Category Archives: Web Article Review

housing vouchers for all?

This article argues that if the U.S. took away the mortgage interest tax deduction, it could provide a housing voucher to everyone below the median household income. That’s hard to believe, but the key is probably that the median is well below the average, because of course the income distribution is skewed toward the top. I like my mortgage interest deduction. It is an important part of my retirement strategy and as I am a bit above the median (but hardly rich) it would be hard for me to support this policy.

Here’s another article on BillMoyers.com that says if you took away the mortgage interest tax deduction, the cap on social security deductions, the lower rate on capital gains, and tax-advantaged retirement accounts, you could double Social Security benefits for everyone. There’s a bit of a trick here – these ideas are presented as revenue neutral, because you can think of all these tax breaks as money the government is spending, rather than money it is not collecting compared to what it could be collecting or what it has collected under some past policy. It would be very easy to paint these as tax increases instead, of course. Still, I could be more easily persuaded to support this policy that the first one, because I would be guaranteed to get a portion of the higher taxes I am paying now back when I am older, and I wouldn’t have to worry so much about savings or home equity now. I would know that people who are both richer and poorer than me would all get the same share I would get, which I might be able to accept on grounds of fairness. I’m not out in the streets campaigning for this policy yet, I have to think about it.

the bottom line on fat

I’ve been confused by the seemingly conflicting studies and guidelines on saturated fat that have been released the past few years. This study from Harvard School of Public Health makes a pretty strong case that it really does make sense to replace saturated fat with unsaturated fat.

When it comes to saturated fat, what you replace it with matters. People who replaced saturated fat in their diets with unsaturated fats—especially polyunsaturated fats—had a far lower risk of death from any cause, as well as death due to cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and respiratory disease. Those who replaced saturated fat with carbohydrates only slightly lowered mortality risk. This is most likely because carbohydrates in typical American diets are high in refined starch and sugar, which have a similar influence on mortality risk as saturated fats…

The recent widespread confusion about the health effects of specific types of dietary fat is in part caused by a misleading 2014 Annals of Internal Medicine paper, which concluded there is no evidence supporting the longstanding recommendation to limit saturated fat consumption and replace it with unsaturated fats. The authors of this paper employed a meta-analysis (a statistical analysis that summarizes data from many different studies), and therefore could not look at specific macronutrient comparisons with saturated fat. In addition, this paper also had errors in data extraction, omitted important studies, and only examined coronary heart disease.

In addition, a recently published BMJ paper based on 1960’s data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment suggested that replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid was not protective against death from coronary heart disease or all causes, which appeared to challenge current guidelines and added further confusion. However, this study was of very short duration, extremely low in follow-up rate, and the intervention likely reduced intake of important omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. The extreme intervention diet was also never consumed by any appreciable number of Americans and likely confounded by intake of trans fat.

Finally, a new systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the association of butter consumption (a concentrated source of saturated fat) with chronic disease and all-cause mortality resulted in headlines touting “butter is back,” even though the findings were predominantly neutral, and the authors pointed out that unsaturated fats were found to be a better choice than butter.

teenagers and green environments

This article says that teenagers in green environments are less aggressive, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors.

The researchers describe several “possible pathways” that could explain their results. Easy access to the natural world may reduce maternal stress, which can lead to children acting out. It can encourage physical activity, reduce air pollution levels, and “act as a buffer for ambient noise.”

In addition, they write, green space in urban areas has been shown to preserve “the microbial biodiversity needed to drive immunoregulation, and to optimize brain health.”

the iceberg model

The “iceberg model” is supposed to help you think through the parts of a problem that are obvious and visible versus the (possibly much more significant) parts that are hidden beneath the surface.

LEVELS OF THINKING

1. The Event Level

The event level is the level at which we typically perceive the world—for instance, waking up one morning to find we have caught a cold. While problems observed at the event level can often be addressed with a simple readjustment, the iceberg model pushes us not to assume that every issue can be solved by simply treating the symptom or adjusting at the event level.

2. The Pattern Level

If we look just below the event level, we often notice patterns. Similar events have been taking place over time — we may have been catching more colds when we haven’t been resting enough. Observing patterns allows us to forecast and forestall events.

3. The Structure Level

Below the pattern level lies the structure level. When we ask, “What is causing the pattern we are observing?” the answer is usually some kind of structure. Increased stress at work due to the new promotion policy, the habit of eating poorly when under stress, or the inconvenient location of healthy food sources could all be structures at play in our catching a cold. According to Professor John Gerber, structures can include the following:

1. Physical things — like vending machines, roads, traffic lights or terrain.

2. Organizations — like corporations, governments, and schools.

3. Policies — like laws, regulations, and tax structures.

4. Ritual — habitual behaviors so ingrained that they are not conscious.

4. The Mental Model Level

Mental models are the attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, and values that allow structures to continue functioning as they are. These are the beliefs that we often learn subconsciously from our society or family and are likely unaware of. Mental models that could be involved in us catching a cold could include: a belief that career is deeply important to our identity, that healthy food is too expensive, or that rest is for the unmotivated.

– See more at: https://nwei.org/resources/iceberg/#sthash.XutaQX5M.dpuf

 

meatless Monday, July 4

Since I’m writing this on July 4, what the hell, I’ll write about burgers today. There is a sustainability connection after all because if more of us were vegetarians, our ecological footprint would be less, and as developing countries not only grow in population, but people shift to eating a lot more meat than they used to, the footprint can grow explosively. Certain traditional nomadic ways of life might get a pass, if they are grazing their animals on natural vegetation on lands that are not suitable for crops. Most of us don’t fall in this category. So, a blog called Meatless Monday provides us with a number of meatless “burger” recipes, plus ideas for grilling veggies. I’m determined to give some of these a shot.

I’m a hypocrite to some extent though – I admire vegetarians and I’ve reduced my meat consumption over the years, but I still like it and find it hard to imagine giving it up entirely. Certainly not eggs and cheese. I also have a policy that if someone cooks something for me, I eat it! If like me you like the idea of being vegetarian for environmental and ethical reasons (and environmental reasons are ethical reasons), but dang it you still like meat, I think the best way to think of it is as a treat – save it for holidays and special occasions, or give yourself a cheat meal once a week. Anyway, just to round out this post here are a few points/links about meat:

  • If you decide to indulge in a pork chop for that special occasion or cheat meal, it is okay to cook it medium rare. This article recounts the horrors of trichinosis, then says it is no longer an issue in the modern world. You should still cook ground meat thoroughly, however.
  • And finally, here are a bunch of recipes for various complicated, creative gourmet burgers.

the recession and the right

This editorial on History News Network links the rise of the right in Europe to the 2008 financial crisis and recession caused by American banks.

What many Americans fail to admit is that the 2008 bank-induced economic downturn was of global proportions. It triggered an international depression which caused tremendous financial pain to the industrialized West. New Right parties throughout all of Europe (National Front in France; UKIP in the UK; New Right in the Netherlands; and the New Right in Germany, for example) viewed the West’s financial-sector breakdown as an opportunity to ramp up their message. First, international agreements such as the European Union is undemocratic; and second, that immigrants are displacing ethnically pure nationals from jobs, university acceptances, what have you. “Austerity” measures passed by many European governments, at the bequest of the EU, didn’t help but only deepened the insult. To many in Europe, the 2008 depression triggered social cutbacks aimed squarely at the poor and middling ranks of society while giving a pass to the wealthy financiers who created the problem in the first place.

This dual rhetorical message, poured on thick and heavy since 2008, should give considerable pause to all those citizens that fought in, or still remember, the horrors of the Second World War. The Great Depression (1929-1937) aided Adolph Hitler’s rise. One then wonders whether our current depression (2008-??) will create another?

The saddest thing to me is that Western Europe seemed until a few years ago like the part of the world that had done the most to solve the problems of war and peace, economic and social integration. The rest of the world just needed to catch up. Now that seems somewhat in doubt. Still, war between European nation states seems all but unthinkable, and it is hard to imagine that changing anytime soon.

Tolkien and World War I

Here’s an article on how J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels were influenced by his experience in World War I.

The descriptions of battle scenes in “The Lord of the Rings” seem lifted from the grim memories of the trenches: the relentless artillery bombardment, the whiff of mustard gas, the bodies of dead soldiers discovered in craters of mud. In the Siege of Gondor, hateful orcs are “digging, digging lines of deep trenches in a huge ring,” while others maneuver “great engines for the casting of missiles…”

In “The Lord of the Rings,” we meet Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, Hobbits of the Shire, on a fateful mission to destroy the last Ring of Power and save Middle-earth from enslavement and destruction. The heroism of Tolkien’s characters depends on their capacity to resist evil and their tenacity in the face of defeat. It was this quality that Tolkien witnessed among his comrades on the Western Front…

Beside the courage of ordinary men, the carnage of war seems also to have opened Tolkien’s eyes to a primal fact about the human condition: the will to power. This is the force animating Sauron, the sorcerer-warlord and great enemy of Middle-earth. “But the only measure that he knows is desire,” explains the wizard Gandalf, “desire for power.” Not even Frodo, the Ring-bearer and chief protagonist, escapes the temptation.

Great stories tend to have a clear cut line between good and evil. In real life, we tell ourselves stories about good and evil, often to rationalize our own actions. But the vast majority of evil outcomes in the real world are not caused by intentionally evil acts, but by ignorance, negligence, and amorality. People don’t have the mental tools to understand and make good decisions about the complex systems we are all embedded in, and don’t think enough about right and wrong in their daily actions. How do you tell compelling stories about that?

divide and conquer

This article on History News Network goes through a long account of “divide and conquer” strategies of the white elite in the U.S., which led poor and working class white people to support the rich elite rather than unite with poor and working class black people. It goes all the way from slavery and civil war through to the Nixon and Reagan years and on to Trump. But he suggests that it won’t work for Trump because the white working class itself is shrinking and divided.

Nate Silver weighs in

Nate Silver has launched his general election forecast page. He gives Hillary about an 80-20 chance of winning. He has a long discussion post about it here. I found this last paragraph interesting, where he relates a 20% chance of winning to a baseball game:

A 20 percent or 25 percent chance of Trump winning is an awfully long way from 2 percent, or 0.02 percent. It’s a real chance: about the same chancethat the visiting team has when it trails by a run in the top of the eighth inning in a Major League Baseball game. If you’ve been following politics or sports over the past couple of years, I hope it’s been imprinted onto your brain that those purported long shots — sometimes much longer shots than Trump — sometimes come through.

It’s an interesting way of thinking about risk. Let’s say your favorite team is in game 7 of the World Series, down by a run in the top of the eighth. The game is insanely late on the east coast as they always are, and you have to do something important early the next morning, like interview for a job or operate heavy machinery. Do you turn the TV off? No, of course not, you stay tuned.

Brexit

Well, I suppose I have to write a Brexit post. The main argument seems to be that the combined UK-EU economy, with free trade and movement of people and money, was larger than either the UK or EU will be separately, and that is going to hurt both while also emboldening Russia. It seems to me that they could just negotiate some treaties to keep most of that in place, at least free movement of trade and capital if not people, but it sounds like politics may get in the way of that because some in the EU will think if they do that, it will embolden others to leave. But there is at least an argument that it could strengthen the EU in the long term.

In the immediate future, the EU will face a serious dilemma. If it allows Great Britain to withdraw from common structures only to a limited extent, it would signal to all Euroskeptics that they can do as they please. But if EU leaders impose high costs on the UK – namely, by restricting its access to the single market – Europe could end up cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The tragedy of today’s situation is that the EU could still save itself and come to its senses. It could compensate for the losses caused by Brexit by transforming the current crisis into an opportunity for true integration – something that up until now had been blocked by the UK. Such an exercise in renewal would demand that EU institutions be granted real authority to create common fiscal, defense, and energy policies, while at the same time pursuing democratization (along the lines of “one citizen, one vote”).

Under this scenario, Europe could finally emerge as a strong actor in international affairs. It could be the world’s third-largest country, with English, ironically, as its administrative language – the United States of Europe. But, sadly, the political will to achieve such an outcome is unlikely to emerge – if it ever does – until conditions in Europe become considerably worse than they are now.