Income Disparity in America -- Why is it Tolerated?

A recent study by Azim Shariff[1] and colleagues revealed an interesting link between the perception of upward mobility and how comfortable people are with income disparity. Shariff found that when primed to believe in the possibility of upward mobility people were more likely to accept income disparity than when primed to think that upward mobility was unlikely.

This may look like one of those “well, yeah — duh” results but it’s worth a closer examination because of the factors underlying it.

First, it’s obvious that when people believe that they too can “make it” they will be less upset by the gap between where they are now and where they think they might be in the future. This effect was seen in Washington State in 2012 when a proposition to impose a state income tax was voted down. The tax wouldn’t kick in until someone was making over $200,000 a year. Many who would have clearly benefited from the revenue the levy would have generated said they voted against it because they were hoping to be making that much in the future and didn’t want their income taxed. The median per capita income in the state, in case anyone’s curious, is $30,000 and the median household income is $60,000.

Shariff’s data also showed an interaction with the extent to which folks believe that their current economic status is due to their own efforts as opposed to outside forces. Those who felt responsible for their circumstances were more tolerant of income inequality.

This finding fits within what’s known as Attribution Theory — an approach that examines how people make attributions about events and circumstances. One of the prominent models is that developed by Julian Rotter who was the first to notice that people could be placed along a continuum from External (E) to Internal (I) forms of attribution. Those who Externalized tend to attribute events, status and circumstances to external forces. Failures get blamed on bad luck or the actions of nefarious others or favoritism that worked against them. Successes tend to be credited to good luck or being in the right place or just having connections.

Internalizers, on the other hand, tend to take credit for their success and responsibility for failures. But — and here’s the fun part — these patterns of attribution don’t necessarily have anything to do with reality. These are the ways in which people “attribute” outcomes, not whether or not they were actually instrumental in bringing them about. And one reason for this disconnect is the last factor I want to toss in this mix: luck.

Most of us, whether we tend toward the E or the I pole of the continuum, have had our circumstances shaped to a considerable extent by flukes, chance outcomes, random events that ended up smoothing our way or putting barriers in front of us.[2] And we typically lack awareness of the impact of these events in determining where we are and where we will be in the future.

When you put all these variables together you can begin to appreciate why the country is so willing to live with horrific — and growing — levels of income disparity. Lower income folks who believe in “The American Dream” keep dreaming that they will, one day, be wealthy and are unconcerned that some are making more than they are. Low income folks who are Internalizers believe that their lot is due to the choices they’ve made. Those who are better off, they assume, made better choices and deserve the riches they have.

Wealthy Internalizers feel that their status is because they worked hard and they blame others for a lack of focus or poor decision-making. Externalizers who are well-off acknowledge the role of the random in their good fortune but are willing to live with income disparity since they believe it’s largely just the luck of the draw anyway.

Who’s left? Not many. Those concerned about income disparity recognize the psychological, sociological and cultural damage it does and also have a balanced view of the contributions of personal choice and chance. I’ve not seen any studies on this cohort but I suspect that we (I consider myself part of this group) tilt toward the Internalizer pole on Rotter’s continuum while appreciating that there were more than a few chancy things that happened in our lives that helped propel us. We don’t have illusions about the poor being able to suddenly transport themselves into the country club set. We recognize that social forces work against the poor and note that an awful lot of those in the top 1% got there by means other than hard work.[3]

There aren’t that many of us with this cognitive, social psychological profile and therein lies the problem.

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[1] Disclaimer: I’ve known Azim for some time now. He did his Ph.D. with Ara Noranzayan at the University fo British Columbia in Vancouver where I hold a Visiting Professorship. I’ve been following his career ever since and note that this year he was named one of the “Rising Stars” in social psychology by the American Psychological Association.

[2] Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” is a nice, historical exploration of the role of these chancy elements in life.

[3] Of the top twenty wealthiest Americans only one started out poor. Seven of them inherited their fortune. 

Diets Revisited -- Two Point Five Year Follow-up

My plan has been to return to the issue of weight and diets once a year. But an excellent article in the New York Times by neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt encouraged me to do my next follow-up after only six months.

My personal data are consistent. I clocked in at 186 this morning so we’re keeping the weight at the same level as the last posting. I am also slowly becoming an even rarer case than I originally thought. My original review of the research led me to conclude that roughly 5% of dieters kept the weight off. The results of the newer studies that Aamodt reports reveal that less than 1% do — though her analyses looked at weight after five years, a longer span than in most of the earlier studies.

Aamodt’s model of weight loss and gain is based on the same general mechanisms I identified back in my original post. When you go on a standard diet your metabolic system detects that there has been a drop in caloric intake and makes neurobiological adjustments. The primary shift is to increase the body’s digestive efficiency so that it can survive on the reduced caloric intake you’ve imposed on it. As a result the dieter feels hungry during the diet. Most dieters just live with the unease because the weight loss is satisfying and, in their minds, it’s worth the pain.

The problem comes when the target weight has been reached and normal intake is resumed. Now the body’s more efficient metabolic system results in weight gain and, of course, it typically goes past the previous high levels. Aamodt also notes that the increased efficiency can be so effective that weight can go back on even when daily calories are kept low.

In short, diets don’t work. In fact — and this is the primary point of Aamodt’s essay and her recent book (Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss) — they almost invariably end up causing weight gain along with the unhappy health and medical consequences.

What she recommends is, “mindful eating — paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain’s weight-regulation system commands.” She also notes that recent research shows that being mildly overweight isn’t a health hazard and that making a psychological adjustment to accept and, indeed, revel in one’s natural body is a good thing to aim for. She’s also, like everyone else in this game, a fan of exercise.

I have no problem with any of this. It’s part of my weight loss regimen. But there are two things she didn’t deal with in the Time’s Op-Ed (she may in her book — I haven’t read it) that I think are critical in keeping weight down.

First, she didn’t deal with the way in which the weight comes off. Most diets (in fact, almost all) have you on fairly sharply reduced caloric intake which leads to fairly rapid weight loss. This is what produces the neurobiological compensatory mechanisms to kick in.

There’s a simple gambit to prevent this: trick your body by reducing your intake by a very small amount over extended time. When I went my original “diet” I aimed for a weight loss of roughly 1 to 2 pounds a month. To do this I only needed to eat slightly smaller portions, eat them more slowly savoring the food and be more mindful about the meal. This technique allows your neurobiological mechanisms to continue operating in their normal manner without triggering off any of those evolutionary mechanisms that are geared to protect us during periods of famine and drought.

Second, she didn’t touch on what I think is the simplest method for keeping the weight off. Weigh yourself every day. Even when you’ve “tricked” your metabolic system into not noticing that you’re dropping pounds the weight can creep back when you’re not looking.

So, look. I get on the scale every morning and spot a gain of a pound or two right away. There’s always natural variation of a couple of pounds up and down owing to lots of different factors but if I hit something like 189 or so I reduce intake and focus more mindfully on eating. Within a day or two I get back down to 186 or 185, my original target.

And, should anyone care, there’s also been no change in my position on deities.

The Idealistic Millennials and The Hating of Hillary

In this curious electoral season one of the more perplexing elements is the white-hot hostility among many left-leaning Democrats toward Hillary Clinton. This sentiment has been dubbed “Hillary derangement syndrome” as a parallel to the well-documented “Obama derangement syndrome” and has been analyzed to death. Heck, I even took a shot at trying to explain it. But explaining it doesn’t feel very satisfying because, frankly, I just don’t get it. I simply do not understand the astonishing anger, even fury, that so many have toward HRC.

I like to understand things — a half-century and counting as a scientist does that to you — and am bothered when I don’t so I decided to collect some data. I listened to a bunch of programs put on-air by anti-Hillary sites, watched several videos and read a number of blogs and columns with particular attention to the ones coming from Millennials, the idealistic, mostly well-educated, mostly white and young voters who make up the core of Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

After the Nth iteration of the same arguments against Clinton accompanied by the standard proclamation that they could never vote for her because she is a ____ and a ____ (you can fill in the blanks with the words or phrases of choice) I was left with one imponderable: they are undeterred by the fact that, by not voting for her they are, in effect, voting for Trump (who now appears to be a fait accompli).

How can this be? How can people with such passion for progressive change be willing to sacrifice their ideals on the altar of Fascism?

Then, while watching a video made by a young woman supporter of Sanders it hit me. She’s maybe 20 give or take a year or so. She was four years old when Bush - Cheney and their putrescent gang of neocons took office, give or take a year. She was maybe 12 or 13 when Obama was elected. She has no idea of the horrors Bush et al. visited upon us. She has little grasp of the remarkable successes of the Obama years — years where a pragmatic president balanced his moderate economic policies with his progressive social ones. She seems not the grasp that the Hillary she’s learned to hate is an extension of Obama’s perspective with a slight shift to the left.

She almost certainly doesn’t see what I see. She’s probably not played the counterfactual game in her head. When I look back at the SCOTUS decision to suspend the vote recount in Florida, when I retrospectively review the impact that Nader’s third party candidacy caused I shudder anew.

Bush gave us two wars, neither of which was paid for because he pushed through an awful, regressive tax break that favored the wealthiest among us. Gore would likely not have invaded either Afghanistan or Iraq — in fact, there are good reasons to think that 9/11 would not have happened. Bush was warned about the terrorists’ plans and dismissed them. Gore, enjoying a significant IQ edge, likely would have taken them seriously and acted accordingly.

Bush supported the fossil fuel industry and denied the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Gore was and still is, one of the most prominent of environmentalists. Bush’s economic policies led to the Recession of ‘07 and ‘08. It’s difficult to imagine Gore supporting the financial positions that Bush’s people took. Bush passed the truly dreadful No Child Left Behind act which Obama, in his wisdom, neutralized.

My Millennial friends were babies, mere children when all this went down. They don’t grasp just how awful a right-wing nut in the White House can be. These terrible years are not even a memory. They are simply things they learned from school textbooks. The Bush - Cheney years are, to them, like the World Wars or the Civil Rights movement, history read about, not experienced. 

They’ve also been inundated with negative messages about Hillary. A recent study showed that she receives far more negative (and less positive) reporting in the press than any other candidate — including Trump. They’re angry that their standard-bearer is losing and, being young and idealistic, are staking out what they feel is the high moral-ground. They will not vote for Hillary — and, sotto voce, “maybe Trump won’t be that bad.”

He will.

I remember Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle and Gonzalez. I remember the lies, the torture, the horrors of Abu Graib and the Black Sites, Gitmo, Katrina and the drowning of New Orleans, the sub-prime disaster, Blackwater, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions dead and displaced in the Middle East, thousands of Americans dead or wounded. I remember the huge deficit, an expanding government with an entire new Department of Homeland Security, the spying on US citizens … and so much more. I fear a return to these days.

I want our young idealists to sense just a glimmer of what I recall and, if they need to hold their noses, hold ‘em and vote for Hillary. She’ll continue Obama’s evolutionary pragmatism with a dash of feminism added to spice things up.

Tennessee's Batshit Crazy New Law

There are stupid laws. There are blatantly unconstitutional laws. There are laws that cannot be effective because they run smack into fundamental principles that neutralize them. All of these were on display in one of the most astonishing pieces of misguided legislation in recent memory: the signing of a law in Tennessee that contains a clause stating that no licensed counselor or therapist must serve a client whose “goals, outcomes or behaviors” conflict with the counselor’s “sincerely held principles.”

I’m searching around for a more disgraceful, insensitive hateful piece of legislation and, even with the anti-LGBT laws enacted in places like Mississippi, North Carolina and Indiana, I cannot find one.

Those laws invite discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. This Tennessee law permits health care professionals, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists to violate a fundamental principle of their professions. No professional organization permits its members to deny service to anyone based on prejudicial, biased grounds.

So this law will result in one of two outcomes. One is that it will never be implemented because no health care provider will ever be so bigoted and calloused to turn away a client because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The other is that one just may — and the result could be horrific.

It’s not difficult to imagine the kind of situation that could emerge. A depressed patient with suicidal ideation goes into therapy. After the first few minutes it is revealed that the troubled individual is transgender. The therapist terminates the session claiming that she/he holds religious views that “conflict” with the patient’s gender identity. A happy therapeutic outcome here is not in the cards.

When a bigoted florist doesn’t want to do the floral arrangements for a gay wedding the only persons whose lives are compromised are the couple who must find another vendor and the florist whose business just took a (well-deserved) hit.

Those are bad enough but this Tennessee law has the potential to, literally, kill someone.

Pork New Orleans

I had a superb pork loin dish in New Orleans some years back and, after a lot of tinkering, I think I’ve managed to reproduce it. I like it better than the original but, well, I’m biased. It’s as basic as it gets, brine, marinade, brown, simmer in sauce. Total time for the dish is long but that’s mainly the brining and marinating. Actual cooking time is about an hour and a half. The recipe is for 4.

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4 thick pork chops

Brine:

3 c water

1/4 c Kosher salt

1/8 c brown sugar

10 or so juniper berries

2 bay leaves

Combine everything, add pork and refrigerate at least 4 hours (or overnight). If you like to play with different brines, this site has a number of excellent ones.

Marinde:

2 T olive oil

1 T soy

2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped

sprig of fresh rosemary, chopped

Remove pork from brine, pat dry, cover with marinade and refrigerate for an hour or two.

Sauce:

2 T olive oil

1 shallot sliced thinly

1 scallion sliced thinly

2 T malt vinegar

1 T balsamic vinegar (good, aged one preferred — if you can find one).

12 oz tomato broth (or 10 oz tomato sauce and 2 oz pasta-water or potato-water)

1 medium tomato chopped fine (I don’t mind the seeds or skin but remove them if you wish)

salt & pepper

Preparation:

Remove pork from marinade and brown in olive oil in a saucier pan large enough for the pork chops to fit without overlapping — remove.

In same pan prepare the sauce. Sauté shallot and scallion in the olive oil, add other ingredients, scraping fond from pan and simmer gently for 15 min. The sauce may need thickening and you may want to tweak amounts of vinegars and tomato sauce. The sauce should be tomatoey but tangy.

Return pork to pan, cover and simmer for an hour, turning occasionally.

The dish goes well with broad noodles. I like bok choy as a side, steamed in a light bath of soy and water with a drop of sesame oil.