The Associated Press and the end of Personal Responsibility (or Words Have Meaning 3)

The Associated Press, a large and influential news organization, recently published a change to their style guidelines that eliminates the use of the term ‘illegal’ to describe immigrants who did not enter the country legally.  The guidance went on to say that only actions should be described as illegal, but not people.  This policy has implications that go well beyond the immigration debate and are both profound and disturbing.

In previous posts on Words Have Meaning (Part 1 and Part 2), we talked about how the words we choose convey meaning, whether that meaning was intended or not.  The decision to stop using the term ‘illegal’ to describe people was meant to avoid stigmatizing a person and instead use the term to describe activity, according to the AP.  Critics of the move say that it was done intentionally to reduce the negative connotation of illegal immigration, thus making it easier for politicians to grant amnesty or provide other benefits to people who entered the country illegally.  But, from a logical perspective, this decision goes well beyond immigration and further erodes the concept of personal responsibility.

We are a country of tremendous personal freedoms, but with that freedom also comes personal responsibility.  If we are to survive and thrive as a nation, we must hold people accountable for their actions.  Look at how we already do that now.  If a person graduates medical school and gets the proper certifications, we call them a Doctor.  Someone who wins an election to the Senate is a Senator.  An athlete that wins the Superbowl is a Superbowl champion.  Someone who is convicted of a felony is a Felon.  These examples could go on, but the point is that we identify people with what they do and how they behave.   In a society that does not believe that people were born into a caste or a certain role and instead have the freedom to pursue their happiness, our actions and behavior define us to a large degree.

To separate a person’s behavior with how we view that individual is to take away the idea of personal responsibility.  If we can only use negative terms to describe behavior it is as if that behavior occurred on its own, without someone making a decision to behave that way.  Imagine if we said that a robbery was committed but the person who committed it was not a thief?  Instead, they are an ‘undocumented owner of goods’.  Or what if a person who could not control a drug habit was not a drug addict? What if a drunk driver was really just a ‘non-sober vehicle operator’.  A murderer could just be an ‘unlicensed end-of-life caregiver’.  Would anyone ever be responsible for the negative acts they committed or would all those bad things just occur without anyone causing them?

If the AP made the decision to strike the term ‘illegal immigrant’ for a short-term political goal, then their decision is shallow and partisan.  However, the unintended consequence of that decision is the further slide into a culture where no one is held responsible or takes responsibility for their bad actions.

Comparison of Quantitative Easing and S&P

What Does Cyprus Mean for Us?

The recent events in Cyprus have many in our country debating whether Cyprus and the larger financial problems mean anything for the U.S.  There are two questions that people ask most: 

1.  Will the events in Cyprus affect us?

2.  Can we become like Cyprus if our debt becomes too large?

First, it is important to quickly cover some background on Cyprus and the larger problems in several European countries like Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS).  The bottom line is that all of these countries face growing turmoil due to large debt compared to their GDP.  Their ability to pay back their debt is in serious doubt so other countries are unwilling to loan them more money unless they take steps to curtail their deficits through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, typically referred to as austerity measures.  For more background on austerity, I refer back to an older post on the topic:  The Myths of Austerity.  The biggest difference between a country like Cyprus and the U.S., and this is important, is that Cyprus does not have a sovereign currency.  They belong to the Eurozone and use the Euro as their currency.  That means they cannot simply print more money to pay off their debt.  Cyprus made headlines recently because of the seizure of portions of private bank accounts to help pay off their debt.

So to answer the first question, can Cyprus affect the U.S, the answer is no in the short term but possibly in the long term.  Cyprus is a tiny country so their economic problems should not directly affect the U.S.  However, the problems in Cyprus and the reaction to the problem of seizing people’s private funds could cause more widespread concern in the PIIGS countries.  If people in those countries believe that their bank accounts could be targeted as well, they could cause a run on the banks and create greater economic problems throughout Europe.  The other short term problem that could happen is if countries throughout Europe decide that the Euro is no longer a viable currency and a nation like Germany, tired of being forced to bail out their Mediterranean neighbors, decides to dissolve the Euro experiment.  Although some feel this is a better option in the long term, the short term chaos would cause problems here in the U.S. since Europe is our largest trading partner.

Now for the second question, can something like Cyprus happen here, the short answer is no but the larger answer is a little less definite.  Remember when I said that we have a sovereign currency.  So technically we can always pay off debt by printing more money.  The problem becomes when we accumulate too much debt and print too much money.  Experts disagree on when that point occurs, but if more currency is put into circulation, eventually the value of all of the currency decreases.  That is inflation.  Now creditors will want more return for their investment because each dollar they receive back is worth less, so the price of borrowing goes up.  Now some argue that despite all the money that the Fed has printed over the last few years that inflation is still low.  They miss the point in two areas.  One, the official inflation rate or Consumer Price Index (CPI) is low because it includes housing rental prices, which have been low due to the crash of the housing market.  With a lot of empty houses due to foreclosure and people underwater and unable to sell their homes, rental prices dropped.  But, think about the things you buy every day like gas and food and you get a sense of real inflation.  Also, higher unemployment rates have kept inflation low because fewer people have money to spend.  However, no one can argue that an almost limitless printing of money will eventually cause inflation.  Without a gold standard to back up our money, the currency gets its value from the full faith and credit of the government.  In other words, creditors have to believe the money has value.  If there is so much of it in circulation, the dollar will lose value, making everything we buy more expensive.

So Cyprus and the events in other European countries are important to watch for a couple of reasons.  One, a larger economic catastrophe in Europe will affect our economy.  Two, the problems countries like Cyprus and Greece have with their debt is actually a better comparison to the issues our states and cities will face due to debt or bankruptcy.  The national debt of Cyprus is about $19 billion.  The debt of California is about 20 times that and like Cyprus, California does not have a sovereign currency.

Obesity and Medical Costs

A discussion on another site came up recently about healthcare costs so I decided to post this picture on this site.  It is a comparison of obesity rates on the left and medicare costs per person on the right.  In both charts, darker is higher.  While correlation does not always mean cause and effect, the correlation is pretty clear.

Vox Logicae

Pork For Our Time

 In 1938, British Prime Minister  Neville Chamberlain met personally with Adolf Hitler to work out a deal to prevent conflict in Europe.  He basically agreed to let Germany take part of Czechoslovakia without repercussions.  When Chamberlain returned from Germany after making a deal with the devil, he told the British people that they would see “Peace for our time”.    Chamberlain’s name has become synonymous with the term appeasement and people have used his actions to show that you cannot negotiate with a madman.  If you examine his words in more detail though, it is even more disturbing.  When Chamberlain said “for our time” he had to know that Adolf Hitler did not have peaceful intentions and eventually there would be war.  He just didn’t want to deal with it, despite the fact that Germany was only growing more dangerous every day.  In other words, as long as we have peace now, who cares what happens later.

Unfortunately, we see this same sentiment today when it comes to dealing with our nation’s debt.  Experts argue about when the debt will become a crisis, but few will dispute that excessive debt hurts our country.  We also know that, if nothing changes, the debt will only get worse.  And nothing is really being done about it.  Despite the fact that Rep. Ryan’s budget is already under attack by some, it only begins to address the debt ten years from now.  The budget submitted by Sen. Murray never balances the budget so will never address debt.  

So where does the problem lie?  The majority of Americans feel that the government should live within its means.  However, mention reduced spending on any program, and some group will protest.  To make things worse, few politicians have the courage to propose reduced spending to any specific program because of the repercussions.  In some ways, that makes our behavior even more cowardly than Neville Chamberlain’s.  At least his decision to sacrifice part of Czechoslovakia was based on life and death decisions, war and peace.  The decisions our elected leaders take now to guarantee ‘Pork for Our Time’ and push this problem off to future generations is strictly based on political gain.  And the American people are not facing the threat of another World War like the British were in 1938.  Will we be willing to sacrifice anything to avoid passing the burden of debt to future generations or will we only be concerned with ‘our time’?

Why Worry about the Debt?

Austerity the Boogeyman

Anyone who is using the term ‘austerity’ to describe the proposed budgets in Congress is irresponsible and dangerous, and here is why.  A debt that is already large and continuing to get larger is not good for this country.  I’ve already written about how non-discretionary spending will become an increasingly larger portion of our spending in Budget, how the debt hurts our foreign policy in It’s the Debt Stupid, how solving the debt problem will become more and more difficult over time in The Biggest Loser, and how nothing in the Ryan or Murray budgets comes close to being described as ‘austerity’ in Myths of Austerity so I don’t want to revisit those ideas in this post.  

So why is using the word austerity irresponsible and dangerous?  First, it is simply not accurate.  Neither budget cuts spending.  They reduce the rate of growth of spending.  If an alcoholic drinks 8 beers every night, plans on drinking 10 tomorrow but only drinks 9 when tomorrow comes, did he cut down on drinking?

But more importantly, the word austerity scares people and makes them think that we are about to take draconian measures.  People equate austerity with chaos and rioting in the street so using the word makes it less likely that people will be willing to consider any deficit reduction measures.  

Here’s the problem.  Imagine the debt is a cavity on your tooth.  In Ryan’s plan the cavity keeps getting worse for 10 years and then stabilizes.  In Murray’s plan the cavity will keep getting worse forever.  Either way, the cavity is continuing to decay for a while.  Now imagine your friend or a loved one tries to scare you about seeing a dentist to get a filling.  Being scared, you do nothing until eventually the tooth gets so bad you need a root canal or get the tooth pulled completely.  By scaring you about handling the problem at an earlier stage, the problem got worse and required more drastic measures.  The same analogy from the Biggest Loser post could be used here as well.  Imagine that you have an overweight friend.  Their excess weight is causing health problems but they just continue to put on more weight.  Would you scare them by talking about how horrible exercise is or how brutal eating right is going to be, or would you explain to them the health risks of obesity and look for sensible ways to address the problem?  If you scare them now into doing nothing, it will only get worse.

Scaring people with the word ‘austerity’ will have the same effect on doing something about the deficit and debt.  Make people aware of the facts and let them make a decision on deficit reduction, but don’t use the boogeyman of austerity to scare people away from the facts.  When you see the word ‘austerity’ trying to describe any attempt to reduce the deficit, call the writer out as irresponsible and false.  I think the American people know that we can not continue to add to our debt year after year with no plan in sight to reverse that trend.