Author: George Papaioannou

The major trends in labor income in the US over the last 50 years are wage stagnation and a yawning gap between workers with and without a college degree.  Both these developments are not just topics of mere economic interest.  They have serious social and political repercussions.  Here I give a partial explanation of how it happened. 

First the data.  Until the early 1970s, the US economy (GDP) and wages grew pretty close together and labor got its fair share.  Things changed after the seventies.  Thus, from 1979 to 2018 productivity rose by 70% but real wages only by 12%.  In the period after 1970, the ratio of wages to profits in the formation of the GDP declined from 67% to 60%.  By the 2000s, automation and outsourcing had robbed non-college workers of well-paying jobs, especially in manufacturing.  The economy created lots of jobs but most were for skilled educated workers.  As a result, wages for low-skill jobs fell and these workers were left behind with respect to: income, social status and integration, and healthcare.  Very tellingly, these disparities were unique to the US among advanced market economies.

There are several factors that drove these negative developments.  For one, the demise of labor unions and unfavorable labor laws and rulings cut down the bargaining power of labor.  But another place to look is changes in the financial objective of the firm which were played out in the corporate boardrooms and the financial markets.

We can say that from the fifties to the seventies American business was ruled by managerial capitalism.  Shareholders held nominal power but they were mostly considered another class of capital suppliers, like bondholders and banks.  Executives governed with little oversight from shareholders whom they tried to appease with just adequate returns.  Executives were mainly compensated by salary and modest, by today’s standards, bonuses.  Whether they held views of social fairness toward labor or they aimed at maintaining labor peace with unions and an assertive working force, they were willing to split the gains in productivity (and profits) quite fairly between shareholders and workers.  Being compensated mostly by salaries, executives also had an incentive to seek higher wage increases which would justify commensurate salary raises for themselves.

But closer inspection of corporate performance by academics revealed that this style of corporate governance had left too much shareholder money on the table.  That is, excesses either in the form of generous labor contracts, managerial perks, or for the building of corporate empires were pursued at the expense of the shareholders.  (Just for the sake of illustration, think of the purchase of a jet to fly the CEO around; it adds to the CEO’s prestige and ego but its cost comes out of the shareholders’ profits.)  To rein in such managerial waste, a new theory, called “agency theory,” proposed that shareholders had to monitor managers more diligently and, even better, make managers behave like shareholders.  The theory argued that treating executives as agents of the shareholders and compensating them at fixed salaries did not incentivize them to create maximum value.  If, however, they were granted shares and/or options to buy shares in their firms, then they would behave as principals (i.e., shareholders) and think twice before they wasted shareholder value.   

Although the goal was to foster better management of resources, turning executives to shareholders created new unintended effects.   In order to increase the value of their stock, executives now had an incentive to squeeze expenses, including labor costs.  That gave us more part-time and temp jobs with little or no fringe benefits, all the way to gig jobs a la Uber.  No longer the interests of executives were aligned with those of labor as in the early era. 

The second harmful possibility came from the incentive to inflate the stock prices even by unethical means.  This reached scandalous and eventually criminal levels around 2000.  Mighty corporations, like Adelphia, Enron, Worldcom, and Arthur Andersen (the renegade auditing firm) were prosecuted for using misinformation and accounting irregularities for the purpose of inflating stock prices.  And adding insult to injury executive compensation packages blew through the roof to levels unseen in the US or other market economies.  To this day, even failing executives are rewarded stratospheric severance pay packages to relieve a firm of their incompetent presence.  Whereas thousands of workers are laid off with minimal notice and severance pay, top executives are sent to retirement with millions of dollars to presumably ease the pain of their aborted tenures.  

The most fertile ground to pursue shareholder value maximization, with significant consequences for labor nonetheless, is corporate restructurings, that is, the sale and purchase of corporate assets, divisions and whole firms.  This is exactly the arena where Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” takes place.  Very soon, the new term “takeover premium” was coined to mean the additional value a firm had as a potential takeover target.  New laws and regulations were passed with the objective to loosen up the grip of various stakeholders on firms and make them easier targets for corporate raiders. 

This newly minted market for corporate control, as it was named, got a big boost when private equity funds and hedge funds entered the market in earnest in the nineties.  The tax loophole of treating carried income as capital gains turbo-charged these funds.  Consistent with the relentless emphasis on shareholder value maximization, an academic study found that between 1952 and 1988 stock prices grew in sync with the GDP; from 1989 to 2017, GDP growth accounted for only 24%.  The rest came from “reallocated rents to shareholders and away from labor compensation.”

The thing is that corporate restructurings and takeovers help cleanse the economy of losing projects and incompetent managers and thus improve efficiency.  However, when academics and consultants measure the positive value creation of such activities, they do it from the perspective of shareholders under the financial objective of shareholder value maximization.  What they leave out is the costs from worker displacement, the unraveling of local economies, and negative social effects.  The neoclassical economic view is that workers and capital holders smoothly navigate the upheaval caused by “creative destruction” until everybody lands on a better place.  After all, it is the government’s job to pick up the cost of smoothing the transition.

But that’s not what happened.  The stories of blue color workers in the American Midwest tells a more dire story.  Their story had a lot to do with who entered the White House in 2016.

When we are invited to discuss possible reforms to the current economic system, many Americans suspect the talk is about overthrowing capitalism in order to introduce some socialist system.  Needless to say, this is not a good way to start a public dialogue about the state of the present system and the potential it holds for very unpleasant social and political outcomes down the road if it continues as is.

There are several different ways one can jump start the discussion.  I will choose one that appeals to me because it relates to how well we in the US care about social growth and cohesion.  Let’s start with the Social Progress Index that measures the standing of a country with respect to nutrition, health care, education, shelter, personal safety, personal rights, freedom and choice, access to information and other indicators of citizens’ wellbeing.  In 2020, the US slipped to the 28^th place out of 163 countries.  Almost all of the Western European countries – capitalist countries themselves – were ahead of the US.  Next take poverty.  In 2017, the US ranked second worse among the 37 countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.  Finally judged by social spending as a percent of GDP, in 2018 the US ranked 16 from the bottom spending less than the OECD average of 20.1%.

A healthy and well-functioning economic system should meet certain criteria.  It should support the production of output and wealth, it should support the fair distribution of incomes and wealth, and it should do no harm, that is, not contribute to social ills and disparities among the population it serves.  The US system does very well with respect to production.  Not though with respect to the other two criteria.  Income and wealth inequality are the highest in the world.  A recent study by the German insurer Allianz shows the US growing its wealth by an average of 13% in 2019 but, as in past years, with the most unequal distribution since most of the gains went to the highest 1% of the population.  Similarly, the Federal Reserve System recently reported that family income, wealth and stock holdings continued to grow faster for the top 10% of households than for any other percentile bracket.

Income and wealth inequality are not the only pathologies of American capitalism.  Wages after inflation have stagnated since the 1970s and this is most pronounced for workers without college education.  Black and non-white Hispanic Americans significantly lag in income and wealth due to long-standing racial inequities.  Unfortunately, economic disparities beget various negative outcomes.  Low-income Americans are less likely to have health insurance.  Lower incomes are associated with less education and the latter is, in turn, associated with more abuse of alcohol, drugs and opioids as well as higher suicide rates.  Less education and lower incomes also lead to more broken families and more children living in single-parent homes.  And, of course, social mobility, that is, moving to higher income brackets, is lower for today’s Americans than it was for their parents and grandparents.  No wonder then the majority of Americans do not think their country is on the right track.

If this is what the data tell us, then it behooves us to ask (a) what is the cause? and (b) what is a possible way out?  My short answer is that we have produced a system without a social purpose.  Advocates of pure capitalism might object to this proposition by reminding us of Milton Friedman’s famous pronouncement of sixty years ago that business has a social responsibility and that is to maximize profits. 

There is no doubt that profits are necessary for businesses to stay viable and, thus, be able to meet consumers’ needs and wants.  But we have also seen that despite a stellar record of profitability achieved by American business over time, this country is afflicted with many serious social problems emanating from the uneven distribution of economic opportunities, incomes and wealth.  The notion that the private interest is aligned with the social interest is just an assumption.  In 2008, it made sense for every trader to dump financial assets as they were losing value fast.  But it was not in the interest of the overall market and society.  The Federal Reserve System and the government (political and social institutions) had to step in to avert the collapse of the whole system.  Chemical companies and fast-food restaurants can be more profitable if they care less for the quality of environment and their customers’ health.  It is society that pays the spillover costs.

Capitalism thrives in markets.  But markets (being mechanisms of exchange) are agnostic when it comes to the social good or purpose.  When a person buys a gun, the market does not care (or know for that matter) whether the buyer will use the gun for a legitimate defense purpose or to commit a crime.  When the labor market facilitates the hiring of a worker at some wage by a firm it has no idea nor does it care whether the worker can live with that wage.

At its beginning capitalism was a new system primarily concerned with the production of goods.  Labor rights and issues of fair distribution of the output were dealt with much later under the pressure of progressive economic and social thinking and movements.  In other words, we cannot divorce the function of the economic system from the political order and the social compact of a society.  If the economic system could operate like a physical system independent of the influence of political order, we would not see businesses spending enormous amounts of money and effort to shape government policies.

Being honest as to what markets can and cannot do is essential for creating a good society.  Markets not only lack a social conscience they can also succumb to endemic imperfections and collapse.  Other times, markets are so concentrated in the hands of a few powerful corporations that can negate the benefits of market competition.  Markets can also fall prey to special interests uninterested in the social good.  Equally unrealistic is to rely on markets to meet the needs we associate with the social safety net. 

The reason the US socio-economic system leaves significant numbers of people behind is two-fold.  First, the economy has been allowed to develop distortions that benefit the few at the expense of the many; and second, public policy, under the mantra of small government, has failed to take responsibility for the needs of those who lack the financial means to access markets for essential services such as health care, education, healthy environment and retirement.

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, to the Supreme Court has renewed the debate about the role of one’s faith in discharging her or his public duties and the place of faith and reason-based secularism in the founding documents of America, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

To be a citizen, a politician, or a jurist in the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural US is truly a challenge as you are called to transcend your personal religious or secular beliefs and learn to live with others whose moral laws and philosophies of life spring from different theologies and worldviews.  When we read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we sense that the Founders struggled with this very problem and eventually came to language that balances the interests of faith and reason. 

To justify the pursuit of freedom and independence from the oppression of the English King, the Declaration invokes the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”  The notion of laws of nature or natural laws has been around since the times of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers.  These are laws of behavior endowed by nature to humans to guide their moral conduct.  The Declaration also invokes laws defined and granted by Nature’s God.  The Declaration is neutral though as to which faith’s God it has in mind.  Thus, no God of a particular religion is identified as the supreme grantor of human rights.  The language implicitly accepts two sources of discernment of laws:  rational thinking for the laws of nature and faith for laws emanating from the God of Nature.  This suggests the Declaration of Independence is open to secular and religious approaches to constructing and interpreting laws.

Keeping with this premise, the Constitution makes no mention of God or religion.  It starts with the words “We the people . . .”  The powers of the government come from the people and not from a Divine Authority as it was the case in the monarchies of Europe of that time.   And as the First Amendment stipulates, the government should not favor any particular religion.  We are free to profess any religious or non-religious beliefs but should not expect any helping hand or validation from the government in all its three branches.  Respect for this constitutional edict implies we should not seek, or worse, apply undue influence to achieve such assistance from the government.

What is of interest to us who live the now and here is the realization of two important points.  The first point is the historical evidence that both secular and religious moral laws have changed over time as humans have become more tolerant and more knowledgeable about our nature, human and physical.  The second and more important point is that secular and religious moral laws vary across different secular and religious systems as well as peoples.   Therefore, the peaceful coexistence under a constitution that invokes no particular religious dogma or secular beliefs and a Declaration that appeals to both, the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, as the source of moral laws requires neutrality in the writing and interpretation of laws.

This understanding of the founding documents then shows the way as to how we should approach the nomination and vetting of candidates to the Supreme Court.  Knowledge of a candidate’s adherence and degree of devotion to a particular faith or secular principles should not necessarily preclude nomination.  Vetting, however, should ascertain the candidate’s adherence to the constitutional neutrality with respect to religious dogma and secular views.  It seems to me the candidate bears the burden of proof of his/her adherence to impartiality.   Consequently, rigorous vetting of a candidate’s impartiality, far from being mistaken as hostility or suspicion of the candidate’s beliefs, emerges as a basic responsibility of the Senators, who confirm Supreme Court judges.

A different approach is to argue that a candidate’s discharge of his/her duties as a jurist does not necessarily accord with one’s religious or secular beliefs.  Here the premise is that most of us, and, hence, Supreme Court candidates, live compartmentalized spiritual and professional lives.  This is what David Brooks has argued in a recent New York Times column.  Specifically, he makes the point that faith has no or little influence on one’s political ideas, including legal ideas.

I would like this to be true, but I have reasons to believe it is more a wishful conjecture.  The three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are strict moralistic faiths that prescribe a certain way of life.  Moreover, since their founding, Christianity and Islam have practiced an active evangelization and conversion policy for the purpose to bring an ever-expanding number of people to live by the tenets of these religions.  For centuries, Church law was also state law and to this day Sharia (the Islamic law) is still practiced in parts of the Muslim world.  Therefore, the notion that religious adherents just believe in the creation and other holy stories of their religion while they bring universal moral values and beliefs to their professions (the practice of law, included) is just an assumption that requires empirical confirmation via vetting.

Such vetting is important in the case of confirming jurists to federal courts and especially in filling seats on the Supreme Court for obvious reasons.  Members of Congress serve for finite terms; hence if the people are dissatisfied with a member’s performance in matters relating to the application of religious and secular principles, they can vote them out of office.  On the contrary, Supreme Court jurists serve life terms without recourse to replacement if a jurist demonstrates systematic bias in favor of the tenets of a particular faith or secular dogma.  Besides, Supreme Court jurists are the ultimate arbiters in interpreting the letter and intent of our basic governing charter.

Precluding anyone as a candidate for a seat on the federal bench on the basis of religious or secular beliefs would be prejudicial; vetting a candidate’s ability to be impartial and neutral in interpreting the law, on the other hand, is a necessity if we wish to do service to America’s founding documents.

Escape to SCOTUS-Land

I entertained several titles for this blogpost before I eventually settled on this one.  I believe it captures the reality, sad in my opinion, of American politics over the past fifty years.  Unable to resolve a host of important but controversial issues, from abortion to guns, and from voting and civil rights to matters of church and state, both parties and behind them the American public have turned the Supreme Court into a proxy battleground.  That has brought the cynical politicization of the Court, the call for litmus tests concerning the selection of candidates and serious spillover effects into electoral politics.

Depending how the majority of justices appears to tilt toward the right or left, the decibel of groans and the degree of anguish grow predictably and correspondingly in the ranks of liberals and conservatives.  With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week, it is the liberals singing the blues as they anticipate the inevitable shift of the Court to the right.  I happen to believe that our reliance to the high court to resolve our political differences is one more indicator of our dysfunctional and divisive politics and it is time we think more soberly about the real roots of our problems.  Without being a legal expert but still with the interest a citizen ought to have about such matters, I will try to offer a dispassionate perspective on the role of the Supreme Court.

Separation of church and state.  The main intent of the establishment clause was to prevent the US government from favoring any specific religion or sect at the expense of others and thus avoid the sectarian wars that had marred Europe. *  I don’t see anything in the radar to suggest this clause is in danger.  As far as I know, several recent Supreme Court cases decided in favor of religious entities had to do with the doctrine of equal treatment whereas others have opposed the use of public funds for religious instruction.  The Hobby Lobby decision granting the company the right to deny insurance coverage for abortion (on the basis of the religious beliefs of the firm’s owners) is an interesting case that has its roots in an American peculiarity concerning health insurance.  The US is unique among advanced economies in making health insurance conditional on one’s being employed, thus giving employers a voice in various collateral matters.  The way out of this unconventional arrangement is (in case you disdain a single payer system) a public option insurance plan free of faith-based restrictions.

Political money.  By granting the right of speech to corporate entities in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court indeed allowed additional cascades of money into politics but again it was forced to decide on something Congress had failed to regulate.  More than any other modern democracy, the US has institutionalized the role of money in politics with all its distorting and corrupting effects on elections and policy making.  It boggles the mind that Americans are willing to spend billions of dollars to recruit senators and representatives whose job performance rarely satisfies more than 20% of the electorate!  However, the argument that political money favors conservatives at the expense of Democrats is without merit.  There is plenty of money on both sides and only the degree of largess of prospective donors determines how much flows to each side.  Just recently, billionaire Mike Bloomberg committed a cool one hundred million dollars to the Florida race to defeat Donald Trump.

Voting rights.  Do we know of any other Western democracy where the courts are as extensively engaged as in the US in resolving disputes around voting rights and procedures?  Notwithstanding the lack of any credible evidence of voter fraud, cases of eligibility to vote, gerrymandering decisions, and mechanics and methods of voting are frequently before the courts, including the Supreme Court.  The states, which have jurisdiction over voting, and Congress have been proven unwilling or incapable of putting an order to the system.  And a disruptive president has exploited these disputes to claim the possibility of voter fraud when, thankfully, this is not what ails the voting system in the US.  You can stack the Supreme Court with nine all liberal or conservative justices and there is little they can do to take us out of this morass.

Civil rights.   This is an area where much more can be accomplished by the force of public attitude and behavior as Americans move – and the movement is in the right direction – to a more inclusive society.  It has been generally observed that in matters of civil rights, like those related to racial equality and sexual/gender orientation, the Supreme Court has tended to move along with rather than against the public sentiment.  Thus, a Court shift to the right may not prove as injurious as it is feared to the advancement of civil rights.

Guns.  Another difficult controversial matter left to the Supreme Court to fix.  Consider the absolute tenor of the Second Amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” And yet, state courts and the Supreme Court have found some wiggle room to place some regulations.  But in this case as well, Congress has failed to take the lead despite the overwhelming evidence that counter to the lame argument of the gun lobby “guns don’t kill, people kill,” gun possession is being proven to be extraordinarily deadly to Americans. 

Abortion.  At the risk of sounding repetitive, let me again say, the US stands out among modern democracies as the country where abortion generates such fervor and fanaticism.  In Western Europe, even in strongly Catholic Ireland, the people, not necessarily the courts, have found ways to adopt abortion rights without the histrionics we see in the US.  They have mostly adopted a middle solution away from the American extreme positions of pro-choice and pro-life advocates.  Are all these people morally compromised one way or another compared to Americans?

I do not wish to minimize the implications of a Supreme Court tilting to the left or to the right.  But let’s look at the political reality.  A president willing to exploit, even abuse, his executive powers to his personal benefit; his party unwilling to provide the checks envisioned by the Constitution; and a Congress chronically ineffectual in legislating matters out of the hands of the courts.  And a citizenry with a significant fraction given to the voracious consumption of disinformation and conspiracy theories. 

To expect in this environment that nine mere mortals seated at the Supreme Court have the power to save us from the failings of the other two branches of government and ours is delusional and a kind of escapism from our responsibilities as citizens. 

* The CARES Act passed by the Congress to combat the economic fallout of the pandemic allows the extension of the Paycheck Protection Program to churches for the payment of clergy salaries.  This is one of the most direct uses of public funds by religious establishments ever allowed.  And it did not come from the Supreme Court.   

Thirty million infected; almost one million dead; economies in tatters; incomes and livelihoods devastated worldwide.  Then there are the children.  And the first thing that comes to mind is how much knowledge they have lost.  But I say think first how much of their social growth has been retarded. 

Since last spring, schooling has been mostly on line.  This fall, children are returning to classes but even when instruction is in-person, social distancing will continue to keep children from meaningful face-to-face and activity-based interaction. 

Social isolation is not a natural condition for humans.  The experts warn us that being deprived of social life can afflict us with anxiety, depression and irritability.  But if socialization is a source of pleasurable living to grown-ups, it is an indispensable ingredient to the growth of children.  At some basic level, we all understand that.  But there is more to it and it goes beyond the limits the coronavirus imposed on the socialization of children.

First, why is the socialization of young children important?  Because it helps them understand who they are and thus become aware of their identity; come to love people outside their kin; understand what friendship and trust are and how to make friends; learn to build networks of people that matter to them and use cooperation to achieve goals; experience the good and bad effects of in-group bias and aversion to those outside; and take advantage of social learning and teaching.  All these dimensions of socialization constitute the social suite, as physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis calls it in his book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of A Good Society.

The upshot of Blueprint is that, genetically wired with some pro-social instincts, humans managed very early to build social systems that helped them survive the challenges of their natural environments.  In turn, successful social patterns favored those living in them to propagate.  Therefore, humans, as biological and social creatures, are products of a shared genetic and social code.  

By the time children are ready to start kindergarten, they bring with them a degree of social maturation that helps build their social suite.  In his book Becoming Human, psychologist and neuroscientist Michael Tomasello shows that 5-year olds have developed a normative sense of do’s and dont’s that is informed by a sense of obligation to others.  By the age of seven, children have started to regulate their behavior not only according to their own sense of what is right or wrong but also according to the standards of society.  And they have enough reasoning skills to make ethical judgments. Thus, children enter their school life with foundations of morality and social awareness.  As they go through elementary and early high school, children develop a sense for loyalty and trust and then for commitment, empathy and affection.

Of the various social venues, children can find themselves, the school and the playground are arguably the most important for their social growth because they are the testing grounds where children try out and hone their social skills.  In the process, they learn how to adapt to the demands of social life.  Unlike children of past generations, today’s children are mostly deprived of the rich social interaction with members of extended families living in proximity and coming together in frequent intervals.  The preponderance of the nuclear family (just the parents and children) has significantly reduced the richness of this human-based transmission of social histories, experiences and lessons.

So, when we take out the social life of schools and playgrounds, what are children left with?  Of course, we know the answer since it has been around for quite some time before the onset of the pandemic:  online games and social media.  Means of virtual socialization which, of course, have intensified in use with the pandemic.  Therefore, the building-up of the components of the social suite has been already affected by forces beyond the pandemic. 

Over their long history, humans have stumbled on discoveries that gave them no clue in advance how they would change human life and nature.  The discovery of the digital technology is such a development.  It raises the question: Can the transmission and acquisition of social skills and experiences through digital means instead of human interaction change any of the components of the social suite that Blueprint claims is at the heart of a good society?  Can you trust that a bot has your back?  And as far as the process of becoming human is concerned, can we leave that task to Artificial Intelligence?

Around 2005, people reported that the average number of their strong friendships had dropped from three to two and 25% in the survey said they had no one they could truly trust.  If this has happened to adults, imagine the deficit of friendship in children. Of all the components of the social suite, friendship is particularly important because it does not rely on kinship or reciprocal altruism.  In online games, players are replaced without much emotional cost and on social media “likes” do not convey the warmth of real bonding with another human being.  Another collateral damage is children developing the habit of verbally abusing bots, like Alexa, that could potentially transfer to abusing fellow humans.

Although bots and robots can be designed to have a positive impact on how humans interact among themselves, the author of Blueprint N. Christakis has argued (The Atlantic, April 2019) that ill-designed interactions through digital and AI technologies can stunt emotional growth and inhibit human connections.

From a different standpoint, we could argue that the social isolation brought upon us by the pandemic has been less traumatic thanks to the presence of social media.  They have allowed us to stay in contact with relatives, friends, and the society at large.  The fact that social media-related firms outperformed in an otherwise negatively impacted stock market is evidence of where people turned when all tangible in-person contacts were shut down. 

Grown-ups though have already developed the social suite prior to the advent of the pandemic and thus they can easily return to normal human interaction.  This cannot be said for the children living through the pandemic.  That’s why schools closed to in-person instruction and contact may prove to be the most important loss for children and by extension for us all to the extent the disrupted social growth of the young hurts the sustenance and quality of our social suite.

If things were what they used to be in years past, my first blog post of the fall would be about places I had travelled in the summer and the frivolous going-ons at the Yabanaki beach in Varkiza, filled with summer nostalgia.  But none of these things happened this summer and as for nostalgia it rarely is the child of mundane experiences.

Instead, the summer laid more devastation in the US as premature re-openings and callus behavior by people spread the virus and death to thousands.  And that was not all.  America’s cities convulsed with protests in response to deadly police shootings of Black Americans.  So, like in some dark music piece, the summer broke out in a crescendo of sickness, deaths, strife for social justice and broken plans.

We tried to salvage some of the pleasures of summertime by taking advantage of what our natural surroundings have to offer, visiting beaches, parks and preserves – some for the first time.  And we did take limited risks in order to socialize with friends with the usual precautions of wearing masks and social distance.  We even tried outdoor dining as a gesture of support for the local businesses.  All things considered and compared to the hardship and losses suffered by so many other people, we count ourselves among those fortunate enough to have escaped thus far the scourge of the pandemic and ready to move on toward better days. 

But this fall is different not just because we are getting out of an unusually deadly and anything but let-loose summer, but also because Americans will soon have to decide the direction they wish for their country.  And, if I may be excused for some hyperbole, it is still true that as America goes so does the world in many respects. 

The pandemic and our individual and collective response to it as well as the social unrest following the deaths of Black Americans in the hands of police should have taught us something about personal choice, personal responsibility and law and order.  That personal choice not informed by an ethical code and social conscience is an empty privilege; that personal responsibility without social sustenance is abandonment; and that law and order not grounded on justice lose legitimacy. 

It is, therefore, unfortunate that the much-needed political debate about the serious problems America faces, centered around racial, social and economic justice, is falling victim to a much more urgent call.  The call to preserve the rules and values of American democracy as opposed to pursuing a narrowly defined nationalism of an America that denies its diversity. 

Long before the pandemic happened upon us, critical conditions had been set in motion that would lead us to the dead-end politics of populism and its dubious leaders.  Populism arises when people feel frustrated and thus become more receptive to the alluring messages of cynical demagogues who succeed in corrupting people’s faith in democracy and pluralism.  We ‘ll always have corrupt and devious politicians, but when their personal follies and exaggerated self-importance are not checked by the people, then we should worry.  Graver yet, it is to dismiss the populist sentiment of the people and especially the conditions that drive them to that state.

A lot has been written about what has driven America to this point.  But two books stand out in their ability to encapsulate the main arguments.  In Deaths of Despair Anne Case and Angus Deaton (a Nobel laureate) use the stark power of numbers to describe how job displacement, social alienation and an ineffective health care system has driven hundreds of thousands of middle-age men in Fly-Over America to opioid dependence and suicide.  

In Winners Take All Anand Diridharadas lays out his case against the global constellation of elites that abuse capitalism to corrupt free markets, amass power and wealth and frame the narrative to ensure that “change” never undermines the underpinnings of their dominance.

A common thread that connects all the economic, social and race-related failings is the diminished presence of a social conscience.  The neglect and even dismissal of the social good as a legitimate goal.  And it’s not because no one writes or talks in its defense but rather because the majority of us have become immune to its influence dazzled by the glitter of the system, so rewarding if you are on the lucky side of the tracks but so punishing if you are not.

In different ways, this is going to be a fall of discontent for many.  But we can get out of this dismal state if we are willing to re-examine the relationship of the individual to the society and of the individual self-interest to the social good. 

I bet no one had predicted what a year this 2020 would turn out to be when we were celebrating in those New Year Eve parties   A global pandemic, sickness and death, lockdowns and unemployment, social isolation, public demonstrations for the deaths of black people in the hands of police, elation the pandemic was on its way out, opening up business and society.  And then breaking the rules, resurgence of cases, retreat on opening up.

So we march into the summer months of July and August carrying all this baggage of emotions, memories, experiences, losses and grief that will mark our lives forever, if not exactly afraid at least concerned about what awaits us on the other side of the season when fall returns.  Here are some thoughts I take with me into the summer.

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The return to normalcy could have been a lot smoother and less risky and reversible if we all had displayed temperance and wisdom.  If we had eased our lives into the joys we had missed instead of binging in them.  If our elected officials had the wisdom to go slow and mandate the precautions needed to keep the virus away.  Instead we treated Nature with hubris and we lost.  With new cases surging at alarming rates, the reopening of the economy is now threatened and America finds itself unwelcomed to parts of the world that unlike us continue to reopen while they keep cases down.  Failing to realize we are all in together, states, like Florida and Texas, now condemn us in the Northeast to international distancing as a result of their antipathy to social distancing.

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Statues of men who had made their mark from the Revolutionary times to the Civil War and even the Twentieth century used to gaze out from their solid pedestals, unperturbed by the pestilence and turmoil suffered by us mortals.   No more.  The Black Lives Matter demonstrations have again put on the table of public consciousness the thorny question: “Who deserves the public immortality of a statue?”  Tempered voices advice we keep the statues of men, who, despite committing the crimes of their day, fought for something good, like building a country even if that meant a country for whites only; but do away with the statues of Confederate men who fought to keep other humans enslaved.  Not so, we are told by those who come from those enslaved men and women.  No good these founding men did for this country can erase their original sin.  The cold reality is that history and the symbols that remind us of it are written and chosen by the victors.  But the day comes when the victors are challenged by their conscience from within and by the aggrieved from outside.  This is the moment we are in right now.  Not only Black Americans but White Americans as well feel the moment of catharsis has come or is very near.  The least White America can do is listen to its fellow Black as well as Native Americans and be sensitive to their sense as to how our common history must be remembered and memorialized.

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When hit by the vicissitudes and risks of something as insidious as this pandemic, it is time to ask “How can I live my life to survive the emotional and mental tear and wear?”  That’s when my mind goes to what the Stoics and the Epicureans had to say about a life well lived.  Both advised that after the initial shock we feel as we react to unpleasant change, fear and loss we should quickly restore our composure and take control of our lives by resorting to reason and contemplation.  Stoics would further advise us to focus on the now and here.  To enjoy what we have and not get trapped in the fear of what we might lose tomorrow.  The Epicureans would add that safeguarding happiness is a virtue.  And by that they did not mean happiness built on the unrestrained pursuit of pleasures.  They rather meant happiness pursued with prudence; happiness that comes from learning to adapt as circumstances change and from discovering new opportunities to find pleasure.  A Stoic endures hardship without surrendering his will to feel whole; while an Epicurean does not let hardship take away her faith in life and a better tomorrow.

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In my amateurish practice of Stoicism, I tried to convince myself that each day of my new limited life I went through was another battle won.  That enduring this prolonged period of isolation was a meaningful experience that tested my will and ability to fight an enemy, and I should not be defeated.   And in my amateurish way of practicing Epicureanism, I started to find pleasure in things I had long ignored.  I started to take pleasure in the flower beds and the landscaping of homes I went by in our daily walks around the neighborhood.  I started to pay attention to the architectural styles of homes.  I would bring back memories of walks in European cities.  Here is an Art Nouveau building and here is an Art Deco or Neo-Classical building.  I saw none of these styles in my neighborhood.  Just Center Colonials, and a few Dutch Colonials and what they call here Ranger Ranches and the other styles you see in an American suburb.  For millions of people, a neighborhood had become the world.

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Funny how we rediscover our social selves under trying conditions.  In our walks, we nodded and said Hi to people we didn’t know and they nodded back.  We saw people sitting in lawn-chairs in front of their houses waving and showing gladness when they would see us again.  We saw people visiting friends sitting in prudent distance from each other in front yards like in times past.   The pandemic had pushed us apart and yet we were pulled closer by a new found need to bond, even so lightly, with others.  I hope people will still wave at us and say “Hi” after the pandemic is gone.  What an irony, if this never happens again and we look back to the pandemic days with nostalgia for the “His” and the looks from strangers, all full of understanding for the common condition we had to share those days of the lockdowns.

So let’s choose the joys of the 4^th of July celebrations with prudence so that we enjoy with exuberance the Labor Day feasts come September.

Let’s face it.  Timing the return to a normal life after the onset of the pandemic was not meant to be an easy or a well-informed decision.  A number of countries, especially in Europe and East Asia, waited until new case and death rates went reliably down before they relaxed the lockdown restrictions.  In some cases, they had to reimpose them at the local level.

In the US, the out-of-sync federal system from the President down to the states proved to be the cause of an uneven and haphazard approach to the pandemic from its start to the time it came to fashion a return to normalcy.  Whether aiming to restore some semblance of social life or, more urgently, to reboot the economy, states started to relax the precautions by following the usual pattern.  Republican governors hewed to the President’s persistent reopening call while Democratic governors opted to march at their own more cautious pace.

What lies behind the two different approaches are different calculations and sentiments regarding the right balance between saving livelihoods and saving lives.  Now, after several weeks of reopening attempts, the results are streaming in and the news isn’t pretty.  States that hastened to reopen their economies are recording accelerating rates of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.  This adverse reality does not seem though to change the minds of the rushing governors and the segments of the population that stand behind them.

Sometimes the argument in favor of saving livelihoods takes on a libertarian ideological cover under which, however, there lies a more or less nonchalant stance toward human loss.  It goes like this: “We can’t shut down the economy just because some people are expected to die.  After all, people die every day for one or another reason.  The vulnerable ones can always choose to sequester themselves to avoid infection.”

I recognize the importance of saving livelihoods but we also need to appreciate the nature and scope of this calamity.  First, dying of complications from Covid-19 is not the same as dying from just any other disease.  Many have died because they caught it from the very people they had to care for.  Almost none of them would have otherwise died.  Others died because they caught it from an infectious relative, friend or co-worker who might never have suspected to be a carrier of the virus.  Absent the coronavirus, these people would still be alive.  To those who lost someone to Covid-19 it feels like a tragedy.  They have suffered a grave loss that could have been avoided.  That heart-sinking feeling of “what if” can last forever.  To the survivors of the Covid-19 victims, the conundrum of saving livelihoods versus lives has a whole different meaning; it’s very personal and devastating.

Next, let’s think of what it means for a state authority to say it’s okay to apply less caution than before.  For example, the prime minister of UK, Boris Johnson, just recently said that social distancing can be reduced to one meter (three feet) down from two meters.  What does that mean from an epidemiological standpoint?  Can an official declare by fiat we are now safer under the closer distance?  Will all of a sadden the virus obey the new guideline?  It would have been more honest if Boris Johnson had also informed his fellow citizens how the shorter distance changes the infection risk.

And what about the position that advocates to let the people decide what to do by making their own calculations of the risks they take?  This is the libertarian view that leaves things up to the individual not the state.  It appeals to those who believe that individuals acting as autonomous units eventually produce a better solution than state mandates.  It sounds liberating until you dig under the surface and discover how naively counterproductive it is.

Mandating individual behavior in relation to coping with the coronavirus is similar to regulating various activities and markets.  So let’s think along this regulation paradigm.   Why do we have regulation?  Not because we believe that individuals in general are dishonest and behave badly but because we believe, based on experience, that some individuals will behave badly.  So what?  Well, if people do not have the information or the expertise to guess who will behave honestly and who won’t, or the cost of doing the screening is prohibitively high, then a lot of individuals will shun away from an activity or market and bring their collapse.

This is exactly the situation we face with the coronavirus.  When we walk into a venue, we have no idea who carries the virus.  Since carriers can be asymptomatic, how many of us are willing to step into a situation where distinguishing between low and high-risk individuals is impossible?  Very few, unless we are recklessly indifferent to sickness and death.  We can encourage and increase participation, by mandating that certain precautions, like wearing a mask and/or keeping the required distance, are required of all, regardless of their sense as to what risk they pose to others.  This is equivalent, for example, to the rules that require all firms to disclose the same types of information when they wish to sell new shares or bonds to the public in order to protect buyers from fraud.  Therefore, a mandate to comply with certain precautions contributes to having a lot of vital activities and markets up and running instead of letting them wither or completely shut down under the failure to signal a reliable measure of protection.

But then, we hear the worn-out argument “What about my constitutional right (meaning ‘to do as I please short of committing a crime’)?  My answer is: “And what about the right (it doesn’t need to be constitutional) of a vulnerable person to shop for food or work or worship without risking his or her life?”

The truth of the matter is that by accepting mandates for certain behavior and rules we can restore a lot of social and business activities and enjoy many of the life’s pleasures.  But we have to show discipline and social responsibility.  And, also let’s stop invoking individual rights, no matter how deadly they may be, because we cling to the naïve assumption of the all-rational and responsible individual.  The states that stuck to this fantasy are now those that reap the grim reality of the virus.

In one of his speeches, Martin Luther King, Jr. said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  On June 15, 2020, this arc bent a little bit more when the Supreme Court of the United States in a 6 to 4 decision ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected LGBTQ persons from employment discrimination.

Although the individuals involved in the three cases before the Court were not employed by religious organizations, the decision was met with strong opposition and dire warnings about its consequences in various religious quarters.  The religious arguments against the decision are centered around the right of religious freedom.  Over the years, religious freedom has emerged as the major argument for the right of religious establishments (churches and affiliated organizations), individuals and non-religious entities to apply religious moral standards in various activities, including employment practices.

It must be said that the right of religious freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment, and as such it is a powerful, justifiable and legitimate right to be defended.   It is the scope of this right that is in dispute, especially when it collides with someone else’s rights.  The argument of religious freedom has been increasingly used to deny services (like decorating a wedding cake) or employment to people of a particular lifestyle, in this case, their sexual orientation or gender identity.  Given, however, the different moral values and standards held by different religions, what happens when they choose to apply them in dealing with others?  Permission to apply diverse moral beliefs on instances that affect people’s lives outside their practice of religious duties would imply that laws work differently across different legal entities within a country.

In an early case, Reynolds v. United States, 1878, the Supreme Court recognized the difficulty of placing religious belief over the Constitution and stated: “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto herself.  Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.”

What is of interest, however, outside the realm of law, is to ask: What informs the position of religious establishments and religious-minded individuals to invoke the right of religious freedom to deny a person employment or services because someone’s lifestyle is deemed to fall short of a particular moral standard?  A related question is:  Can religious beliefs be trusted to the point that it gives them the authority to define the rights of others?  As provocative this question may sound to religious people, it is a question deserving probing and answering.

If moral beliefs were immutable truths, one could say that a clear demarcation of right from wrong would exist and could possibly be the basis for discrimination in the allocation of rewards and punishments by religious authorities.  History, however, suggests that moral values and beliefs are anything but immutable.  They evolve with knowledge, social environments, political power, and natural conditions.

Although Christianity proclaimed all persons to be equal before God, it nonetheless went along with slavery in the secular world.  In the American South church people even gave godly reasons on behalf of slavery.  Likewise, women were placed behind men with respect to various rights not only in the secular but also the religious world.  The view that the earth rotates around the sun was once a belief enough to send you to the stake.  Likewise, if one held religious beliefs that ever so slightly deviated from official church dogma.  For a period, the Church thought people, especially women, were bewitched by Satan and sentenced them to death.  The theory of evolution and the cosmological evidence that our universe has existed as such for only a finite period were denounced as immoral beliefs, before they were accepted with considerable delay and consternation.   Other religions have made similar revisions of their moral beliefs.

In these and other cases, religion usually claims it is God’s word that has set on this and that side what is right and what is wrong.  Luckily, religious views about God’s will have evolved toward a more tolerant stance.  Robert Wright calls this the evolution of God in his book with the same title.  Of course, what is evolving is not God; it is our sense of what is moral and ethical that is evolving.  Even better for humanity, and despite occasional periods of stepping backwards, we seem to move to beliefs that allow more justice for ever more people.  I suppose this is behind Martin Luther King’s metaphor of the arc of moral history.

Given the history of evolution of moral standards, it seems to me the right thing religions ought to do is apply special skepticism about the absolute moral “truths” they hold lest the future bending of the arc proves these “truths” to have unjustly punished people under the standards of the day.  The Eastern Fathers of the Christian Church, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, had the wisdom to develop an apophatic conceptualization of God, by arguing that humans cannot conceive the essence of God.  If so, why would then Christians, or anyone for that matter, claim with full certainty knowledge of God’s will and word?

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch stated: “But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.”  In other words, Justice Gorsuch (a conservative person himself) recognized that in prohibiting discrimination on the base of sex, the drafters of the Civil Rights Act ought to be understood as extending this right to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Imagine if those Christians opposing the rule of the Court were able to find the wisdom and tolerance to also understand that Christ’s grace, that same grace that was extended to the Samaritan woman and the reviled tax collector was also meant to be extended to people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

It is in that sense I chose the title to imply that religious freedom exercised with a magnanimous  view of the original religious message, especially when its messenger preached mercy and love, should never limit another person’s rights because of choices society no longer accepts as a moral or civil lapse.

It was Friday, April 21, 1967.  I had gotten up very early to go over the material of a difficult college exam later that day when my father came in and told me that there was a coupe d’ etat in process and a strict curfew in place.  That’s how the seven-year military dictatorship started that day in Greece.  Rolling the tanks out of the barracks and laying siege to critical government buildings in a country’s capital and other key cities was the preferred method of establishing dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s around the world.

In almost every case the assumption of extraordinary emergency powers by a strongman and the army was not in response to threats from abroad but rather from an alleged enemy from within.  The standard rationale was to establish “law and order” and protect the people from dark domestic enemies.  There was always a significant portion of the population that felt relieved and willing to substitute authoritarian rule for civil liberties and constitutional protections in the name of a vague fear of civic unrest and insecurity.  To others violent suspension of the constitutional order was their way to impose their will.

That was the technology of producing dictatorships and illiberal political orders back then.  Since then the technology has been refined.  The origination point has been moved from the army barracks to the judiciary system.  Hungary’s Orban and Poland’s Law and Justice party have been successful in appropriating their countries’ justice systems in order to intimidate and neutralize their political opponents, including the press.  Putin is doing it in Russia and Erdogan in Turkey.  These countries are nominal democracies with duly elected officials.  But they are not true democracies.  Control of the judiciary system easily translates into control of the law enforcement apparatus.  When the government arbitrarily prosecutes and compliant courts convict who needs the armed forces?

Apart from articulating wishes with an authoritarian flavor, unusual for an American president, few thought early on that the Trump presidency threatened the essence of American democracy.  Not anymore.  There is a growing concern that liberal democracy in America is at risk.  Why the recent reckoning?  Because all the major pillars of a liberal democracy have come under assault or are found wanting.  This should have both conservatives and liberals worry.

Independent administration of justice.  Citizens must feel free of coercion or intimidation from the judiciary arm of the government.  From the start of his term, President Trump made it known he wanted an Attorney General who would protect his interests.  Finally, in early 2019, he got one who comes close to fitting this job description.  Consistent with his view that the constitution gives the president nearly unchecked powers, Attorney General Barr has fostered than restrained President Trump’s predilection for absolute power.   Barr has given favorable spins of damning reports (e.g., the Mueller Report) and has launched investigations of those who have caused problems for the President.  Equally worrisome is Barr’s publicly declared disdain and demonization of secularism and his siding with religious interests in legal matters that refer to the constitutional separation of church and state.  Instead of practicing neutrality, Barr’s Justice Department is seen as aligned with the President’s political agenda.  Unsurprisingly, Barr has been accused of weaponizing and politicizing the Justice Department.

An independent and intimidation-free press.  Since before the elections of 2016, Donald Trump declared news to be fake and the press an enemy of the people.   Whether this claim is believed or not by the public, it undermines the credibility of news reporting and encourages the public to seek news in unvetted and unreliable corners of the internet.  It betrays President Trump’s ulterior end to brand the press irrelevant and thus be left unchecked to shape the political reality for Americans.  In a world of “alternative facts” any government tactics and actions become legitimate.

A professional corps of public servants.  From the CIA and FBI to inspectors general and diplomats, President Trump sees nothing but a cabal that runs the state apparatus bent on destroying him and governing over Americans from the deep layers of bureaucracy.  Thus, he has fired FBI directors, inspectors general, and diplomats.  The message is clear and chilling: collaborate or you are out.

Freedom of expression and assembly.  Arguably the most important constitutional right of citizens that allows them to express their disapproval of actions or policies of the government and its subdivisions.  Thomas Jefferson held civic demonstrations and even disobedience so important as to have said: I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.  No such tolerance, let alone appreciation, fills the political philosophy of the current administration.  Calling for the intervention of the army and attacking peacefully demonstrating citizens so that the President would walk through was as disgraceful as it was antithetical to the essence of what it means to lead a democracy.  And the picture of a military chief in fatigues walking next to the President was a caricature of Latin American strongmen showcasing the support of the army.  Thankfully, reaffirming the military’s loyalty to civilian rule, former chiefs of the armed forces were quick to renounce the President’s call to turn the military against Americans.  And the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley finally found his voice and apologized for his infamous walk.  I hope it has not escaped the American people the fact that our laws give the right to some hotheads to burst into a State Capitol building in full semi-automatic gear while demonstrating citizens are harassed and attacked!

Free and fair elections.  The impartiality and reliability of American elections are undermined by a patchwork of state rules, practices and mechanics.  From partisan gerrymandering to vote suppression and faulty voting mecanics, the American election system is unbecoming of a country that calls itself the greatest democracy on earth.  One can see why a system like this is vulnerable to abuse and discrediting and how it can be manipulated by an unscrupulous leader to deny the people the government of their choice.

I am afraid that in good faith many Americans believe what is happening is the unfolding of a ripple in the trajectory of American history that eventually always steers itself back to the course of liberal democracy.  But history need not repeat itself and its trajectory may not return toward the desired direction.  Just imagine what this president could do if his Secretary of Defense, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former military leaders had come out in support of his call for military intervention to “dominate our cities.”