Category Archives: Uncategorized

Apr 20 2015

Happy Birthday Every Day

I was both born and met my death on April 20, 1970.  It also happened on March 25, 1944 when I separated from my mother’s body.  It is happening again in this very moment.

Our universe is energy, in no way fixed, an endless, glorious play of energy.

None of the universe’s energy is created or destroyed.  It simply changes.   That is the first law of thermodynamics.  All energy is conserved.

Physicists have measured the conservation of energy.  It is absolutely consistent across all space and time.

So, along with everything else, what I think of as “me” disappears and is reborn in every instant.  The waves of energy that appeared as “me” when I typed “in every instant” have already changed shape and direction.

Mostly, we notice only the dramatic changes.  Perhaps for a moment we feel the beauty of a flower.  But we do not recognize that our mind-body is always changing.

All the energy that manifested as “me” when I landed in New York forty five years ago remains in this world even though much of it is no longer part of “me”.  Every wave of energy that encountered “me” changed “me”.  The path of every wave that met “me” was changed by the encounter.

How to sense this fundamental truth?  I think of the weather.

The entire weather system is interconnected.  It has no fixed borders yet it is different everywhere and always changing.  The sun is rising in a clear sky above Brunswick Maine this morning.   Yesterday at this time it was gray, windy and raining.  Rain is falling in other places right now.

Tiny actions like the flap of a butterfly’s wing engage with powerful winds that arise seasonally as the positions of the Earth and Sun change.  So many factors change the flow of energy that we experience as weather.

We humans manifest in the same way as weather, all different, all part of the same system, not remaining exactly the same even for a moment.  And, like the butterfly drying its wings, our every action changes the entire energy flow.

Perhaps some of the energy that now creates the appearance of “me” will later join other waves of energy in a summer monsoon to nourish rice in India.  Perhaps a grandchild of a child waking up now in Brunswick, Maine will enjoy some of that rice.  The play of energy makes anything and everything possible.

Our intellect can’t quite understand how our “self” can be imaginary yet cognizant, imaginary but able to choose how it nudges the energy in which it appears.  I’ve learned not to worry about that.

Intellect is what gives us the opportunity to deploy our kindness intelligently.  Becoming better able to do that is my birthday wish.

Oct 9 2014

Our Eleven American Nations

I was quite startled to learn that our Constitution has a stated aim to protect the “opulent minority.”   I was impressed when I studied our system of government for my citizenship exam.  Now I realized that I didn’t understand the system’s history or implications.

I started with Robert Dahl’s excellent How Democratic is the American Constitution?  Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic opened my eyes wider.   Then I read Colin Woodard’s enormously helpful America Nations – A History of the Eleven Regional Cultures of North America.

Woodard began his career in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union was collapsing.  He noticed that the boundaries of Hungary, Poland and other nations bore little or no relation to the ethnic and cultural realities.  Groups within those countries had always been rivals and people across borders shared a culture and long history.

That got Woodard thinking about cultural rivalry within our nation.  The South versus the North, the coasts vs the heartland, those grossly simplified divisions don’t explain the reality.  Cultures that came from England, France, Spain, the Netherlands and so on were significantly different and those cultures remain powerfully alive.

Our values and the behavior they motivate are much more those of eleven distinct people than of fifty States, or of an homogenous population with shared values.

Eleven American Nations

What are the implications?

The Constitution’s first words are “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union.”  Coming in the recent past from very different cultures with very different values, many of the delegates did not want union but to be left alone.  Those who wanted union had very different ideas about its form.  The great majority of the population was not consulted, certainly not those whose land had recently been invaded.

The Constitution that resulted from all the necessary compromises results in an ongoing contest between only two major parties.

My conclusion before I read Woodard’s research was that since the Republican Party has been taken over by a tiny minority of the most wealthy Americans in alliance with fundamentalist Christians and anarchists, “something-other-than-progressives” must take over the other Party.  But that would result in even more extreme gridlock.

The Democratic Party must not shift to the far left to balance a Republican Party that is moving further and further to the far right.  It must find a position that accommodates the diverse values of a majority of people across all our eleven nations.

Our world is constantly changing, so our policies and programs must, too.  Sometimes a conservative brake on changes will be best, other times major changes will have grown urgently necessary.  And the priorities of neither major party will permanently align with those of any of our eleven nations.

Some of us wage war on “invasive species”, plants, insects, fish, rodents, mammals, any form of life that “does not belong here.”  Some of us reject people who arrived recently and “don’t belong.”  But as the world inevitably changes, life forms inevitably move.

Recent linguistic research indicates that the first people in North America did not come directly from Siberia across the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago.  People from Siberia had been living in Beringia for around 85,000 years.  When the ice melted and their habitat was flooded 12,000 years ago, some came here.  Others went back to Siberia where they perhaps no longer “belonged”.

Those who came here formed into tribes, some peaceful, some making war on each other.  We think of those Native Americans as being decimated by “the white man” as if a single invasive species destroyed them.  In fact, it was a variety of new species, eleven major ones, that set up an entirely new form of government which excluded them.

What we need to do now is figure out how we can use that system of government to better represent the people of the eleven nations who we speak of collectively as “Americans.”

We are not alone in facing this challenge and we have had governments that better represented us all in the past.  We can have such a government again.  We’re in a much better position than, for example, Nepal.  Politicians there continue to wrangle without visible progress over what structure of government could represent all Nepalis, not just the Brahmin elite.

Nepal’s politicians cannot even start to learn how to govern until they choose a structure.  Ours could start governing effectively right now.  We must make them do so.

Feb 3 2014

Protecting the Opulent Against the Majority

A few days ago, billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins wrote that the way progressives are starting to treat the super rich reminds him of how the Nazis treated the Jews.  Soon after his letter was published in multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, he had to apologize for his politically incorrect phrasing.   He would have done better to quote James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” and author of the Bill of Rights.

When the Federal Convention of 1787 turned to the question “whether the republican form shall be the basis of our government,” Madison pointed out: “In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure.  An agrarian law would soon take place.” 

The implication, he continued, is:  “If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation.  Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other.  They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”  (emphasis added)

A widely held belief has developed that the US Constitution offers protection for all minorities.  That was not its intent.  Madison’s much more limited aim was to protect the wealthy minority.  Whether or not we like the result, we should recognize that our Constitution is working as intended.

How does it work?  A republic is where power is held by elected representatives whose actions are bound by a Constitution.  People in a republic vote for candidates who promise changes they like.  The risk is that a small majority could make changes with unacceptable negative impact on the rest of the population.  That’s why a Constitution is necessary, to prevent such changes by defining ‘unacceptable.’

I’m thinking about this because I’m reading Noam Chomsky.  His diagnosis of why our government acts as it does, regardless which party is in power, feels spot on.  He shows example after example of actions by our government that benefit the opulent minority and work against the interests of the majority here and throughout the world.

But Chomsky’s proposed solution is misguided.  His central beliefs are that power corrupts and capitalism concentrates wealth, which, based on long first-hand experience and close study of history, are truths I hold to be self-evident.  The question is, would his solution, anarcho-syndicalism, be better?  Could it even work?

Anarcho-syndicalists are socialist libertarians.  Like capitalist libertarians who enjoy President Reagan’s signature joke: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'” they oppose central power.  The difference is anarcho-syndicalists say the inevitable concentration of wealth by capitalism exploits the majority.

Attractive increases in freedom are promised by both kinds of libertarians.  In real life, however, the system does not scale.  A libertarian (i.e., unregulated) society cannot protect shared resources or universal needs: local societies often manage local resources (e.g., forests) sustainably but resources managed by non-locals are polluted and/or depleted.  And small societies cannot retain freedom: they cannot defend themselves against more powerful exploiters.

It is true that a fundamental problem for large scale enterprises is that central planning cannot work: there’s too much change to comprehend at the center.  An ingenious programmer I once hired was directed to model how many tractors Soviet factories should plan to build.  He tried combinations of many, many factors without success before at last seeing how to produce results that pleased the planners.  How?  By plugging the number of tractors that were going to be built, anyway.

Big businesses fail for the same reason – they lose contact with changes in their market.

Another problem is many things that start small seem destined to grow big but central planners too often fail to identify which are worth the investment.  Small societies with property managed at the local level would make better choices but they lack the necessary resources.  Today’s semiconductor and internet infrastructure, medical technology and etc required enormous investment.

So history tells us that democracies with a constitution tend to be better for people than autocracies, that market-based economies tend to deliver better results than centrally planned ones, and that capitalism seems essential to generate disruptive technology and deploy it on a large scale.

Speaking in Parliament in 1947, not so long after he lost the election following WW2, Winston Churchill famously said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  The same looks to be true of capitalism in the economic sphere and nation states in the sphere of sovereign entities.  They do all tend to concentrate power and wealth but the alternatives are worse.

So, “if these observations be just,” how can the non-opulent minorities who make up the majority get protection?  Curtailing the inevitable abuses of power is achieved by incremental legislative changes that adapt Constitutional definitions to changes in society.

Because the fundamental structure of the system results in the wealth and power of the opulent minority always nudging the law’s evolution in their favor, other minorities must speak more loudly.

It is healthy that voices are now speaking loudly enough about too-high and rising inequality to be heard by Perkins and others.  It indicates that our system is working as it should.

Jan 28 2014

The Practice of Transformation

First, some background to the epiphany (an experience of sudden and striking realization).  Twenty-odd years ago I joined Dun and Bradstreet’s advanced services division as Director of Program Management.  I was not the only one unfamiliar with what that job might be.  When my business cards came, they identified me as Director of Program Manglement.

There is no better way in such a situation than Steve Jobs’ approach: “When you don’t know where to start, start somewhere.”  I did what needed doing for a complex new service that was being developed in New York and tested and rolled out in country-specific variants all across Europe, then used that experience to establish a methodical software development process.

The first step in the process is a Vision Statement.  Its purpose is to imagine and articulate “how great it will be when.”  Because our mission was to develop and deploy “advanced services”, we had to imagine new ways our customers could do their work to get better results.

Vision Statements imagined people using radically new software to do business in new ways with far more effective results.  We illustrated how pieces of the software might look and got feedback from innovative customers to identify the best ideas.

Then came the Scope Statement.  That’s where, based on our image of “how great it will be when,” we defined what the first software version would and would not do.  Scope transformed an ultimate vision into something we could actually do.  That became the basis for the Project Plan.

So, the Vision Statement harnesses intuition: the Scope Statement employs the intellect.  The Vision Statement is expansive: the Scope Statement is restrictive — that’s where you discipline yourself to say, “No, we don’t have to do that piece yet.”

By the time I took over as General Manager of that division then went on to establish D&B’s global “Technology Strategy, Architecture and Frameworks” I’d realized the same method of harnessing intuition disciplined by intellect was applicable to transformational business strategy.

No transformation is possible if you have no vision of “how great it will be.”  At best you will find only quicker, cheaper ways of doing the same things you always did.

Now the epiphany:  a couple of days ago, I realized Tibetan Buddhism is built on the same foundation.

In a long traditional set of rituals I practice every morning, supplemented by study and reflection later in the day, I imagine becoming deities that flawlessly manifest behavior I want to perfect.  The only difference from business Visions is instead of imagining freedom from business limitations, I imagine freedom from emotional and conceptual habits.

In the same way as Vision Statements include illustrative stories, Tibetan Buddhist texts include tales about exemplary beings.

But unlike the process for product and business transformation, Tibetan Buddhism requires no Scope Statement.  New products and services or business strategies take substantial time and investment which makes rigorous scope management of a stepwise transition essential.

Tibetan Buddhist practice is more like bug-fixing.  All features exist, they’re just buggy.  Because they’re so buggy, it’s hard to imagine all the defects gone, so we visualize deities that reveal in purified form what we cannot see even though it is already there.

How to proceed when there are so many bugs?  The proven method in the business world is “continuous improvement.”  One of its early leaders, W. Edwards Deming, was instrumental in Japan’s mastery of manufacturing.  They summarize his teaching that errors are opportunities for learning to generate improvements as “every defect a treasure”.

Continuous improvement is an unremitting process of noticing defects, rigorously identifying their root causes, and incrementally eliminating those factors.

Tibetan Buddhism is a continuous improvement practice.  My teacher says two to four hours of formal practice every day is necessary for transformation.  Some change seems to be taking place since I upped my own practice to two hours.  But it’s the same as in business, my aim must be to stay alert throughout the day, notice every defect, identify why it happened, and steadfastly uproot its cause.

I was lucky in my business life to get transformative teachings at Harvard Business School and elsewhere.  I am lucky now to get transformative Tibetan Buddhist teachings.  And I’m blessed above all by my parents’ teaching, “I don’t know, let’s work to find out.”

Epiphanies result, if at all, from long hard work whose aim may not even seem to be discovery.  They are surprising because arriving at the realization is unexpected.  The realization itself, however, is immediately recognized to be obvious truth.

It’s not surprising that both transformational Tibetan Buddhism and transformational business strategy use envisioning integrated with continuous improvement.  My surprised feeling was because I hadn’t noticed that before.  It’s lucky that what I learned in business was such good preparation for what I’m doing now.

Jul 6 2013

Identity, Independence and Kindness

Although everything is in every instant changing, which means everything flawed can be perfected, that’s not what Mr. Ego sees.  He’s afraid if he relaxes even for an instant, bad things will come to pass.  He is a deluded Jeeves devoted to caring for a Bertie Wooster whose nature exists only in his imagination.  That he exists only in mine does not make his activities less real.

Mr. Ego and I have been together so long and he is so very diligent; he usually has me believing I am what he imagines.  On rare occasions I do wake up and tell him I’ll be OK, he can go on vacation, but he doesn’t because if he does, I will no longer have an identity.  He thinks that would be very scary.

Psychotherapists say Mr. Ego manifests soon after we are born and develops well into adulthood.  “Saying ‘NO’ is one of the earliest signs of individuation”, according to GoodTherapy.  “It is a statement that I am separate from you and want something different … individuation is … learning what we want to say NO or YES to [and] acting according to what we want and do not want.  It is a statement of who we are (ME) and who we are not (NOT ME).”

Mr. Ego starts by teaching us to say NO and unless we’re very lucky, it’s all downhill from there.  He teaches us to want and not want, to see everything as ME or NOT ME and to reject everything that is NOT ME.  He teaches us, in other words, to be selfish.  Therapists consider individuation normative, meaning something that should happen.

In fact, our belief that we have an identity, are part of a group and should have a home makes us unhappy and unkind.   Our imagined identity, “I am the kind of person who…”, says we are solid and we should make our situation more so, more dependable.  We should instead rejoice that nothing is solid because that means everything really can become more perfect.

A way to dispel the illusion is to recast our identifier from noun to verb.  That makes Martin Sidwell not an explorer destined always to be an explorer and implicitly never doing anything else, but an exploration taking place at this moment.  Thinking of ourselves as verbs eliminates a big part of the harm we cause by believing we have an identity.

Believing we are part of a group is also a problem.  If I think of myself as Buddhist it seems I am different from Christian but if I am practicing techniques that helped others grow more kind even to those who are abusive, I am practicing how to love and turn the other cheek.  The program that helps me is different but the goal is the same as Jesus taught.  I am not different from Christians, Muslims or others.

Keeping the goal clear is especially hard if our group’s identify is that of a people defined by its religion.  A dear friend who recently gave up her long standing role as spiritual leader at her synagogue said:  “What I realized is important is my values.  People I’m close to have the same values.  My rabbi’s are different and we’re not close.  Trying to lead those with his values to a different way can never be helpful.”  But being Jewish informs so much of what a Jewish person does, thinks and feels.  Recognizing what my friend did must have been very, very hard and acting on the recognition must take so much discipline and courage.

The recognition my friend came to may be even tougher for Tibetans whose identity is so deeply associated with not only religion but also their homeland.  Home is our idea of the ultimate refuge.  As Robert Frost wrote: “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”.   My Tibetan friend who only ever wanted to be a nun was expelled from the nunnery by the Chinese government after the Beijing Olympics.   A third of all Tibetan monks and nuns were forced out then after Western journalists reporting the Tibetan protests went home.

Jews whose ancestors were driven from their homeland milennia ago now have Israel.  The homeland Tibetans always had began to be destroyed just as Israel was established.  No wonder Tibetans yearn for that lost world  even though there can be no such place of safety.  It is so hard for any of us to recognize that and the idea of nation makes it so much harder.

China’s rulers always try to control the lands to their north and west because invaders from there have always swept in.  The dynasty that ruled from 1644-1911 was established by invaders from Manchuria.  As soon as the Communists won China’s civil war in 1949 they set out to control all China’s peripheral territories.  Tibetans lost not just their independence as a nation but increasingly also their culture.  The monasteries were destroyed, monks imprisoned, Chinese-language schools set up and masses of Han Chinese settlers imported.  The Tibetans were to become Chinese to make China safe.

We think nations help us to be safe because nations have armed forces for defense.  By identifying with a nation, however, we feel separate from people in other nations.  We think they are different and we become afraid or jealous of our fantasy of what they are.   Our struggle for independence in fact makes us fearful.  The Chinese rulers’ treatment of Tibetans is motivated by fear, as is exiled Tibetans’ yearning for a Tibet they may never have known and that no longer exists.

There are two Tibetan words for independence.  “Rang btsan” means not dependent on anything else and signifies the freedom we associate with independence.  “Rang mtshan” means an independent self and signifies what we associate with being an individual.  Both are pronounced rang tzen, are usually spelled rangzen in the West, and both suggest more than they mean.   Nations are not truly independent and neither are people truly individual.  Geography does not define a people nor is any man an island.  Borders are just ideas that create suffering and limit our compassion.

Opening our hearts to feel the terrible suffering of Tibetans and others can lead us to feel compassion both for them and their abusers whose delusions lead them to their terrible actions.  Then we can try to help both, for only in that way can suffering be ended.  We really can do this if, as in this beautifully rendered Imagine There’s No Rangzen, we think independently.

So many ideas.  We have this relentless urge to get things identified, situated and dependable.  We’re determined to define who we are and take action against what we are not.   But it can’t work.  How could such a program succeed when nothing can be fixed, when everything is arising in every instant from an ever-changing assembly of causes?

One of the first great Tibetan teachers in the West said it this way:  “The bad news is our airplane is crashing and we have no parachute.  The good news is there is nowhere to land.”  Mr. Ego got us into a vehicle he said would take us somewhere safe, if it didn’t crash.  His fear of crashing distracted us.

That’s why it’s so hard to recognize that in fact we are crashing right now precisely because we imagine we have a fixed identity, we belong to a group whose rules are sacrosanct and we will be protected from those who are not like us by the nation where we live.  We are creating our own fear.

We could instead accept the good news, train ourselves to dispel habitual reactions that grew from our misunderstanding, and grow more happy and, more importantly, more kind.

Jun 3 2013

Earthquakes, Jewels and Zombies

Last night’s earthquake (September 2011) was the strongest in Nepal since 1934.   The epicenter between eastern Nepal and Sikkim was 6.8 on the Richter scale.  I barely felt it.

As G and I came out of a tea shop into light rain, I felt momentarily as if I was a little drunk.  The ground felt a little bit unstable but it passed so quickly it didn’t really register.  A little later, the street filled with people clapping, shouting and cheerfully jostling all across the road.  Was there a huge wedding?   Surely it couldn’t be part of today’s ceremonial offerings to continue getting blessings from their tools by those who work with metal even though that now includes taxi drivers, kitchen workers and many others?  G asked.  There had been an earthquake and people thought there could be another one.

This morning’s newspaper says there was almost no physical damage but more than 60 people were hurt jumping out of buildings and three were killed when the very old brick wall round the British Embassy collapsed.  This was not the “massive earthquake” D’s teacher said is necessary (but far from sufficient) for Kathmandu to get a better than third world road, water supply, sewer, electrical grid and other infrastructure.

G and I walked today in another area where it’s likely no Westerner ever went before.  There’s no temple or historical site, just very poor villages that you get to via an hour-long walk through the “jungle”.

We stopped at a tea shop where locals gather.  The proprietor was excited to find an American in his shop.  He said: “America is the richest country in the world”  then proposed to sell me a jewel that he took from a naga, a snake deity that lives in rivers.  They produce one jewel from their body during their incalculably long life.  They use it to hunt for food at night because it casts intense light 21 feet in every direction.  You can keep it if you can take such a jewel when the naga is not looking, the man tells G, but if the naga sees you, it will bite and you will die instantly.  It will not be after one minute or one second, it will be instantaneous.  That’s why such jewels are so rare.

The man said he would show it to me if I would like to buy it but it would cost eighty thousand million rupees.  That’s a little over one billion dollars.  G said I did not have so much money in my pocket today.  The man said in that case he could not show us the jewel.  G told him he had read about these jewels but never imagined he would have the good fortune to meet someone who possessed one.  The tea the man’s wife prepared was exceptionally tasty but it had no magical properties as far as I can tell.

On the way back G said when he was studying philosophy and reading Socrates “and it was the time when I must decide who I am, I realized I am a citizen of the world”.  He also realized he could not say he is a devotee of any religion.  His wife, however, is Hindu.  She knows that while not everyone is Hindu, those who are not are either Muslim or Christian and since her husband is not Muslim or Christian, he must be Hindu.  That means he must do what a Hindu man should do.

Yesterday was a day when all Hindu men must get their hair cut.  G forgot.  Last night Mrs G was very concerned because she believes dead men will now start to follow him around.   G does not want her to be distressed, so he will get his hair cut this evening.  She is afraid that will not be effective because today is the wrong day.  G says she will relax after a couple of days when she sees no dead men following him .

Jun 2 2013

Observations from Kathmandu

First observations from Kathmandu, September 2011:  “I typed this into Notepad for when I could get wifi access.  Extreme lack of electricity really is a problem.  The official explanation for 18 hours a day of load shedding made no sense.  Now I’m amazed at my naivete.  There’s a 200% customs duty on imports which means an imported generator brings twice its value to the government, i.e., the politicians.  Also, since they have a monopoly on fuel imports, they make money on every liter of generator fuel.  The politicians have powerful incentives to minimize the supply of electricity, therefore they do.

The Kathmandu real estate bubble has deflated because banks are not lending.  Everyone imagines lower land prices to be a temporary problem but Nepal’s economy depends on tourism, which is much lower this season, and remittances from family overseas.  There is almost no industry and none of the infrastructure, physical or cultural, that industry requires. There’s no fundamental reason for Kathmandu to be a large city.  It became the center because it’s at the crossroad for China/India trade.  Not much of that these days.  Villagers moved here en masse when the Maoist guerrillas made rural life too dangerous.  Now they don’t want to go back to village life.  They survive for now in what feels like the pre-recession US economy, i.e., one not based on anything real.

G. and I continue to talk about small scale businesses we could try to kickstart so villagers in the hills around Kathmandu could support themselves but we no longer believe it makes sense.  It just goes against our nature to give up.  The bright spot we found yesterday is villagers in the hills above Buddhanalikantha do not need to sell their land.  They are doing quite well selling illegal home-brew down in the city.   Because the rainy season isn’t quite over, it’s very humid.  Hill walking is pretty tiring in these conditions so we often stop for tea which provides opportunities for chatting, a double benefit.

Many of the few tourists this year have always-on iPad-type devices but the internet is usually off for lack of electricity.  It’s a dramatic illustration of the need for infrastructure and why the libertarian ideal is not viable.”

Some questions in response: “The corruption answer makes sense but I’m still surprised.  I suppose not having an immediate assumption of corruption is part of growing up in a culture where corruption is supposedly policed.  From your descriptions of Nepali politics it doesn’t seem like it’s possible for Nepal to succeed; do you think there’d be a way to arrange things so there was more benefit in their politicians doing what was good for the people they supposedly represent?  Something where the politicians could still benefit (they’d have to, or they’d never go for the policy changes.)

If Kathmandu has no real reason to be a city, and can’t seem to support being a city, does it follow that it will eventually have to stop being a city, or will there being a dense collection of people mean enough jobs that people will be able to stay?”

My response to the questions: “I haven’t yet figured out a system of carrots to incent politicians to do what is good for the people.  The stick, however, is a vigorous and independent judiciary determined to stamp out corruption, which Nepal does not have.  Politicians need to fear consequences of abusing their position.

I also haven’t yet figured out Kathmandu’s future.  D.’s social studies teacher told the class it would take another massive earthquake to make sufficient change possible.  He is almost certainly correct.  I don’t see how else it would be possible to establish the infrastructure necessary for a viable city.”

Jun 1 2013

Social Security Tax and Fairness

Do we really need Social Security?  Is it fair that it is mandatory or that high earners contribute more but get relatively less benefit?   What is the best way to keep it financially sound?  What guidance does it offer to make our overall tax and budget management system better?

Do we need Social Security?  It is different from other government programs in that its costs are matched by dedicated taxes.  Hoping to stimulate consumer spending, we recently cut them temporarily.  Should we eliminate them altogether?  It would be time-consuming and costly, but we could in theory unwind the program and for example, switch to a system like Nepal’s where families traditionally support each other.

That thought experiment highlights the parallel between contemporary Nepal and pre-industrial USA.  Both are family farm economies where when you retire, your kids take over and support you.  In a society where generation after generation works on the same farm, if you are unable to work when your kids are young, a relative can take over and neighbors help when family is not enough.   In an economy of jobs, however, workers create no family asset to take over, people keep moving, families become dispersed and communities exist mainly in virtual space.

Nepal’s situation is thought-provoking, too, because its traditional support system is collapsing.  The 1996-2006 civil war made villages too dangerous so people abandoned their farms and moved to the cities.  They now need jobs but Nepal has no industry because there is insufficient power (no electricity 14 hours a day), insufficient access to market (no railroad and extremely weak roads), a corrupt legal system and no government.  So Nepalis go overseas for jobs and send money to their families.  That is currently a quarter of the entire economy.  But they send less as they form new attachments.

In the USA we have a job-producing infrastructure but we are vulnerable to losing our job, our family is probably far away, and few of us save enough for retirement.  Like other Western societies, the nature of our economy makes us dependent on social security when we cannot support ourselves.

Is it fair that Social Security is mandatory?  It seems so in a society like ours.  We simply don’t save enough voluntarily – 7% or more of every $ we ever earn, invested to earn at least 3% above inflation, as noted here: Our Ridiculous Approach to Retirement.  And we don’t have enough disability insurance.  The result?  “Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day”.  That’s even with social security benefits.

Is it fair that high earners contribute more but get the same benefit as those who contribute less?  We all contribute at the same % rate but the higher our income, the more we contribute in total.  The more we contribute, the higher our monthly benefit, but those who contribute more get proportionately less.  We get 90% of the first $X (currently $791) of our average monthly earnings, 32% of the next $Y of earnings (currently the the amount between $791 and $4,768), and 15% of the remaining $X  (currently the amount over $4,768) – see Social Security Benefit Amounts.  Is that fair?

That question may be the most contentious.  Should those with higher earnings pay taxes at the same or a higher rate?  I will return to this when I explore income tax.  Here, I’ll just make an observation in this context.  Everyone’s work adds assets to our economy.  If it is reasonable to consider those with higher earnings to be getting a higher return on those assets, it is reasonable they should contribute more to the ongoing development of the assets.  I can’t be the first to have this thought.  I’d be grateful for a discussion of its merits, if any.

What is the best way to keep Social Security financially sound?  Social Security will take in roughly $40B more than it pays out in 2013, so it is not contributing to the problem I noted in FY2010 Revenues, Expenses and Liabilities: “Federal revenue last year was $2.2T while expenses were $3.5T.  We therefore increased public debt by $1.3T.”  Although the Social Security’s trust fund is growing now and will be around $2.8T in 2013, that will not always be the case.  As I noted in Social Security:  “Social Security taxes [were sufficient] to pay current recipients … until 1975 – 1981 when expenses exceeded revenue every year.  Average benefits were then cut approx 5%, tax rates for individuals were raised approx 2.3%, and the full retirement age was raised 3%, which created an annual surplus until 2009.”  Another update will be necessary.

“The fundamental problem”, I wrote, “is that while 100 workers supported only 6 Social Security beneficiaries in 1950, 100 workers in 2010 must support 33 beneficiaries.  When the Social Security full retirement age was set at 65 in 1935, USA life expectancy at birth was 62.  The retirement age is now 67 but life expectancy is 78. “  In Social Security – Past and Future Changes I explored our options.

The best way is to increase the payroll tax ceiling and raise the tax rate.  I won’t repeat the analysis here, just add that Social Security finances are far more predictable than other government programs.  We can model population trends, which change relatively slowly, and accurately forecast future spending.  Revenue is relatively stable because contributions are collected automatically and are pre-tax.  Income tax revenue fluctuates more with the economy (and is easier to illegally evade).

What guidance does Social Security offer for a better overall tax and budget management system?  We need better presentation of Federal government finances.  Social Security spending is usually presented in the context of total spending not in relation to its revenues, so we don’t connect the two.  Payroll taxes feel like an onerous burden on every pay check.  Social Security benefits seem like a burden adding to our public debt.  Social Security looks like just one more unfathomably costly activity of an out of control government.

As JohnK commented about an earlier post: “I always grind my teeth when I see social security benefits lumped in as part of our federal budget.  For instance, in your “The Purpose and Performance of Our Tax System” post, you have a pie chart showing Social Security benefits as 22% of the federal budget.  That amount, and others like it, should be lumped under something like ‘Repayment of Borrowed Money’.”  Folks getting Social Security checks are simply getting back contributions they made when they were working, plus the [notional] investment profits.

TonyP commented on another confusing aspect: “I believe it was Al Gore who proposed a “social security lock-box” in order to stop the federal government from looting the social security trust fund to improve cash-flow.”  Social Security contributions are not invested as a regular pension fund would in marketable securities, but are used to fund overall Federal spending.

John replied: “As per the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, the social security trust funds are NOT a part of the federal budget.  By law, income accrued by the social security trust funds is invested in securities GUARANTEED as to both PRINCIPAL and INTEREST by the full faith and credit of the U. S. Government.  When the government spends the money obtained from these debt obligations or any debt obligations such as Treasury bonds, it is spending “borrowed” money.  When it is required to redeem these securities, the amount redeemed should be labeled something to the effect: “Loan Redemptions” and not “Social Security”. 

So from one perspective, the Social Security trust fund is a fiction because the money put into it has already been spent, but from another, the money is no more fictional than any other ledger entries representing loans.  What was borrowed from the Social Security trust fund is secured by US Treasury bonds that will be repaid.  John added:  “The official SS history is at: http://www.ssa.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html  Social Security ADMINISTRATION costs are on the federal budget as are administration costs of all federal agencies, but that amount is relatively miniscule, and is not what was represented on Martin’s pie chart.”

Fully absorbing that official history is headache-making but scanning it gives a sense of why presentation is so important.  The way our government finances are presented now makes it impossible for most of us to evaluate what’s going on.  We don’t know where our tax dollars go.  We imagine half is wasted and the other half is spent on things that benefit other people.

In summary:

  1. We do need a Social Security system
  2. It is financially sound but if unchanged it will not remain so
  3. The options to keep it financially sound for at least the medium-term future are not hard to understand
  4. We are easily misled about all the above because Social Security revenues and spending are usually not presented together, and
  5. If Social Security finances were presented more clearly we’d be better able to debate what’s most fair to those contributing now, those needing support, and future generations.

But as I’ve said before: “The greatest challenge is … an accelerating reduction in the number of jobs as more and more is done by computers and robots”.  That could be a much deeper challenge than for Social Security alone so I will return to it at the end of this series.  Next up, Business Tax and Fairness.

May 21 2013

The Beauty of Impermanence

Yesterday was the last of six days at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat.  Fifty years ago was the end of eight years at Richard Hale’s Free Grammar School for the Deserving Sons of Impecunious Gentlefolk founded in 1608.

Half a century ago my six hundred fellow students and I processed down the long school driveway, past the Hart rampant at the center of town, past the friendly pub where I sometimes soothed my spirit, through the cemetery and on into the great stone church.  Half an hour later I ascended the pulpit to read what was read at every school year’s dissolution, Ecclesiastes Chapter 12 Verses 1 to 12. 

I spoke the words with an actor’s conviction: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”.

It was fortunate I wasted so much of my school years acting because although I was feeling apprehensive, it was not about my performance in the pulpit.  That day felt like the end of my youth.  “In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble”, I continued.  That was not a day to look forward to.  Nor was the mysterious one when “the doors shall be shut in the streets”.  The voice in my head joking about ecstasy if I lay with them on the day when “all the daughters of music shall be brought low” failed to lighten my gloom.

I almost believed the summation: “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity”.  I paused, dramatically, to let that sink in.  Vanity when those words were written meant futility.  Now existentialist philosophers were saying the same thing – everything is futile.  Then I intoned the preacher’s message:  “The words of the wise are as goads … be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh”.

Why did they choose that Bible lesson?  Perhaps it had resonated in 1944 when the school was absorbed into the state system a decade before I came there.  Many of my teachers rejected the present, retaining traditions from a world of privilege very different from mine on the far side of the tracks.  They yearned for the past, I felt unprepared for the future, but we had more in common than I imagined.  We were both living not where we were but in worlds we imagined.

Buddhism is training to live in the present, the only time we actually are alive.  It offers folks of every temperament ways to practice being and doing with graceful acceptance and joy.  A wise man speaking not about Buddhism but business leadership offered the same insight about our all too common absorption in a stew of regret and hope: “Living with one foot in the past and one in the future will only hurt your crotch”.

That everything is impermanent and every act has results led the preacher to an entirely different conclusion from the Buddhist and the businessman.

The preacher tells us to fear a day in the future when an external deity will pass judgment on our every past act, “whether it be good, or whether it be evil”.   Buddhism teaches not fear but that we can overcome our habits and illusions, not repeat our mistakes, learn to become truly happy, cherishing and selfless in every instant.

That everything is impermanent with no intrinsic tendencies means we need not repeat what we did before.  We need no deity to know what is good and what is not.  We know which makes us happy and which causes suffering.  We can recognize that nothing compels us to do what is not good.

We can purify the working of our mind.  We need not worry about, for example, the theory of my biology teacher who escaped from Hungary after the 1956 invasion by Soviet Russia.  We are doomed by our biology, he thought:  “The huge growth of our frontal lobes is cancerous.  It allows us to create imaginary worlds where we can do terrible things, things that in the real world we could never do, things no other animal could imagine.”

We do too much thinking.  The breath I am taking right now probably is not my last but there definitely will be a last one and I probably will not recognize when it starts.  Those radiant daffodils outside my window, the translucent new leaves, the heron so still at water’s edge, the sun sparkling on the ocean, they probably will not be the last thing I see but there will be a last scene for me.

It makes sense to relish every instant.  If I continue to practice this simple truth, I will waste fewer moments seeking safety by treating life as improvisational theater.  If I really, really try and I live long enough, maybe I can shake off dreams for a whole day.  I shall do it the same way I quit cigarettes, just breathe fresh air for the next hour.  I will aim to awaken just for this moment.

We imagine false choices.  At the T-junction, we cannot turn both left and right but in this instant, we can both think and feel.  We can vibrantly feel the joy or pain this instant brings and also prepare for future moments when we may no longer be present and whose circumstances we cannot know.

Walking while chewing gum may be beyond me, I have not tried, but I can relish the fragrance and complex taste of this Wicked French Roast at the same time as I figure out a better tax system without worry if the one we have can be changed.  Everything changes, anyway.  That’s the beauty of impermanence.

Apr 20 2013

Love and Birthdays

One of our kids’ favorite books many years ago, “A Birthday for Frances”, movingly captures the complexity of love.  “Happy birthday to me is how it should be”, Frances sings.  She announces she is not going to get her sister a birthday present, then dissolves into tears because she is the only one not getting her a present.  We love ourselves, we love others, how can we love both at the same time?

But do we even have a self?  “Writers aren’t exactly people,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “they’re a whole bunch of people trying to be one person.”   I remember that feeling.   Every reflective adolescent goes through the same existential scare.  For me, it was exacerbated by the then-recent publication of “Three Faces of Eve” about a woman with three separate personalities, by Colin Wilson’s more intellectually respectable “The Outsider” and by the fact that one of my closest friends whose father was a psychologist was deeply expert about schizophrenia and dissociative personality disorder and saw evidence of them everywhere.

A few years later, it seemed to me I did have a self even though it had an unusual combination of interests.  Most of us come to that conclusion.  We start work to support ourselves, maybe do some self-actualizing in the process, perhaps start a family, in any case become very busy – too busy to consider whether our self has any fixed properties.  We might notice our interests and behaviors changing, that we react the same way our parents did, that we’re looking increasingly like someone else in our family, but we don’t consider what those changes indicate.

Only recently I came to realize there’s actually nothing at all fixed about “me”.  Now, I see that more and more of the pieces of what I used to think of as “me” are the result of genetic and experiential memories.  I see they’re continuing to change, and I haven’t identified anything at all that is fixed.  I’m lucky to have lost that delusion of “self” because it helps me resolve Frances’ dilemma, the selfishness I’ve tried for so long to overcome.

That’s why I had Facebook show today as my birthday.   It’s not the anniversary of when my mother gave birth to me but the day I began life in the USA.  It might better be termed my rebirth but that whole way of thinking – birth, death, rebirth and so on – just leads to confusion.  There have been so many days, before and after my physical birth, that gave birth to what still feels like “me”.

Knowing deeply that “self” is an illusion will require a lot more work.  That’s work worth doing – a good birthday resolution.  How fine it would be if every one of us could wholeheartedly celebrate every instant as everyone’s birthday.