Where's the Blogroll?

Last week I got tired of maintaining my list of friends' blogs in the sidebar and removed it. Afterwards I learned that some of my friends were using my blogroll to find out when people had updated their blogs. To help these folks out, I have used Google Reader to make a bundle of all my friends blogs and posted it here: justinis.com/friendsblogs. So if you're one of those few who were relying on my blogroll, just click this link and you'll be able to view and subscribe to all of my friends' blogs in Google's full-featured feed reader (it's much better than my blogroll, I promise). You can also view articles my friends and I bookmark and join in the lively discussion which often surrounds them.

Image: Dhammika Heenpella

Quotes: Justice, Principles, and a Double Agent

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me." Abraham Lincoln via Erin Smith

"There is a law in Washington, followed by politicians great and small from both sides of the aisle, that principles are fine, but not something you'd want to lose your seat over." Gail Collins

"Sarah Palin is a Democratic double agent. That's the only plausible explanation for the last two years." David Brooks

Cutting Taxes to Raise Revenue with Dr. Buckley

You may have heard a lot of noise coming from Washington about the Bush Tax Cuts, which are set to expire at the end of this year. Republicans want to extend them. Obama wants to extend them for everyone who makes less than $250K a year. Democrats want to... well... finding a consensus among Democrats is like herding cats.

You might wonder how Republicans, who have been yelling a lot lately about deficits and debts and financial peril, can square these concerns with extending a giant tax cut, which will mean less income for a government wading in the red. Well, one way they've been doing it is by claiming that cutting taxes actually increases government revenue. If you cut taxes, people keep their money, use that money to make more money (expanding the economy), and then end up paying more in taxes than they would have if you had taxed them in the first place.

This idea made me curious, so I headed to one of the first places I go when I have questions about the economy—my friend, professor of economics at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Dr. Bryan Buckley.

His response was so good I decided to post it here.

The idea comes from the Laffer Curve. If there is an income tax of 0% then the government collects zero in revenue. If the tax is 100% the government collects zero revenues because people no longer work if they don't get to keep any of the money they earn. So, we can raise the tax rate starting at 0% and increase revenues, but at some point, the tax rate becomes high enough to discourage so many people from working that further increasing the tax would actually decrease revenues. Which means there is some tax rate which would maximize tax revenues.

This article surveys a bunch of economists to estimate how high income taxes would have to be before it starts reducing tax revenues. The estimates range between 20% and 70%.

So according to most of the economists in that survey, we could raise income taxes and increase revenues. Also, this study seems to say the same thing.

Cutting taxes will probably not "pay" for itself.

In short, yes, if you tax people enough eventually you will get less revenue than you would if you taxed them less. But taxes would need to be a lot higher than they are now for this to happen. Keep in mind taxes are actually at their lowest levels in sixty years. For more, here is a terrific article from CBS News.

Image: alykat

Please Label Me

In the past couple years I've grown to like labels. Not all, but some. This is part of the maturing process, I think. As a college student, I often became prickly when folks tried to define who I was while I wasn't quite sure myself. I'm not much more sure now, but I have started to accept that labels can be helpful. When you describe yourself as part of a recognizable group, you provide a reference point which someone else can quickly connect with. If that someone is a member of the same group, you instantly form a bond, a small community with him or her.

I think labels are used in this way much more often than they are used to constrict or box in people's perspectives of others. There is value in conviction, in aligning yourself with certain ideas and ideals. I've come to see that this often outweighs the stereotypes you sometimes find yourself fitted with. Most folks recognize that there is a enormous diversity of thought in the world, and that labels are general groupings, not strictly narrow definitions.

Some labels I have grown to accept are engineer, Republican, conservative, Christian, moderate, pragmatist, extrovert, Protestant, blogger... I'm sure there are others. I've even cozied up to my Myers-Briggs profile. I welcome suggestions. And I would encourage you to consider what labels you might accept for yourself.

Image: used with permission from Young Lyxx

Quotes: Eisenhower

"I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center."

"In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?"

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels—men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

"Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends."

"In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

When I think of the great Republican presidents, even the great presidents, Eisenhower is always near the top of the list. I wish more men believed as he did.

Image: used with permission from Les McClaine

Top 5 Things Which Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. Guess who the world's leading manufacturer is. China? Nope, China is number three. Number two is Japan, and number one is the US of A. By value of goods produced, the US churns out double what China does (though China is gaining fast). For more, check out this article and this podcast.

2. Let's say you decided to sit down and watch every minute of video that was uploaded to YouTube yesterday. Know how long it would take you? Six years.

3. Recently a Lt. Col. published a book with some information the Defense Department didn't want the public to see. To take care of this problem, the DOD spent 47,300 tax-payer dollars to buy every single one of the 9,500 copies which made up the first print run and destroyed them. A copy of the first edition later sold on eBay for $2,025. The DOD was unable to capture the sixty to seventy advance copies which went to newspapers and journalists, allowing them to easily compare the two editions and publish the differences.

4. If you've seen Jaws, you probably remember the iconic monologue which the character Quint gives about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis cruiser, which left 880 men stranded in the water for four days, most of whom died from exposure, dehydration, and shark attacks. That story is almost entirely true, and it doesn't end there. A series of mistakes resulted in no one in the Navy noticing that the enormous ship had not returned and all of its distress calls being missed. To find a scapegoat, the Navy court-martial-ed the captain of the ship (who survived the wreck) for not zig-zagging to avoid the Japanese sub which sank it, even though the captain had not been directly ordered to do so. He was later cleared and restored to active duty, but this did not convince many of victims' families he was not responsible. After retiring, the captain committed suicide on his front lawn with his Navy-issue revolver, a toy soldier in his hand.

5. Though it's still neck and neck, Lisa Murkowski may win the Senate race in Alaska as a write-in, after losing in the Republican primary to Sarah Palin backed Tea Partier Joe Miller. If she does, she will be the first write-in candidate to win a Senate election since Strom Thurmond in 1954. I can't wait to see this happen.

Image: 246-You

A Honduran Perspective on My Sweatshop Guitar

A friend of mine who is living and working in Honduras posted some insightful comments on my recent post about sweatshop labor, and I liked them so much I got his permission to publish them here as a follow-up post. Hope you find them as interesting and enlightening as I did.

The implications of "sweatshop" labor have many consequences here in Honduras. Last year after two Nike factories closed down they refused to pay severance pay and other unemployment aid. There were protests here. I don't think I heard much about it from Stateside, but needless to say there was sufficient pressure from all sides to get Nike to pay its former employees.

So I feel like the boycotts, media coverage, and protests had a positive impact for those families.

But the reason Nike shut down its operations here in Honduras, and a couple of other factories, is because the President of Honduras who is sympathetic to the workers plight decided to double minimum wage to about $280 a month for urban folk and $200 a month for rural people. The factories have been fighting this mandate since it was inacted. Some have easily linked this disagreement to the military coup in which this President was overthrown six months after the minimum wage was raised.

So now we have a new president who is more friendly to business and factories granting foreign factories tax-free access to Honduran labor.

In my simple view of American history, development in our country was spurred by the industrial evolution and moderated by labor unions and the like—both sides necessary to the "sustainable" development that took place in the United States of America. It would seem that the "sustainable" development that everyone seeks in Honduras also requires these two apparently opposing forces to be at work. Hopefully this could be accomplished relatively peacefully and without any more coups.

Most of the factories I have seen in Honduras I would not classify as "sweatshops," though I have not seen the inside of any. I know a couple of people who have worked in different factories in San Pedro and each of them considered themselves lucky to have had the job. Outside of the Nike incident, and few womens human rights violations, for the most part it just seems to be foreign businesses taking advantage of cheap labor. Some organizations, like organicconsumers.org, claim there are several sweatshops in Honduras.

So the poor (in money) Honduran is faced with a dilemma to one, live in poverty; two, move to one of the most dangerous cities in the world and work in a "sweatshop" to gradually pull their family out of poverty; three, get a job in the most dangerous line of work, drug trafficking (unfortunately this is very common) and pull their family out of poverty very fast;  or four, take one of the most dangerous journeys to arrive and try to work in the United States.

They say that roughly 50% of Hondurans live under the poverty line. Of these eight million Hondurans, one million of them live in the United States. So it would seem that a large percentage have tried option four. I don't know how well undocumented Latin workers are doing from the United States' point of view, but looking over the fence from this side of the fence the US is still the promised land. Over 28% of the entire GDP for Honduras comes from workers in the States.

I don't know the numbers of people who selected options two and three, but the majority of the 50% of people living in poverty choose to continue to live their simple lives.

To conclude, poverty sucks, and with poverty comes sicknesses, hard work, and a hard life. But the overwhelming majority of Hondurans that I have met that live below the poverty line complain less in one year than I do in a week, though in the States I make more money in a week then they make in a year. They are gracious, and super-thankful when they are in good health. They are happy to live a simple life, enjoy simple things, work hard and don't complain. They value God, health, and family. They are content, but enthusiastic to do what they can to improve their lives and the lives of their children.

An older gentleman once told me that "Honduras is a very rich country, rich with natural beauty and natural resources. There are no poor Hondurans; we are rich in spirit." So when I think about buying things, whether the effects on poverty within the global marketplace are good or bad, it is good to know where it comes from.

Image: Jason A. Samfield

Trouble on the Farm: Why You're Paying Brazilian Cotton Farmers

Two years ago I wrote about my disbelief that Congress had overridden one of Bush's few spending vetoes in order to pass the Farm Bill, which included billions in farm subsidies. Since then I've learned a little more about agricultural subsidies, and the more I learn the more I scratch my head in bewilderment.

I had a conversation about a year ago with a close friend of mine who grew up in Minnesota, who generally supports farm subsidies, and it was so curious to me how difficult it was for us to see each other's point of view. She felt there was intrinsic value in America growing its own food, I thought there was intrinsic value in allowing the global market to operate freely. She couldn't see why I wouldn't want to give my tax dollars to support American family farmers, I couldn't see why she wouldn't want to give our money to other countries' farmers who can grow food more efficiently. She worried about the dangers of importing what we eat, I worried about the dangers of creating trade barriers. She was concerned about the livelihood of American farmers, I was concerned about stifling innovation by creating a market where there was none. As we spoke, I was intrigued by how our thoughts were so closely linked to where we grew up—Atlanta and Minneapolis are separated by more than just miles.

Here is a bit more of where I'm coming from. In Jessica Williams' 50 Facts That Should Change the World, she explains that every cow in the European Union is subsidized by $2.50 a day—more than what 75 percent of Africans have to live on. Japanese cows get $7.50 a day. In other words, the governments in these places use tax money to stabilize the market for beef by paying farmers for what they cannot sell. (For the money the EU gives its farmers, it could fly each of its 21 million cows around the world every year.) This creates a big problem for developing countries, because EU farmers sell their excess goods to developing nations at cut-rate prices, which the local farmers in these countries cannot compete with. This stifles agriculture in the developing world. In addition, rich countries place tariffs on agricultural imports which increase with each value-added process added to the food—in other words, tariffs are higher on tomato sauce than they are on tomatoes, creating in effect a tax on development. Agricultural subsidies in rich countries keep the developing world from, well, developing.

In America, agricultural subsidies are just as baffling. The image to the left shows the traditional food pyramid next to another pyramid showing which products are subsidized the most in America. Meat and dairy receive the lion's share, perhaps helping to explain why beef and cheese are so cheap and so popular here. This is ironic when you consider how many branches of our government are working to limit Americans' intake of these foods to fight obesity and heart disease. A Times article published last week showed that Dairy Management Inc, which is paid for by taxes on dairy farmers and funds from the Department of Agriculture, has been behind major campaigns (including Domino's Pizza's new cheesier line of pizzas) to promote cheese and dairy products at the same time the Center for Disease Control is trying to fight obesity by discouraging their consumption.

I happened upon one of the most fascinating stories I've encountered about American food subsidies last week, when the Planet Money team at NPR produced a podcast on the "cotton wars" between America and Brazil. Check it out below. I know it's hard to believe a podcast about this topic could be "fascinating," but I promise you, it is. You won't be disappointed. 

NPR's Planet Money: The Cotton Wars

If you don't have the time or inclination to listen to the podcast, here's the gist: America gives tax money to struggling American cotton farmers so they can stay in business, hurting competition for Brazilian cotton farmers. Brazil's agriculture minister files a case in 2002 with the World Trade Organization, which rules that America's subsidies are illegal and hurt global trade. America appeals three times and loses, and then essentially does nothing, because the WTO has no power to enforce any of its rulings. The Brazilian agricultural minister then contacts a bunch of American businessmen and says that in thirty days Brazil will start taxing American imports on the goods these businessmen produce unless America does away with its cotton subsidies. The American businessmen call Congress and complain. The U.S. government sends a team of government officials to Brazil and offers to pay Brazilian cotton farmers 147 million dollars a year, as well as push Congress not to subsidize cotton when the Farm Bill comes up again for renewal in 2012. Brazil takes the deal. And that, my friends, is why right now you are not only paying American cotton farmers to grow cotton Americans don't want, you're paying Brazilian cotton farmers too. Crazy, isn't it?

All this said, I should point out that my distaste for farm subsidies does not extend to global free market fundamentalism. If America was to stop subsidizing farmers (or subsidize them less) and start importing more food, I think it would be important to maintain regulations which ensure this food is produced well, and to compensate for the uncaptured costs that shipping tons of food to America would have on the environment. In addition, "farm income stabilizaton" accounted for just 0.5 percent of the federal budget this year ($20.3 billion)—while that is a lot of money, it is not something whose elimination would make all our spending problems go away. Still, I can't help being skeptical when I think of the good that could be done with that money which would not include helping Brazilian cotton farmers or hurting folks in the developing world. I guess I need to have a few more conversations with Minnesotans.

Images: IATP, PCRM

My Sweatshop Guitar

"The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes" Brett Dennen

I sold my old guitar last week, which was more emotional than I expected it to be. There was no sense in keeping it, but I learned to play (such as I can) on it and kept it for ten years, and you know how we become attached to things.

It was a Cort, and while I was looking for a new guitar I happened to google Cort one day and found the following videos, which feature South Korean Cort factory workers describing the terrible working conditions they have experienced.

The images of women describing how they were told that the guitars were worth more than they were, and saying that if you press a Cort guitar tears will pour out, were harrowing to me. I read some more and found out that in 2008, Cort workers had gone on a 30-day hunger strike and sit-in to protest working conditions at a Cort plant in South Korea. One worker even set himself on fire.

These awful revelations, about an item which I own and has sentimental value to me due to the countless hours I've spent with it over the last decade, gave me pause. I felt guilty. Shameful.

I arrived again at a question that has confronted the West many times in the last century: how then should we buy? As consumers, what should we do about sweatshops and injustice in the workplace and terrible working conditions and child labor in far-away countries which make so many of the goods that we bargain shoppers purchase?

It's a difficult question, because I'm not convinced that the obvious answer—do not buy from companies which support these practices—is always the right one. As Nicholas Kristoff stated in this excellent article (as well as this one, and this one), "the only thing worse than being exploited in a sweatshop is not being exploited in a sweatshop." For many people in the developing world, the alternatives to working long hours in terrible factories for almost no pay are actually worse. Not having a job and an income and earning a living by picking through acres of garbage or pulling a rickshaw is more dangerous and less healthy. What's more, industrialization and increased manufacturing are the only way out of poverty for developing nations. If we work to prevent factories from operating in the developing world, we won't fight poverty—we will perpetuate it.

This is not to say that working to fight poor working conditions and abuses in factories in the developing world is pointless. Consider the following selection from this revealing article by a former sweatshop inspector:

As for those who feel especially strongly about the issue and kick up a (peaceful) fuss about sweatshops, I think they're doing a valuable thing. Even when they take actions that are sometimes off-base—such as continuing to boycott Nike when its competitors are the bigger problem—the effect is still, overall, good: it scares businesses into taking compliance more seriously. Boycotts, protests, letters to Congress, saber-rattling lawmakers, media exposes—they do have an impact. And just imagine if members of Congress or the executive branch made an effort to praise or shame companies for their records with foreign suppliers and to encourage transparent monitoring in the private sector. I suspect it would do more for international labor standards in months than the most intricate trade agreements could do in years.

I don't pretend that everything monitoring brings about is for the best. An example: Mattel's factories in China are superb, but workers there often earn less than their peers in shadier factories because their employers confine them to shorter workweeks to avoid paying overtime. Another: You may rightly hate the idea of child labor, but firing a fourteen-year-old in Indonesia from a factory job because she is fourteen does nothing but deprive her of income she is understandably desperate to keep. (She'll find worse work elsewhere, most likely, or simply go hungry.) A third: Small village factories may break the rules, but they often operate in a humane and basically sensible way, and I didn't enjoy lecturing their owners about the necessity of American-style time cards and fifteen-minute breaks. But labor standards anywhere have a tendency to create such problems. They're enacted in the hope that the good outweighs the bad.

So we must be measured in our approach. Some companies are better than others about hiring foreign suppliers which employ fair labor standards. The article above praises Target over Wal-Mart, for instance. There is something to be said for conscionable consumerism. However, there is also much to be said for encouraging manufacturing in developing countries by lowering trade barriers and resisting movements which will harm its growth. Should I have bought my Cort guitar? Probably not. Should I feel guilty every time I put on my GAP jeans? Probably not.

I own a Martin now, and I have to say I feel a little better when my fingers hit the strings.

Image: Cort Guitar Workers Action

3 Songs

Three songs which have been racking up plays on my iPod lately:

Ed Harcourt – "Lustre"
(sent to me by my buddy Jared Buchanan)


Good Old War – "Coney Island"


Jon Foreman – "White as Snow"

What Happened

When you look at the big picture, you start to wonder why the Democrats lost so big on Tuesday. The TARP program (begun by George W. Bush and guided by the current administration), which many scholars believe prevented a bad recession from being much worse, has turned out to be far less expensive than originally planned. The auto bailout looks like it might even make money for the government. The unprecedented health care legislation, the popularity of which was evenly split when it passed, is gaining supporters. Democrats managed to push through a large financial reform bill. The economy is growing again (albeit slowly), and the stimulus may have helped. Combat operations have ended in Iraq. In just two years the Democrats arguably managed to pass more powerful legislation than any Congress since FDR. As a right-leaning guy, I have my concerns about much of this legislation. Even so, it certainly seems to me that despite whether you agree with his decisions or not, Obama has delivered much of what he promised to.

But it doesn't matter, as is obvious by now. The housing market is still in shambles and most likely has at least another year before it starts improving. Unemployment is at 9.6%. Americans are going to shuffle politicians in and out until this changes. And of course the irony is there is so little Congress can (or in my opinion, should) do about unemployment or market failure. 

It has been interesting though to watch Democrats this season run from everything I mentioned in my first paragraph. What Democrat did you hear this season trumpeting their votes on the stimulus, health care, the auto bailout, financial reform? Good luck finding one. The message (if you can call it a message) went something along the lines of, "We're the victims here; Republicans got us into this mess; they're keeping us from getting out of it; don't give 'em back the keys.'" Or as Jon Stewart put it, "We suck less." The Republicans mopped the floor with this. I got off the Metro Tuesday night and saw the bus pictured here parked outside the GOP headquarters. "Need a job? Fire Pelosi." It doesn't get much simpler than that.

What intrigues me is how much we've changed in two years. We went from a brilliantly-run campaign that included health care and education reform to a man who wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act. We went from an inspiring speech on bipartisanship to throwing out Republicans for voting for TARP and working across party lines. We went from John McCain to Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino and candidates so outside the box they can't find D.C. on a map. We went from 18% turnout for voters under 30 to 11%, and from 16% of those over 65 to 23%. We went from Barack Obama to John Boehner as the symbol of change we can believe in. We went from hope to anger, frustration, and disappointment—fast.

But all right, ok, you guys have the House now. Let's see some legislation. 

Restoring Sanity with the Jon Stewart Anti-Massacree Movement

The great Drew Norris and I attended "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on Saturday, and since I've been chronicling most of the D.C. rallies and protests I've attended here, I thought I would post a few words.

A lot of folks are wondering what precisely the rally was. I think this is primarily because the organizers themselves weren't quite sure. Jon Stewart appears to me to be perpetually undecided about whether he is a popular comic or one of the greatest newsmen of my generation. I don't think he has yet found his voice in the way Will Rogers or Mark Twain did. Perhaps he never will.

The rally was primarily a comedy show, and a good one. Drew and I laughed constantly throughout. With the inappropriately insane exception of Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock, the musical performances were excellent too. Stewart said his primary goal was to give people a good time, to present his and Colbert's shows in rally form. I think he succeeded (although the team was obviously unprepared for the amount of people who attended). The humor was even a little lighter and the satire less biting than the average Daily Show episode.

But just like any episode of the Daily Show, the rally wasn't without a moment of critique. Stewart ended the rally with a twelve minute address arguing that Congress and the 24-hour media machine present Americans as more divided than we actually are. By presenting each side in ever argument as ridiculous, one-sided extremists, they make it difficult for honest discourse and compromise to occur. Stewart's speech even had a strain of populism, praising the ability of the American people to work together, despite our disagreements, in ways the media almost never displays. I'd encourage you to take a look.



Jon Stewart - Moment of Sincerity
from the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear"

My favorite statement by far was, "We live in hard times, not end times." Amen to that.

It's no surprise that a poignant critique of the media would be completely misunderstood by the media. Fox News presented the rally as a gathering of potheads against the Tea Party. The New York Times described it as a "Democratic rally without a Democratic politician." But CNN and the Washington Post (after complaining about the crowds for two pages) got it. Even though many attendees thought this was another anti-Fox, anti-Bush rally, I think most of them understood what the rally was about: having a good time and taking it down a notch, for America. And even with such humble ambitions, I think some positive change was begun.

I feel I can't close without mentioning that this was probably the best rally for signs ever. Check out some funny ones here. And do the reasonable thing tomorrow, and go vote. Restoring sanity starts with electing some fair-minded folks.