Helping Places Left Behind

I admire the way The Economist has recently taken on the challenge of supporting globalisation’s losers. Having been a shameless champion of free markets, small government, privatisation and other modern orthodoxies, they have paused to observe the unwelcome side effects, and to try to find some solutions.

The need for action is clear. Inequality is a curse of our times, and neo-liberalism makes it worse by design, in the name of incentive, dynamism and growth. One of the weak spots for Trump that Democrats are not exploiting (being constantly side-tracked into identity issues) is the impact of key policies to exacerbate inequality. Gut healthcare and the poor suffer, and the tax plan will redistribute further to the rich. The main part of this redistribution is due to the love affair the administration has with corporate America. We have already seen the biggest effect, because stock markets have responded to the promises of lighter regulation and lower taxes already. This is touted as a good thing, and in some respects it is, but who is benefiting? Of course it is those who own stocks. That is most of us to an extent, through our pension plans, but it is mainly the wealthy. It was the struggling white working class that elected Trump, and to defeat him the opposition message has to resonate with the same people. That means less talk about civil rights and more about inequality.

The Economist takes this argument a step back, and sees inequality and hopelessness as reasons Trump and other populists get elected in the first place. Hence the need for a story to correct the most glaring negative consequences to halt the tide of populism before it becomes entrenched.

Previous articles have focused on how to help people who have lost out, and recommended the old chestnuts of education and transitional support, as well as help with mobility. The most recent essay instead looked at places. People who lose out are concentrated in rural areas and places where heavy industry leaves. Giving people more weapons to move out from these places is admirable, but tends to make things even worse for those still left behind.

This was an issue even before globalisation turbo charged it. We have hears of Scottish districts populated only be the old and incapable, and of Japanese prefectures becoming older and older. The South of Italy has been a basket place for generations. Now we also have places like Detroit and Baltimore, and smaller districts like parts of north-east Pennsylvania or West Virginia, places where a large employment cluster previous attracted families, and then abandoned them as business dried up.

The symptoms are brutal. Departing people leads to poorer schools, depressed house prices and crime. For those that don’t escape early, there is no escape. The local government has too much infrastructure to maintain and too many pensions to pay, with not enough taxpayers to pay them.

And trends will make this worse, as jobs overall will become scarcer while the old live longer. The slow death of retail will remove more jobs and also civic pride and places to meet. It is no wonder such districts become crime ridden, and readily turn to opioids and populist politics.

Having described the problem, The Economist was disappointing in advocating solutions. Mostly, the discussion centred on enterprise zones or similar initiatives, designed to create new skill and employment hubs. These have a mixed record. I have seen them work myself, while visiting the Algarve and other poorer parts of Europe, where EU structural funds have helped to drag such places upwards.

The article went into lots of detail about which sort of assistance works and which doesn’t, though the evidence is patchy. Just paying subsidies does little, seemingly, and any positive effects vanish once payments stop. Trying to set up new businesses can also fail, unless somehow a cluster emerges, like in South Carolina after BMW elected to build a factory there.

It is no wonder that cities are bidding so aggressively for Amazon’s HQ2. But in a way, that is the problem, because it is another example of corporate power. The bigger winners will be Amazon and its wealthy shareholders, more than the citizens of HQ2.

The Economist’s only slightly radical idea was for the public sector to try create sorts of clusters, for example with research facilities around colleges. This is how things always used to happen. I have submitted paperwork to national vehicle licensing offices in Swansea, Kiruna and Mo I Rana, the last two near the Arctic Circle and all chosen to give stable public sector employment to struggling places.

The must also be mileage in supporting places in efforts at smart rightsizing, as they attempt to get out of the negative cycle of decline with fundamental fixes. Detroit could turn into a positive example here. Key to their latest attempted regeneration is housing, destroying the stock in distressed areas and trying to nudge people into a reshaped city designed for its modern needs. Funding such investment locally is always tough, and the public sector, or some public-private funds, could focus on this.

Linked to this could come some more creative marketing and specialisation of districts. Why does everyone have to have classical employers? Could some cities focus on trying to be ideal places to live for older people, for example? That would imply different priorities in transport, housing, health care and leisure – some rebirth of civic centres perhaps.

However, the real solution might require the Economist and others challenging their real sacred cows. Should the public sector always be reduced, is there a right size for that, and have many developed nations now shrunk it too much? Think of things the public sector usually provides, especially and education and health care. Even if provision is via private contractors, these can be regulated or steered to equalise regional disparity. They offer jobs where wages can be closer to nationally set. And in some areas, like defence or health research, the national government can choose locations to favour regions with other disadvantages.

A universal basic income would help here, and perhaps that will arrive sooner rather than later, as classical jobs become ever more scarce. My alternative to universal income would be paying people for care, an idea that would help reduce inequality even more.

So The Economist and others blame the phenomenon on globalisation, but actually the drive to small central government could be the true culprit. Starving public sector wages and services harm weaker areas disproportionally. You can hardly find a bus in the UK nowadays except on commuter routes.

I am not advocating collectivism or mass nationalisation here, merely a rebalance away from its extreme opposite. Regional hardship is just one of the consequences of the Great Wrong Turning around 1980; indeed almost all the consequences have been negative. We should remember that the Great Wrong Turning was not an inevitable consequence of globalisation, but an active choice by doctrinaire governments. The public have been duped. And that is why we now have the ugly rise of populism. Once The Economist starts to recognise that, then at last the tide might start to turn.  

Two Ears, One Mouth

I often look for advice that can cross over between different parts of my life. Often that turns out to be between singing in choirs and working in teams.

In both contexts, there is great emphasis placed on listening. Often we are told to listen more and to speak less. According to this, God gave us two ears but only one mouth for a good reason, so that we can use our ears more and our mouths less.

I can understand where the advice comes from. In both situations, the loudmouth who does not listen causes the most disruption. He (or occasional she) undermines the performance of the team. In the choir case, the overall sound becomes less blended and unified unless everyone else copies the tone and pitch of the dominant performer. In a work team, its diversity is undermined because valuable inputs are inevitably lost.

I accept this logic. But there is an opposite logic of equal value. What about the player who always listens but never speaks? While not disruptive, this player is contributing precisely nothing to the sound or to the team. Perhaps loudmouths get a bad press that they don’t always deserve.

In singing, specifically choral multi-part singing in small groups, the balance between producing sound and listening is complex and instructive. We usually have a conductor, who gives the tempo and other indications such as for volume, but we have to listen too in order to create a blended sound. By precisely matching vowel sounds and rhythm, a group can create a resonant sound far stronger and more pleasant than the sum of the parts of individual singers. Part of that comes from something called overtones, a feature of the wave physics of sound, in which the listeners hears not just the pitch but also suggestions of higher pitches at the same time. Individuals can make overtones – it is fun to try – but groups can do it far more powerfully.

But there is a fundamental problem with listening while singing, which is that you have to actually produce the sound before you hear the sound of others. If you listen and follow, you are by definition late, and being late eliminates precise rhythm and quality sound. Many singers actually do use this technique in choirs – they sit next to somebody strong and essentially copy their sound, slightly behind.

So, in a small group where there is no room for followers, everyone needs the courage to lead with their mouth and wait until what their ears tell them afterwards. The ears are helping in the background as you sing through a piece, helping the vowels and the blend, but there is no substitute for singing out, following the conductor and trusting your own sound.

There is another wrinkle to this, a trick the body plays on us. The only sound we don’t hear reliably is the one we make ourselves. If you doubt this, consider the last time you heard a recording of your own voice, perhaps playing an answerphone message. We don’t actually sound like we think we sound. So even if we listen carefully, we can only truly blend by using technique and experience, not simply by matching our own sound to that of others. The implication as singers is about a different kind of listening – not of sounds in the moment, but of feedback, from conductors, recordings and fellow singers.

I think all this technical stuff about choir singing has some relevance when working in small teams, especially in a meeting or workshop context. There, we have one mouth and two ears as well, and some of us are sometimes advised to use the mouth less and the ears more.

If this is you, take some comfort. Imagine the opposite, someone who always listened, but never spoke (or wrote, or decided, or acted). Organisations are full of such people, folk who do as they are told, stay out of the limelight, and parrot their leaders. Just like the singer who follows, these people are holding back the group, taking up valuable space, and preventing the magic of overtones, or whatever the equivalent would be in the work context. If you are being told to use your ears, take comfort that you don’t need to be told to use your mouth.

There is a company advertising on the NYC subway just now called the doers. I am not really sure what they do, but I like their attitude and their advertisements make me smile. An example is: “just think it, said no one ever”. Without doers, nothing gets done. If no one has the courage to take the lead in a workshop, no progress will be made.

But then, after taking comfort, heed the advice. The good singer knows that quality sound requires more than following the conductor and producing a note. Listening is required too, so that the vowels and volume and style of the others around us are understood and incorporated into our own effort. We can build on the sounds of others to synthesize a better result.

And, just like in singing, the one voice we hear in a distorted way is our own. So when someone tells us to use our ears they are giving us valuable feedback. Giving feedback is not easy and requires its own courage, so we have to respect it when we receive it, and treat it as a rare jewel. So do as they say, shut up for a while and listen. Ask others what they think, take in the atmosphere and the ideas of others, take stock. But then don’t just become a follower, but instead be a better leader.

All this applied in wider fields, such as in representative office. Am I making an argument for a twittering president? In a way yes, because twittering takes courage and gives clarity. It is better to have a communicating leader than an absent one. Of course, it is one thing to endorse a twittering president, and another entirely to endorse the one we have, or the content of his tweets.

He gets away with his behaviour for a couple of reasons. One is that indeed he does listen – to his base, and to his instinct for a popular position and the potential for re-election. The other is that the rest of his choir is made up of people using only their ears and not their mouths. The Republicans, with pitifully few honourable exceptions, have been reduced to a shameful silent rabble in the face of the demeaning of their country.

So look around you next time you are in a meeting, or even in a choir or other collaborative group for that matter. Who is using their ears, and who is using their mouth? Which group to you belong to? What would be better for the group, more ears or more mouth? After all, God did give us a mouth too, and not just to consume food and drink.   

Sleep

A human being has very few basic functions. Some, like breathing and circulating blood, take place unconsciously. The main conscious ones are eating and drinking, urinating and defecating, having sex, giving birth and nurturing young, and sleeping. The one of these that we understand least well, yet have changed the most, is sleeping.

We can impact on our basic functions on a micro level and a macro level. The micro level concerns our personal choices, while the macro level concerns the combined impact of all those personal choices on the environment. Increasingly, we understand the macro level quite well, and, albeit with stumbles and perhaps too slowly, start to act to address the imbalances. That is the root of environmental policy.

For eating and drinking, there is also much research at micro level. Scarcely a day goes by without new findings about diet, often contradictory. The generic advice of “eat, not too much, mainly plants” may still be the best science available. Diets have changed, and while lives have become more sedentary and indulgent, most of us have reasonable information and choices available to us in order to forge our own path to health or ill health.

Sleep is different. There has been less research into it, so that science still struggles to even understand its basic purpose. And there is less focus on sleep in teems of advice and products available. The obvious reason for that is money. Few firms get richer by encouraging us to sleep more or more effectively. Behind every diet are firms trying to make money from us. If we sleep more, most firms will earn less, because we won’t be consuming their products while we are not conscious.

That is one good reason to tune into sleep more than diet. It also stands to reason. Evolution has led us to devote a third of our lives to being unconscious. It has done the same to most other creatures. There must be a reason for this. Sleep must be important to our health.

And wow, have we been cavalier about sleep. We are reminded of this every time we view a historical series such us Wolf Hall or Poldark. Many scenes are shot in partial light, supported only by candles. That is because candles were the only light form available. People got up when it got light and they could see to work in the fields, and when it got dark they went to sleep, because doing anything else was quite difficult.

That changed less than two hundred years ago with the invention of electricity. We have electrified the night, and now we use more and more of the night to do things other than sleeping. First, we undertook more activities within the home, then we changed our work patterns, devoting more of our day to travel and leisure, all at the expense of sleep. Nowadays, leisure often involves looking at screens, which inhibits sleep even after we stop viewing.

This is the background for an excellent article about sleep in the Guardian Weekly of October 13^th, profiling a global sleep expert called Matthew Walker. Walker makes a series of great points, adding up to a plea to take sleep as seriously as anything else in our lives.

Most convincingly, there is mounting evidence linking adequate sleep to longevity and to the absence of diseases like various cancers and Alzheimer’s. It stands to reason: evolution must have given us sleep for a purpose, even if we aren’t fully clear what that is yet or exactly how it works.

But Walker and others are making progress even on these conundrums. There is an emerging consensus that sleep comes in packets lasting about an hour and a half, and that the final few minutes of each packet is the time that the brain resets internal functions, much like maintaining a building. These maintenance periods ensure flawless operation while awake, and inhibit diseases and ailments from taking hold. A good night’s sleep of eight hours will include four or even five such maintenance periods, and we need all of those to stay fully healthy and protected.

So what have we done? We’ve reduced total sleep hours. We’ve pushed sleep later into the night so that we are more easily disturbed by morning light, just when we need that last maintenance cycle. We have set earlier and earlier alarms to the same effect, pretending that snoozing is as good as deep sleep. Walker predicts impending doom, and I give that thought some credibility, because the problems will build up slowly before revealing themselves at a point when it is too late, much like environmental damage.

The article made me consider my own sleep, despite the fact that I have always had the facility to get to sleep quickly. I love and value my sleep and am blessed with a lifestyle that gets enough. I read 37 tips to sleep better online. Most were consistent with Walker. A few were slightly surprising. Seemingly, each night matters and we can’t catch up for short weeknights by lying in at the weekend. And naps, which I love, are good, but cannot replace night sleep at all. In the 37 tips sex was not mentioned, so I looked that up separately and found that indeed, sex induces sleep in a very healthy way, for both men and women.

Walker believes that encouraging sleep should be a top priority of health policy, and that finding ways to improve sleep patterns would be much more cost effective than promoting diet and exercise or various pharmaceuticals. I believe him. I know that the only two times in my life that I was seriously unhealthy corresponded to times when I was sleep deprived. I always thought the causality was the other way around, and indeed it probably is a reinforcing cycle. I also note that when I get sick these days it is nearly always after plane travel. I had concluded that this was because of bugs on planes, but it is probably more because plane travel nearly always implies sleep deprivation. Think about it. How much does a lack of quality sleep impact your life?

I would love to see more research into this topic. When living close to the arctic circle, I found myself sleeping eleven hours per night during the winter and six during the summer – what long term effects would that have? Are there health differences between nations with different sleeping cultures? What about places misplaced in time zones, like Spain? Are Californians more healthy than New Yorkers because we sit up half the night watching prime time sports? There must be a wealth of available evidence, and I would be interested in reading it.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful to the Guardian Weekly and Walker, and even to the staffer who compiled the 37 tips. Sleep matters, and it is great to be reminded of that and incentivised to do something about getting more good quality sleep. And now, once I’ve posted this, I’ll head off for a well-deserved nap.      

More Happiness Tips

Time Magazine weighed into the happiness tipping game last week, quoting a science backed survey and highlighting eight ideas. These are hardly deep thoughts – most are marginal, and assume a developed world lifestyle absent fundamental inhibitors to happiness – but they are interesting nonetheless.

Top of the list comes moderating our use of social media. This sort of advice becomes more and more common these days, and it feels smart. One way to view social media overuse is in the same way as an addiction, and in the most severe cases it probably counts as an addiction. Addictions are compulsions that we lose control over, and which ultimately harm us either directly (such as with alcohol related diseases or debts from gambling) or indirectly, in that they suck up so much of our time and attention that other important aspects of a healthy life get squeezed out.

I would expand the category of social media to include all screen based time fillers. Perhaps foremost of these are computer games, which have become central to many young lives in recent years. An excellent article by Ryan Avent in 1843 (formerly Intelligent Life) examined this phenomenon and raised some interesting challenges. He found that two reasons that people (often young men) become attached to computer games are that it has become possible to live incredibly cheaply and that traditional work is so hard to find nowadays. Many of the kids he looked at lived with their parents and spent next to nothing, but also had limited prospects of paid work with a decent wage and prospects. Of course it becomes a vicious cycle, because the longer someone is socially alone and away from the workforce the harder it is to reintegrate into traditional ways of life. Avent posited paid work as a trade off, something often not pleasant in itself but a means to enjoying life more outside of work. Well, if the returns from available work are so low, and the means required to live comfortably so minimal, we should not be surprised if layabouts, or rather screen junkies, is what we create. We should remember this before we judge too harshly, and also put ourselves in the shoes of the anxious parents with such offspring at home.

So screens may the modern obsession and the thing we must guard against overuse. The risks are clear. If it becomes more important to check our facebook feed first thing in the morning than greeting our partner then our priorities have become skewed. We need sleep more than anything, and it is sleep that is lost due to late night screen obsession. Our moods can also be affected – I am among millions who find it hard to resist a Trump news story, yet I know my mood will only be darkened by clicking.

Another interesting article in the same episode of 1843 (April-May 2017), this time by Derek Thompson, talked about our different social media personalities. He freely admitted that on Twitter he snarks, on Facebook he preens, on Instagram he poses and on Snapchat he goofs. He argued that this was all fine and dandy, indeed offering a release to those parts of his personality that otherwise would stay hidden and build up trauma. I appreciated his honesty and fresh attitude, but I would add that all this requires moderation to be healthy. It also requires enough wisdom to realise that everyone else is snarking, posing, goofing and, especially, preening too, and that if we must compare our lives to others, we should use real experiences of our friends not their Facebook exaggerations.

So limiting social media was number one on this list of happiness tips, and probably will remain at number one on survey after survey for years to come. But there were seven other items as well.

We are urged to value our free time and to be ready to spend money to protect it. Examples quoted demonstrate what a rich world, pampered list this is, including ordering in food or sending out laundry. But it is a well-made point. Since most of us are time poor, we should find whatever ways we can to grow leisure time.

Next comes an encouragement to embrace emotions. This is one I can use myself. An example for me is the first hour of the day. Now I am time rich, this hour can offer such joy, if only I take it slowly enough and mindfully enough to actually experience that joy. Even now, too often I wolf down my delicious breakfast and treat coffee as a task to complete not a pleasure to savour. We spend too much time on autopilot, and consciously recognising pride or amusement or excitement or other such emotions can help to make us happier.

Fourth is letting go of grudges. This one is rather biblical, recalling stories of forgiving seventy times seven times and of loving our enemies. I have tried this one myself, and, with practice, have found it easier than I thought it would be and totally effective. There is such a lightness created by genuine forgiveness.

The fifth one I also found interesting, and rather less in tune with most such lists, and it concerned vacations. Most of us build up stress week upon week, and need a break every so often to recover. But then we make rookie mistakes with our vacations. We fail to plan, and end up building up stress in airports or last minute arrangements that usually fail. Or we try to achieve too much, having no doubt read surveys about the importance of experiences, and forget to relax. Or we have expectations radically different to our travel partners, leading to conflict and resentment. Of all of these, setting time for relaxation is the most important for me. We should always visit one less city or try out one less activity, or even arrive home a day earlier, if the result is feeling properly rested.

Next, we are encouraged to seek out green space, even if this is limited in a city. We can always find nature if we actively remember to look out for it, and then take the time to appreciate it. I classify this one with the advice about savouring emotions.

Number seven advises us to nurture and maintain friendships, not just family ties. I am poor at this one. My daughter, a teenager at the time, once memorably said: “Dad, you have no friends”. I took this to heart and did something about it for a few years, but have slipped back to old habits since. Seemingly, I am running a risk of loneliness in old age by this behaviour. I don’t know if I am alone, but I find this tough. Generalising completely, guys I usually don’t empathise enough with to want to spend lots of time with, while women I fear would become a source of jealousy or misunderstanding in my marriage. And I have always been very comfortable in my own company, so maybe lack a drive to be very sociable. Perhaps I’ll find a way to solve this one before it is too late.

The last advice is another one like letting go of grudges, and that is to indulge in random acts of kindness. I bore on about our trips to the old folks home to volunteer there, but the truth is that this has transformed our lives. I am not naturally kind, but I am blessed with a wife who is, and she has trained me to discover kindness and its blessings.

I find these eight useful tips, for someone in a pampered scenario who has every chance to be healthy. They don’t help enough if we are physically, mentally, emotionally or operationally challenged in serious ways. Perhaps the best way to see the list is as a way for happy people to become even happier, and there is nothing wrong with that.