Corporal Punishment in Schools: economic, legal, practical, ethical?

Corporal Punishment in Schools: economic, legal, practical, ethical?

Economic: web forums are replete with corporal punishment discussions where parents say they intended to move to a particular locale only to learn school systems there beat children and then decided to choose another location.

In the now famous TV episode an otherwise progressive principal delivers gasp causing blows with the heaviest of paddles to not particularly disobedient kids; somewhere on line last summer I read an elementary school booklet (trying to track it down) requiring kids to carry a card which keeps track of their demerits and prescribes that they will be beaten for even one lateness as if they had gone over the maximum if they lose their card; in Booneville, Arkansas a former special education teacher is now suing the schools in federal court for not having her contract renewed because she refused to beat autistic children.

What educated, progressive parent (what every community tries so hard to attract) would move to a locality where they discovered such systematically callous school punishments being practiced? *
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Legal liability: according to a Booneville school handbook I read on line a student will be notified in person that the next punishment may include paddling if they are about reach the quota. The federal court rule is that schools must follow the published rules for corporal punishment to fit under what I call the “exception” to normal state assault prohibitions.

The boy in the TV episode made all his tardy infractions in one day (not a bad kid – had a silly day escorting a girl too far before going to his class). There is no way he could have been warned before the last infraction because the administration could not have known in time.

The class president girl may not have been warned personally before her last tardy either. She picked Saturday school (where there is a half-day corporal punishment choice) for once because she was sick on the regular school day. Nobody may have thought she would need a warning – just speculation; but it’s typical slip up.

If either punishment was meted out without the prescribed warning the school could be in for a giant unjustified assault lawsuit. Beating younger kids for a lone infraction because they do not have in their possession their infraction card could be seen by a court as beating a child for nothing (parents may not even legally do that) – you never know how judges will see things until you get to court. There are all ways the most careful administration can create giant legal liability when violent punishment is practiced.
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Practical: hidden psychological trauma. Cops and psychiatrists can tell you there are a lot more damaged individuals around than psychologically naive school teachers might ever guess – cops because they deal with such folks and the problems they create all day long. I don’t know how much shrinks really know about what goes on inside patients’ heads or what to do about it but they see nothing but such problems all day long.

Paranoids (future serious alcohol abusers; heroin addicts) fail to perform because in their super-self conscious state they do everything to satisfy everyone else – not for their own satisfaction of accomplishment: getting satisfaction from nothing therefore; what substances allow them to feel by releasing them from we “heavy supervisors." To use hold'em poker nomenclature: the kid who perpetually fails to do his homework or show up on time may reasonably be put on a paranoid hand. Last thing in the world you should want to give him is a violent beating.

Kids who don’t care about themselves because they perceive (half the time incorrectly) that nobody (adult) cares about them is the classic making of a juvenile delinquency (robbery and burglary) -- more out of their own control than anything else. Boys are in the emotionally dependent stage and subject to this level of hysterical alienation up until 18 1/2 (the change seems to come over a weeks time in my observation); girls mature a year or year and half earlier. Not a right candidate for adult given beatings.

Girls who think take it as sexual abuse (maybe even with female paddlers and witnesses) are another no-no category. Kids who formerly lived where corporal punishment is unthinkable often take it (subjectively) as the worst of malicious personal assaults (often parents too!) – even some kids who aren’t -- hate inducing punishment.** In poker terms we are building up a lot of inside straight and three-flush draws here, not one thousandth of one percent stuff -- and I do not even have professional training to make a whole list; I am just reporting what I have seen in my own 65 years.

And we haven’t even gotten to teachers with bad motives. One out of 14 priests has been accused of molesting children (incurable molesting does not come from the strain of celibacy – or even from homosexuality – these guys brought their problems to the seminary with them; from their mixed up childhoods of course). How many teachers have some interest in seeing their own or the opposite sex child bend over? How many are just plain mean – or just neurotic – or something else this nonprofessional cannot even conjure up (all of the above)? More gut shot draws adding up.
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Ethics: the way our emotions work (we are admittedly talking limbic system emotion here – not forebrain intelligence) we cannot intentionally hit anyone (adult or child) to cause pain unless we perceive moral offense on their part. Knowing this all I have to do it talk any school paddler into the idea that school infractions are not really immoral, just inefficient, and they should not be able to hit kids.

Tough assignment: I can come up with many midbrain (limbic) equivalents but not yet a direct forebrain description or definition.

Would most people who heard of the infractions of the two kids on the TV episode think the kids were immoral? If our high minded principal’s own kids were guilty of the equivalent “inefficiencies” at home I am confident he would feel it immoral to give them the same violent beating to get them under control (a silly day’s two-minute latenesses?).
If I beat up a deadbeat to get my money back I am under the limbic definition of moral but also breaking the law. (The two don’t have to match: “The law was made for man, not man for the law.”) Again, there is no equivalent moral offense on the part of neglectful school kids.
A horror story on one forum (unlike the more normal "laboratory" of Bonneville high) is of a principal paddling five kids whose car ride ran out of gas and who pushed the car the rest of the way in to school. Most would probably not put up any big legal objection to all five serving detention but I believe most people would see it as outright illegal (not just immoral) to violently beat people over an empty gas tank that was not their fault. Why?
Some might maintain that a kid being late for school is immoral – but would probably not carry the same description over to the lateness of college kids or adults; especially about a couple of minutes late every couple of weeks (20 times a school year! -- like I used to be in high school; not in my few months in college -- more interesting). Why?

Is it natural for our emotions to see kids infractions as uniquely immoral? Or is it natural to feel we can beat only children for infractions that are not immoral? Being a male of the species who evolved primarily to swing a bat on meat I would have no problem personally paddling kids if only I could see their little office management inefficiencies as morally offensive (forgetting that kids who screw up the most are most likely to be emotionally screwed up the most -- you can't tell). And there I must leave the topic – incomplete – until I can come up with a direct forebrain explanation, not just make limbic equivalents, why only seeing (repeat "only") school children's everyday office infractions as significantly morally offensive is 100% morally inaccurate (and offensive?).

* a few examples: http://www.corpun.com/uss00303.htm#10956
* endless examples: http://www.corpun.com/usscr2.htm
* outrageous example + sensible observation:

http://www.greatschools.net/find-a-school/school-visit/how-safe-is-your-school.gs?content=6

"My 1st grade son's bruises lasted 12 days. He was paddled for picking his nose. "
"When adults hit children and bruise them, the system says it was in the name of discipline. Yet these same teachers are mandated by law to report bruises on these school children if parental abuse is suspected."
** disturbing example of:: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLv4Q9Tebg&feature=related

Ureka! Easily and safely divert or even vaporize any size giant asteroid!

Eureka! How to easily and safely divert and even vaporize any size giant asteroid!

Gently land a nuclear reactor core on the side of the asteroid you want it to move away from. Withdraw control rods and allow the reactor to melt down. As the core evaporates everything below the shaft it is boring the gaseous rock will shoot out the top: moving the asteroid in the opposite direction with equal force.

An asteroid of the size that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs has a gravity is about 1/600 of earth's. (Such an asteroid would be about the size of Mt. Everest. The pull is seemingly out of proportion to the mass of the earth because the surface is so much closer to the center -- the gravity does not have a chance to "spread out.")

When the core reaches gravitational center it will continue to evaporate rock all around it which could conceivably keep sinking into the superheated core instead of the other way around. If the size of the reactor core relative to the size of the asteroid were sufficient it might be possible for one or many superheated cores to evaporate an entire asteroid if the core or cores don't run out of fuel before the asteroid runs out of rock -- sort of like a reverse black hole.

Could blackjack high count could mean you should stand everything on 16 -- could a low count mean you should hit some on 18?

Could blackjack high count could mean you should stand everything on 16 -- could a low count mean you should hit some on 18?

High count means the dealer is more likely to bust -- and you too. Could this mean you should alter your card play as well as your betting?

Got this idea when learning hold'em poker -- the constant calculation between what to play and what the pot odds are.

Maybe you could keep a side count on 7s or 5s. Illegal (in the casinos) blackjack computers supposedly give a 5% edge by keeping track of every card and telling you how to adjust your card play not your betting.

Adjusting your card play might even be enough to beat the casino and would be relatively undetectable. Adjusting your card play could conceivably throw off the casinos about your betting adjustments -- making you look less like a counter because you are deviating from perfect strategy.

Think: the 17 we stand everything on might really be fractional if we could possibly stand on 16.45. It is extremely unlikely that the math just happens to hit on all even numbers -- right? :-) Only the propeller heads know -- or could figure this out. It is possible the count could push the "true" (fractional) stand everything number up to 18 or down to 16. (Separate question: if the "true" [fractional] stand everything number were 17.5, for example, might it be correct to vary your card play between 17 and 18 -- which option I presume was never considered when testing perfect strategy programs -- another concept borrowed from poker?)

Card play adjustment counting might even lead to wholly different cards being considered as small (7 and under or 5 and under). Have no ability to do the math at all. Just got the general idea.

Excess profit from drug manufacturing diverts most scientific research to cobbling copycat potions?

It just occurred to me that the billions in excess profits wrung from drug patent monopolies only serves to divert much -- or most -- scientific research efforts from discovering new cures to cobbling up copycat potions. Did Pasture or Salk need billions dangling in front of them?

Ho Chi Minh: would be deemed among history's maddest if...

Ho Chi Minh would be deemed among history's maddest if he had gotten a over a million Vietnamese soldiers and over two million Vietnamese civilians from both sides killed to kick out the French colonialists -- which at least would have been a laudable goal. But to bring about the deaths of three million with another three million permanently maimed and another three million wounded but recovered (normal distribution of combat statistics) our of a population of thirty-five million just to force his version of good government on the other half of the country...
...a police state in which he can force millions to die and in which school children are indoctrinated to inform on their parents if they hear them criticize the state plus a loony economic system that leaves everybody poor...
...even if the South Vietnamese for some reason wanted to live that way...
...they held out a lot longer than the French did and fled in droves (almost a million ended up in the USA) when Ho won...

If Gandhi had gotten almost half the population of India killed, permanently maimed or wounded kicking out the British...

South Vietnamese peasants had no reason to revolt. Why; to give their (70 percent) personally owned land over to government communes (it had been close to 100 percent in the north)? If commune-ization did not happen to South Vietnamese farm land, what was the difference that communism was theoretically supposed to worth leaving millions dead? The people of North Vietnam would never have voted to kill off a million of their military age males (one million North Vietnamese soldiers died fighting in the south) to spread their political system. By the time communism showed its true face in the north folks there may have wished they could have remained under French colonialism instead.

If LBJ's $10/hr minimum wage (2009 dollars) had kept pace...

If LBJ's $10/hr minimum wage (2009 dollars) had kept pace with average income growth, today, the projected federal minimum wage would be $5/hr greater than the actual $15/hr median wage.

What Issac Newton and Adam Smith missed!

Issac Newton, 18th century physicist, missed something big: that to make something go three times as fast you have to make it go three times as far -- taking nine times the energy. I wondered about this (energy increasing with the square of the speed) for twenty years before some kid on a science fiction newsgroup explained it to me. Didn't feel so dumb once I found out Newton missed it (and two hundred years ago the top physicists of the world were debating it -- they had to conduct experiments!).

Adam Smith missed something that should have been much more obvious -- something that would have been instantly recognized by any 21st century biologist -- that a free market is an (evolved) equilibrium system among equilibrium points -- an evolved organism (plenty robust). Nothing "hidden" about its workings -- other than that there are so many zillions of interactions in a body or a market that we cannot keep track of all of them at once. That does no prevent us from prescribing medicine for our bodies and should not deter us from designing fair and balanced bargaining into an economy with, say, sector-wide labor agreements and/or a much higher minimum wage.

Checks and balance is the thing 18th century Brits on this side of the Atlantic got most right -- in the political sphere. But we forget all about checks and balances when it comes to our MOST IMPORTANT (!!!) economic sphere -- our labor market-- and instead perpetuate a "Voodoo" myth inadvertently created by some guy with an unimaginative name like Adam Smith.

80% of LBJ's median wage = 66% of Obama's median wage = the same $10/hr minimum wage!

80% of $12.50 = 66% of $15.00 = the same $10 federal minimum wage

If LBJ was able to boost his minimum wage to 80% of his era's relatively generous (as in fair?) $12.50/hr median wage: to $10/hr (old figures adjusted) -- why can't Obama refuel his time's minimum wage to at least 66% of his era's relatively tight-wad $15.00/hr median wage (advanced only 20% as average income grew 100%): to the same $10/hr?

Why not do it in one jump as Eisenhower's (1956), LBJ's (1968) and Nixon's (1974) did? Seems plenty of headroom beneath plenty more headroom.

John F. Kennedy reportedly said (I believe I read it in "The Making of a President 1968"): "Who cares if the minimum wage is $1.00 or $1.25?" Yet Kennedy pushed $1.25/hr minimum for 1963 through Congress, expanding its real buying power almost 15% over Eisenhower's $8/hr minimum (in parallel with per person economic growth): to $8.75/hr.

Does today's more unequal sharing of labor earnings fairly reflect a lesser need for unskilled labor in a higher tech economy (should barbers get relatively -- or absolutely -- less)?

Let's guess that 90 percentile income level roughly equates to the 90 percentile IQ level (willingness to work and opportunity do count as much). The earnings of 90 percentile earners, all the way up to about the 97 percentile earners (and IQs?) have not grown more or less than overall economic growth over the past 4 decades. Who else might possess such extraordinary new productive powers?

Even the low end of top one percentile incomes (and IQs?) have not grown that much out of proportion (ask your doctor). If you ask Paul Krugman it is the ballooning incomes of the top 1/10th of one percentile and especially the top 1/100 of one percentile earners which have absorbed most of the 15% of income share lost by the bottom 90 percentile since 1973: ball players, news anchors, CEOs -- many earning 25 times what the same job skills paid 36 years ago (when "stagwagion" began its apparently too-slow-to-be-noticed creep).

If it would be economically comfortable in our labor market to return the minimum wage to a relatively weaker (in this century) $10/hr, then, it should be as equally doable for re-organized American labor (under sector-wide contracts -- only modern way -- versions in every modern OECD nation except US and Japan) to push the median wage all the way back to the overall share of 40 years ago: to as much as $25/hr.

The minimum wage could then bring up the rear at at least 50% of the resurrected median wage: $12.50/hr: end of the Crips and the Bloods -- who will thank us -- who wants to get shot and/or jailed to make $10/hr selling crack: the end of the most poverty in a modern economy that is twice as productive per person as it was in LBJ's time (he is looking down impatiently).

A "Compact of Free Association" with the US the only way to secure Israel?

MY LETTER TO THE ISRAELI KNESSET (STILL IN RE-WRITE)

A "Compact of Free Association" with the US the only way to secure Israel?

In 1949 Israelis made yourselves comfortable, didn't you, taking 80% of the former Palestinian homeland when only 55% had been allotted to you by the UN -- squeezing a like number of Palestinians off to both sides of their ancestral dominion. Today Israel stoops to lower behavior vainly hoping to drive them off the last 20%.

I have pointed out more than once -- last time, the same week Harretz reported 25% of Israelis would consider abandoning home if Iran even got the nuclear bomb -- that all any enemy of Israel needs to do is leave behind in Tel Aviv to be discovered an unexploded nuke -- maybe without fissionable material; maybe they don't even have any, maybe only bluffing. How will you retaliate: leaving an unexploded nuke in Tehran?

Half of Israel might empty out; the other half would have to follow.

This kind of scenario will naturally suggest itself once a Mideast nuclear arms race speeds up. Check out books like "On Thermonuclear War", "Thinking About The Unthinkable" (Kahn) and "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" (Kissinger) which were widely read on both sides during the height of the Cold War to see the road you may be heading down.

My unsolicited (cabdriver) advice on how Israel can secure itself the twenty-first century:

Some South Pacific Island nations that were formerly US possessions or territories under US administration have maintained a "hint" of a sovereignty connection with us since they became independent -- to avoid becoming someone else's possessions. Under arrangements called "Compacts of Free Association." both side cooperate in mutual defense. Former territories cooperate by leaving their territory open for our military bases. Current compacts are renewable after 20 years.

It may be hard to define the precise sovereignty connection but their former condition of American territories or control combined with mutual defense on their soil communicates to everyone else that stepping on their toes somehow equates to stepping on the 800 pound guerilla's toes (if only because everyone knows that is the idea).

To realistically take cover under a "hint" (if only because everyone knows that is the idea) of American sovereignty you will need to look more convincingly like you conform to Western ideals of equality and especially to American norms of assimilation. This inescapably means a substantial right of return for large numbers of Palestinians. You may sensibly impose requirements needed to protect the fabric of a modern state (e.g., they must be able to contribute to the economy or be able to purchase real estate). If you are to plausibly adopt some kind of political connection with America, then, "exiled" Palestinians can much more plausibly claim a legitimate citizenship connection to the former 80% of their land. That is your cost.

Your permanent security gain (and the whole world's) would be Mideast nuclear disarmament (including you!), a lifting of the economic and personal life burdens of maintaining enough tanks, 3000, to repel an invading force of 9,000 NATO quality tanks manned by NATO quality troops on the population base of New Jersey.

Another benefit for you (and your consciences): you can start to feel and act like Jews again instead of like purveyors of pogroms for Palestinians. (All I can say for so-called "religious fanatic" settlers [I don't like that phrase because I am a prolife Roman Catholic and we are sometimes called that] is that they would probably behave even worse without their religion -- like a lot of the Ayatollahs.)

American ground force and air bases on your soil under a "hint" of shared sovereignty would mean nobody is going to leave a nuke behind in Israel. If they do they wont do it again (not that the 800 pound guerilla needs to blow anybody up -- but we would take care of it like we might be next because of that "hint").

If all this doesn't work out the "other half" of the Jewish people can always move here. You will be less trouble for us here than you are there. (Alternately, one of my Irish-American siblings has suggested giving the Palestinians the burnt-out areas of the Bronx -- as former Jewish land. You can always work something out

If you see any value in a "hint" of political connection to the 800 pound guerilla you will have to take it up with the US government yourselves (there are those words "take" and "yourselves" again -- how the current mess all started). I wouldn't expect a letter to my congressman to get anything going except his robot letter machine.

(Maybe if you want to "convert" you can become a full fledged territory or state :-])

HEADLINE: 2007 MINIMUM WAGE UNDER PERFORMED MALTHUS! :-)

HEADLINE: YEAR 2007 MINIMUM WAGE UNDER-PERFORMED MALTHUS! :-)

Even under defunct Malthusian theory, LBJ's $10/hr minimum wage ($1.60/hr in 1968, adjusted) should have shrunk only 33% as US population grew 50%. But by the time GWB's $5.30/hr minimum wage ($5.15/hr in 2007, adjusted) came to be it had sunk nearly 50%.

Adding 72.5% to today’s $7.25/hr minimum wage would make it $12.50/hr; would raise a $6.00 fast food meal to $7.45, but would raise nearly 40% of the US labor force to (a still shamefully low for the 40 percentile US wage?) $500/wk -- the fast food buying 40%. Direct inflation would be 2% -- not “1000%” with the fantasy “$100/hr."

Two short years ago the federal minimum wage was $212/wk. Today it is just short of $300/wk. Michigan Democrats are pondering $400/wk next. Does anybody expect -- has anybody yet experienced -- any great unemployment tragedy? $212/hr never should have happened!

A realistically* assessed (if never ever reported) 30% US poverty level shouts that there is lots -- and lots -- of room for more fairly set labor costs (which should be all the market will bear, just like ownership's prices) to be re-inserted into US products and services -- the same missing labor costs that have siphoned 15% of income share from the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners mostly into the buckets of top fraction of 1 percentile earners over the past few decades -- with neither matching increase in relative output from the top nor decrease from the bottom. (*see charts, pp. 44-45)

This “http”* illustrates that minimum wages do not affect employment below half the median wage. Unfortunately (unbelievably?) the US median wage rose only 20% while average income climbed 100%, probably making half the US median no longer a true test (meaning that if the minimum could be pushed harmlessly to $12.50/hr that the median could sensibly be pushed to $25/hr?). *http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2006/11/when_the_minimu.html

LBJ's 1968 minimum was about 80% (!) of the median (around $12.50/hr) -- really pushing it. It must have been recognized back then that nobody could live on half their day's median ($6.25/hr). LBJ's minimum wage earners would fit into today's $20,000/yr income tax paying bracket -- GWB'S were in 2007's $10,000/yr almost no income tax paying bracket. (If LBJ's minimum wage had kept up with average income growth, today, it would be $5/hr higher then Obama's median wage!)

Re-inserting (re-asserting!) fair US labor costs across the board must needs cause a boat load of inflation – but that just quantifies the depth of what I call America's "Great Wage Depression."

My neighborhood McDonald's enjoyed a noticeable up tick in business following Illinois' minimum wage jump from $6/hr ($5.15 in 2003, adjusted) to $8/hr -- noticeably (to myself and others) all in the low wage, foreign born customer segment. Minimum wage earners beginning to afford the products of their labor? My neighborhood owners even closed both their stores -- one at a time -- for 6 months to beautifully rebuild them for $1 million dollars apiece -- right in the teeth of the 33% real minimum wage increase which apparently did not phase them much.

Given the too long, below fair share US labor market, those who perform minimum wage studies ought to separate US born from foreign born employment statistics to get a realistic assessment of the effect on both. How else can they detect whether today’s minimum wage may often (most often?) be too low for Americans to even show up for? Ditto for measuring teenage and adult minimum wage work participation simultaneously: a higher wage may merely attract a few more, more employable adult applicants.

Meantime my neighborhood Ronald's has begun to attract a few (very few) American born workers now that Illinois' 2009 minimum wage has caught up with Ike's (read senate majority leader LBJ's) $8/hr minimum wage ($1.00/hr in 1956, adjusted).

Huge minimum wage hike -- (supposedly?) loses sales -- while labor gains

You would never know it from reading “scholarly” examinations of the minimum wage but both labor and management could make more money moving fewer hamburgers for a higher price apiece. If all fast food franchisees could collude to raise meal prices from $6 to $7 they would do it, wouldn’t they?

Labor may legally “collude” if you will to double its price from $6.55/hr (federal minimum up to July 24) to $13.00/hr via a minimum wage raise (or via sector-wide collective bargaining if it were available). Ownership could potentially lose profit, of course, leading to some stores closed and some employees laid off – there could be nothing good in the price raise for ownership (OTH, there could very well be). But without a doubt, if American labor had a choice it would never have agreed to adding a more jobs (or even many more – most of the increase maybe going to desperate immigrants) if that meant dropping its fair market price in half.

Why not make the minimum wage $100/hr? 1000% inflation (to cite a genuine possibility) instead of 2% inflation (see link).

The so called “hidden hand” would be recognized by any modern day biologist as a system of equilibrium among equilibrium points – A.K.A., an evolved living organism. If the pin maker and the butcher and the lawyer did not cooperatively support each other’s occupations the market organism would never have evolved in the first place. Point being: a robust mechanism is the free market (how do all just the right products end up on all just the right supermarket shelves? – how do all just the right nutrients end up in all just our right mammal cells?), not some ethereal force never to be touched by human regulation lest the whole efficiency fall mysteriously apart as our eighteenth-century-myth based Republicans would have it.

By far the biggest users of labor are restaurants -- and the biggest users of minimum wage labor are fast food restaurants: one-third labor costs (typical businesses: one-tenth). Double the minimum wage and the one-dimensional (typical “scholarly”) expectation is demand will drop. Maybe not for fast food.

Last time I looked (see link) $13/hr was the 40 percentile wage. Raise the minimum wage to $13/hr and fast food demand should thrive, no? Almost half the work force (not the expensive restaurant half) gets a big raise (average $150/wk). In between restaurant eaters will their extra 2% inflation raise (40-90 percentile earners get some economic growth raises too; more as they get closer to the top).

When labor has been down in the raise department as long as it has been in our unbalanced market (as of 2007 25% of the workforce earned less than LBJ’s minimum wage!) every bit of inflation caused by labor getting some income share back should be looked upon as a positive sign – it may take 30% inflation to restore 15% of income share lost to the top 1% (mostly top fraction of) over the last few decades – with back and forth “chain-shifting” of income share; get used to it.

Why aren’t some progressive scholars working out models or whatever to predict just how demand would shift after a minimum wage hike to 30% over LBJ’s minimum ($10/hr adjusted -- 100% average income growth later!)? There are thousands of progressive economic researchers. Why is there only one positive study (that I know of: Card and Kruger) on the impact of minimum wage raises? Myth-based economists, of course, come back citing 100 studies. Reality-based economists have to close the minimum wage (not to mention sector-wide labor contracts) study gap!

-- An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the true difficulty of paying for national health care --

-- An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the true difficulty of paying for national insurance --

Me: $1.2 million is the average income for top 1 percentile households (2006 figure). You must have made at least a couple of million last year, right? I mean you are a doctor – and you are with Columbia Presbyterian hospital.

Doctor Levine: “[Laughs].”

Me: You mean that the 15% of income share that slipped out of the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners and into the buckets of top 1 percentile earners over the past few decades slipped right past you doctors?

Doctor Levine: “[Smiles ruefully].”

Me: Still, with the US having 135% of the per capita GDP of comparable modern economies we should no trouble devoting 15% of GDP [.15 X 1.35 = .2025] to health care, right (note parallel with 15% of income shifted to pockets of folks who earn lots more than doctors)? Unless we have too deeply gutted much of our workforce’s pay – with something like 30% of families living below the poverty line.

In real life the poverty line for a family of three -- assuming they have to pay their own health premiums – is about $45,000 (not the unreal $20,000 government calculation based on three times the price of an emergency diet – premiums alone exceed $12,000!). If you look at the Census, median family income is about $62,000. The real minimum needs line would hover somewhere around 37 percentile – if we didn't count families with paid health insurance. Knock off 7 points (guesstimate) for families on the top end with paid insurance (not those on the bottom with Medicaid) and we can reckon – it turns out very reliably -- about 30% of American families’ incomes are below minimum needs without government helps like food stamps.

Sounds like a quarter of the country must be earning less than the minimum wage or something equally crazy, right? Nearly a quarter of the workforce is earning less than the minimum wage – if we are talking about Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 minimum wage of $10/hr [$1.60/hr adjusted] – back when average income was half today’s. (FYI, tech improvement, like how much better today’s Timex is, generally not counted in inflation estimates.)

Doctor Levine: “How can something like this happen; why can’t we straighten it out?”

We can straighten out our labor market any time we wish – nothing like this happens anywhere else in the first-world. Simply institute the same labor market structure in place in virtually every modern economy (and many not so modern like Argentina and Indonesia): sector-wide labor agreements – wherein everybody with the same job description within the same locale works under identical collectively bargained terms with all the different firms – legislation required. [Note: check out French-Canadian “lite” version.]

Medical Doctor (not psychiatrist) Levine: What is holding back our big wig progressives from pushing – or at least mentioning out loud – such apparently badly needed and promisingly efficacious labor market changes?

Me: Something I call “pack check.” Males instinctively check in with what everybody else is thinking on any economic or political – or metaphorical “hunting pack” -- issue. And as long as they stay fix-focused on what everybody else is thinking it can seem impossible to them to make headway in an entirely new policy direction: so many different people require so many different approaches – and whom did we ever convert before with our most reasonable (we thought) arguments. Impostavazoo!

Sociobiology time – my lay opinion anyway: chasing wild pigs (what human males evolved doing) required a kind of perfect awareness of what every other hunting pack member was doing (pigs, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are not stupid) – was an essential survival mechanism. Without awareness of the need to break free from this innate focus-on-everybody-else’s-focus, at least for short breaks, all the economic male geeks in all the world may never initiate any new solution to the uniquely lop-side bargaining power ruining the American labor market – nor anything else – no matter how obviously practical, no matter how desperately (!) needed.

Human males are not so much pig headed as we are “pig-chase” headed.

Doctor Levine: “[Makes excuse; finally escapes].”

School corporal punishment: closer to the final "anti" argument

Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.*

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]

Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (can't help it: I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

What to replace the US Senate with: a representative US Senate.

What to replace the US Senate with: a representative US Senate.

First raise the number of representatives to 500 (representing 600,000 people each, to be apportioned across state lines if necessary; no state need have less than one, lowest population, Wyoming, 621,254).

Then (you guessed what was coming), have 100 senators represent 5 contiguous representative districts. California (pop. 36 million) could share 12 US senators with Hawaii (pop. 600,000) under this arrangement.

No other country in the world has such screwy undemocratic representation as found in the number one legislature body of the United States. 18% of our citizens supply 50% of the US Senate vote.

On top of which no new progressive directions can be taken without an undemocratic 60% of the vote. 10% of our citizens can supply enough votes block any legislation. (This reactionary setup reminds of why California cannot raise taxes to pay for expenditures that have not risen beyond inflation over the years – the only kind of setup the Republican disease can thrive in anymore.)

Worst – so I thought -- of all to alter the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the US Senate: making it practicably impossible. I contemplated the most populous states (e.g., Texas) seceding from union with the least populous (e.g., Alaska) – temporarily – just long enough to get rid of the old US Senate and replace it with something more practical (until this week I could not think of what that might be).

“When in the course of human events…” Then the full states can re-adopt the empty “territories.” Under this scenario Obama can play the part of Jefferson Davis. I don’t think the national guard of Alaska is going to suppress the “rebellion” in Texas. J

Just today I learned there is another path to amendment (and junking the US Senate). Two-thirds of state legislatures can convene a Constitutional convention to propose an amendment which then must be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Worth a try.