On this holiday on the day after independence day, I am posting again a reflection on what to me is one of the most intriguing phrases in the US Declaration of Independence. It is contained in the famous sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

I have always found the insertion of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” as a fundamental right to be appealing. One does not expect to see such a quaint sentiment in a political document, and its inclusion sheds an interesting and positive light on the minds and aspirations of the people who created that document.

But the problem has always been with how happiness is attained. And in one serious respect, the suggestion that we should actively seek happiness, while laudable, may also be misguided. Happiness is not something to be pursued. People who pursue happiness as a goal are unlikely to find it. Happiness is what happens when you are pursuing other worthwhile goals. The philosopher Robert Ingersoll also valued happiness but had a better sense about what it would take to achieve it, saying “Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.”

Kurt Vonnegut in his last book A Man Without a Country suggests that the real problem is not that we are rarely happy but that we don’t realize when we are happy, and that we should get in the habit of noticing those moments and stop and savor them. He wrote:

I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any “Good Old Days,” there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, “Don’t look at me, I just got here.”

There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity — the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, “Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.”

When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, “You’re a man now.” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.

Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a man can’t be a man unless he’d gone to war.

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Good advice.

POST SCRIPT: More on flag fetishes

There were some interesting and informative comments on my post on flag fetishes.

One rule about the proper treatment of the US flag that is routinely violated is the use of the flag design on clothes. You can see this photo album of celebrities wearing the flag design on bikinis and underwear.

As we approach the independence day holiday with its orgy of patriotic fervor, I want to remark on one of the things that I find curious about America, and that is its flag fetish. People seem to treat the country’s flag with a level of veneration that I find somewhat bizarre. There even exist statutes that spell out in incredible detail how the flag should be treated such as how and when the flag should be raised and lowered, how it should be carried or folded, how old flags should be destroyed, and so on. All the rules of etiquette surrounding the flag are incredibly complex and June 14 has even been designated as Flag Day. Most people, I suspect, are not aware of many of these rules such as, for example, that the flag should never be used as wearing apparel, should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, or water, should never be carried flat or horizontally, and so on. Even the Bible does not get this level of special treatment.
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I recently read the book The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman. This is a story of Warsaw during the German occupation of World War II, told through the eyes of Antonina, the wife of the Jan Zabinski, the head of the Warsaw zoo. They both worked for the Polish underground and over several years sheltered in their villa over three hundred Jews as they tried to escape from the ghetto and get to freedom. The book is based on the diary of Antonina and recounts the tales of the refugees and of the animals under their care. It gives some first person insights into what life was like under Nazi occupation and during the Warsaw uprising.

One thing that I learned from the book that I did not know before was that “the Nazis were ardent animal lovers and environmentalists who promoted calisthenics and healthy living, regular trips into the countryside, and far-reaching animal rights policies as they rose to power. Goring took pride in sponsoring wildlife sanctuaries (“green lungs”) as both recreation and conservation areas, and carving out great highways flanked by scenic vistas.” (p. 86)

The well-known obsession of the Nazis about racial purity also extended to the animal kingdom and they had a particular interest in exotic species that generated some weird ideas, such as trying to bring back to life ‘pure-blooded’ species that were now extinct. In pursuit of this goal, they raided zoos in the countries they occupied, in search of animals that most closely resembled extinct animals so that they could do breeding experiments with animals that showed specific desirable traits. Lutz Heck, the director of the Berlin Zoo, was a key advocate of this idea.

Heck’s reasoning went like this: an animal inherits 50% of its genes from each parent, and even an extinct animal’s genes remain in the living gene pool, so if he concentrated the genes by breeding together animals that most resembled an extinct one, in time he would arrive at their purebred ancestor. The war gave him the excuse to loot east European zoos and wilds for the best specimens. (p. 80)

During the occupation, the people in Warsaw received rations of bread that were carefully calculated: Germans got 2,613 calories per day, Poles 669 calories per day, and Jews 184 calories per day (p. 104). No doubt German scientists had calculated precisely the minimum calories needed to maintain life. The Nazis also believed in the abominable practice of collective punishment, where in response to an act by a single individual, retribution was immediately meted out to the members of their family and even the extended community. “[I]n Poland harboring a Jew was punishable by immediate death to the rescuer and also to the rescuer’s family and neighbors, in a death-frenzy deemed “Collective responsibility”.” (p. 116)

In reading this I was struck by how Israel now practices collective punishment in the occupied territories by imposing a policy of restricting food supplies to the people of Gaza and also committing such acts as bulldozing the homes of the extended families of anyone suspected of any terrorist action.

In response to my series of posts denouncing the Israeli siege on Gaza and the attack on the relief flotilla, one commenter defended Israel’s actions and produced data suggesting that the physical health of Gazans was not that bad compared to people in some other developing countries. I did not respond to that comment, thinking that most readers here would recognize that you cannot justify a policy of deliberately restricting food reaching people merely by saying that other people are worse off. The point is that willfully brutalizing people, deliberately keeping them hungry and miserable, and denying them basic due process is wrong, whether or not the targets of such actions look emaciated as a result. Deliberately denying entire populations of people equal access to food and medicine and other staples of life based on their ethnicity, religion, or nationality is simply monstrous, whether done by Germans to Poles and Jews or by Israelis to Gazans, and also irrespective of whether any single groups receives minimal amounts.

Reflexive Israel supporters like Senator Chuck Schumer said, to enthusiastic applause from other Israel supporters: “And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.” He should be roundly condemned for these disgusting remarks. He seems to think that collectively punishing an entire population because he does not like who they elected is just fine as long as the people of Gaza have just enough food so as not to starve to death. And this man is a US senator. Why are there no widespread calls for him to resign?

You would think that any people who have suffered harsh injustices at the hands of others and know what it feels like would resolve to prevent such acts anywhere to anyone in the future. But the sad truth is that not only do they not oppose such actions, they even inflict them on others, perpetuating the cycle of injustice and oppression. We find on a collective scale the cycle we see in individuals, where the victims of abuse often become abusers themselves.

The US was born of anti-imperialist sentiment but that has not prevented it from becoming an imperialist power now, applying brute force on country after country. When I see the hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions that are being used against Hispanic people, I often wonder if this does not originate in fear. Some whites may think that when white people in America become a minority, as they are projected to do sometime in the not-too-distant future, they may be treated as badly as they treated minorities.

The cycle of abuse and injustice must be broken. The only way to do that is to break free of the sense that allegiance to our particular tribe (whether ethnic, religious, or nation) is more important than our allegiance to human rights and justice.

POST SCRIPT: Brilliant Marcus Brigstocke rant on the three Abrahamic faiths

It is hard to disagree with anything he says.

Every year when I do my taxes, I also do a small extra calculation to see what percent of our gross family income goes as taxes. It amazes me that the number comes out to less than one third. This low rate would make sense if I were poor. But I am not. I have a good job, as does my wife, and our combined income puts us well above the median income for families in the US, which in 2008 was around $52,000. In fact, as I have discussed previously, our whole concept of what constitutes the ‘middle class’ is hopelessly out of whack with how income is really distributed.

Bear in mind that in calculating my total tax liability I include federal, state, and local taxes, and also social security, Medicare, and property taxes. Furthermore, I do not use an accountant to find loopholes or use any fancy tax shelters and the like to reduce my liability, the way that very wealthy people do. Our finances are so straightforward that I have always done my own tax returns. Yet despite the lack of any determined effort to find ways to reduce taxes, I still pay what seems to me to be an absurdly low rate.

This is why I have so little patience with those people, often people like me or even better off, who use phony tax arguments to constantly whine about how the taxes in the US are too high. They are not. These people seem to start from the assumption that the justifiable amount of tax is zero and anything above that is an imposition. You hear these people saying things like every dollar they get in their paychecks is ‘their’ money and that anything taken out from it in taxes is tantamount to the government ‘stealing’ their hard earned income. Because these people have dominated the discussion, they have convinced everyone that all taxes are bad and any politician who raises them risks defeat.

But this argument is bogus. When I take on a job and sign a contract to have my employer pay me a certain amount of money, that is not a zero cost arrangement. For the company to exist to offer me the job and for me to be able to accept requires the existence of a huge infrastructure. Simply to exist, the company needs roads and bridges and lights and water and electricity and police and schools and fire protection and a whole range of other government services. For me to reach a stage where I am capable of doing the job requires those same services. All those things require money and just because I do not pay for them at the moment of use does not mean they cost nothing. The cost is hidden from us because they are paid using our taxes. These costs are factored in by employers when they negotiate the contract. So what is ‘taken out’ of our paychecks is what was ‘put in’ to cover all these costs. The taxes we pay is not ‘our’ money that is taken away from us, it is basically a bookkeeping device to show us how much money was essentially loaned to us to cover the cost of the very things that enable us to earn the money in the first place. If the costs of all those services were paid for elsewhere by the tooth fairy, our salaries would likely be correspondingly lower.

The fact that costs are factored into the process of determining salaries should be obvious. This is why a job in New York city will likely pay more than the identical job in a small rural town, because to live in a big city simply costs more, especially for housing. We could have a system where the city levies a ‘housing tax’ that reduces your take-home income by a certain amount and uses that money to subsidize your housing costs so that you recover the money at the back end. The net result in terms of take-home pay would be the same but people accept the former arrangement because they themselves are paying the extra costs for housing and it seems like they have a choice as to how they spend ‘their’ money. It does not come out of their paychecks and is thus not seen as a tax.

But certain public services cannot be paid for by individuals at the point of receiving the service. How would you pay for roads and streetlights and police? The debate about taxes should be not be the silly one about the amount of taxes we should pay, as if there is some magic number, but about what public services we want to have and at what level and the degree of progressivity of the tax code that we think is fair. The taxes we pay will naturally flow out of that discussion.

POST SCRIPT: Atheism-inspired rock song and video

The song Bombastic Mind by the band Mental Health has been chosen as one of 40 songs taking part in the Storm The Charts campaign in the UK. By purchasing it starting on Monday, June 27, you can help it reach #1.

It is actually a pretty good song and if the embedded video below does not work, you can see the video here.

The band’s website is here.

The last few decades have seen massive giveaways to the very rich in the US that has resulted in huge increases in the inequalities in income and wealth. See these charts for how bad the situation has become. Even in the last year when almost everyone was badly hit by the economic recession, the millionaires and billionaires saw their wealth jump by almost 20%.

But whenever there is any suggestion of narrowing the gaps, the arguments raised in opposition are fascinating. Suddenly, the very rich people start arguing that those going to be most affected by tax policies aimed at them are actually the poor people. It is quite amazing how there is always a surge in solicitousness for the welfare of the poor whenever the wallets of the rich are threatened.

For example, when suggestions are made that in order to close the budget deficit, the marginal tax rates on the highest income brackets should be raised, we are told that the people who would be hurt most by this move are the people at the low end of the income scale, whose income is in the lowest tax brackets. Why? Because supposedly if you increase taxes on the rich, they will have less money to invest in businesses and so businesses will have less capital and thus will not hire more people or will even close, throwing people out of work. These arguments are usually made in the form of these kinds of just-so stories, without supporting evidence.

When it comes to farm subsidies, they are always sold as essential in order to protect the ‘small family farmer’, a phrase that conjures up a mental image of dad on the tractor, mom baking bread, and the children before and after school cleaning out the barn and feeding the chickens on a small farm that the family has owned for generations, when in reality these subsidies are mostly giveaways to the same large agribusiness that are destroying the environment, keeping livestock in inhumane conditions, and actually driving genuine small family farms out of business.

As another example, the estate tax is imposed on people who die leaving enormous amounts of wealth to their heirs, people like Paris Hilton. The very wealthy, the only ones affected by this tax, have long tried to repeal it and again tried to make out that they were acting on behalf of poor people. They again invoked the small family farmer, who had struggled hard to make a living all his life and after his or her death, the so-called ‘death tax’ was going to be so onerous that the descendants would have to sell the farm to pay off the tax. This is totally bogus. No one could produce even a single example of such a case. To pay any estate tax, the estate would have to be worth more than $3.5 million.

Recently there have been moves to close a loophole that enables the managers of hedge funds and investors in derivatives, the people behind the recent financial collapse who made enormous profits (Making Big Bucks by Betting on Collapse by Carl Ginsburg in the May 16-30, 2010 issue of CounterPunch), to pay only 15% in taxes on this income instead of the top rate of 35% they would have to pay if those profits were treated like ordinary income. On NPR I heard one person opposing closing this loophole, saying that doing so would harm (surprise!) poor people. Why? Because hedge funds provide financing for (among other things) construction and thus taking some of their huge incomes as taxes would mean less money for building projects and thereby put construction workers out of work. So closing a loophole that prevents vastly wealthy people from paying their fair share in taxes is now argued to be a move aimed at construction workers. Again, no evidence is given to support this argument.

BP is playing the same game. In order to pay for the damage caused by the Gulf oil spill, they are being asked to not pay dividends to their shareholders. Suddenly we are hearing that the people who would be harmed most by not paying dividends would be the old pensioners in England who depend on the BP dividend to keep them from starvation and freezing in the cold English winters. In reality, the largest shareholders in BP are big institutions, with Wall Street banking giant JP Morgan Chase topping the list.

Just last night, the auto industry obtained an exemption from oversight by the new consumer watchdog contained in the financial industry regulations to protect consumers that are being sought in the wake of the financial meltdown. Their argument to for special consideration? That they represent the ‘neighborhood auto dealer’, that they are ‘Main Street and not Wall Street’ (to use a current populist cliché), when in reality more than 70% of the loans they offer are backed by the same big Wall Street firms.

The image that the very rich try to impose on the rest of us is that what they constantly seek to do with their money is find opportunities to invest in new business and create new jobs, when in reality what they do is use their money to make more money by financial manipulation. They don’t care even if, as it often does, their greed results in low wages or throws people out of work because of the pressure to squeeze more profits out of them. When they do spend their money, it is on luxurious living, so perhaps it results in more business for yacht makers and a few people in the service sector such as high-end restaurants, hotels, and places of entertainment.

What these examples illustrate is that the one thing that very rich people are good at is spinning stories that can make their naked greed and self-interest seem like civic mindedness.

POST SCRIPT: Bill Maher’s New Rules

The only thing that is working in favor of Obama and the Democrats, despite their terrible performance in office so far, is that the Republican Party has gone crazy. American conservatism has been hi-jacked by demagogic know-nothings who pander to and fuel the most paranoid and xenophobic fears of people. See this video by Bill Maher on the difference between British and American conservatives.

One of the things that seems obvious to me but most people seem unaware of is that the US is a country in deep decline and if no corrective action is taken soon it will end up just like many other failed empire in history, collapsing from within due to a combination of hubris, arrogance, and greed.
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