The Financial Distraction

Is the re-nomination of Ben Bernanke a way to simply reassure the financial markets; to basically avoid any noise by changing the Fed chief? Or, is it an exhibition of a strong commitment on President Obama’s behalf?

Simon Johnson responds on the Washington Post’s live chat :

The goal is definitely to reassure financial markets. The administration likes what Bernanke has done – so far quite complementary to their fiscal approach. Also, many of their nominations (for other jobs) have run into various kinds of difficulties in Congress; why take the risk of that, particularly as the healthcare debate is going to be messy.

Financial systems = number one prority for stability. Once the hysteria over the health care/deficit armageddon is over, talks will resume. One way to do it: a distraction that keeps people calm with the “same ol’ faces”. Ben Bernanke kept markets from complete meltdown by reacting with innovative and timely measures, his re-nomination could just that once more.

Robert Reich adds an important point about the latest numbers on debt:

A $1.6 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30 … is alarmingly … small …With unemployment and underemployment still rising, consumers still pulling away from the malls, business investment still in the basement, and exports still dead, … the deficit has to be larger in order to get people back to work.

Education for the Educated

I read Brad DeLong’s recent post on Education and Equal Opportunity and it drove me to the following idea. It is quite a stretch from what the initial post is about, but I felt compelled to write about it.

America is in the midst of rethinking and restructuring its health care system. It made me wonder about the role of education versus health care: both are, in the best of worlds, of public nature and crucial for the development of our society. However, one is periodically needed throughout one’s life, while the other, is concentrated at the beginning of one’s life and then put aside for the remainder.

I believe that if education would be treated the same way health care is (not the current health care system in the U.S., but more like what Canada has), our society would be much more productive. I would like to see education continue throughout one’s life. That could be made possible by establishing a more productive 4-day work week combined with a 1-day “higher-education” day. It could reduce initial training costs, facilitate the transition between college/universities and work, and it would allow more resources to be redirected towards education. It is clearly a fantasy, but I find it is interesting to see education for what it could be worth, knowledge.

Also, I am deeply puzzled by the indubitable need of resources in education, especially elementary schools. Higher taxes are an option, but an improbable one. Private schools are another, but, it clearly contradicts the idea of equal opportunities. That is why a workplace that would integrate education to the extent that they become completely dependant from one another would create benefits for both businesses (including government operated organisations) and education. It wouldn’t directly solve the lack of resources in elementary schools, but it could create a different culture of education spending, which, in turn, could generate (again, the fantasy part of my idea) a greater allocation of capital towards the most crucial intuition of one’s development, the first years of schooling.

To quote Prof. DeLong’s post, “I am still not sure whether my beliefs that in a good society higher education–indeed, all education–is free to the students and that elementary-school teaching is a very high-status profession [if I may add, should be restructured, so that better talent is attracted towards that much needed profession] reflect my own biases produced by my own position within this society or whether my beliefs are a rational assessment of reality, but it is worth thinking about…”

Understanding Brad DeLong Understanding Karl Marx

Brad Delong eloquently describes Karl Marx and his views. However, one of the economic points that Prof. Delong labeled as a “bad economic belief”, more specifically, Marx’s dislike of the society of the cash nexus was, in my opinion, misinterpreted.

Basically, I’ve always interpreted Marx’s view on the pursuit of wages as his main argument against alienation: society commits to one activity, one job, and therefore, a unilateral way of life, living for the one purpose of production (working for wages). Marx was trying to expose the fact that we could lead better lives by expressing ourselves in the way we behave “after the five o’clock whistle blows” in that, we could perform different jobs not geared towards the accumulation of wealth, but in avoidance of committing one’s life to the sole purpose of one task.
I saw Marx’s criticism on wages and labour as an alternate view on how work should define one’s life and, also, how it could help someone better define himself by using different labour activities.

Prof. DeLong interpreted it in a purely economic way – when he concludes by saying “that there is no reason why people cannot find jobs they like or insist on differentials that compensate them for jobs they don’t.”

The argument might have been misplaced; instead of an economic point of view, it should’ve been taken a philosophical idea. Marx laid out an important piece of our society when he opposed himself to the cash nexus, meaning that our lives should be fulfilled with more than “what we do for money”.