Caring for the poor. Teaching them to fish might not be enough.

We have a lot of poor people in this world. But what is meant by poor can mean a lot of different things in different places. I really don't thing anyone would disagree that a single mother in Central America that has only a piece of dirt with no electricity, running water, toilets, or even a roof overhead is poor. One of my neighbors recently went there trying to help the extremely poor, and met this woman. She has about as close to nothing as one can get. She just wanted to have enough food to keep her and her 2 year old son alive for another week. I read many articles about poor people in various parts of the world who just want food. That is truly poor.

There are other kinds of poor. We have an ongoing debate in this country on how to help the poor. Our federal government has dozens of programs to help the poor. We spend unfathomable amounts of dollars trying to address the problem of America's poor. Unfortunately, the more of these programs that get used, the fewer that do all they can to work their way up out of poverty. It doesn't seem to mater how much we give them, it doesn't raise them out of poverty.

I suspect, there are several factors involved here. The first is opportunity and it is a double edged factor. There are many in the extreme poverty that simply do not have opportunity. There are many in fact, even if they knew 'how' to fish, could not feed themselves as they have no access to the fishing waters. Before we start teaching people how to take care of themselves, we need them to have access to the means to take care of themselves. The other side of opportunity applies to those who have the opportunity to life themselves up, but who have a better opportunity to just take the hand outs and not have to work for it. I am not saying the poor in the US don't work. Many of them do, but there are those who do not. Our means testing is very imperfect, and often those who get the most help, don't need it nearly as much as those to don't get the help. I have know quite a few families over the years whose expertise covered which forms and programs to leverage to get a maximum payout from the government.

The second factor is motivation. Those extreme poor in places like Central America, Africa, an so on would do just about anything to improve their situation. They work harder than just about everybody on the planet when they have opportunity. They have motivation. They lack opportunity. They also lack skills and training. If they have the chance, the will get the skills and training. The flip side is that those with robust social programs don't seem to have the motivation to work hard to improve their situation. It isn't that they don't want better. They do. But if they get too successful and trying to improve their situation, they will reach cutoffs for the programs they are using, the their success will ultimately penalize them and leave them worse off than they were before. They are motivated, but motivated to become better at utilizing government and other programs which provide for their needs. They are motivated to avoid too much success.

It is really tragic that this dichotomy exists. We need to find a way to have programs that taper better. That don't penalize those who are finding success. And, we need to find a way to take the resources we dedicate to the problem of poverty, and use it more effectively. Whatever the solution, it should be simple to administer, and difficult to defraud. And most importantly, it should be easily copy-able by those parts of the world where the truly extreme poor and in abundance.

Agile Education

So, I work mostly with computers and application development. One of the big movements or trends these days is called Agile Development. It is a methodology for creating regular incremental iterations (of 1-4 weeks, usually) of software that is highly responsive to customer needs and developed by self forming teams. To really learn more about it, a good place to start is Wikipedia.

Interestingly, my educational background is in educational psychology, dealing mostly with ways and methods that people learn and what works best. In thinking about education in the last month or so, I came up with the idea of Agile Education. Well, turns out that it isn't totally original, but the one presentation I found on the web tried to copy the Agile Manifesto and only change the word software to education. Well, I can tell you, that education isn't developed. At least not in the way software is. The idea in the presentation is a good start, but certainly didn't go far enough into a methodology and system for education that really will help people learn better.

The basics of the full idea that I had uses an iterative approach to identifying scaffolding and ZPD's, but not just a first tier ZPD, but second tier, and related foundational ZPD's required for future tiers. It allows the individuals to progress at their own speed, and at the same time work in cross cultural social situations through self forming teams. The teachers in such a system, would be more in the role of student external advocate combined with scrum master and coach. Learning is a self driven activity, even when the motivations are external, so the customer is the student themselves, but they often loose site of or fail to fully comprehend their own needs and educational situation.

Anyway, there is no way I could really give such a big idea adequate justice in a simple blog post, or even a presentation for that matter. I think I will have to start writing a book on it. Maybe. It is a great idea. I just don't know if I have the time.

Social insecurity

An overwhelming majority of our federal budget is spent on what we call social programs. The most famous and far reaching of these programs is Social Security. There are also numerous welfare programs, unemployment insurance, and medicare, medicaid, chip, and even many of our education programs such as the school lunch program that are part of these social programs.

But, what is the purpose of social programs. I think most of us have ideas as to their purpose. Things like "to help the poor" and "to create economic fairness". But perhaps one of the best definitions I have heard I read the other day in an article about what was wrong with privatizing social security. They said that "Investment is about risk; Social Security is about certainty."

With that in mind, lets briefly revisit our overall approach to social programs. Well, we don't have a lot of consistency. We sometimes provide end user services. Often we pay for services provided by the private sector, such as health services. Sometimes, and is Social Security and some forms welfare, we provide cash payments to individuals. Now, social security is supposed to be some form of certainty for those who retire or are disabled, but all that is certain is that those who start poor are guaranteed to stay in their situation under social security, but, at least it is consistent. The real benefit is that those who either were not able to plan for retirement or not able to afford putting money away for retirement have something to provide for them. Similarly, we have unemployment insurance. This is supposedly paid for by employers who are viewed as responsible for the unemployment, but often the benefits received are paid for by the general public.

How about a different approach? What if 20% of what a person earned went into an account that was accessible by that person only. It would be taken out directly from their checks. Ok, sounds like I am back to privatizing social security. Actually, the money in the accounts would not be eligible for investment purposes, apart from the most secure and government backed "investments". Congress would not have any access to the funds in these accounts. In fact, the owners of these accounts would only have access to their accounts by application through some form of social verification system. They would be able to receive payments from those accounts in the event that they became unemployed or retired. The employers would not be left holding the bag. The government and indirectly the people would not be left holding the bag, and everyone would have some security. If someone has worked 15 years, they would have 3 years worth of their average yearly wage available to them.

Implementing such a program would have to be a phase in, but could be done over 10 or 15 years with special carryover programs for current social security recipients.

There are other things that could improve the situation as well. Make the 20% of their wages include 20% of the cost of their benefits. Put the accounts in a national bank (which would replace the Fed), where they can be loaned out to banks, but backed by FDIC without limit. Implement the Fair Tax, only increase they prebates to be equal to twice what a one at the poverty level would pay in taxes every month. Fix the health care system by fixing the FDA and AMA and mandating equal access to care and coverage by combining all coverage groups and prohibiting exclusions, but allowing limitations on specific payouts and by making a publicly accessible symptom, tests, and treatments match database. Make welfare an education grant program, and mandate life skills training in addition to emphasizing practical work skills training. I could go on, but I think I have made my point. Each program needs to be self contained, to a degree, but needs to fit into the overall holistic system. In doing so, all of our social programs can work together to provide what they were intended to provide.

The problem of property taxes

I have a problem with property taxes. Yeah, I know, everybody pays taxes. I don't have a problem with the fact that we pay taxes, but I have one, well, more than one with property taxes.

First, I don't like how arbitrarily income taxes can so often be raised. In the last year of living in various jurisdictions, I have seen how all of them have multiple entities that can raise property tax rates without consulting the public. Not only can they raise the rates, but they do raise the rates. And often. Many of these are not directly elected bodies, and there really isn't much of a process where the voters have input on those tax increases.

The bigger problem I have, however, is that with property taxes, it means that you really don't own what you think you own. If you own something, and you still have to pay someone else, or that they have some kind of right to your property that supersedes your own, then you really don't own it. I mean, if I purchase something, do I own it or not. I know, it is like software licenses, except that, when I purchase software, I know I am buying a license, not the ownership of the software. When I buy a house, what I am paying for is the full rights to the actual house and the land it is on, right. Well, obviously not. I have to pay property taxes.

I don't mind that we pay taxes, but I think property taxes are about the worst way to pay for government services.

Someone in the past came up with the brilliant idea that property taxes should somehow be reserved for schools. I recognize the importance that education can have in the lives of our children, and even if our current method of schooling might be failing, publicly funded education provides at least a small degree of opportunity and a slight leveling of the playing field for the disadvantaged. I just don't think property taxes are the best way to fund anything. What does property have to do with education. Is it supposed to make it so that those being educated are paying for it. Why not a sales tax then. If states were to institute a local version of a Fair Tax, wouldn't that be far better? Property taxes just don't balance out, and have too many other negative side effects. We would be better off getting rid of them.

Economic Justice and Mercy

"It's Not Fair!"

How many times do we hear that phrase in the course of our lives? Surely the average for each of us has to be somewhere between once a month, and perhaps, once an hour. Those with young children, such as between the ages of 5 and 25, probably hear it more than others.

Do we ever stop to think about what Fair really means? If life were truly fair, we would all start out the same, with the same parents, culture, language, talents, and access to wealth and opportunity. If that really were the case, think how boring life would be. Same interests, same abilities, same - same - same. Not that it wouldn't be fair, just not desirable.

At the same time, it isn't desirable either to have huge disparities between individuals that prevent happiness in some, and condescension in others. This leads to all sorts of negative emotions, and for every individual that somehow overcomes a really bad starting place, there are many who become bitter, hateful, or full of despair.

The ideal is that despite our many differences, if we have equal access or near equal access to opportunity and life is what you make of it, then we can all thrive to the best of our abilities and interests. Unfortunately, the ideal is generally not reachable. Ever. There are some things that can at least move toward the ideal though. We can make sure everyone gets a chance at a good education. Well, no, we can't. There are no public schools that provide what I would call a truly "good" education. In fact, there really aren't private schools that do either.

We can try to balance the playing field economically. Usually this is done through taxation. It gives money to those who don't have it, and takes from those who make it. Those who have amassed huge fortunes, however, somehow seem pretty immune to it, since it only taxes earnings, but not if those stay invested. So much for balance. But, aren't we in a country were we are proud of our imbalance? We love our capitalist system. You know how this works. "Those who have the gold make the rules." "It takes money to make money."

Ok, so perhaps not all of us like our system, but it is what it is, and it isn't likely to change any time soon. So, what we have, at the moment, is economic Justice. Certainly not the same as economic balance. Those who start in a good place have all the advantages. Those who start with very little, have a very hard time making progress. But, what each of them do results directly in the natural consequences of their actions. Cause and effect. That is justice, and when you start imbalance, it takes extraordinary effort for the guy on bottom to get on top, and extraordinary bungling for the guy on top to end up on bottom.

What the people who complain about the system usually want (what they call 'fair') is mercy. It has nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with compassion and kindness and love for ones fellow man. More fortunate people give, help out, or provide opportunities to those who are less fortunate because they care or because the think it is the right thing to do. This usually comes from the Christian ethic of mercy taught by Jesus Christ. None of the other major religions teach about mercy in the same way. It says we are all indebted to Christ for his atonement for our sins. If we want mercy, we have to give mercy. If we give justice, or demand justice, we will get justice, and pay for our own sins.

So what does money have to do with this? Scripture talks about the city of Enoch and about the followers of Christ after the day of Pentecost sharing everything and having no poor among them. The didn't do it by force, but by choice. It wasn't based on law, but upon mercy. If we have mercy economically, we do what we are able to help all those around us who are less economically fortunate than ourselves. If we have economic mercy, the poverty problem around us will be solved.

Unfortunately, the real disparity between rich and poor is a sad and indicator of the lack of mercy in the American economic system. We don't give unless we have to. We are focused on ourselves and how we measure up to either our neighbors, various celebrities, or some ethereal standard of success, and we never look outside ourselves and think of those in need who are constantly around us. We each need to re-examine our economic values. Perhaps the success and happiness of our fellow man should factor in just a bit more.

Fair Tax, or not Fair Tax

I have made no secret that I support the Fair Tax. It has some really wonderful components that I think would be an overall boon to the whole country. Unfortunately, it really doesn't have support from across the whole political spectrum like I would have expected it to. And, here is the thing. I was originally attracted to the fair tax for five main reasons.

The first reason is the prebate it gives everyone. It isn't a huge amount of money, but enough to make a difference for the poor. Now, for the richest of Americans, what they would get for the prebate wouldn't even be pocket change, but there are some of the poorest Americans who live on not much more than they would be getting in their prebate, therefor it would almost double their available finances. Anyway, that was the first thing I liked about it. It helped those in need, but it helped everyone the same amount without taking away their freedom.

The second reason is that it eliminates the regressive, ineffective, and punitive payroll taxes. Lets face it, payroll taxes suck. And the only people who get out of them are those who make too much. Replacing it with the consumption tax would make it much more fair for everyone and less punitive, especially for those who are self employed.

The third reason was the nature of a consumption tax means that I get to decide how much I get taxed. If you don't like getting taxed, reduce your spending. But, with it being an inclusive tax, you don't have this big add-on at the checkout stand, it is just there, but since it is a standard rate, you know exactly how much you are paying in taxes, but you don't have to file a tax return, and you don't have to worry about some IRS auditors making your life hell just because you added something wrong.

Fourth, simplicity. No tax cheating. You pay by buying stuff. It is the only tax you pay. It gets rid of all those layers of tax garbage that we currently deal with. The tax code is possibly as short as a single page.

Fifth, economic stimulus. Our products are too expensive overseas, so we don't sell as much, and other countries products are too inexpensive here for us to want to buy our own products. If the we sell our stuff overseas, the cost is high in part because of all the layers of taxes that are rolled into the costs. Theirs are cheaper, cause their taxes aren't as much. But with the fair tax, suddenly, they lose the benefit and we gain it. Sure, we still have a higher standard of living, but it eliminates a disadvantage that can be as high as 50% of the cost of goods. We sell ours for about 23% cheaper, and theirs cost about 30% more, and all of a sudden, our goods are much more competitive, if not cheaper for better quality goods.

So, in all of this, I have looked into the fair tax, and understand the economic advantages, and the only thing I couldn't understand is why there was such lopsided support. I decided to write a blog post about how liberals and progressives should be coming out in droves to support this thing. I first decided to do some research.

Fairtax.org has a calculator that you can use to determine what you would be facing under the fair tax. I have used this to figure how it would have affected me before I shut down my business and sold my house, and again after everything kind of imploded and I lost everything, and based on how much I expect to be making now that I am closer to getting back on my feet. Each time, things are quite a bit better for me under the fair tax.

For my research however, I decided I was not typical in terms of economic conditions, so I created Joe Doe. Single college age kid but not in college, working for $9/hour in a dead end job and not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he is having fun right now. Well, guess what? The fair tax was not as fair to Joe Doe. "Wait a minute," I thought, "That can't be right!" Well, I double checked the calculations, and guess what, if you are really close to the average, it isn't such a great idea for you. Not terribly worse, and in the long run, you would still probably benefit due to the other features, but I thought this thing was supposed to be progressive. Well, what if we give Joe a couple more years, a wife and 2 kids. Well, it got even worse for poor old Joe. That doesn't sound very fair to me. I mean, sure, I benefit greatly, even when things are really bad for me, but us independently minded entrepreneurs don't represent mainstream America very well. Joe is the definition of main stream America, well, the poorer side of it, anyway.

So, am I saying that I don't support the Fair Tax anymore? No. I just don't support it as enthusiastically as I did before. There are 2 or 3 main things wrong with the current configuration of the Fair Tax.

First, the prebates need to be bigger, a lot bigger. Like, try double. If you need to raise the overall rate to cover it, then do it, but first try the other two suggestions.

Second, education (and I work in the education industry) needs to be taxed the same as everything else. Education does not really help people become more productive. That idea is just industry marketing doing its job.

Third, all investments need to be taxed, but at a much lower rate, something like 3% to 5%. Not so much that it becomes a bad thing to invest, but enough so that it takes most of the vampires out of the system and causes the stock market and other investment systems to become much less volatile. Then you wouldn't have non-productives leaching on the rest of the economy. Those making long term investments would hardly even notice it. Day traders, on the other hand, would have to go find real jobs.

These changes would make for a much more "fair" tax, and be supportable by more of those who are not on the extreme right of the political spectrum.

Seatbelts and Freedom

I wear my seat belt when I am in a car. I think you should wear your seat belt when in a car. But I don't think I have the right to tell you to do so. In our country, and across the world, we have a lot of concerned individuals. They, like I, think it is just tragic when someone dies or is badly injured when it could have been easily prevented. However, are we going too far in making every safety precaution a legal obligation? Benjamin Franklin is known to have written "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

This is exactly what is going on. We decide that we need temporary safety when we get in a car, so we mandate that individuals no longer have the choice to use a seatbelt, but that they have to or else... (they get fined, etc.). They now have temporary safety. What they have given up is freedom. According to Dr. Franklin, they therefore deserve neither. Is freedom really that important. History has shown that without it you get tyranny and oppression in unequaled severity. Is that what we are heading for. As a student of history, I have to conclude that yes, we will get to that point. Sure, it probably won't happen overnight. But it will happen.

That sounds bad, but if we shouldn't mandate intelligent behavior, what then can we and should we do? Also, what is appropriate in terms of laws so that our society functions. Since we are using traffic laws as an example, lets continue with them. Should we have speed limits? Why or Why not? What about required stops at stop signs and stop lights? How about lane changes? What should we do about them? Obviously, there has to be some kind of regulation to ensure that our traffic system functions, but does that logically extend to forcing people to wear their seat belts? Perhaps we call out the difference in that it doesn't affect other drivers or passengers in other cars if I don't wear my seat belt, so therefore, it shouldn't be a law.

Seat belt usage still is desirable, though, cause it certainly has a positive outcome for society. So what should be done about it? How about public education and encouragement programs? How about seat belt billboards quoting the smartness of it, or the statistics of how smart it is? I think much of our mandated laws could be converted to educational programs. No force, but it would be something that people would know. Then we could have both freedom and safety, and be deserving of both.

Fundamental Flaws in American Education

Public education is one of the things that made America great. It surely wasn't the only thing, but it was a huge factor in America becoming the "Land of Opportunity". Unfortunately, any time something becomes institutionalized, it also becomes a target of political, social, and economic forces who view it as a short cut to achieving their goals. Education is even more so a target due to the effective of having nearly all of the very malleable minds in the country captive and required to participate in the activities. Education in America has become a battle ground between opposing sides in far too many wars. Conservatives and Liberals, religious and anti-religious, business versus... well, business fights well enough by itself, call that the civil war of business philosophies, and many other sides fighting to influence the collective minds of American youth. The casualties in this war too often end up being the students who are supposed to be served by education, and instead they become cynical, bitter, and/or hateful. Doesn't matter which of the various sides they end up on, they are given disservice by this situation. At the same time, there are a few who make it through this maelstrom who are highly enabled to thrive in life.

There are a few things that could be changed about our educational institutions which would greatly expand the number of students who are able to greatly thrive as a result of their education. The first thing has to do with those sides. The ability to lobby and influence education is strongly related to it's centralized nature. The solution then would appear to be the decentralization of it. However, there still need to be standards, and those standards are where the various sides will try to attack or influence our youth. Our youth are not stupid, and we should stop treating them like they are. They are inexperienced, and we should try to help them understand the challenges they will face because of that inexperience, but we should do so in a respectful and supportive manner. If there is a side of something presented, then any other side of that issue should also be presented, regardless of how unpopular it might seem. If you don't want certain sides of things presented, then just define that there is an issue, and inform the kids they will have to ask their parents or research it on their own. Also, when an issue with it's various sides is presented, the alignments and history of those sides should be presented, but no side should be favored over another.

Sounds pretty lofty, doesn't it. I know it is possible, cause I had a professor in a philosophy class that did it with such exactness that none of us could guess or even come close to what his personal philosophy was. He ended up being pretty normal.

The next thing that needs to change about education is that we need to stop limiting the growth and progress of some students in order to keep them at the same place as their slower peers. In fact, we need to change our whole approach to education from a group based progress, to individual progress in a structured, yet self paced, environment. There are several forms of this. Some of the older forms often are used in independent study programs, but there are much better scaffolding programs that can incorporate both the independence of the individual as well as social learning and support structures. In this way, each student could progress at a rate where they felt comfortable and could best succeed at.

Thirdly, and there will be many who will think I have political motives here (I really don't. Read carefully and you will see what I am getting at.), we need to change how education is funded. I recognize that if we removed government involvement that we would just be favoring the upper classes over the lower classes. This is not intended, nor desirable. The government has a very important role in the funding of education, as well as in the standards that are set for it and in making sure that it is not abused. However, creating a big bureaucracy and turning over a major portion of each state's budget over to that bureaucracy is worse than most other ways you could go about it. I recognize that any effort to standardize or support or govern education will require government funding, but those funds should be completely separate from the funding of the actual education. The parents should determine which qualified school or teacher should receive the funds paying for their child's education. I am not saying just open up the funding spigots and dump it on private schools. On the contrary, if a private school wants to be eligible to receive public education funds, they should have to meet the standards attached to receiving those funds. In this way, there becomes more of an economy around education, which will help maintain the quality of education.

One last thing, and perhaps this would never fly, but a parent should be required in every class that is conducted. Just to sit in and listen, and they could help if they and the teacher agreed on it. Just one parent. Assuming that each class has 20 students, and half the students have both parents at home, each parent would only have to go to every 30th class. The point here is that the parent is the consumer. They are the customer. They need to know what is going on, and far too many parents are complacent to just ship the kids off and not look into the quality of the education again until report card time, and sometimes, not even then. Would this create an additional burden on parents? Sure it would. And for those who have a lot of kids, even more so. If you have that many kids, you need to be involved. I suppose you could designate someone else such as a grandparent, or some other responsible adult relative, and meeting the requirements should be somewhat flexible, but a parent needs to be there. The result this would have would be better performance by the teachers, the students, and most especially, the parents.

Scary, isn't it. But, it would work. I am sure of it.