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venerdì 1 maggio 2009
giovedì 30 aprile 2009
Troppo moscio
L' america riflette sul suo futuro. E' il caso d' importare il modello europeo?
Charles Murray pensa di no. Motivo? It drains too much of the life from life.
Esempi casuali:
Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. The nations of Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their "child-friendly" policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. They are countries where jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And with only a few exceptions, they are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest...
Cosa c' è che non va con l' Europa:
Two premises about human beings are at the heart of the social democratic agenda: what I label "the equality premise" and "the New Man premise." The equality premise says that, in a fair society, different groups of people -- men and women, blacks and whites, straights and gays -- will naturally have the same distributions of outcomes in life--the same mean income, the same mean educational attainment, the same proportions who become janitors and who become CEOs. When that doesn't happen, it is because of bad human behavior and an unfair society. Much of the Democratic Party's proposed domestic legislation assumes that this is true. I'm confident that within a decade, the weight of the new scientific findings will force the left to abandon the equality premise. But if social policy cannot be built on the premise that group differences must be eliminated, what can it be built upon? It can be built upon the premise that used to be part of the warp and woof of American idealism: People must be treated as individuals. The success of social policy is to be measured not by equality of outcomes for groups, but by the freedom of individuals, acting upon their personal abilities, aspirations and values, to seek the kind of life that best suits them. The second tendency of the new findings of biology will be to show that the New Man premise--which says that human beings are malleable through the right government interventions -- is nonsense. Human nature tightly constrains what is politically or culturally possible. More than that, the new findings will confirm that human beings are pretty much the way that wise observers have thought for thousands of years.
Charles Murray pensa di no. Motivo? It drains too much of the life from life.
Esempi casuali:
Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. The nations of Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their "child-friendly" policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. They are countries where jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And with only a few exceptions, they are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest...
Cosa c' è che non va con l' Europa:
Two premises about human beings are at the heart of the social democratic agenda: what I label "the equality premise" and "the New Man premise." The equality premise says that, in a fair society, different groups of people -- men and women, blacks and whites, straights and gays -- will naturally have the same distributions of outcomes in life--the same mean income, the same mean educational attainment, the same proportions who become janitors and who become CEOs. When that doesn't happen, it is because of bad human behavior and an unfair society. Much of the Democratic Party's proposed domestic legislation assumes that this is true. I'm confident that within a decade, the weight of the new scientific findings will force the left to abandon the equality premise. But if social policy cannot be built on the premise that group differences must be eliminated, what can it be built upon? It can be built upon the premise that used to be part of the warp and woof of American idealism: People must be treated as individuals. The success of social policy is to be measured not by equality of outcomes for groups, but by the freedom of individuals, acting upon their personal abilities, aspirations and values, to seek the kind of life that best suits them. The second tendency of the new findings of biology will be to show that the New Man premise--which says that human beings are malleable through the right government interventions -- is nonsense. Human nature tightly constrains what is politically or culturally possible. More than that, the new findings will confirm that human beings are pretty much the way that wise observers have thought for thousands of years.
mercoledì 30 luglio 2008
Allarmi riformulati
Allarmi!
STATEMENT 1 The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.
STATEMENT 2 Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.
STATEMENT 3 Health costs are eating up an ever increasing share of American incomes.
La riformulazione di Mankiw.
... appuntino annotato tanto per non far cadere nel vuoto uno scambio con la maliarda...
STATEMENT 1 The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.
STATEMENT 2 Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.
STATEMENT 3 Health costs are eating up an ever increasing share of American incomes.
La riformulazione di Mankiw.
... appuntino annotato tanto per non far cadere nel vuoto uno scambio con la maliarda...
giovedì 24 aprile 2008
Più consumisti, più generosi
Non mi sorprende certo il fatto che la nazione più consumista (USA) sia anche quella in cui le persone sono più ricche mediamente.
Non mi sorprende neanche che sia felice. Ho potuto constatare ripetutamente come i beni materiali aiutino ad essere felici.
Mi sorprende che sia la più generosa.
O meglio, che ospiti persone mediamente più generose che altrove.
"...No developed country approaches American giving. For example, in 1995 (the most recent year for which data are available), Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans. These differences are not attributable to demographic characteristics such as education, income, age, sex, or marital status. On the contrary, if we look at two people who are identical in all these ways except that one is European and the other American, the probability is still far lower that the European will volunteer than the American..."
Mi sorprende che sia un Paese a religiosità diffusa e, si sa, le persone religiose sono anche le più generose.
"...in the year 2000, “religious” people (the 33 percent of the population who attend their houses of worship at least once per week) were 25 percentage points more likely to give charitably than “secularists”..."
E' anche un Paese con forti diseguaglianze. Ma questo non frena la generosità. Anzi, i più poveri sono anche, in percentuale, i più generosi.
"...Low-income working families are the most generous group in America, giving away about 4.5 percent of their income on average..."
Stiano parlando della Right Nation. E i "conservatori" sono mediamente più generosi dei "liberal". Facendo 2+2...
"...the fact is that self-described “conservatives” in America are more likely to give—and give more money—than self-described “liberals.” In the year 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on average, 30 percent more dollars to charity than households headed by a liberal..."
Un Paese pragmatico, in cui l' investimento deve avere un ritorno. E infatti la generosità ha una buona resa sociale.
"...In America, $1 given privately tends to increase GDP by about $15—an excellent rate of return by any standard..."
***
Ma come mai?
Forse tutto cio' dipende dalla presenza di ampie libertà economiche.
Il consumismo è una implicazione evidente.
Ma l' ambiente rischioso nel quale ci si muove, puo' darsi che funga da stimolo ad una maggiore religiosirà e ad una maggiore generosità. In situazioni di rischio diventa importante costruire attorno a sè una rete sociale che funaga da assicurazione.
Forse tutto cio' dipende dalla presenza di ampie libertà economiche.
Il consumismo è una implicazione evidente.
Ma l' ambiente rischioso nel quale ci si muove, puo' darsi che funga da stimolo ad una maggiore religiosirà e ad una maggiore generosità. In situazioni di rischio diventa importante costruire attorno a sè una rete sociale che funaga da assicurazione.
ADD1. Oggi 27.4.2008 il sole 24 ore dedica la pagina del supplemento vultura all' articolo oggetto di questo post. Titolo: e vissero ricchi e contenti. Le reazioni delle vittime più illustri confutate: Kahneman: "molto stimolante". Easterline: "apprezzo, anche se l' analisi dei dati è ancora in una fase preliminare...".
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