I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.
Pope says he is not a Marxist, but defends criticism of capitalism | World news | The Guardian
Pope Francis has rejected accusations from rightwing Americans that his teaching is Marxist, defending his criticisms of the capitalist system and urging more attention be given to the poor in a wide-ranging interview.In remarks to the Italian daily La Stampa, the Argentinian pontiff said the views he had espoused in his first apostolic exhortation last month – which the rightwing US radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked as \”dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong\” – were simply those of the church\’s social doctrine. Limbaugh described the pope\’s economics as \”pure Marxism\”.\”The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don\’t feel offended,\” Francis was quoted as saying. Defending his criticism of the \”trickle-down\” theory of economics, he added: \”There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it\’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor … I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist.\”
Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage, has written a post on charitable giving. He has very kindly offered me the opportunity to put it up early. As always, I am privileged to be a party to his writing and his continued drive for ethics. (His web site is here!)
James Pilant
Global Survey: U.S. Now #1 in Charitable Giving: American Exceptionalism Lives On
The Ethics of Charitable Giving and the Goodness of Americans
The United States now ranks the highest in terms of charity in a comprehensive global survey conducted by Charities Aid Foundation (CAFAmerica), a member organization of the United Kingdom based Charities Aid Foundation International Network of Offices, providing charitable financial services to individuals, global corporations, charities, and foundations. The 2011 survey reflects an increase from fifth place (2010) to first place.
According to those surveyed, two out of three Americans said they donated money to charity (65 percent), more than two out of five volunteered their time (43 percent) and roughly three out of four helped a stranger (73 percent).
This is an impressive example of the goodness of the American people and one reason why the U.S. is a beacon of hope for so many in need of help to survive, to better themselves, and to thrive in an increasingly global competitive economy.
For the past five weeks I have blogged about the decline of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ From excessive and senseless violence, to fraud and corruption ingrained in our systems of government, to a declining work ethic and level of competency that goes along with it, to a perpetually troubled education system that is failing so many kids, to our inability to effectively establish an immigration reform program, the U.S. has remained stagnant and developed ineffective approaches to solving the most important problems of our time, especially those that deal with quality of life issues that are a symbol of an exceptional society.
This is why it is so heartening to me that the U.S. is the most giving nation in the world. Clearly, this is a sign of an exceptional society. From the Bill Gates’ and Donald Trumps’ to middle class Americans, to low-income people, the U.S. has a long record of helping others to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and provide a foundation to improve one’s lot in life.
We certainly do this for our own citizens. Think what you may of unemployment insurance, SNAP (i.e., food stamps), Medicaid, and other government assistance, these are programs that demonstrate the humanity Americans have as citizens towards their fellow citizens in need of a helping hand.
Returning to the CFA report “World Giving Index (WGI) 2011”, the second through fifth countries are all English-speaking — Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The four new countries in the top 20 compared to the 2010 WGI report are Thailand, Morocco, Nigeria and Liberia. Of these, Liberia has enjoyed the biggest rise from 39th to 14th place, although Morocco’s increase from 33rd to 12th is equally notable. Other major shifts in the rankings include the rise of the United Kingdom from eighth to fifth, and Thailand’s neighbor Laos moving to tenth place. Perhaps not surprising, although somewhat concerning given their rapid economic development in the past twenty years, China, Russia and India are among those near the bottom of the list.
The WGI report is based on over 150,000 Gallup polling interviews with members of the public in 153 countries. The 2011 report looks at three aspects of giving behavior of individuals in the preceding month, asking if they have donated money to a charity, volunteered time to an organization, or helped a stranger. The U.S. has shown a steady increase in each of the three measures over the past year, ranging from four percentage points ‘volunteering time’ and to eight percentage points ‘helping a stranger.’ It is this even progress across all three measures that underlie the country’s rise to the top of the Index.
Charitable giving does have an ethical component to it. Aristotle and Aquinas assessed it using such factors as the object of the action, the circumstances of the action, and the end of the action. Aristotle believed that the act of charity is a virtuous one if it is done for its own sake and not some external reward. Using the example of giving to charity, exercising the virtue of charity (or generosity) requires that the giving be done for the sake of giving. In other words, the charitable act should be done because of the commitment to aid others and the way it makes one feel inside, not for the sake of getting a tax break.
What about those who give because their religion demands it? Here, we need to examine why the religion holds such a position. Typically, it is for good reasons – to help others and express our humanity towards others. No doubt peer pressure works in these cases.
Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher and central figure in modern philosophy, claimed that what matters morally is the good will and not what the good will accomplishes. Reasoning from that premise, if a person wills the moral law, then that is what matters. Whether the person accomplishes anything practical or not is not relevant to the ethics of the matter. In the case of a charity, what would presumably matter is that a person will in the appropriately good way and the consequences would not matter morally. This would certainly match the idea that what matters in a charity is that this will be shown by focusing on minimizing overhead and maximizing what goes to the charitable cause.
From a utilitarian perspective, what matters is not the intention of the giver, rather it is the consequences of one’s giving. If a large portion of one’s giving never gets to those in need, but is swallowed up by bureaucracy in administering the charity, then a utilitarian might reason the ends of giving and helping others do not justify giving freely of one’s own resources.
So, in this journey I have identified one very important reason why the U.S. is an exceptional nation. While it is true our government gives generously to many countries, there almost always is an ulterior motive for the giving making it less than a virtuous act. Our motive may be to win friends and influence people, or gain help in monitoring and controlling terrorism, or for us to help develop a country economically so its markets expand; business opportunities increase for American capitalists; and low-cost alternatives to needed products emerge to the benefit of the American consumer.
It is not government aid that makes us exceptional. In this season of joy and wonder we should remember that our charitable nature is linked to giving by the average citizen. This is the heart and soul of America – the essence of our giving spirit. We do so out of goodness, caring, compassion, and to help in the effort to wipe clean the image of starving people with little food and water to sustain themselves. This is the exceptionalism of America.
Ethics Sage — December 6, 2013
From around the web.
From the web site, Little Laos on the Prairie. (Which is just a fun site!)
Have a ‘sue kwan’ blessing for your first born and the Lao will come in droves. Your aunts, uncles, cousins and cousin’s cousins will shower you with lump sums of money and food. Have a fundraiser for a charitable cause like say, UXO removal, and maybe one or two Lao will show up with a few bucks to donate here and there. Beyond the excuse of being constantly broke, it’s the current reality of Lao American giving. It’s not to say that the Lao are terrible charitable givers, but it raises the discussion about what, how and why do Lao Americans give in the first place.
Dad said the true soul of Lao people consists of two main characteristics: humility and generosity. The Lao will cherish a single grain of rice under the most difficult financial times, yet they will tell you they don’t need any pity saving (or as some will call it “vow keu” aka they’re just pretend-saying that they don’t need saving, but really they want you to save them in some significant way).
The Lao in need don’t just need your money. They want a sustainable way of improving their livelihoods. Show them. Teach them. Provide them with resources and training. You’ll see how they pave the path towards prosperity on their own terms.
Monday was the last night with the flu. My sinuses are still swollen but that is my usual lot in life. I feel washed out like old denim but I will begin posting tomorrow night (Wednesday). I thank you, my kind readers, for your loyalty and forbearance.
My friend, Jayaraman Iyer, made this comment on one of my posts and I want to share it with all my readers.
James Pilant
“Yes, children do learn ethics in schools and No, they don’t learn to practice greed in the universities. You have to continue teach them business ethics. But they should learn how to measure ethics, subtler than the subtle.
First in the series of CREAM™ Report on Corporate Rating I have created a rating system on Hindustan Unilever that leads towards self-governance. JP Morgans, or Lehman Bros cannot be controlled but we can measure them with the published materials as to the extent of ethical values practiced within. We let them commit attrocities and try catch them. No, we have to have rating system on real-time.
CREAM™ Report on Corporate Rating on Hindustan Unilever is about 350 pages [A4] of 189 issue areas with no single issue analysed beyond a single page.The data is shrunk to arrive at their rating of 1,1,1,2,1, for the years 2008-09 onwards till date. With the optimum level of 5 the study suggests areas how they should work towards reaching self-governance.
The measurement methodology adopted is unique. I want universities and corporate to learn the technique of evaluating by ethical responsibility. It fetches more $ and better stability. Companies with better rating will attract the public to invest, as Paul Polman CEO of Unilever says: Increasingly consumers will vote with their wallets for companies that are just and equitable. More importantly the Society is benefited. We don’t need JP Morgans but we should learn how to create companies practicing self-governance as corporate culture.
Jayaraman Rajah Iyer is a Chartered Accountant from ICAI, New Delhi (1966) who has a unique insight into major changes in accounting in India’s history culled from experience with major firms across the globe. He interned at Hindustan Lever, worked his way up holding key positions at API and Mafatlals. He introduced the principle of Likely Ultimate Cost while appointed as Forestry Operations Accountant at Wimco. Leaving India in 1977 was appointed as General manager of ITI Nigeria, Lagos. Selected by Sir William Castell who is now the Chairman of the Wellcome trust, joined the Wellcome Foundation, UK to set right the accounting functions of Wellcome Nigeria. He had also been visiting faculty at SPJIMR, SIES School of Management, and Vivekananda School of Management where he taught Balanced Scorecard and Strategic Cost Management based on the Proprietary IBCM (Jayaraman owns the copyright to Inactivity Based Cost Management, 2006).
He is the son of the renowned educationalist late Rajah Iyer, Headmaster, policy maker and Member of the Legislative Council of Tamil Nadu till his death in 1974. Jayaraman’s Rajah Iyer Foundation provides a support system for teachers.
Beccaria says that punishment should be based on the harm done to society not the actor.
Which does more harm to society: 1) manipulating the companys books to reflect profits when in fact the company was losing money or 2) robbing a grocery store and taking $180 from the register while threatening a crowd of people with a firearm?
The collapse of the company caused the loss of all the employees pensions and benefits. The company had more than twenty thousand employees, many close to retirement. The profit and loss manipulations of the companys books made the officers of the companies, millionaires many times over.
Who does more harm to society? Why?
What punishment would be appropriate?
My Answer –
Manipulating the company’s books does more harm to society.
Retirees are probably between 50 and 70 at most companies. For many the loss of pensions will mean delayed retirement and years of more labor. For those unable to continue working, this means living off social security which average 1, 250 dollars a month. Generally speaking the elderly are sicker than the general populations and living on a tiny budget often means going without food, medicine or adequate housing. In these situations, the elderly may have to choose which prescriptions medicines to buy and which ones to try to live without.
But even more, these individuals thought that they would have a surplus of money beyond their basic needs. After all, they worked for it and sacrificed for it.
For these people, there will be no vacations, there will be no helping hand extended to children and grandchildren in need, there will be no retirement in Florida, or on the beach or the waterfront or in the mountains – just wherever it’s cheapest to live.
These retirees might live another ten or twenty years, every single night staring at the ceiling wondering whether there will be enough money for groceries or medicine. – ten or twenty years going without a car, not going anywhere, not ever eating out or going to a movie. Their pain is almost endless.
Yet, the person who cooked the books, who stole tens of millions of dollars, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars, will appear in court in a fine suit with fine recommendations from his wealthy and well placed friends. He is unlikely to spend much time in jail, and when in society, his friends and family will not ostracize him but welcome him back.
This second insult to society does far more harm than either crime in itself because this reprobate getting away with little or no penalty does serious harm to the moral fabric of society. This kind of “justice” harms us all.
Beccaria is very deliberate in his approach to analysis. He views the law as a tool for preventing violence and suffering, rather than a tool for punishment. He defines laws as “the terms under which independent and isolated men come together in society” (Williams 442). Rather than advocating for extreme individualism, he argues for some restrictions on freedom for the good of society as a whole. Beccaria views individuals outside of society as men who are “wearied by living in an unending state of war” whose freedom is made useless because there is “uncertainty of retaining it” (Williams 442). According to him, men sacrifice a certain degree of freedom in order to live in the sovereign of the nation and “the sovereign is the legitimate repository and administrator of these freedoms” (Williams 442).
I was cruising the Internet when I came across this site. I immediately liked it and I recommend it to you. He prefaces his posts with this –
I grew up in a middle-class family, the first to go to college full-time and the first to earn a Ph.D. The economic policies of the last 35 years have reduced the middle class’s security, and this blog is a small contribution to reversing that.
I, James Pilant, grew up in a middle class family, was the first to go to college, and the first to earn a J.D. So, I feel a certain affinity. I wish my fellow economic blogger luck and continued success. As for you, my kind readers, please go to the site and become a follower. You won’t be sorry.
James Pilant
Middle Class Political Economist: Subsidy Insanity in Western Missouri
I have written before about the gross waste of taxpayer monies on retail in the St. Louis region. According to the East-West Gateway Council of Governments (p. 18), governments in the bi-state metropolitan area pumped about $2 billion worth of subsidies into retail projects from 1990 to 2007, but only saw a net increase of 5400 jobs, meaning that each low-wage, low-benefit retail job cost the cities of the region $370,000 apiece. The price is only this low on the generous assumption that the subsidies were solely responsible for this job creation. However, given the growth of incomes in the metro area during that time period, it is likely that most if not all the jobs would have been created without the incentives provided.
By David Rohde – For decades, praising the middle class has been a staple of American politics. Candidates vow to defend the middle class and accuse their opponents of betraying it. But what, exactly, is the “middle class”?
Despite the incessant political lip service paid to the middle class, there is no official American government definition of the group. The middle class has been intensively studied but no political consensus exists over how it was created or how to strengthen it.
The closest the task force came to defining the middle class was a January 2010 report “Middle Class in America (pdf).” The study never gives an exact income level that is “middle class.” Instead, echoing academic studies on the subject, the document concludes that “middle class families are defined more by their aspirations than their income.”
Foundations, charities but mainly for-profit groups claim to have all the answers to “fix” education in the United States. Their principal tool is the standardized test, and not just any standardized tests, the ones they have created. It’s funny they always talk about accountability but what harm does it do to millions of students to be rated by tests that make little sense and measure only a small part of the results we expect our schools to produce?
As as society, it should be a matter of some concern that tax free foundations are the weapons of choice in the battle to replace public education with a neo-liberal set up where you get what you pay for. Essentially, the taxpayers are substituting anti-democratic initiatives across the country.
It’s bizarre that the United States is one of the pioneers in creating public schools is the nation where it seems most under attack.
James Pilant
Privatization is undoing Brown v. Board of Education – Salon.com
Untaxed and Unqualified Foundations Want To “Save Our Schools”
The “starve the beast” mentality allows the privatizers to claim that our “Soviet-style” schools don’t work, and that a business approach must be used instead. Philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family, who have little educational experience among them, and who have little accountability to the public, are promoting “education reform” with lots of standardized testing.
But according to the National Research Council, “The tests that are typically used to measure performance in education fall short of providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes in many ways.” Diane Ravitch notes that the test-based Common Core standards were developed by a Gates-funded organization with almost no public input. Desperate states had to adopt the standards to get funding.
Bill Gates may be well-intentioned, but he’s a tech guy, and his programming of children into educational objects is disturbing. One of his ideas is to videotape teachers and then analyze their performances. The means of choosing ‘analysts’ is unclear. Another Gates idea is the Galvanic Skin Response bracelet, which would be attached to a child to measure classroom engagement, and ultimately gauge teacher performance. It all sounds like a drug company’s test lab.
As noted by Ravitch and others, philanthropic organizations tend to contribute to “like-minded entities,” which are likely to exclude representatives of the neediest community organizations. They are also tax-exempt. And when educational experiments go wrong, they can just leave their mess behind and move on to their next project.
I completely agree with the Education Bug. Standardized testing has its place in schools, but it is extremely flawed. In today’s society standardized testing greatly impacts the lives of every student and teacher in the public school system. We have created these tests to measure students intelligence, as well as the performance of teachers in the classroom. One problem with this (which must not have stood out when we decided to implement these in our schools) is that just like every student learns differently, they test differently as well.
Another problem with standardized test is that it takes away from a teacher’s freedom in the classroom to teach what they think the students should know.When a teacher steps into a classroom each morning they focus on only the things that may be on the big test at the end of the year, leaving out crucial information that may not necessarily be on the test. The curriculum of our schools are now being based around the content of the standardized tests. This not only limits teachers’ creativity and ability to share knowledge with their students, but also caps students’ learning and retention of information. Students take in the information in a way only to regurgitate it for the test and then they soon forget what they have learned. Among the many flaws of standardized testing, curriculum is only one. Governmental spending on test preparations and how great the impact these tests have on students’ educational careers are also pitfalls of the standardized tests.
I am tired of these settlements. How can business ethics be taken seriously when massive illegality produces meager fines. Yes, 4.5 billions is chicken feed compared to what was made. If getting caught is just a cost of doing business, why not commit any illegality you can afford?
Is this is how it is going to be, why don’t we just take business ethics as a course offering and throw it out the window, then replace it with a new course. We’ll call the new course, “Rule Breaking Costs.” Instead of looking at ethical systems, we’ll apply the lessons of JPMorgan to business ethics: We obey the rules only when it is profitable to do so and we break the rules when the risk is justified by a cost-benefit analysis. See, no more nasty talk about good or bad, we just use a calculator. Of course, we have to worry that someday, somehow, against all current business free market analysis, will prosecute these criminals but what are the chances of that?
My students can go to jail for failing to pay parking tickets or using marijuana. JPMorgan can ruin tens of thousands of lives through their vicious and unprincipled manipulation of the mortgage markets, and not even be prosecuted once for a criminal offense.
Is that justice?
Is that a lesson I want my business ethics students to learn?
James Pilant
JPMorgan reaches tentative $4.5 billion deal with investors | Al Jazeera America
The bad news continued to pile up for JPMorgan Chase & Co. with Friday’s announcement of a $4.5 billion settlement reached with investors who said the bank deceived them about bad mortgage investments, part of a string of recent legal deals that contributed to the nation’s largest bank rare third quarter loss this year.
The newest settlement covers 21 major institutional investors, including JPMorgan competitor Goldman Sachs, BlackRock Financial Management and Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. The mortgage-backed securities were sold by JPMorgan and Bear Stearns between 2005 and 2008.
As the housing market collapsed between 2006 and 2008, millions of homeowners defaulted on high-risk mortgages. That led to billions of dollars in losses for investors who bought securities created from bundles of mortgages. Those securities were sold by JPMorgan and other big Wall Street banks.
Separately, JPMorgan has been negotiating with the U.S. Justice Department to settle a civil inquiry into its sales of mortgage-backed securities. While that case has yet to be full resolved, the bank reached a tentative deal last month to pay $13 billion.
As part of the $13 billion settlement, $4 billion will resolve U.S. government claims that JPMorgan misled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about risky mortgage-backed securitie
The banks have paid tens of billions of dollars in settlements with Federal and State agencies and law enforcement. Where did the money go? But more importantly the real question arises out of the investigation and the question Elizabeth Warren keeps asking — which homes were found to have defective notes and mortgages as alleged by investors in their lawsuits against the investment banks? Which homes did the agency investigation find were foreclosed by parties who were strangers to the transaction. I agree with Sen. Warren who thinks that nothing could be more important to answer as required public informations hand the finding already made by investigators and admitted by the banks to be illegal Foreclosures on defective mortgage liens based on enforceable notes.
A poll of businessmen says they are hiring more part timers to avoid buy their workers health insurance. The data points in the opposite direction of what the businessmen’s poll says. Do businessmen let their politics get in way of the facts? Well, I think that’s likely but it’s obvious that something’s wrong. Either someone is lying or they are polling the wrong businessmen.
James Pilant
When It Comes to Obamacare, Businesses Don’t Do What They Say | Beat the Press
That would have been an appropriate headline for a Christian Science Monitor article on a poll of businesses sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. The poll found:
\”Some 31 percent of franchise businesses and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses say they have already reduced worker hours because of the law.
\”About 27 percent of franchise businesses and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses have already replaced full-time workers with part-time employees because of the law.\”
Of course this is what the businesses say they are doing. However the data say the opposite. The data say that businesses have actually reduced somewhat the share of their workforce employed for less than 30 hours a week.
This is not the only case where the businesses answering this survey seem to be contradicting the data. The survey finds:
\”Some 41 percent of the non-franchise firms say they already see health-care costs rising because of the law.\”
By contrast, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the rate of increase in employer health insurance costs has slowed in recent years.
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