The inequality boom

Henry at Crooked Timber posted about the most recent issue of Politics and Society and its discussion of What Produced the Inequality Boom?. I commented:

---

I have to agree with Straightwood on the importance of propaganda and on a pervasive mental model of how the world should work. Ideology, maybe?

What I've noticed, especially in the last couple of decades, is that many Americans and almost all Republicans or libertarians have great difficulty assigning blame to rich people. In discussing any problematic situation or institution -- illegal immigration, for instance -- their first reaction is to see the source of the problem in the least powerful and wealthy people involved. In the example of immigration, if you bring up the complicity of major employers who want to hire illegal immigrants because they're cheap and exploitable, they'll nod and then ... it's as though their brains skid away and they start talking about anchor babies again. The idea that wealthy people have more power and thus may be more culpable doesn't seem to have an traction in their brains, it's a notion that doesn't seem to compute on some basic level. Wealth is the elephant in the room that *people can't actually see*.

From Henry's description of the articles, what stands out to me as an unconsidered aspect is something about the behavior of inherited wealth. It's not just that some people were able to get lots of money, it's that at least some people who started out with money -- Old Money -- didn't lose it in the time-honored fashion, but saw it grow in the way only New Money used to grow. See, for instance, a Wall Street Journal article about Charles Koch, which said he 'applied the "science of liberty" to become one of the world's richest men' -- apparently the "science of liberty" allowed him to make a very wise choice of parents.

---

chris:

It can't be just Calvinism, we've had Calvinism all along.

Currently, there's a discussion at Balloon Juice about Megan McArdle's piece in the Atlantic blaming the housing bubble on the 30-year fixed mortgage, because it

gives the consumer the power to shaft banks whenever it is to their advantage.

See Irvine Housing Blog for more evisceration.

McArdle is a useful idiot test case, because she so perfectly exhibits the attitudes I'm talking about. She's not a Calvinist; she calls herself a "libertarian". She's The Atlantic's business and economics editor, though it's thunderously obvious that she knows nothing about what Henry would call "economics".

What she *is*, is an MBA. As I recall, MBA programs became very popular and important in the late 70s, as the inequality boom was taking off. I wonder, now, if what these programs teach -- the mindset, the basic attitudes, what things are important and what aren't -- isn't where the Dives-blindness (or whatever it should be called) comes from. MBA programs, generally speaking, teach the wealthy to regard workers as tools, consumers as lawful prey. This is where our aristocracy is trained, and this is what they learn.

Now that I think about it, what has changed in how inherited wealth functions is that the scions of wealth are often expected to get MBAs. Dr. Hilarius @15 talks about how Old Money is tied up in trusts, etc., so the heirs can't spend it on hookers & blow, in traditional fashion. But since the 60s-70s the MBA has become a way to train heirs to a different kind of aristocratic tradition. You don't have to insulate your heirs from the money if you train them not to blow it, and that's why e.g. Charles Koch (who has an MBA) can be so obscenely wealthy. Gilded Age robber barons started small and made their businesses large; modern ones are Robber Dukes: they start with a large business and make it gigantic.

Smoking Bans and Smell

shaddup. I'll work tonight.

At Crooked Timber Henry reports on the effects of recent smoking bans:

When Ireland banned smoking in enclosed spaces in 2004, I would have been prepared to bet large amounts of money that the ban would be universally ignored (Irish citizens have historically had a flexible attitude to the interpretation of legal rules that don’t suit them). In particular, I would have predicted that the ban would never work in pubs. But it did – pretty well instantaneously as best as I could tell. If it hadn’t been for the Irish example, I would have bet even larger amounts that the ban would never have taken off in Italy (where storeowners are legally obliged to give you a receipt when you buy something, to make it more difficult for them to fiddle taxes, and where the general attitude to large swathes of civil and criminal law seems best characterized as a kind of amiable contempt). But again, it appears to have worked.

I haven’t seen any research on this (if someone knows of any, let me know in comments), but my best guess in the absence of good evidence would be that the success of the ban reflected instabilities in previously existing informal norms about where people could or could not smoke.

My comment:

---

The Irish case is very interesting, and not what I would have expected, either.

I think one reason for the norm fragility on this issue is a peculiarity of the nervous system. Speaking as a lifetime non-smoker, one of the things that annoys me most is the smell. Smell is the most adaptation-prone of the senses: that is, we "get used" to smells more quickly and thoroughly than for other types of stimuli. The consequences for smoking are:

a) smokers have no idea what it smells like, none.

b) as the number of smokers goes down, the smoke from the remaining ones is *more* annoying and obvious to non-smokers, because we're no longer adapted to moving through a constant blue-gray fog.

In the 60s and 70s, everyone smoked in eating/drinking places all the time, it was just part of how they were. By the 90s, it was much less common, and I'd feel free to leave a place if it was too smoky. Now, I can tell if my husband has talked to a smoker, by the smell clinging to his clothes; I've returned books to the library, because the previous borrower had smoked while reading them and the smell wafting up from the pags was repulsive.

So I think it's partly that a lot of people were looking for an excuse to ask people to stop smoking, but also that the fewer smokers there are in the population the more stinky they seem.

Fetal rights, category errors, and the Invisible Woman

At Crooked Timber, John Holbo linked to a post about category errors and whether fetuses are human. In the ensuing discussion, I wrote:

---

Aulus:
But I think the arguments raised in this post all apply perfectly well to the purely personal, moral question, “should I abort this pregnancy?”

It is my impression that of the participants in this (local) discussion only Katherine, aimai, and I could ever theoretically ask this question.

What the rest of you (presumed) guys are asking is, “should I permit this woman to abort this pregnancy?” By making the question, “when is the fetus a human person?” you-all are gliding over the true issue, which is: “when is the woman a person?”

Don’t tell me “of course the woman is a person!” There is no “of course” about it—we women have not (historically, traditionally, conservatively) had the full rights of “real”, male human persons. We might not have the right to own property, drive a car, initiate a divorce, vote, run for office, be a doctor, have legal custody of our own children … it has depended on circumstance. A cynical woman would not assume, a realistic woman should not assume, that she has will automatically be granted all the rights a man may assume.

In particular, I don’t think any of you male-type persons here have been told that your body does not belong to you. If your sibling needed a bone marrow donation to treat their cancer, for instance, you would not be legally obliged to give it. You would not expect to be shackled to a bed for weeks or months if necessary, to keep someone else alive—even someone you should love (whether you do or not). You would certainly not expect total strangers to come up to you and give their opinions about whether you are drinking too much coffee, or smoking, or to stroke parts of your body and discuss your medical condition, lifestyle choices, etc.

It’s possible I’m the only one in this discussion here who’s actually *been* in that position, who’s borne children and who knows what it’s like to have my body be considered public property, to a certain degree. Fortunately for your male-type people, the worst offenders (by far) are women of the grandmotherly demographic, and I can kind of understand where they’re coming from—though it is certainly not a place know to most philosophers, so I suggest you back off. Unless you can talk about things like “episiotomies” without turning a hair.

---

A zygote will.

No, Julian, a zygote *might*, but it usually doesn’t. To get a human being requires both a considerable amount of luck *and* months of cooperation from a woman. You don’t get to decide that the zygote—not coincidentally, the only part of the process requiring a male—is the important bit, and then force the woman’s far more substantial contribution whether she likes it or not. Not to mention blaming her for all the factors known as “luck”, which in the normal course of events doom more than half of all zygotes anyway.

---

jcs:

I was going for an overcurrent of anger, actually. I’m not angry because you can’t bear children, I’m angry because, once again, a bunch of men are sitting around talking about what women should do with our bodies and our lives. As echidne of the snakes said after the final Presidential debate:

It is always extremely distasteful to watch two men discuss what should be done about abortion. Always, never mind what they say.

*Always*, dudes.

Do really believe this is a legitimate analogy? I mean I am pro-choice, so you do not need to convince me, but do you really think the two situations are comparable?

Organ donation and pregnancy? Yes.

In both cases, I’m giving up use of part of my body for the benefit of another person. In both cases, the consequences for me are at minimun painful, may include permanent changes to my body, and may be life-threatening.



Differences include that organ donation doesn’t generally take 9 months of increasing physical risk and constraint, doesn’t normally involve a 20-year commitment thereafter, and is hardly ever done more than once in a donor’s life.

In what way do you see them as *not* comparable situations?

---

jcs:
Should I understand your position to be that no man has any business ever discussing the notions of personhood and rights as those terms may pertain to a fetus?

He has no business discussing them without even noticing the woman. He has no business talking about fetal rights without mentioning that what makes fetal rights different is that they are literally embedded in another person’s rights. To discuss fetal rights without talking about women is to make women invisible, to erase us as persons, to make us The Women Men Don’t See.

I’m not so much angry at you personally, jcs, as at the way John H. could start this discussion and you-all could take it down to comment #14 before Katherine (surprise, surprise—NOT) mentions that there is a woman in the issue. At least you, jcs, seem aware that perhaps you *should* notice the woman, instead of some of the other commenters who just glide right over her, nothing to see here, move along.