I've decided to start a new segment on this blog. My wife and I don't exactly have the same political views. She took the World's Smallest Political Quiz and her results were closer to Constitutional Conservative than mine, which were 100% Libertarian. As such, there are many things we agree on, but a few that we disagree on very passionately. I've been thinking of doing this segment for a while, and I finally got her permission this week.
I'd like to start with the drug war. The reasons for starting here are fairly simple: last week I watched a documentary called The House I Live In, which is all about the negative consequences of the war on drugs. This is a topic I've been mulling over for a while (I'm sure you can remember me mentioning it way back in my first post about Orange is the New Black), and finally setting aside time to watch that documentary solidified my desire to write a full post about it. Why call it "Arguing with my wife"? That's simple as well: she has completely different ideas on this topic that I'd like to also present in this forum so that I can deal with them a bit more eloquently than I ever can when the two of us are arguing.
As many of you know, there were drug laws before the "official" start of the drug war under President Nixon, but most of them were racially motivated and most were ignored if you were a high class white person. Until the 1930s, marijuana wasn't even illegal in the United States. In fact, hemp production was encouraged in the 19th century. You can see in the timeline that the reason for banning marijuana use was largely motivated by the influx of Mexican Immigrants in the 1920s and people's fear of these immigrants. Today, marijuana is largely recognized as less dangerous than alcohol, which has been legal to use for anyone over the drinking age since the repeal of prohibition.
Other drugs follow a similar path: opiates and cocaine were outlawed around the turn of the 20th century due to fear of Asian and Black communities, but their recreational use continued with high class society mostly unabated. Prior to those bans, many products used these drugs as ingredients, including Coca-Cola, which originally was made with cocaine.
Now, whether there were dangers to these products should have been for people and markets to decide, or at the worst these products could have been subject to age restrictions and labeling regulations as we have now with tobacco and alcohol products. Instead, the government instituted an all-out prohibition against many psychoactive drugs.
This is the point where my wife and I begin to disagree. I see this idea of prohibition as ludicrous. For starters, we already tried prohibition with alcohol, and I don't need to go into details about just how much of a terrible idea that was. Why then would anyone think that drug prohibition wouldn't garner similar results? Almost a century later, and what do we have to show for all of our efforts to ban recreational use of psychoactive drugs? We have hundreds of thousands of people currently in prison serving some drug related sentence. How has that affected usage rates of drugs in our country? It largely hasn't. What I can't understand is why we would treat psychoactive drugs any differently than tobacco products, or alcohol? The recreational use of the drugs is harming no one other than the person using them, yet we seem to think that it is the job of the federal government to protect people from themselves by ripping them away from their families and putting them in prison just because they wanted to get high.
My wife, on the other hand, believes that this is fairly simple. People make choices knowing full well the consequences, and if they get caught and put in prison, that's their own fault. She completely refuses to here my argument that the laws are ludicrous in the first place. In fact, I used the analogy of chocolate ice cream because it's one of our favorite desserts to share. I asked her if chocolate ice cream was banned tomorrow if she would continue to consume it, to which she said, "Yes, probably." She then clarified that, if that were the case and she were caught, she would expect to be put in prison. Frankly, I don't know how to argue with that kind of logic.
That being said, I attempted to appeal to her in a different way. What if the people who are using or selling drugs have few, if any, other choices? People who grow up with parents who were put in jail because of the drug war are often trapped in low-class neighborhoods with little to no economic prospects. They may have gone to the local government schools where they received incredibly sub-par educations (maybe next time I'll cover this topic as it's fairly huge). Many will drop out well below the functional literacy rate, leaving their job prospects incredibly impaired. Even those who graduate will find it difficult to escape the neighborhood as few colleges will accept them and their schools likely have no vocational tech programs. These individuals are left with no real choice but to turn to what they know: drugs.
This argument didn't work, either. She went back to, "I don't need to feel sympathy for people who make the choice to do something illegal and then find themselves in prison." I finally tried the argument that the drug war is bad because of how it enables police brutality, which I wrote a bit about a few weeks ago. I tried telling her about Radley Balko's work on the increasing militarization of police. She didn't seem to mind that local police can obtain and use tanks and armored personnel carriers, and when I tried to tell her about cops raiding incorrect houses or killing dogs for little to no reason, she simply told me that I was focusing on a few high profile cases and not the vast majority of cases that go off without any problems like that. I tried to argue on this point, but then she told me to stop talking, and now I'm here. I was thinking of doing another full post about the growing military mentality in police, but I think instead I'm just going to recommend Radley Balko's book.
I hope my arguments here were more clear and easier to follow than those I attempted to make with my wife. Let me know if I've changed your mind in any way. If you feel as my wife does, please don't hesitate to comment; I'm always looking for views that challenge my own and keep me thinking.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
8/16/15 - Something More Personal
For weeks now I've been reviewing things and discussing politics, but, honestly, my life doesn't really revolve around politics. I hardly ever talk politics outside of this blog, so it works as a good way for me to express that portion of my personality, but it's not the main thing I spend my time thinking about. Therefore, today I'm going to take a break from politics and spend time talking about something a bit more personal.
I'd like to talk about something that's a still about society in general, but more about personal choices. You see, when I was young, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and that has really shaped a large portion of my life. I want to talk about how my mother and I handled this because it doesn't really fit with about 2/3 of the people who are diagnosed with ADHD. I am in no way an expert on this, and frankly, I'm going to spend a whole lot more time talking about me than about ADHD in general, but it's something I've been studying to help with my own difficulties and something I think is important to share.
I'll start by saying that, while most of my political views are shaped by my father, most of my life views were shaped by my mother. When I was ten my mother and father split up, and it took years for my father to find a stable place to live and make a stable arrangement with my mother, so for 3-4 years after the split I hardly ever saw him. This was around the time when we were just learning of my ADHD and my mother mostly determined my coarse of treatment. I don't really know her motives, but my mother has always been reticent to turn to medication, and this was no exception. She absolutely refused to have me medicated, and because of that decision the two of us really spent a lot of time learning together how to handle my behavior.
I'm not sure my exact diagnosis, but I believe I'm of the combined hyperactive and inattentive, as with most people diagnosed with ADHD. I have a very difficult time sitting still, and, even to this day, find myself overly hyper and out of control from time to time. From my understanding, it was much worse when I was younger, but the hyperactive behaviors tend to lessen with age and I've also learned how to control those urges most of the time. Without medication, I had to learn what it meant to be out of control and I spent a lot of time learning what helped bring me back into control.
For example, while I tend to zone out and day dream during a class that I find boring, I can hyper-focus on something that catches my interest. I can't watch TV these days without something in my hands to occupy a bit of my attention, but I can sit down with a book for 6 hours without so much as getting up to use the restroom. I was very lucky in that, early on, my teachers worked with me and didn't push my mother to medicate me. In third grade my teacher would allow me to leave my desk after a lecture to play on the math game machines so long as I knew that I had to complete all my work. I would often rush through any assignments he passed out just to run over and see how quickly I could answer math problems on the games or to see if I could complete harder and harder questions. In fourth grade, my teacher would allow me to wander the room and help other students if I was finished with my work. Not long after that I began to learn that what I needed was something to focus on if I was unable to focus on the task at hand.
I started reading at a fairly regular rate because a book was a quiet, acceptable form of activity that I could take with my anywhere. If things became boring in class, I would read. As the years progressed and the teachers became less understanding, I would often get scolded for reading in class and not focusing on their lessons or the assigned work. I tried doodling in a few of those classes, but I was never very good at it, so instead I would zone out and focus on a game that I had come up with in my head. Sometimes I would try to challenge myself to come up with some incredible math problem that I would then have to solve. At least then it would look like I was taking notes even though I wasn't really paying any attention at all.
The point I'm making here is that, when I find something that's actually interesting to me, focus isn't a problem. The hyperactivity goes away and I can sit still. This is something that's been noted for most children with ADHD, at least according to a the National Institute of Mental Health. Thus, one way I learned to cope was to find something enjoyable that could fill my time when I was bored but was also constructive and acceptable behavior. This one is the tough one for many children as most kids with ADHD don't find difficult math problems or reading a book to be quite as enjoyable as I do, but I'm sure something can be found for everyone.
The other thing that's been much more helpful since I've reached adulthood has been exercise. Now, don't get me wrong, my mother may have known this when I was a child as she was fairly strict about spending time indoors. As far back as I can remember, my parents restricted the amount of time my siblings and I could spend watching TV or on the computer, and would generally prefer that we spent as much time as possible outside. I have really learned to appreciate that as I've aged. I joined the Boy Scouts around the time my parents split as a way to spend more time with my father, and I found that being physically active kept me more level. These days I'm a fairly avid jogger, and I've been attempting to work out a routine so I can jog every day. This morning I awoke early enough to go jogging before the heat became too oppressive, and that is helping me to be level and focused enough to write this post. It's been noted in a number of studies that exercise helps with attention, and it's a great way for me to manage my ADHD without medication.
This brings me to my final point, and probably the reason I am writing this post. Prescriptions for ADHD medication continue to rise, and, frankly, I don't think it's a good idea to medicate children when alternatives exist. Medications only treat the major symptom of ADHD, namely the inability to focus, and neither cure the disease, nor treat the other problems that are present in children with ADHD. Medications can cause social stigma, which can exacerbate socializing problems that many children with ADHD have. There is almost no information on the long term effects of taking these medications. Finally, and this is the really personal one for me, I can't stand the idea that we're teaching children that if they have any kind of trouble with the attitudes or behaviors that they should just take medication to fix it. A few months back, one of my coworkers almost lost her grandson to an overdose of, you guessed it, medication designed to control his behavior. He was feeling out of control and he was scolded for being out of control, so he broke into the locked cabinet where his father kept his medication (children are very resourceful), and took the remaining medication in the bottle. His father noticed him acting funny soon after, found the empty bottle, and rushed him to the hospital. Thankfully, the medication was the slow release kind, so he didn't receive the full affect at once, but it was a very scary situation for my coworker and her family. When asked later why he had taken the pills, the boy told his doctor that, "He was bad, and he wanted to be good, and the pills make him a good boy." That's not the kind of attitude I think we should be promoting in children, and apparently in this case the doctor agreed with me because he immediately stopped the prescription. Beyond that, I've heard of cases where children become shells of their former selves due to the medication they're taking, along with plenty of other horror stories. Besides, I can't stop coming back to how little is known about long term effects.
So my advice is to study the problem, talk to your child's doctor, and come up with a plan for dealing with ADHD that doesn't require medication. I'm twenty five years old and have been dealing with ADHD as long as I can remember. I have never taken medication to treat my symptoms, but I am able to lead what I consider a relatively productive and successful life. Let's focus on the best outcomes and stop wasting time and money on medicating our children just because dealing with them is difficult.
I'd like to talk about something that's a still about society in general, but more about personal choices. You see, when I was young, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and that has really shaped a large portion of my life. I want to talk about how my mother and I handled this because it doesn't really fit with about 2/3 of the people who are diagnosed with ADHD. I am in no way an expert on this, and frankly, I'm going to spend a whole lot more time talking about me than about ADHD in general, but it's something I've been studying to help with my own difficulties and something I think is important to share.
I'll start by saying that, while most of my political views are shaped by my father, most of my life views were shaped by my mother. When I was ten my mother and father split up, and it took years for my father to find a stable place to live and make a stable arrangement with my mother, so for 3-4 years after the split I hardly ever saw him. This was around the time when we were just learning of my ADHD and my mother mostly determined my coarse of treatment. I don't really know her motives, but my mother has always been reticent to turn to medication, and this was no exception. She absolutely refused to have me medicated, and because of that decision the two of us really spent a lot of time learning together how to handle my behavior.
I'm not sure my exact diagnosis, but I believe I'm of the combined hyperactive and inattentive, as with most people diagnosed with ADHD. I have a very difficult time sitting still, and, even to this day, find myself overly hyper and out of control from time to time. From my understanding, it was much worse when I was younger, but the hyperactive behaviors tend to lessen with age and I've also learned how to control those urges most of the time. Without medication, I had to learn what it meant to be out of control and I spent a lot of time learning what helped bring me back into control.
For example, while I tend to zone out and day dream during a class that I find boring, I can hyper-focus on something that catches my interest. I can't watch TV these days without something in my hands to occupy a bit of my attention, but I can sit down with a book for 6 hours without so much as getting up to use the restroom. I was very lucky in that, early on, my teachers worked with me and didn't push my mother to medicate me. In third grade my teacher would allow me to leave my desk after a lecture to play on the math game machines so long as I knew that I had to complete all my work. I would often rush through any assignments he passed out just to run over and see how quickly I could answer math problems on the games or to see if I could complete harder and harder questions. In fourth grade, my teacher would allow me to wander the room and help other students if I was finished with my work. Not long after that I began to learn that what I needed was something to focus on if I was unable to focus on the task at hand.
I started reading at a fairly regular rate because a book was a quiet, acceptable form of activity that I could take with my anywhere. If things became boring in class, I would read. As the years progressed and the teachers became less understanding, I would often get scolded for reading in class and not focusing on their lessons or the assigned work. I tried doodling in a few of those classes, but I was never very good at it, so instead I would zone out and focus on a game that I had come up with in my head. Sometimes I would try to challenge myself to come up with some incredible math problem that I would then have to solve. At least then it would look like I was taking notes even though I wasn't really paying any attention at all.
The point I'm making here is that, when I find something that's actually interesting to me, focus isn't a problem. The hyperactivity goes away and I can sit still. This is something that's been noted for most children with ADHD, at least according to a the National Institute of Mental Health. Thus, one way I learned to cope was to find something enjoyable that could fill my time when I was bored but was also constructive and acceptable behavior. This one is the tough one for many children as most kids with ADHD don't find difficult math problems or reading a book to be quite as enjoyable as I do, but I'm sure something can be found for everyone.
The other thing that's been much more helpful since I've reached adulthood has been exercise. Now, don't get me wrong, my mother may have known this when I was a child as she was fairly strict about spending time indoors. As far back as I can remember, my parents restricted the amount of time my siblings and I could spend watching TV or on the computer, and would generally prefer that we spent as much time as possible outside. I have really learned to appreciate that as I've aged. I joined the Boy Scouts around the time my parents split as a way to spend more time with my father, and I found that being physically active kept me more level. These days I'm a fairly avid jogger, and I've been attempting to work out a routine so I can jog every day. This morning I awoke early enough to go jogging before the heat became too oppressive, and that is helping me to be level and focused enough to write this post. It's been noted in a number of studies that exercise helps with attention, and it's a great way for me to manage my ADHD without medication.
This brings me to my final point, and probably the reason I am writing this post. Prescriptions for ADHD medication continue to rise, and, frankly, I don't think it's a good idea to medicate children when alternatives exist. Medications only treat the major symptom of ADHD, namely the inability to focus, and neither cure the disease, nor treat the other problems that are present in children with ADHD. Medications can cause social stigma, which can exacerbate socializing problems that many children with ADHD have. There is almost no information on the long term effects of taking these medications. Finally, and this is the really personal one for me, I can't stand the idea that we're teaching children that if they have any kind of trouble with the attitudes or behaviors that they should just take medication to fix it. A few months back, one of my coworkers almost lost her grandson to an overdose of, you guessed it, medication designed to control his behavior. He was feeling out of control and he was scolded for being out of control, so he broke into the locked cabinet where his father kept his medication (children are very resourceful), and took the remaining medication in the bottle. His father noticed him acting funny soon after, found the empty bottle, and rushed him to the hospital. Thankfully, the medication was the slow release kind, so he didn't receive the full affect at once, but it was a very scary situation for my coworker and her family. When asked later why he had taken the pills, the boy told his doctor that, "He was bad, and he wanted to be good, and the pills make him a good boy." That's not the kind of attitude I think we should be promoting in children, and apparently in this case the doctor agreed with me because he immediately stopped the prescription. Beyond that, I've heard of cases where children become shells of their former selves due to the medication they're taking, along with plenty of other horror stories. Besides, I can't stop coming back to how little is known about long term effects.
So my advice is to study the problem, talk to your child's doctor, and come up with a plan for dealing with ADHD that doesn't require medication. I'm twenty five years old and have been dealing with ADHD as long as I can remember. I have never taken medication to treat my symptoms, but I am able to lead what I consider a relatively productive and successful life. Let's focus on the best outcomes and stop wasting time and money on medicating our children just because dealing with them is difficult.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
8/9/15 - Why Libertarianism?
A few posts back I began talking about my journey into the world of libertarianism, and today I've decided to avoid all the negativity in the news and the entire circus act of the first Republican debate and tell you exactly why I came to be a libertarian, and why I stay.
I've already explained to you that I came to learn a lot of what I know about being a libertarian through Ayn Rand's books and philosophy of Objectivism. As I mention in my post about "Freedom and Liberty vs Death and Taxes," I never could quite reconcile Rand's philosophy with my upbringing. I agree with most of what Rand said, but the idea that religion is anathema, along with a few other issues, really kept me at a distance.
As I also mentioned, my Government teacher in 12th grade suggested I may be a Libertarian, so I began following the Libertarian Party on Twitter (when I actually started using Twitter, which was sometime in college). I saw that they posted a lot of articles from a magazine called Reason, so I began following a few different Reason accounts on Twitter as well. This is what ultimately led me down the rabbit hole.
Twitter caused my transformation into a full Libertarian. As I mentioned above, I didn't start using it in high school because I thought it was stupid, but I toyed around with it in college because most of the people I knew were on it. I ended up with an account that hardly follows anything but news sources, libertarian publications and accounts, and a few politicians. As time went on, Twitter would recommend that I follow new accounts, and at one point it was recommended that I follow the We Are Libertarians account. I had been following this account for quite some time with little to no interaction before my wife and I decided to drive cross country. The day we left, I had noticed a Tweet about a new Podcast episode, which I was previously unaware of, and decided to download it and listen to it in the car. I figured I had 38 hours to kill, so what was the harm? Besides, one of my friends had been suggesting that I start listening to podcasts on my commutes for a while now, so I was already predisposed to the idea.
Well, this is really the time when I fully began to come into my ideas. I started with an episode somewhere in the 90s of their catalog (though for the life of me now I can't remember which episode it was exactly. I think it had something to do with Ferguson as that was a hot topic at the time and it seemed like something I wanted to learn more about). Needless to say, I quickly became hooked. I went back through their entire catalog and listened to every single one of their episodes. I've also started listening to the other podcasts produced by We Are Libertarians, even though the main one is the only one that's still producing new content. Once I completed their catalog, I began branching out to other podcasts recommended by them and by the Stitcher app, which I had downloaded to listen to We Are Libertarians when I heard in one of their episodes that the podcast was available on that service.
At any rate, the last 6 months of my life have really been eye opening for me. I've been reading more news, challenging myself more with different ideas, and not just libertarian ones. I've come to feel so strongly about my libertarian ideas that 6 or so weeks ago I decided to start my own blog to expound them. I know that most of the time I've been fairly negative, which I would prefer to avoid but I have trouble with because of the current climate of our country. So much going on right now upsets me that I feel the need to speak out against it.
That leaves me with an attempt to explain to you, dear reader, why libertarianism?
As I heard the other day on the Tom Wood's Show episode 461 (I think), "If I really hated poor people, I would wish Socialism upon them." I told you last week that Bernie Sanders scares the crap out of me because he speaks so loudly for Socialist ideas, and people stand behind him. We already know that Communism doesn't work, and Socialism is honestly not hugely different from Communism on paper. In fact, we cannot deny that, since the American Revolution and the idea that government should get out of the way and let people live as they might, there has been a radical shift in the standard of living of people across the globe. As explained in the Forbes article I just linked to, the increased wages, life spans, and mobility of even the poorest people can all be credited to free market forces driving up the standard of living for everyone.
I think next time I'll touch on the ideas of income inequality and wage redistribution, which are key arguments that people like Bernie Sanders make to gain support. In the mean time, I want to end this as positively as possible.
I believe in Free Market Capitalism and the libertarian ideas that follow because I know that, if left alone, people generally can make good choices for themselves. Theses choices aggregate to the betterment of all people, especially the poorest of people. The best example of this would be the people living at or below the poverty level as designated by the government here in the US: they probably have at least one TV in their house/apartment, as well as cell phones, a building to live in, more than one set of clothing to wear, etc. Poor people in many other parts of the world live in tents or mud houses without electricity, plumbing, or many of the amenities that most of us take for granted. If we as a people want to continue increasing the standard of living of everyone, we need to continue pushing for free market ideals and get the government to stay out of our way.
I've already explained to you that I came to learn a lot of what I know about being a libertarian through Ayn Rand's books and philosophy of Objectivism. As I mention in my post about "Freedom and Liberty vs Death and Taxes," I never could quite reconcile Rand's philosophy with my upbringing. I agree with most of what Rand said, but the idea that religion is anathema, along with a few other issues, really kept me at a distance.
As I also mentioned, my Government teacher in 12th grade suggested I may be a Libertarian, so I began following the Libertarian Party on Twitter (when I actually started using Twitter, which was sometime in college). I saw that they posted a lot of articles from a magazine called Reason, so I began following a few different Reason accounts on Twitter as well. This is what ultimately led me down the rabbit hole.
Twitter caused my transformation into a full Libertarian. As I mentioned above, I didn't start using it in high school because I thought it was stupid, but I toyed around with it in college because most of the people I knew were on it. I ended up with an account that hardly follows anything but news sources, libertarian publications and accounts, and a few politicians. As time went on, Twitter would recommend that I follow new accounts, and at one point it was recommended that I follow the We Are Libertarians account. I had been following this account for quite some time with little to no interaction before my wife and I decided to drive cross country. The day we left, I had noticed a Tweet about a new Podcast episode, which I was previously unaware of, and decided to download it and listen to it in the car. I figured I had 38 hours to kill, so what was the harm? Besides, one of my friends had been suggesting that I start listening to podcasts on my commutes for a while now, so I was already predisposed to the idea.
Well, this is really the time when I fully began to come into my ideas. I started with an episode somewhere in the 90s of their catalog (though for the life of me now I can't remember which episode it was exactly. I think it had something to do with Ferguson as that was a hot topic at the time and it seemed like something I wanted to learn more about). Needless to say, I quickly became hooked. I went back through their entire catalog and listened to every single one of their episodes. I've also started listening to the other podcasts produced by We Are Libertarians, even though the main one is the only one that's still producing new content. Once I completed their catalog, I began branching out to other podcasts recommended by them and by the Stitcher app, which I had downloaded to listen to We Are Libertarians when I heard in one of their episodes that the podcast was available on that service.
At any rate, the last 6 months of my life have really been eye opening for me. I've been reading more news, challenging myself more with different ideas, and not just libertarian ones. I've come to feel so strongly about my libertarian ideas that 6 or so weeks ago I decided to start my own blog to expound them. I know that most of the time I've been fairly negative, which I would prefer to avoid but I have trouble with because of the current climate of our country. So much going on right now upsets me that I feel the need to speak out against it.
That leaves me with an attempt to explain to you, dear reader, why libertarianism?
As I heard the other day on the Tom Wood's Show episode 461 (I think), "If I really hated poor people, I would wish Socialism upon them." I told you last week that Bernie Sanders scares the crap out of me because he speaks so loudly for Socialist ideas, and people stand behind him. We already know that Communism doesn't work, and Socialism is honestly not hugely different from Communism on paper. In fact, we cannot deny that, since the American Revolution and the idea that government should get out of the way and let people live as they might, there has been a radical shift in the standard of living of people across the globe. As explained in the Forbes article I just linked to, the increased wages, life spans, and mobility of even the poorest people can all be credited to free market forces driving up the standard of living for everyone.
I think next time I'll touch on the ideas of income inequality and wage redistribution, which are key arguments that people like Bernie Sanders make to gain support. In the mean time, I want to end this as positively as possible.
I believe in Free Market Capitalism and the libertarian ideas that follow because I know that, if left alone, people generally can make good choices for themselves. Theses choices aggregate to the betterment of all people, especially the poorest of people. The best example of this would be the people living at or below the poverty level as designated by the government here in the US: they probably have at least one TV in their house/apartment, as well as cell phones, a building to live in, more than one set of clothing to wear, etc. Poor people in many other parts of the world live in tents or mud houses without electricity, plumbing, or many of the amenities that most of us take for granted. If we as a people want to continue increasing the standard of living of everyone, we need to continue pushing for free market ideals and get the government to stay out of our way.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
8/2/15 - Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is running for president under the Democrat Party. A lot of people have compared him to Rand Paul because, much like Paul and the Republican Party, Sanders only loosely fits into the Democrat Party. In fact, currently Sanders' roll as senator for Vermont is as an Independent. He identifies most with the socialist movement, which he has openly admitted to.
Bernie Sanders scares the crap out of me. Sure, many people on the political right want to dismiss him as a joke, and, sure, it can be easy to make fun of him. The fact of the matter is, though, Mr. Sanders is being taken seriously by a lot of people. While his gains in the polls may be slowing, he's still seeing backing by 17% of Democrats, and national polls put him ahead of Donald Trump. For these reasons and a few others, Mr. Sanders really, really scares me.
The other reason I am so afraid of Mr. Sanders, though, has nothing to do with whether he will be elected. Even though the odds are good that Sanders will not top Clinton for the Democratic nominee, what really bothers me are the sheer amount of people who parrot his ideas. I see them every single day on Facebook and Twitter. I argue with friends and family over the absolute garbage they're parroting from a man who obviously devoted his life to studying the ideas of Carl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, and not much time actually paying attention to reality.
I'd like to spend some time refuting some of those ideas that the Sanders' crowd spews onto social media on a regular basis without getting mired in an argument with someone and trying to make my point in 140 characters or less (which is to say, I'm going to be verbose).
I'll start with the one I had to argue with my own sister about: college funding. Mr. Sanders would have you believe that everyone needs to go to college and that the government should fund it all. He's even come up with a new tax in order to help fund this idea. The fact is, though, that the reason so many people are struggling with college debt is that so many people are going to college and getting government assistance. Actually, as more people get more money from the government to pay for college, costs keep going up, to the tune of sixty five cents for every dollar the government spends. So please, let's send everyone to school for free; it should work out for the middle class about as well as all that free healthcare.
That last point more than anything gets people in my age group really fired up because, well, if they're anything like me, they're drowning in student loan debt. I know that I will personally be paying off my student loans for the next roughly 15-20 years. unless something major changes in my life. Frankly, I don't use a cent of that education, but being able to tell people that I have a degree has opened certain doors for me. What I can't figure out is, why? My coworker, who was brought in from doing manual labor in our job shop at my behest, is just as good at what she does as I am at what I do, if not better. She has no college degree, and thus had to wait ten years longer than I did to get out of manual labor and into a position that is far less punishing and pays better. I could have just as easily taken the same path and be working in a job shop or retail job in Western PA to this day had it not been for the fact that some piece of paper that I paid a bunch of money to obtain was valued more than honest knowledge and hard work. My solution to the student debt problem is fairly simple: stop sending so many people to school and stop subsidizing it. The system worked just fine before the government got involved, and plenty of people without degrees were able to work their way into the middle class or beyond without a load of debt holding them back. If we stop funding the problem, schools will be forced to cut back on expenses, and there won't be the problem of people like me going into a business with a degree in advanced mathematics to write up purchase orders all day. Maybe then employers will start looking at actual qualifications again instead of putting out a line that says "Bachelor's Degree or better required."
The other thing that Mr. Sanders supports that I just can't get behind is the idea of expanding workers' benefits. Mr. Sanders is a staunch supporter of raising the minimum wage, which is an idea discussed by so many people and refuted so fully that I need only link to one or two and not attempt to expand on some very well written rhetoric. He supports many other expansions, though, including expansions to Social Security, and increased parental leave for working people.
I can say that, as someone who is only a few years removed from making minimum wage, and who has many friends who make minimum wage or just about minimum wage, I can understand the allure for people my age. When I was 16 the wage minimum in the United States was increased from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour. Anecdotal evidence, at the very least, would suggest this was not a benefit to me, though. I was making $5.50/hour before the wage was increased, but with the increase I did not increase to thirty five cents above the new minimum. Instead, I was only increased as much as legally necessary. The small restaurant I worked for immediately stopped hiring, squeezing as much work from as the least number of people as it possibly could. Finally, when that wasn't enough, I watched as, seemingly overnight, prices for our food increased by roughly 12%. I was only eligible for a certain discount on my meals, so eating at work suddenly became more expensive. At the same time, the cost of gasoline and other goods that I provided for myself and my family (assorted clothing and food items) showed increases as well. Sure, I was making roughly $50-60 more a week, but I was not really any better off financially. However, at that time, I wasn't drowning in student loan debt (see above), so I really didn't have that as a consideration. Many of the people posting on my various social network feeds are in a similar situation as I am, and a sudden raise would seemingly do wonders when it comes to attempting to pay off student loans and also attempt to find a way to have a life outside of one's parents' house. I only hope they'll reflect on my experiences and the two articles I linked to above and come to a difference conclusion.
Now, Social Security is not a huge concern to most people my age. We're (at least) 40 or so years removed from the idea of retirement, and most of us are more concerned with starting our lives than ending them. That doesn't change the fact that the program is already likely to become insolvent in twenty years or less. Increasing benefits will only increase the timetable for insolvency, leaving more people who are expecting and maybe relying on those benefits at a loss. For a great podcast on this topic, I suggest Free Thoughts most recent episode, "Going for Broke." The podcast discusses the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid problems in much greater depth than I'm going to here, but they conclude by saying that we either need to tax more (to the tune of 18-19% compared to the current 12.5%), or pay out less. Now, I could see Mr. Sanders advocating for higher taxes, but the fact is, he's asking us to pay out more in Socials Security benefits, not less.
Many of my friends are recently becoming married and/or having children. I myself was married just two short years ago and my wife and I have been trying to have a child of our own. The idea of having time to spend with my newborn child is something that I look at as a beautiful dream. I live in California now, so I could realistically take 6 weeks of "paid" time off (paid at at rate of 50-70% of my normal pay depending on which program I am going through) for raising my newborn child. Now, much like the people that Mr. Sanders discusses in his campaign adds, though, I could not afford to do this even though I am eligible for this leave. I'm going to go anecdotal again here, so bear with me. Last year when I began my new position here in California, I had requested the services of a young woman who had previously been working in our job shop (see above). She was, unfortunately, due to have her baby just after I arrived, and I was only able to work with her for a few days before she left on maternity leave. (I might add here that, if not for her pregnancy and being required light duty work, my supervisors may never have seen her promise in her current position and I would likely never have had the chance to request her aide.) Putting that aside, though, between two different programs she was able to take approximately 12 weeks off work to be with her newborn child. Now, on one level, good for her. I'm glad she was able to afford that and to spend that very important time with her child. In fact, one of the programs that allowed her to take half of that time at a reasonable rate of pay was a private program endorsed by our employer, and as such I wouldn't have had a major problem with it. If she had returned after 6 weeks, I would have complained, but I wouldn't have been quite so worn thin. As it stood, though, being without her services for 12 weeks left me pulling the weight for what was obviously two people, and much of my work was half-done or neglected entirely. By the time she returned I was completely beaten down and it took me months to recover fully. If my wife were to get pregnant and I took that kind of time off, I honestly believe that much of the progress my coworker and I have made in the past year in our fledgling department would be completely lost.
Companies that can afford to offer these benefits to their employees, do. Much like the company I work for, there are private insurance plans that allow for leaves up to six weeks at some percentage of your regular wage that you pay into (or in my company's case, is paid into for you) and you can use at a time of need. I've worked for smaller businesses, though, and if I had requested six weeks off, my leave would have so crippled the business that I would have been replaced as soon as reasonably possible. My problem comes with the idea that a government can not only force an employer to keep my position open to me even if my leaving for that time period would cripple the regular business of the company, but can also take money from my wages and my employers' earnings to pay for me to take this time off. We could continue down this path until families are afford over a year of parental leave like in Sweden. We could also pay 49-60% of our wages in taxes, but I think most Americans would oppose that idea. Which begs the question, why are the Swedes okay with such high taxes, and why can't we make that work here? The fact is, we could never make such high taxes work in the United States, as even people like Mr. Sanders can only advocate collecting more taxes from the "well-off" without committing political suicide.
Mr. Sanders, please go back to Vermont and stop influencing the very influential youth. If you don't, I fear that soon we'll end up like Greece.
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