Fixing Structural Inequality

 With the rekindling of Black Lives Matter, there has been a flurry of articles about structural inequality in the USA. Many quote the statistic of median family wealth for white and black families, with whites up in six figures and blacks essentially at zero. I am also struck by the extent of the historical abuses, not just the well-known Jim Crow ones but more recent restrictions of housing zones and job biases.

 

The debate is eye opening and makes me weep. As a European, I am also reminded of discrimination in my own country, obvious while I was a child but still in existence in much of society. It is past time to fix this.

 

The Economist occasionally tries to defend the policies of the last forty years by demonstrating how inequality in developed countries has been broadly static, as measured by the share of income and wealth of the top 1% or 5%. This may be true, but it is far from acceptable. From before the days of Downton Abbey, inequality of opportunity has been a scourge, and the period from 1945-80 was exceptional in enacting policies to reduce it. The fact that inequality has been static since then shows how policy has been ineffective; anything less than a gradual decline is a calumny.

 

Inequality is often portrayed as a race issue, but I think this is another simplification. It is worse than that. I have not read Casteby Isobel Wilkerson, but her basic premise is that societies remain stratified, with many layers. Yes, most African-Americans are near the bottom, but there are other factors in play, and focusing solely on race may lead to suboptimal remedies.

 

Focus on race also gives an uncomfortable argument to racists. Most Asian Americans and Jews also arrived in America with nothing and were discriminated against, yet these groups have largely escaped poverty. It is a good question as to why, because putting similar conditions in place for groups that have not escaped might be good policy, but the question can drift into racist territory. Thinking of castes can help.

 

There is no doubt that the Trump administration has damaged the cause of equality like few before it, and they fully deserve their comeuppance from the pandemic and race protests, hopefully throwing them out of office soon. But there is a lot of shoddy journalism on this topic like so many others.

 

It is shoddy to equate the equality issue with race. It is shoddy to define equality of outcome as a goal, when equality of opportunity should be the true measure. And many are shoddy in analyzing which neo-liberal nationalistic policies are the worst culprits.

 

A great example was in Time a couple of weeks ago. They tried to come up with a list of the administration’s ten most damaging actions regarding (poorly defined) equality. I can only assume this was delegated to some kids on a Friday afternoon. The list was a perfect example of how The Economist is superior when it comes to rigorous numerical analysis. The list included a decision to outlaw Trans people from the military, but failed to mention the 2018 tax package. The former was indeed a terrible choice, but the impact on equality is surely minimal given the number of people affected. The latter affected everybody, significantly and in a lasting way.

 

So I have tried to make my own list. Arguably I have cheated in that I have included inactions as well as actions. I have also not made big efforts to quantify impacts. Nonetheless, an incoming administration might use the list when defining its policies to restore the necessary trend towards equality of opportunity.

 

The tax package must be number one. Reagan (and Thatcher) rebalanced fiscal policy away from equality. At least in Europe future governments have been more balanced, but in the US Bush 43 added fuel to the fire and Trump’s only legislative accomplishment set things ablaze further. The impact has been to allow the already wealthy to take rent from the economy, embedded inequality, removing resources for a generation from other reforms and even stifling consumption and growth.

 

My number two is also a tax matter, but more specific. The main reason that wealth inequality persists across generations is the effective absence of an estate tax. Bush/Cheney did an impressive job of gutting estate taxes in the US, by reframing them as death taxes. It is true, that is what they are, but surely kids of wealthy people have enough advantages already without allowing them to simply inherit the wealth of their parents. I think I would set estate taxes for inheritances above $1 million at close to 100%, and eliminate foundations and other loopholes too. Use it or lose it.

 

My third item is also an omission and relates to gun control. Every so often an incident, usually a school shooting, offers an opportunity to enact gun reforms, not to eliminate hunting rifles, but to strengthen background checks, eliminate weapons of war and enact an effective register. Trump missed his chance after Parkland, because many of his party remain wedded to the NRA. And we always equate this is issue with white school kids, while the overwhelming majority of victims are from poor black neighbourhoods. Tackling gangs without tackling guns cannot be effective, and reforming the police would be much easier if the streets were not full of guns. It is easier not to be trigger-happy and to avoid unconscious racist profiling if you are not in fear for your life.

 

None of these three items made the list in Time. Criminal justice did, and ironically it is the area of Trump’s greatest achievement, the bill that started to correct the ridiculous levels of incarceration in the US. How can a black community hope to create any wealth while so much of its male population is behind bars?

 

Next on my list comes housing, and once again it is a sin of omission. Eviction Remains one of my favourite books, and 2021 will see a terrible tide of evictions across the US as temporary programs taper off while unemployment continues to rage. Housing support is criminally underfunded by congress while city rents continue to skyrocket and little new public housing is constructed. Minimum wages are creeping up in some cities but are full of loopholes, most notably for tipped workers, whose minimum wage in some states remains around $2 per hour. It is hard indeed to escape poverty in these conditions. More subtly, I believe co-ops are a source of continuing racial bias.

 

There are many candidates to round out the list. Perhaps next would come the relentless prioritisation of capital over labour. Consumer rights have been gutted, and the stock market used as an awful proxy for growth. The stock market makes people with wealth wealthier, at the expense of those without. It should not grow faster than median earnings, but that has almost been a policy of the administration. Listen also to McConnell: his top priority in the next relief package is liability protection for businesses. It is a valid item, but it betrays his priorities – the donors and lobbyists he meets every day, rather than the struggling people he doesn’t.

 

The list must include failure to rebalance school finance per pupil so that poorer areas do not lose out compared to richer ones. The lack of any infrastructure investment harms the poor most, especially public transit and Internet availability.  We must also include allowing the number of people without health insurance to grow and the attempt to link Medicaid with employment.

 

Packing the Supreme court, bloating the military (as opposed to social programs), protecting clannish religions, the trade disaster (harming poorer consumers), linking immigration entitlement to wealth and the general incompetence of the virus response could all the added to the list. And then there is the rhetoric, stoking caste supremacy daily.

 

The list is long and reform will take many generations. But crafting good policy is not helped by poor framing of the issue, misstating the goal or woefully lazy lists. 

Goals for a Decade

I am now sixty. I don’t feel any different and I don’t know that the change has many practical ramifications, though I am looking forward to skipping the line at Costco once out of quarantine.

For the past few weeks I have pondering a set of goals for the next decade. The set for my fifties proved surprisingly robust and helpful despite being formed in a time of turmoil. Now I have a more stable life and the process should be easier.

We are trying to do this as a couple, through some form of iteration. We can both produce priorities independently then work together to address any contradictions and trade offs. It feels like a constructive and productive way to talk through the possible dilemmas we will face in the next few years, and to make explicit all those assumptions that have been hidden before.

When I defined goals ten years ago, I wrote down that they were for two decades, which feels rather heroic and unnecessary now I look back. It would be quite a feat to produce goals that could remain relevant for as long as ten years, but twenty seems too far. Perhaps it was an effort to recognize that health is likely to become an increasing constraint from now on. One context of any goal for my sixties must be to maximize the chances of being able to enjoy life in my seventies. Fate will play its part, but good choices now improve the odds, to a greater extent than would have been the case earlier in life.

Thoughts about health give another clue. It is possible to come up with a set of goals that are generic and not very helpful. We call all subscribe to peace, joy, health and love, especially as we reach the years when such things are far from guaranteed. But what actions would such goals lead to, beyond taking no risks? The aim of any set of goals is to produce a life of fulfillment and one with all the other generics. The trick is to find some priorities that make them more likely to come about. A lot of corporate mission statements make the same mistake, becoming so generic that any company on earth could subscribe to it.

The other pitfall is to be too specific. Some people of my age go for bucket lists, but I don’t like the idea. The list can become too much like a checklist, and tends to be too dominated by destinations and experiences. There is a risk of such lists missing the point, and leading to lives without peace but lots of air miles to take to the early grave.

For my sixties, I’ve come up with four themes, which I hope can lead to the generic outcomes by offering clear priorities. The first is kindness. The coronavirus has allowed us all to take stock of what we miss most, and in my case volunteering at our old folks’ home comes near the top of the list. Visits to the home always leave me in a good mood that lasts several hours, and the reason is kindness. The home is a place of kindness, full of kind people, and where I can learn to be more kind myself.

I would like to seek out places and people of kindness, to take opportunities to be kind and to become kinder. The home is a good example, but the priority can also guide other activities and indicate what to avoid, for example the Trump twitter feed. I have some choirs that are kinder than others. I can practice being kinder to my family, and try to spend more time with its kindest members. If I am offered any work, paid or unpaid, I can check in advance how good a fit there is with this theme.

The second theme is enlightenment. I enjoy learning things, mastering some skill or finding an explanation for some event or behaviour. It also gives me pleasure to offer enlightenment to others. There is room in my life for projects, and I need a means for selecting good ones and some trigger to actually embark. Languages are a good option, so is history, especially history of music. I have recently tried writing something longer than a blog, and see this decade involving more reading than the last. I love coaching others when the opportunity arises. I love to travel, but at a slow pace so the travelling itself does not become too stressful. This could be a decade of enlightenment.

Early music is the third theme, and what I missing the most during the pandemic. The older I get, the fussier I become in terms of my tastes. I have been so lucky recently with the chance to sing the very best early music in quality groups and beautiful locations. This might be my last decade with a serviceable voice, so I want to use it while I have the chance. Studying early music is a promising avenue too.

Finally I envisage a bias towards simplification. A highlight of recent weeks in Portugal was an absence of clutter and an abundance of time. I have also recently made a big effort to unsubscribe from mailing lists and love my emptier inbox that has resulted. A life with fewer accounts, cards, passwords and files feels like a life with more space for enjoyment. It would also be good to reduce legal and financial ambiguity. Simplification can also help with the projects and the travel plans. Complex itineraries, short layovers and one night hotel stays feel like good things to target for reduction.

In many ways the themes work together, but there are some potential conflicts. A kind, simple life would probably spend most of its days in Portugal, but then where is the early music? The best enlightenment projects will involve people and places, and that won’t always be simple. Performing quality early music usually involves regular commitments, which might not always be simple.

There will also need to be trade offs with my wife and my family. Perhaps this decade will bring the gift of grandchildren, and spending kind time enlightening them and being enlightened by them feels appealing, but, with kids on three continents, hardly simple.

I believe that the trade offs are part of the point of the goals. If achieving the goals did not involve trade offs, then the goals themselves are probably too trite, and their value as a trigger for personal thought and for conversations with family members would be limited.

Are these goals SMART? They are not at all, really. But I don’t think that diminishes them. Team goals and short-term goals need to be SMART, because clarity of expectation and focused action are critical. But I have a full decade for these goals, and, while I will work with others, the key actions are only mine. At the end of the decade, it will be easy enough to assess how well I have achieved the goals.

The only theme where some discipline could help is the one of enlightened projects. It is too easy to be lazy and to become fixed in habits and to procrastinate. I need to make sure that I start enough projects – if they have been well chosen, it will be no problem to maintain momentum after that. Perhaps there is a role here for some resolutions each New Year.

I recommend the process of setting longer-term life goals, and not just for those of us nearer the back end of our working lives. And I’m happy that I had the idea of looking for a limited number of themes as a way to express the goals. No doubt the decade will throw up plenty of surprises, but I feel more ready than I did a few weeks ago.             

The Glory of Goals

I have always found setting goals useful. This weekend I will turn sixty and I am taking the chance to spend time defining goals for my next decade. I am finding it a valuable process.

There are some pitfalls with goals. One is that setting goals can itself become a form of procrastination, like all lists. Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian Weeklyfrequently advises us to be careful of tools that can be used that make us feel productive but defer action. The daily checklist is the most obvious example. Many of us can comfortably make it to the afternoon without actually achieving anything useful, simply by wasting time making lists. Lists are not achievements. They are meant to help us prioritise and define actions, but they achieve nothing unless we actually do the actions.

That is another pitfall of goals, especially in politics. Often a platform is a set of goals, usually the sort of universal goals that nobody could object to, but with no definable policies to achieve the goals. Left-wingers want to reduce inequality, but struggle to define meaningful policies that would retain support during implementation.

Even so, such goals are better than nothing, which is just as well because often they are all we are given to help us decide how to vote. Trump was always devoid of policies and even the goals were vague, but we should not be surprised that many actions have been anti-immigrant and pro-business.

Elisabeth Warren shows how doing goals the right way can work against getting elected. She had clear goals and set down policies that demonstrably would have worked towards achieving them. Sadly, every policy attracted the ire of some interest group and set her up as a target and ultimately doomed her campaign. A robust debate process and an intelligent media would help, but while we lack those Bidenesque vagueness may be smart. But in business we don’t have to be so naïve. If a new CEO, or even a new boss, arrives with a set of goals that sound convincing, celebrate their courage but then stay cynical until you see some policies and plans to back them up.

There is a lot of literature about how goals should be SMART, that is specific, measurable and so on, but in my experience lack of SMARTness is not the major problem. The letter of SMART that is most important for me is the last one, T for timed.

Often people set goals because they are told to, with a time duration set by somebody else. Budgets and staff reports are annual and require input according to deadlines. Again, these goals are better than nothing, but thinking about time horizons can lead to more useful goals.

For many projects, I recommend as many as three time horizons, each always with a current set of goals. The longest horizon is for the end of the project or a major milestone. The shortest is not much more than an action list. The middle is the most useful and bridges the other two. How could we describe a good place to be in six months if we complete the next twenty action lists? What description in six months time would place us best on the journey towards the project goals?

It is also important to review goals at the most useful frequency. For the short term, I might like a horizon of two weeks but a review each week, so there is a rolling update of actions and achievements. The long-term goals should be reviewed too, perhaps annually, to take account of new realities. The middle set can be a fantastic agenda for a quarterly team meeting. What did we achieve? What can we learn? Where do we stand against the bigger picture? Where do we go from here? What will have to be different to succeed?

The other parts of SMART can be flexible depending on time horizon too, and not all goals need to be as SMART as each other. The short-term list usually needs tight definition and clear accountabilities, but the middle list can mix this sort of goal with more subjective items, for example relating to a culture or a reputation with key stakeholders. The long-term ones can be similarly mixed, some defined by project boundaries and others perhaps more about ways of working or setting up for the future.

I remember exactly when I composed my goals for my fifties. I did it while away from the office and over a relaxing week, but otherwise the occasion was not conducive at all. I’d recently made a decision to quit work without really thinking it through, and I was hurtling into a marriage crisis having just escaped a long period of denial. Still, crafting the goals helped find some perspective amidst turmoil.

Given that the decade encompassed a change of career, life partner and continent, the goals held up remarkably well. Here is what I set down eleven years ago:

·     Enjoy company (real or virtual), offering intelligence, depth, vitality, and challenge of assumptions.

·     Coach interesting young people to grow with confidence. Start this with my daughter, grandchildren, or others.

·     Achieve deep relaxation, from sunshine, no need for wearing many layers, time, the lack of everyday stress, fresh air. Maintain robust fitness of the mind and body.

·     Follow my musical passion – singing, choir directing, listening, understanding, appreciating, performing, experiencing.

·     Take cultural, spiritual, and educational journeys. Find wonder from history, nature, beauty, magnificence, literature, architecture, sport, films, philosophy, food and drink, and human radiance.

I still like the list. It is manifestly not SMART, and I think it is better for it. There are few obvious actions indicated, but they give guidance and have enough depth to remain valid for an extended period. I have referred to them explicitly a few times during the decade, and many other times sub-consciously, most especially when I first defined them. It would not have been a sin to change some of them every so often, but that has not proven necessary.

It is also quite easy to assess now how successful I’ve been. The first one was always going to be a challenge without a regular office environment, but through reading and blogging and seeking out interesting people I think I have managed to grow. The other four have formed a sort of background agenda for the choices I have made over the decade, even though compromises have been inevitable and events have sometimes conspired in other directions. Deep relaxation is not simple in New York City!

If I give myself a star rating for each goal, I think I have done the least well at the last one. I can be rather lazy, and I’ll certainly embrace journeys when they are forced or appear in front of me, but I think I could do more to proactively seek them out. That is a key learning for the list I have been marinating for my sixties. How can I be a more proactive explorer?

Apart from the ever-present stress of the pandemic, the last weeks have been perfect for goal setting, so I have high expectations for my new list. I am also take the chance to merge my own list with that of my wife, and have found it an excellent method for taking some perspective on what is important for each of us and where we can help or team up and where we must compromise. God willing by the time I write my next blog I’ll have started a new decade and will be back in New York, and hopefully will have a new set of goals to guide me. 

Policing the Police

Although the trigger was tragic, it is great that debate has been rekindled in the US about police brutality and the wider issue of race discrimination. Sadly, I can see it becoming rather like the related question of gun control, which flares up every time there is a tragedy and then goes quiet again without any meaningful change.

I have experienced policing in many countries, though not its toughest functions and usually as one of the privileged. Still, I have seen enough differences and practices to have some opinions about how policing might be reformed.

First, I find it problematic that the issues of police reform and race reform become confused, because potentially it can harm both worthy causes. Racism is evil and prevalent and needs to be addressed, though eventually time will provide most of the cure. Different outcomes for races are damaging and are largely due to historical racism, but the best responses are about equalizing the playing field of opportunity now, or even slanting it in favour of the historically oppressed, rather than debates about history.

There is racism within police forces and it cannot be tolerated, but I suspect it is not the prime cause of different racial outcomes at the hands of the police. The reality is more about poverty and disadvantage. It is correct for police to focus on places of disadvantage where most crime occurs: indeed intelligent targeted policing has a very good track record at reducing crime and even improving neighbourhoods. The fact in the US is that these neighbourhoods happen to be overwhelmingly black. If the police were humane and development focused, the extra attention of police on minorities would actually be good, because the police can play a role in helping communities develop. So it is damaging to consider differential statistics about arrests as about racism, because they are not, at least not primarily.

The police in any society perform a necessary function, or protecting the population from crime. With no police there would be more crime, which would affect disadvantaged areas the most and make inequality worse, not better. We should also not forget the initial success of the Guiliani zero tolerance policy. If crime is uncontrolled, aggressive policing can be effective. Even so, the police in most countries could be improved.

As much as possible, the police should be treated like any other business or public utility. It needs a purpose, goals and KPI’s and regulation, and from that flows recruitment and other policies and a performance appraisal system.

In most cases it is the performance appraisal system which is most flawed. Who polices the police? The customer is society and is represented by local and national governments, and that is where things go wrong.

The NYPD is a good example. The NYPD and its unions form a powerful bloc locally, and their endorsement can get a mayor elected. The rest of the public is not interested enough to care about the details, so around election time the police tend to acquire additional budgets and powers. The NYPD are well paid, have excellent pensions, and, perhaps most important of all, have protection against being sued and are almost impossible to fire. The Fire Department, Corrections Officers and other unionised public servants have secured similar benefits over the years. They are the main reason lazily run cities and states now have unsustainable finances – pension liabilities for public servants have become crippling.

So now there is a public outcry for more accountable policing, and Bill DeBlasio has to play both sides. Still, it is a rare opportunity to redress the balance.

The lack of individual accountability is the biggest problem. Recent NYPD police commissioners have done a good job, but they are powerless to impose discipline. When they are tempted, Pat Lynch, the obnoxious head of the sergeants union, reminds them who is the real boss. There is a rump of violent officers, many no doubt racist, who remain secure in their jobs despite repeatedly breaching all guidelines.

The effects are pernicious. Why should new officers behave well when their peers can get away with anything? Leaders resort to giving the bad apples desk jobs or hiding them on unnecessary assignments, driving up costs. And everyday efficiency goes by the board as well. Next, the jobs become sinecures for the wrong sort of cop, whose sons follow them into the force to perpetuate the unhealthy culture.

So individual accountability must be the core reform. Having secured that, I would take a micro approach and drive efficiency and culture at a precinct level. A police precinct is not so much different to a petrol station or supermarket. I can always tell a well-run business by observing small things. In the case of the 112^thprecinct of the NYPD, I have never had a courteous interaction, I have never witnessed a courteous interaction, and every day I see cars parked lazily, illegally and unsafely.

Apart from anything else, why do they need so many cars? Placard abuse is a topic than comes up in the news once per year and then disappears without meaningful change. I can’t believe all the police placards near us are valid. Even if they are, the vehicle budget must be ripe for a heavy cut. Why can’t the NYPD ride to work on the subway like the rest of us?

I will give one compliment to the NYPD: they don’t take bribes. That puts them way ahead of forces in most developing countries and, sadly, some developed ones too. Whether that has come from management or union, I applaud it, because petty corruption in a police force is the most poisonous thing of all.

Once there is accountability and a locally driven initiative to work on culture and efficiency, the next lever is recruitment. Here there is an opportunity to increase racial and gender diversity, and to remove bias towards alumni families.

There are a couple of specific US issues that should be easy to address. The disposal of excess military equipment to police departments is comically short sighted and counter-productive. Then there is mission creep, prevalent in the NYPD and elsewhere. It is hard to fund good programs to house the homeless or protect the mentally ill, so such things are added to the remit of a place where funds are always plentiful – the NYPD.  

As with much in US society, media and Hollywood have done a lot of damage too. I hate the way that Hollywood movies never rarely involve fat people, always have characters that are either all good or all bad, run away from ambiguity and generally stifle intelligent thought. Portrayal of the police is a good example. In most cop shows violence and disrespect for protocol is idealised. This is just one more factor perpetuating the negative culture.

There is much than can be done to improve policing around the world. Best practice is probably in Scandinavia or the Benelux, as usual. Policing in the US is uniquely handicapped by the gun culture and by its history of racial animus. But treating the police more rigorously as a business can achieve parallel progress. Personal and precinct accountability is a critical first step. Then be good COO’s and hack away at waste and other local failings. And I would be forever grateful is somebody in the 122th precinct sorted out the fleet of cars and how it is parked.  

The Dangerous Months

I remember the day after Trump’s election, wandering the rainy streets of Manhattan in a daze. I went to a Broadway matinée, and it seemed the entire audience was numb like me. It was a dark day, and four years seemed an awful long time to endure.

Well, we are now at three and a half years, and somehow it hasn’t been as bad as I feared. There is not about to be a world war. The EU is still together, apart from recalcitrant Britain, and is somewhat more united. The Paris agreement has held, most of the world’s citizenry want to go further, and even US cities are busy undermining the federal government on climate. The Washington Post and the New York Times are stronger than ever. The Supreme Court has wobbled but is still credible. Congress is as dysfunctional as ever, but the number of Trump style semi-fascist thugs in positions of power is rather small. There is popular anger between ethnicities, but it has remained largely peaceful and even informed. I can still write my blog without much fear of deportation.

Perhaps I am setting the bar too low, but on the dark day in November 2016 I truly wondered what might occur in these four long years. What we must accept is that they have been years of regression and lost opportunities. An enlightened administration might have led a decisive global climate movement, or started to reverse the lurch towards inequality that underpins public distrust. I believe China would have been open to a fair deal with an honest broker, ceding some domestic liberalisation and respect for human rights and fair business practices in return for more of a seat at the table in global affairs. In 2016, despite the stalemate in congress, there was gentle momentum towards a fairer world, but that vanished overnight.

I expected a neutralisation of Trump after the midterms. I thought there would be a grand deal in quiet corridors that would restore some competence to government while allowing Trump his ego and some harmless playing fields. That is what would have happened in the UK, led by the civil service and supported by other institutions like the military and colleges and judges and CEO’s and Bushes and Romneys. Key to that would have been senior Republicans in congress, fed up with holding their nose, aware that the eventual backlash might sweep them away and with the national interest at heart. But the silent establishment coup did not happen.

In the absence of any backbone among Republicans, our saviour has been sheer incompetence. This lot could not organise a piss up in a brewery. There is no inner circle with a strategy, only a rotating cast of lackeys fighting fires and watching their backs, achieving little of import. Most of their attempts to implement madness have been screwed up or abandoned before securing any traction. 

Now we reach the last few months of Trump’s first term and perhaps the most dangerous phase of all. Re-election matters to every politician, but to Trump it is everything, for two basic reasons. Firstly, he clearly has no agenda nor aspiration for the country, only for himself, and power is the only antidote for such an ego. Secondly, as soon as he loses power he becomes vulnerable legally across many fronts, and he knows it. His support is wafer thin and entirely dependent on power, so those silent Republicans will join everybody else in seeking vengeance once his power has gone. Unless there is some grand bargain involving a pardon, he will spend most of the rest of his days in jail if he loses. That is one large motivation to win at all costs.

So we have a leader whose ego needs him to win and whose personal security needs him to win, and one whose absence of probity will stop at nothing in the quest to win. Worse, any semblance of checks on his behaviour has long since disappeared: there will be no more impeachment, his base support is immune to any slur, and the remaining lackeys are locked in as well.

So, anything goes, and the more he looks like losing the more extreme will be the response. Watch out immigrants, and journalists, and Chinese, and health experts, and anybody else that might become fodder for the base. It will be open season between now and November. Watch out also technology companies, and election supervisors, and anyone else with responsibility for election fairness.  Finally watch out for a disputed result and the civil unrest that might unleash. There is no such thing as a gracious loser when the stakes are this high and the morals this absent.

But there is a second reason to fear the coming months. US adversaries know of Trump’s position too, and will exploit it ruthlessly.

It is a well-observed part of the Putin playbook to create facts on the ground when the enemy cannot respond and before any negotiated settlement. We see this time and again in conflicts around the globe, from Syria to Ukraine to Libya. Wait until the other side needs a deal for political purposes, then attack to the limit and negotiate from the newly established position.

We are seeing this already around the world. It is no coincidence that North Korea is being belligerent again. Trump cannot condemn him without undermining his claims, so now is the time to take a risk. Expect Russia to be aggressive in the next few months, also because of domestic weakness. Modi will do the same in India, and Israel will probably choose these months to annex more of the West Bank. In each case, Trump’s hands are tied.

But nowadays the most important adversary is China, and the Chinese are master strategists who will have planned for this moment since Trump’s election. Chaguan has become one of the most interesting pages in The Economist lately, and an article last week posed the question as to whether the Chinese would like Trump or Biden to win in November. They can play Trump like a fiddle, but they also crave recognition and peaceful global development, which can only happen under Biden.

The Chinese will use the next months to be prepared whoever wins. Trump must claim that his bluster has led to success in controlling China, so they can push the limits now without fear of any backlash. We see this already in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, and pessimists might wonder if this could be a decisive moment regarding Taiwan. They are also ready to decouple from the US in technology, though they would rather not have to.

If Trump wins in November, China will bank the gains and prepare for four more adversarial years, with a key goal of separating the US from its allies and creating parallel institutions to those the US currently dominates, such as SWIFT. If Biden wins they will be ready for a sweeping global deal with many dimensions, but will have the best possible starting point for negotiations.

There is not much that most of us can do except watch this play out of the coming months, and pray that the damage continues to be limited. The last three and a half years have been scary enough, but the next six months are likely to make them seem rather mild. Buckle up.

Reimbursement For Care in Practice

Reimbursement for Care is my solution for many of the social and economic problems currently afflicting developed societies.The basic concept is for local authorities to pay citizens for beneficial activities that are currently either performed for free or not carried out. It is better than Universal Basic Income because society gets something in return for its investment and because it is better targeted to those who need it.

Jill is an only child in an affluent mid-western family. She attends college locally and pays tuition fees, and rent to her parents. She takes paid vacation jobs and paid internships, but also tops up her income with RFC, working an average of ten hours per week as a care assistant at a local senior care facility. This way she can graduate without a student loan.

Jill moves to New York to take a job with a major employer. Because her rent is high and her experience low, she agrees a fifty-hour per week annual rolling contract with her employer. She is the vocalist in a band and every fortnight the band spends Saturday’s performing at local senior homes, earning Jill just four hours per week of RFC.

Jill starts living with fellow band member Jack and before long they marry and have twins. For the final month of her pregnancy Jill takes a pause with her employer and self-certifies twenty hours per week self-care RFC. For two years after the birth, the first child entitles Jill’s household to thirty hours per week of RFC and the second child a further ten hours. Jack and Jill split this equally and both reduce their employment contracts to thirty hours. Fortunately, both employers allow a proportion of work from home.

Once the kids are a year old, their parents register them in a local nursery for twenty hours per week. Jack and Jill both become accredited carers at the nursery and each work there ten RFC hours per week. Most of the kids’ RFC entitlement is now transferred to the nursery budget, but they can still claim five hours each of self-certified RFC. The nursery enables both to increase their employment back up to thirty-five hours.

RFC entitlement starts progressively reducing when the kids are two, but the parents initially only sacrifice the self-certified RFC. The kids progress to pre-school and then full school, a blend of classroom, online learning and play-centre. The parents gain accreditation to work ten RFC hours each at the play centre, and stay at thirty-five hours with their employers. Now the band can play again, and it gains approval to start a project teaching music to deprived kids elsewhere in the city each Saturday, paid with RFC.

When the twins reach twelve they no longer need supervision at home and lose their remaining entitlement to RFC. Jack and Jill both increase their employment contracts to forty hours, but now they can expand their band commitments to earn ten hours each of RFC on their project.

Five years later, Jack’s widowed mum Jess has an accident that leaves her disabled and comes to live with Jack and Jill. Soon she needs at home care assessed at ten hours per week, which Jack and Jill share and self-certify as RFC, reducing the band project hours. As Jess requires more specialised help both secure accreditation to higher care levels. The RFC entitlement of Jess becomes twenty and then thirty hours, and Jack and Jill reduce their employment hours accordingly.

Next Jess needs help that can’t be provided at home and so moves to a senior care home. Jack and Jill register as RFC carers at the same home, but can now increase their hours at their regular employment again. After Jess dies, Jack and Jill are in their fifties and only wish to work twenty-five hours per week for their employers. They expand their band project into a second community and continue to care at the senior home, claiming RFC for each.

At sixty-five, Jack and Jill are still healthy and keen to be active. They maintain their RFC activities at the same level but reduce their regular employment to ten hours, giving them more free time to spend with the grandkids and to travel. At seventy they retire from their regular employment but keep up the RFC, until Jack falls sick and Jill must care for him, earning additional ten hours per week RFC entitlement for Jill. Jill continues her other RFC work but scales back the hours.

Jack and Jill have varied their RFC activities and hours as their lives have evolved, and also varied their regular employment hours. Their lifetime income is similar to the time before RFC, but they have been able to look after the mental and physical health of themselves, their family and others in their community.

Another example is Denise, who comes from a deprived part of Cleveland and does not attend college, but becomes a single mother at twenty-one. Her own mother lives with her to help bring up the child, and they share the RFC entitlement as well as hustling with various gig jobs and supporting another RFC funded local community project. The balance of hours varies as the child grows and as the gig work waxes and wanes, but luckily the community project is able to offer unlimited hours so their income is always enough to live on.

All the various RFC projects except the self-certified ones are registered with the local authority and require standards of service. Most of the projects also have paid professionals leading them, qualified at the highest RFC accreditation levels. Each school, nursery and care home need fewer full-time professionals than before RFC, but the pay is better and the total number of projects is much higher because of RFC, so the system efficiency has improved. No longer to mothers have to sacrifice their careers or struggle to find adequate child-care or senior care, and the whole community has become part of the solution.

The RFC incentives also nudges resources towards more deprived neighbourhoods, as well as providing an adequate safety net for those who can’t find sufficient regular employment, either temporarily or permanently.

RFC works best if all regular employment takes a gig like character, because then employees can vary their hours as their lives develop. In most cases, there will be a rolling annual contract specifying an average hours per week, and a rolling weekly sub-contract agreeing hours a week or two in advance, including required particular hours for team activities and location specific activities. Work hours become more spread through the day and the week, so commuting is less of an issue for anybody. With the new concept for schools and child-care, these can also be handled more easily in parallel with regular jobs.

RFC involves a lot of reallocation of budgets but can be self-financing, assuming delayed pensions for most and higher taxes for the highest earners. The effect on national productivity is arguable. Perhaps some firms will be less competitive internationally, especially if corporation taxes increase, but higher staff motivation can be expected, and increased automation can also add competitiveness.

Implementation would be far from simple and there would be transition issues. People currently benefiting from tenured jobs with generous pensions may consider themselves losers. There will be fraud, though mobile communications can reduce that risk.     

Reimbursement for Care

Recent events have laid bare the bankruptcy the extreme capitalist model practised in the western world. Reimbursement for Care (RFC) is my idea for a key component for a successful modification of the model.

A fundamental flaw in our current model lies in the goals we use. While affairs are managed by nation states, some competitive financial metric will remain necessary. But the internal goals are all flawed, and create consequences leading to failure.

I believe there are three key metrics in use. The first is GDP. This has always been an ugly metric, including things like arms sales and financial transfers and excluding much of the informal economy and beneficial activity such as volunteering. GDP is essentially a corporate rather than a human metric. There is no obvious human replacement, but some sort of dashboard of welfare, happiness and development could work.

The second metric is also corporate. It is not a goal but more of an axiom. It is assumed return on capital, and it has converged globally on something like 6% real for no risk assets. This assumption has driven the turbo-charging of capitalism and caused the squeeze on labour. International agreement for series of radical changes could reset 6% at a sounder level such as 3%.

The third metric is the only human one and that is full employment. Less than full employment creates waste and welfare and discontent. Of the metrics, this is the one most dear to the left. Yet I find it the most damaging one.

The underlying assumption behind a full employment goal is that humans should undertake paid work as much as possible, or at least for a defined segment of their week. Humans do need activities to support self-esteem, but why should that be dominated by paid work? What if machines could do all the work and we could just sit back and have fun?

The emphasis on full employment leads to crazy distortions. We are trained to be upset when a factory automates so that robots can replace humans doing grinding, unsafe and mind-numbing activity. How on earth is toiling to an early death in a coalmine a good thing? Surely humanity should maximise automation and embrace technology, and find a better metric to replace full employment and compensating mechanisms to rebalance incomes?

The traditional model is increasingly out of date even for those who can find work. People with families cannot easily balance rearing kids with work, perpetuating gender inequality. The gig economy is growing and sits uncomfortably next to the classic model.

Keynes mooted the concept of the post-work society, and I believe its time has come. It is supported by a number of factors, not just the speed of development in technology and communication. It is not just technology that is squeezing traditional jobs. The most labour-intensive sectors are most stressed, such as retail. During the pandemic and post-pandemic, we can add hospitality and tourism. Worse, the squeezed segments most affect the least well paid, and can kill whole communities.

Next, the pandemic has awakened both the need for and the value of community service. Too many of our old and disabled people live in unfit conditions. Housing in vulnerable communities is detrimental to health. Many of our young lack the critical advantage of pre-school. Local facilities are crumbling. And those who have volunteered have realised that community work makes them feel good as well as the beneficiaries. The right often promote national service: why not national service for all, focused on communities?

Inequality, deprivation and temporary economic pause have moved Universal Basic Income (UBI) from the fringes to the mainstream. UBI is a sticking plaster, but does little to address the more fundamental issues listed above. RFC is a fairer and more sustainable alternative.

RFC envisages payment by local government for a whole slew of beneficial activities that people can enjoy, activities that currently are unpaid or underpaid or not done or done poorly. In an RFC society, people will rebalance towards these activities, with the balance varying depending on phase of life. A young single adult may choose only a few hours of RFC (or even none). Parents of young kids will complete more RFC hours, and older adults will place a higher priority on supporting society than career development or income maximisation. Someone living with a dependent relative will devote many hours per week to RFC (as they do already, but unpaid).

RFC activities should be widely defined. They include childcare, elderly and disabled care, sick and deprived person care, community maintenance and development activities and projects, and even arts and culture. Citizens can self-declare a number of hours per week depending on the make-up of the household, and add additional hours via certified and loosely regulated organisations. Because of the explosion of potential funding, there would be a step-change increase in the number and quality of nursing homes and childcare facilities.

I envisage hourly payments based on defined levels of qualification, with training provided to progress through levels for different types of RFC. The lowest level requires no training, and should be reimbursed at a local minimum wage, set depending on a basic cost of living including housing rental, utilities and food. It should be possible to live a simple life only with RFC income for say forty hours per week at level two or three, but most people will choose more like ten hours of RFC and continue regular employment. Over time, I suggest that all employment follows a gig model, one where the employee defines their availability and the employer cannot discriminate based on the hours per week offered, only on total experience.

I believe this model to be more affordable than might be envisaged. In the US, 200m people might claim an average of 10 hours and a rate of $10, giving an annual budget for RFC of a trillion dollars. But RFC obviates the needs for many existing budgets, including some social security (healthy pensioners undertake RFC), food stamps, welfare and so on. In addition, many public sector jobs could be eliminated, which we should not see as a bad thing in a post-employment world, so long as sufficient RFC is made available (and I propose it can be bottomless).

I see the biggest implementation challenge not in affordability but in equitable distribution. I can see a lot of wealthy white suburban folk embracing RFC with all sorts of fancy playgroups for their own kids and beautification of their own neighbourhoods. Rich faith communities will tend to restrict their efforts to their own kind. That is all well and good, but I believe that incentives will be required to direct a higher share of the effort (and supply) to more deprived populations. Perhaps a share of total RFC hours should be mandated towards higher priority areas and projects. It should be possible, so long as budgets are equalised. Funds should be disbursed locally, but from a national pot.

In an RFC world, corporations may have to lower their expectation for return on capital, partly because taxation will need to fund RFC and partly because labour supply would be reduced. So long as a sufficient number of developed nations choose to implement RFC in some form, this should be seen a benefit rather than a problem.

I find it sad that so few imaginative ideas have come to light in this rare moment of global opportunity. We should cheer UBI and the various support packages implemented by governments, but many seem to be ignoring the signs and planning for a return to normal business after the pandemic. Stock markets seem to agree. In my opinion any return to normal that supports corporations to the level now assumed by the markets would involve catastrophic hardship among communities and whole segments of the population. The time has come for something more radical. It is time for RFC.