Day: January 22, 2017

A new pro-choice movement? Or, how to put the real “choice” back in “pro-choice”.

by Economoralist in ChiefOriginal ContentLeave a Comment on A new pro-choice movement? Or, how to put the real “choice” back in “pro-choice”.

I’ll start by saying: I love women. Racism sucks. Sexism sucks. Bigotry sucks. Inequality sucks. I mean it.

Now, for starters, please read this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4144242/KATIE-HOPKINS-Having-vagina-biology-not-argument.html

Then consider the below…

Imagine if all that time, effort, and energy were directed at something tangible and actionable? For example:

PROBLEMS:

  • Years of artificially low interest rates tricking women into taking on unsustainable levels of personal debt (i.e. overpaying for things like college, housing, and other goods purchased on cheap credit)
    .
  • QE & money printing by the Fed devaluing women’s labor and stealing their hard-earned savings to pay for the irresponsible choices of others (whether investment bankers who took too much risk, or your friendly next-door neighbor who bought a huge house or SUV knowing that he or she couldn’t really afford it)
    .
  • Asset price inflation stealing future investment returns from our daughters, granddaughters, great granddaughters, etc… to pay for the debt binges of their parents, neighbors, and politicians

SOLUTIONS:

  • Higher interest rates = more savings for women = less debt for women = more freedom for women to pursue their dreams!
    .
  • Equal pay for equal work (i.e. opportunity to profit from actual productive work vs. debt-fueled speculation & financial skimming), and the right for women to retain the value of their labor while saving and investing in their own independent futures!
    .
  • Market equilibrium that offers a level playing field for women to invest, acquire assets, start businesses and/or otherwise pursue financial independence via productive risk-taking (and perhaps the choice to stop working if they so choose?)

If a woman’s right to choose is important to you (and there are many choices to make in life), wouldn’t it make sense to tackle the underlying issues that tend to govern any individual’s true freedom to make choices – i.e. economic & financial freedom? Wouldn’t it be easier if we had a system that simply provided more fair & equitable opportunities for women to work, save, and invest (without having to take on excessive levels of debt) so they could be free to make their own life choices, without having to involve the government (and other taxpayers) in their decisions (moral or otherwise) in the first place?

Replace “women” (or any other gender references) in any of the aforementioned points, and you’ll see that most of the real issues we face as a society (it’s the economy, stupid) affect women as well as every other “identity” group just about the same.

By the way, just a reminder: I love women. Racism sucks. Sexism sucks. Bigotry sucks. Inequality sucks.

So remind me exactly what all these people were marching for again?

What do you value most?

by Economoralist in ChiefOriginal ContentLeave a Comment on What do you value most?

What do you value most? Family? Friends? Independence? Intellect? Wealth? Achievement? Power? Beauty? Charity? Purpose? Justice?

The sooner we realize we don’t all have same answers to the previous question, the sooner we can all start to make sense of the current political environment we live in, and perhaps, start tackling the real underlying issues that govern our ability to pursue whatever it is we value most – and that usually starts with economics.

An economy without a shared morality is destined to fail, in relative terms. Failure is relative to one’s definition of success. And one’s definition of success tends to be relative to one’s values. Likewise, one’s morals tend to be derived from one’s values, and those values are often a by-product of one’s upbringing & life experiences – and can include diverse influences along the lines of religion, culture, community, and circumstance. So, you start to see (hopefully) how a crazy mixed-up concoction of deep-rooted tensions emerges (and all the misunderstandings that come with it) leading to the political chaos we have today. For starters, perhaps considering everyone’s deep-rooted perspectives above your own, for just a sec, might help you make sense of it all? And that applies to all sides of the political, cultural, and socioeconomic spectrum.

For this particular writer, a sense of personal responsibility and the opportunity to control one’s own destiny in pursuit of one’s own version of happiness by leveraging god-given (or natural-born) talents & circumstances to the best of one’s abilities, taking calculated sacrifices and risks along the way, are important values & virtues. I also tend to believe that applying these values at large ultimately give a greater percentage of the population a chance to pursue whatever is important to them, more so than any other system of governing and distributing wealth & opportunity.

To accomplish this vision of individual sovereignty with equal opportunity (allowing for potentially unequal results) requires an economic system where we all play by the same rules, and respect the game, as well as the rights & aspirations of others. It’s when some individuals – whether for purposes of self-gain, or ill-advised attempts to solve others’ problems for them, or simply due to unrealistic expectations – start to bend the rules that “equal opportunity” turns into a fool’s game, fraught with moral hazard. It becomes a game not worth playing – and in a game not worth playing, nobody wins.

To some, eliminating the game altogether – a world where there are no winners or losers – is something of a utopian vision to aspire to. To me, nothing could sound more dystopian. In the game of life, there are always winners and losers, and the point where it suddenly starts to feel like there’s no longer a difference, is the point where you lost the game, without realizing you were playing.

It all comes back to values. Are you in the game? Or perhaps there’s a different game you’d rather be playing altogether?

Why economorals?

by Economoralist in ChiefOriginal ContentLeave a Comment on Why economorals?

“An economy without a shared morality is destined to fail (in relative terms, of course).”

(you know, applying the whole “moral relativism” thing… yeah, you get it…)

The classical definition of an “economy” refers to:

  • The management of scarce & finite resources.
  • The production, distribution and consumption of goods and services within a community.
  • A system designed to meet the needs and wants of its people.

So, with that said…

Who gets to define “need”? Who gets to define “want”?

  • Ask not (yet) what your economy can do for you.
  • Ask not (yet) what you can do for your economy.
  • Ask first: What purpose does your economic system serve in the first place?
  • Ask then: How closely aligned are the views & values of popular economists to your own, as they relate to the previous question?
  • Then come back and read the rest of our blog.
  • Then figure out whether your economy is succeeding or failing (in relative terms, of course).

How this blog started.

by Economoralist in ChiefOriginal ContentLeave a Comment on How this blog started.

NOTE: This is a post I began to draft way back on March 4, 2014 when the thought of starting this blog first crossed my mind (actually the thoughts & views behind it started much sooner, but the idea of expressing those views on a blog took a certain “aha” moment).

In any case, life and a slightly scattered mind prevented me from actually getting around to launching this blog until now, in 2017, shortly after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 45th president of the United States.

What’s interesting is the uncanny resemblance of this now-nearly-three-year-old draft post to the very platform that Trump ended up running on, and essentially got elected on.

What’s equally uncanny is the fact that I never considered myself much of a conservative, or a republican, or a right-winger, or anything like that. If anything, I’ve always been quite liberal & progressive in my thinking, though skeptical of “liberal” policies themselves. Perhaps you could call me a “post-liberal”. Some might say my views start to skew a bit libertarian. It doesn’t really matter what you label me or my views. What matters is, there’s a dialogue about the root causes of our divisions, our political chaos, our economic challenges, our cultural rifts, and the erosion of our social fabric that needs to continue – now more so than ever. Bringing the left and the right and everyone in between together to take a hard (sometimes really hard – sometimes brutally hard) look at some of the underlying economic & moral issues we all face collectively, to hopefully bring us together in support of real solutions and new perspectives, was and is the ultimate purpose of launching this blog.

Some topics and posts will reflect my own personal views & values (because like you, I’m only human, after all). Some posts may come from other individuals whom are invited to share their own specific perspectives, either in contrast or in support. Some posts will be more provocative than practical – you know, with a touch of hyperbole just to get you thinking. Other posts will simply be a call to look at the bigger picture, to help keep ourselves honest either way. As viewpoints go, the more the merrier.

Oh, and yes, a common theme will be the idea that economics trumps politics, and that many of the problems we call on the latter to help solve for us could perhaps be better understood & addressed by taking a more critical look at the former.

Drafted March 4, 2014:

Some of the articles on this blog, at first glance, may come off as a tad self-righteous. You may find statements that seem a bit out of touch, maybe a tad exaggerated, often popularly unpopular, or at least politically inconvenient.

It will quickly become evident that we’re actually speaking on behalf of a large majority of “old school” working and middle class Americans whose voices, values, and virtues have been marginalized or even silenced in this “Everyone’s entitled to a free lunch” (and that means everyone, top and bottom) era of no-money-down mortgages, Wall Street bailouts, QE-infinity, and the moral hazard it’s wreaking on our system.

You’ll find no hatred or scorn against the genuinely underprivileged here (many of us come from families whose ancestors are not far removed from similar circumstances). No twinges of racism, sexism, or any other “isms” that others would like you to believe are automatically associated with our beliefs (nope, we’ve got folks of all colors, shapes and sizes here).

In fact, our ultimate gripe is not with any particular individuals or persons who are (rightfully or wrongfully) taking advantage of a system that’s been put in place before them. Our gripe is with the system itself and those who enable it (and those who fail to see the need to disable it – or at least revamp it).

It’s not the 99% vs. the 1%. It’s the 100% against itself.