Sunday, October 27, 2013

Time to Rethink the Poverty Line
This short editorial provides a fine introduction to a challenge we need to talk about and address.  It also reminds us of the heroic work of economist Mollie Orshansky who created the index to measure the poverty line in the 1960s that we need to update today.

Some Basic Data in this Editorial
According to the way we currently calculate the poverty line (because the cost of food as a portion of a families overall spending has changed since Orshansky created the formula), a family of four is OUT OF POVERTY in America if they earn $23,501. 

If you were a parent in a family of four earning $23,501...would you feel like you had made it?!

If we utilize the same logic Orshansky used to recalibrate that level today, it would be $41,001.  This is nearly identical to the number most Americans point to in surveys when asked to identify the lowest income level needed to get by for a family of four today.

In the past 30+ years the productivity of American workers has increased 80% but worker wages have remained stagnant, while pay for the top one percent in the US has increased 3x over the same period.  I thought we believed that hard work should be rewarded?

This situation creates three problems:
An economic problem:  the consumer demand that at one time defined the American middle class has disappeared (as their relative share of income has declined)...accounting for about $1 trillion dollars a year in lost annual spending...and all the jobs that would create.

An honesty problem:  the unadjusted calculation of the poverty line makes it easier to pretend this problem is not causing enormous real harm to millions of American families with almost no attention to the problem, because we are not even describing the problem accurately.

A moral problem:  millions of hard working American families, with parents employed full time, live lives on the edge of poverty, one illness away from losing everything, and we are choosing to ignore both their pain and their (lost) potential contributions.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Remember Republican Lack of Leadership on Election Day
Do not let the story become distorted by Fox's willingness to simply keep repeating that Obama refuses to compromise and the Democrats forced the shutdown.  Just not true, other than in the Fox universe. 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Heart and Mind
A central insight in a major text on conflict management is the importance of ‘leading with our hearts,’ if we want to learn to be effective in the difficult conversations that make a difference.  The Atlantic Monthly just published an article about a course on Confucian philosophy (taught by a professor Puett at Harvard) and made a related point.

Many of us ‘tend to believe that humans are rational creatures who make decisions logically, using our brains. But in Chinese, the word for “mind” and “heart” are the same. Puett teaches that the heart and the mind are inextricably linked, and that one does not exist without the other. Whenever we make decisions, from the prosaic to the profound (what to make for dinner; which courses to take next semester; what career path to follow; whom to marry), we will make better ones when we intuit how to integrate heart and mind and let our rational and emotional sides blend into one.

‘Zhuangzi, a Daoist philosopher, taught that we should train ourselves to become “spontaneous” through daily living, rather than closing ourselves off through what we think of as rational decision-making. In the same way that one deliberately practices the piano in order to eventually play it effortlessly, through our everyday activities we train ourselves to become more open to experiences and phenomena so that eventually the right responses and decisions come spontaneously, without angst, from the heart-mind.

Recent research into neuroscience is confirming that the Chinese philosophers are correct….’

You can read the entire article in The Atlantic. 

The idea of ‘training ourselves to be spontaneous,’ is a perfect illustration of the power of paradoxical thinking.  From a literal, either/or, dualistic perspective, planning to be spontaneous is internally contradictory. 

But this is what we do when we try to learn (in the classroom, in our families, in general):  we force ourselves to try something unfamiliar and awkward, something we are lousy at or uncomfortable with…then we do it over and over until it becomes second nature, and suddenly we are living a thoughtful life…as a habit of the heart, where we can be spontaneous and be our best selves at the same time. 

Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Daily Show On Target Again
Jon Stewart is back and helping us understand the shutdown and shutdown coverage.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Two Presidents
Listen to two real leaders lead...and explain how insurance pools work, the benefits of Obamacare to average Americans, and why every individual should sign up now.