A Review of Recent News on the Web

Globalization, Protectionism, and the Global Poor

In an insightful article in Prospect Magazine, “Protecting the Global Poor,” Ha-Joon Chang argues that developed countries’ push toward global free trade may increase total economic development, but without necessarily doing a lot to alleviate poverty in developing countries. Chang gives a useful overview of the past few centuries’ economic history and the role of protectionism in the economic development of almost all of the currently developed countries’ histories. For anyone who’s read much economic history or world systems theory, this will be review, but a concise and nicely written review.

Importantly, Chang is not against globalization and increased trading among all countries. He recognizes that trade is critical for economic development and that economic development is necessary, if not sufficient, for the alleviation of poverty. It’s just that Chang also recognizes that unfettered free trade tends to disproportionately benefit more developed and wealthier nations. It’s no coincidence that the British were protectionists when the Dutch were the dominant mercantile power and became free-traders after becoming the dominant economic power themselves.

Chang also usefully points out a rhetorical strategy often employed by free-trade advocates, which is to conflate opposition to free trade in some form or another with opposition to trade generally. Chang writes:

“But there is a huge difference between saying that trade is essential for economic development and saying that free trade is best. It is this sleight of hand that free-trade economists have so effectively deployed against their opponents—if you are against free trade, they imply, you must be against trade itself, and so against economic progress.”

Mexican Cuisine

I’ve recently encountered two interesting articles on Mexican food. The first, “Mexico’s long chilli (sic) love affair,” reports on recent archaeological findings of systematic use of chiles in Mexican cooking at least 1500 years ago. As the article points out, the cultivation of chiles implies a well developed tradition of seasoning and cookery. (There is some research indicating possible antiseptic qualities to chiles, but as food, chiles are grown more as seasoning than for caloric sustenance.) The finding of use of both dried and fresh chiles indicates familiarity with the distinct quality of chiles in different preparations, and to me implies even longer familiarity and use of chiles than is directly indicated by the archaeological evidence.

The second article, “A Crash Course in Mexico’s Varied Cuisine,” simply presents a savory overview of “Mexico’s varied cuisine.” For those only passingly familiar with Mexican food, much less its regional diversity, there will probably be several surprises. For those who are familiar with Mexico’s regional cuisines, there probably won’t be any surprises – but if you’re thoroughly familiar with the range of regional cuisine diversity in Mexico or anywhere else, you probably like reading about food like I do.

Burying the N-Word

A week or so ago, the NAACP held a mock funeral to bury the “N-word.” In my local newspaper, The Pensacola News Journal, columnist Reginald Dogan presented his response to this event in “NAACP campaign to ‘bury’ N-word overlooks the bigger picture.”

Dogan writes:

“I wasn't as troubled by the mock funeral to bury a word as I was by NAACP officials saying ending the use of the N-word is one of their main goals.

“I cannot believe that of the myriad problems facing black people in America, the NAACP sees the N-word as the root of all troubles.”

See also Dogan’s follow-up column, “Racism is not the cause of all ills that plague black people.”

Florida and Climate Change

Also about a week ago, Florida’s governor made surprising announcements regarding plans for the state on energy and carbon emissions. An article in Grist magazine summarizes the announcement:

“His plans include adopting California's strict vehicle-emissions law, making Florida the first Southeast state to go that route; calling for a 40 percent reduction in statewide greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025; and requiring state agencies to prioritize fuel efficiency when buying or renting vehicles and to hold events in facilities certified as green by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Crist is also asking state utilities to produce 20 percent of their power from renewables, and creating a Florida Governor's Action Team on Energy and Climate Change.”

Optimal Foraging

An article on Science Daily, “Monkeys don’t go for easy pickings,” has the following to say:

“Animals’ natural foraging decisions give an insight into their cognitive abilities, and primates do not automatically choose the easy option. Instead, they appear to decide where to feed based on the quality of the resources available and the effect on their social group, rather than simply selecting the nearest food available.”

In other words, monkeys at least do not simply always forage the closest resources, but also forage partly on the basis of nutritional quality of food resources. That alone is easily understood in terms of something like optimal foraging theory. What I find particularly interesting is that monkeys seem to take into account non-nutritional qualities of food resources, specifically potential social effects (presumably things like the different effects likely to result from foraging fruits that are large but less common versus smaller but more common and dispersed), when selecting foraging strategies. This could also be understood in terms of optimal foraging – it’s just that what’s “optimal” becomes a bit more complex to include factors in addition to use of physical space and nutritional qualities of foods.

Racism and Free Speech: Part III

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s online Intelligence Report has a recent article on the topic of academic freedom and racism in the college classroom. The article can be found at this link: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=754

Academic freedom is critical for the advancement of knowledge and understanding. Scholars in the sciences, humanities, and arts have to know that their research, writing, and teaching pursuits will not be infringed because of political expediency, corporate interest, or the whim of public opinion.

There are limits to academic freedom. Many academic disciplines and programs have curriculum elements that are prescribed. For example, when I teach a course like “Introduction to Anthropology,” there are certain topics that I am expected to teach. Technically, this abridges my free action in that I have to teach these topics. This is not a bad thing, and my freedom to pursue my research and writing is not infringed upon. Nor for that matter is my freedom to have a perspective on the topics I teach in that course abridged – and I have any number of ways available to go about teaching about human evolution, language, human culture, etc.

Another limit to academic freedom in the classroom has to do with truth, or more precisely with untruth. There is a reasonable expectation on the part of students and the public (including other faculty) that a teaching professor is knowledgeable about the topic they are teaching and that they present the facts of the topic in an accurate manner.

Ideally, people should be knowledgeable about matters that they hold forth about. As the B-52s song “Mesopotamia” says, “Before I speak, I should read a book.” Still, in general people should be free to express whatever the like, even the nonsensical or offensive. And when people say offensive things, others should freely express their offense. As I wrote in my previous post, for example, I’m against both Holocaust Denial and Holocaust Denial laws.

The classroom is different though. Again, there’s a reasonable assumption that what a professor says is accurate and based on expertise. When a professor presents information which is manifestly untrue as if it were true, they’re not just expressing themselves. They’re actively causing harm to the education of their students. In that context, it’s entirely reasonable to restrict things like Holocaust Denial or the presentation of other racist untruth as established fact.

At the same time, I’m wary of formulating restrictions on academic freedom in general. There are too many people who’d like to influence academics’ freedom under the guise of protecting “truth” or “balance” or “academic freedom.” One example: a couple years ago, in the Florida state legislature a bill was introduced (thankfully, it didn’t pass) that would have required balance in the teaching of human origins, the clear and fairly explicit goal of which was to force professors to teach creationism alongside evolution in the guise of protecting students’ academic freedom and scientific debate about truth.

Taxes and an Upward Redistribution of Wealth

The Florida House of Representatives is debating a measure that would eliminate property taxes on homesteaded property, with the budgetary shortfalls that would result to be made up for by a 2.5% increase in the state’s sales tax. This is being presented as a move to relieve the economic burden of the state’s permanent resident homeowners. (It should be noted that such a radical move faces an uphill battle to adoption. It would first have to pass through the legislature, and then, since it involves a state constitutional matter of taxation, it would have to be approved by a 2/3 vote, which wouldn’t occur for at least a year and a half, according to current news reports.)

To judge from the comment boards to articles on the issue in the past two days’ (February 21 and 22) online editions of The Pensacola News Journal, this would be a move highly popular among many homeowners. This is understandable in the current context. For starters, the elimination of property taxes probably sounds on the surface like a good deal to any property owner. Further, many if not most Florida homeowners are currently economically burdened by increases (sometimes drastic) in home insurance costs as a result of the hurricane damages in the state during the past few years. Right now, any reduction of total house payments for any reason sounds like a good thing to many Floridians. On the News Journal’s comment boards, the vast majority of posters are clearly in favor of the proposed changes.

One rare dissenter, who posted that this move would place the tax burden on the poor, those who rent, and those with currently low property taxes, was promptly rebutted with the claim that he or she (comments are generally anonymous, without clear indication of gender) was using faulty logic, that clearly the burden for the shift to higher sales tax would be on those who spent the most – not the poor. In one sense, that thinking is correct – as with sales tax in general, those who spend the most pay the most sales tax, so the increase in sales tax revenue will come more from those who spend the most. But I think the problem with the dissenter’s post was not in its logic so much as in its rhetoric. If instead of asking who will bear the burden, we ask who will be burdened, or who will benefit and who will be disadvantaged relative to their current situation, we see a different perspective.

Regardless of whether one feels the proposed tax changes are fair or unfair, moral or immoral, on objective economic terms, the proposed changes in how taxation works will cause some people to pay more in total taxes than they do now and others to pay less than now.

Simply put, the poor, those who rent (whether poor or not), and/or those with currently low property taxes will generally end up paying more total taxes. If you don’t currently pay property tax, you can’t benefit from its elimination (unless one assumes that landlords would pass on their savings on property tax to renters, something I find hard to imagine happening en masse, and certainly not something to count on). If you don’t currently pay much property tax, you won’t benefit much by its elimination. And at the same time, the poor along with everyone else will end up paying more sales tax, with therefore the result being more total taxes for the poor, and in many cases, as a proportion of income, considerably more tax.

For most of us in the middle class economically, the proposed changes won’t amount to much one way or another. Some will gain a bit when the elimination of property tax is weighed against the increase in sales tax (by my own quick and dirty calculations, I figure to fall into this situation myself); some might lose a bit; most middle class homeowners probably don’t stand to gain or lose much by these changes (I again place myself here), though the subjective weight of the eliminated property tax bill might be heftier than the increased sales tax spread over many small purchases, i.e. it’s likely to feel like a better economic deal than it is for many.

Those who are wealthy will pay lower total taxes than now. They’ll pay more total sales tax on an individual basis than anyone else, just as now, but in proportion to income this will affect them less and will be outweighed in most cases by the elimination of large property tax bills.

In short, and again whether one finds it right or wrong, fair or unfair, what the Florida House’s proposed changes amount to is an upward redistribution of wealth where the poor will pay more taxes than they do now and the wealthy will pay fewer taxes than now.