented vacancies that have slowed justice to a crawl and brought business to a halt in many of the nation’s federal courts. Legal organizations and the ABA have sounded the alarm. No matter. Senate Republicans have kept focused on their primary mission: say No to this President.

They finally pushed the Democrats too far.

Reid’s reluctance to “go nuclear” has been clear for some time. But it finally became obvious even to him that the alternative was another three years of stalemate, another three years of national drift, of getting virtually nothing done.

The Constitution requires a simple majority vote to pass bills and confirm most nominees. Except in a few specific instances, it does not require a super-majority. And yet, for the past five years, the GOP’s constant abuse of the filibuster has effectively required a super-majority for even the most mundane and previously uncontroversial actions.

The Party of No has used the filibuster to throw sand in the gears of the Senate–as a way to refuse to do the people’s business so long as Obama occupies the White House. Senate Republican leadership made a calculation: they would stand united to ensure the failure of the hated (black/Kenyan/Muslim) Obama, and the Democrats wouldn’t have the balls to go nuclear.

It was a reasonable bet, but it turned out to be wrong.

The skinny weakling grew a pair.

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