Category Archives: Society

Social exclusion and The Other America

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According to most commentators, it was French politician René Lenoir who coined the term ‘social exclusion’ (l’exclusion sociale). But the idea that there is a disparate group of disadvantaged citizens who are excluded from economic, social and political participation is nothing new. It is one of the major themes of Michael Harrington‘s 1962 book The Other America.

It’s been 50 years since Harrington’s book was first published in the United States. This expose of poverty in America turned Harrington into a celebrity and saw him invited to Washington to help plan Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.

Harrington argued that the poor had become invisible in America. In the 1930s poverty was too widespread to ignore and workers could be politically organised. But as 1960s began, the poor faded from view. They were a disparate group that included the old, the mentally ill, agricultural workers, blacks, homeless alcoholics and penniless bohemians. Aside from low incomes, all they really had in common was that they were excluded from the mainstream of society and immune to the benefits of economic progress.

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Clairvoyance in the commentary box: a vignette from the psychopathology of modern life

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I remember being at a wedding reception talking to someone who was 70 odd.  I asked them whether in their day it was normal for the bride and groom to put the tip of the knife in the cake and then beam at the cameras for two or three minutes – celebrities on their special day. Sure enough, back in the day, the camera was at the service of life life or was most of the time, not vice versa.

Today I’ve noticed a similar, subtle but profound difference in the zeitgeist. Listening to the Australian Open commentary it’s extraordinary how much psychologising goes on. Now filling in all those hours with chat is probably quite difficult, but the current formula (or perhaps it’s just a formula built around Jim Courier’s style) is endless speculation on what the players are thinking/feeling.

“Take us inside Novak’s mind Leyton” says Jim, and sure enough Leyton does his best in the role play. Roger Rasheed is on hand in hushed tones in the stands telling us what it’s like. He’s right there you see. Well so are Jim and Leyton, but he’s so close he has to speak quietly – and of course that means he can get even further inside the players minds. (Quiet – Roger is trying to hear the players thinking.)

And it turns out that whoever is asked to take us inside a player’s mind really can!  They just say what they reckon the player is thinking – though it seems pretty likely they have no more idea than anyone else. Bruce McAvaney is into this schtick like a rat up a drainpipe of course and is endlessly asking Jim “So what would he be thinking as they change ends”.  Continue reading →

In the good old days French children burned Santa in effigy

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Last year French parents were outraged by an advertisement that claimed Santa Claus wasn’t real. AdWeek reported:

"I have some bad news for you," a father says to his (grown) son right at the beginning of the spot. "Père Noël doesn’t really exist." Parents are all upset that their children’s illusions about the world will be shattered by this uninvited revelation, since the ad aired during a broadcast of Ratatouille. One child psychologist even claims this could have the effect of a "bomb" on children.

But 60 years ago attitudes in France were different. In a pastoral letter the Catholic Bishop of Toulouse wrote: "Do not speak of Santa Claus for the good reason that he does not exist and never existed. Do not speak of Santa Claus because Santa Claus is a fiction clever people use to remove all religious character from the Christmas holiday."

The bishop’s condemnation was only the beginning. In Dijon, a young priest, Abbe Nourissat, burned Santa in effigy in front of a crowd of cheering children who pelted him with orange peel.

As it happened, Santa rose again to deliver a speech from the town hall: "Nobody can kill me," he said, and assured the children that if they believed in him, there would be plenty of gifts.

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Does women’s morality differ from men’s?

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Clive Hamilton writes:

Women’s morality differs from men’s. Feminist philosopher Carol Gilligan argues women are motivated more by care than duty, and inclined more to emphasise responsibilities than rights. They seek reconciliation through the exercise of compassion and negotiation rather than demanding "justice", through force if necessary.

While the idea has widespread appeal, empirical research has failed to find large differences in the way men and women think about morality. Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde argues that a "consequence of his overinflated claim of gender differences is that it reifies the stereotype of women as caring and nurturant and men as lacking in nurturance" (pdf). Research suggests that women who violate the stereoptype of being caring nurturant can find themselves penalised in the workplace.

American psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that there is much more to morality than concerns about care and justice. He lists five sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity (pdf). According to Haidt and his colleagues, some of the biggest differences in how people think about moral issues are between liberals and conservatives rather than between men and women.

(Hat tip: Mindy at Hoyden About Town).

Together alone: Why McMansions appeal

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At #76 on the Things Bogans Like list, McMansions are a symbol of the culture of overconsumption and a triumph of marketing over common sense. Built on the urban fringe, kilometers away from services and public transport, McMansion owners are doomed to spend hours in their cars. And with all that open plan space, these supersized houses are costly to heat and cool. Critics deride McMansion buyers as greedy, environmentally irresponsible and lacking in taste.

At Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony, Helen argues that McMansion buyers are being duped into buying substandard housing by developers and their slick, manipulative marketing campaigns. She argues that, if developers and their advertisers wanted to, they’d have no trouble convincing buyers that "they’d be happier and more comfortable (and richer!) in a smaller but better constructed and environmentally intelligent house." But is it really that simple?

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Could we abolish poverty if we didn’t spend so much on public servants?

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In the Sydney Morning Herald of 1 June, Julie Novak of the Institute of Public Affairs criticised an article by Gavin Mooney and Alex Wodak, writing in the previous day’s Herald, which argued for higher taxes , in part based on arguments developed by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level arguing that Wilkinson and Pickett’s analysis should be taken with a grain of salt.

Now being an international comparisons pedant, I also have a lot of problems with aspects of the Spirit Level (mainly related to the fact that Japan is assumed to be a low inequality country and shouldn’t be).

But we’ll put that to one side, because along the way she raises an argument that is even less well founded than anything in “The Spirit Level”.

In particular, she asserts that “the primary beneficiaries of big welfare are the middle-class bureaucrats who administer the welfare state in fine detail. To get a sense of how much welfare-state funding is being misdirected, consider this: based on an upper estimate of 13 per cent of Australians living in poverty, the Commonwealth’s social security and welfare budget of $117 billion could have been evenly shared among the poverty stricken with a $40,817 payment.”
But let us stop for a minute to have a reality check. A payment of more than $40,000 per person means that we could pay a family of four more than $160,000 per year out of the current welfare budget; but only a small minority of families make this much in earnings. Is this possible? Well the answer must be “Sadly, No”.

Now if you divide $117 billion among 13% of the Australian population, it is arithmetically correct that you come up with about $40,000. This calculation is simple, straightforward and completely misleading.

People I have a lot of respect for criticise the estimates that the poverty rate in Australia is 13%, but let’s accept for the moment that Australia’s welfare system is not sufficiently generous to raise everyone out of poverty, and leaves 13% of the population below the poverty line.

But the point overlooked in this calculation is that in the absence of our welfare system a lot more people would be poor. So, the relevant figure is not how many people are in poverty after receiving social security benefits, but how many people are poor before they receive benefits.

OECD figures for around 2005 estimate that 12.4% of Australians were poor after taking account of taxes paid and benefits received, a figure a little lower than Julie Novak’s estimate. But 28.6% of the population would have been poor in the absence of welfare benefits. So if we divided all of the current welfare spending of $117 billion dollars equally among all pre-transfer poor people rather than giving them a payment of more than $40,800, we would only be able to give them a payment of $17,700.

If we completely abolished Centrelink and were somehow able to pay people benefits without actually having anyone to administer the system, then we would have about $3 billion to add in, which would give all poor people an extra $450 a year.

The combined amount is actually less than the current single rate of age and disability pension of around $19,000 (including supplements) – although it would be a big improvement on the rate of payments for the unemployed of around $12,400.

Of course to use up all of the welfare budget in this way would mean that we would no longer be paying for child care support, nursing homes, services for people with disability or support for the homeless.
Julie Novak also argues that “An insidious effect of progressive income taxation is to substitute leisure for work and, combined with a large welfare state, to impose high effective marginal tax rates that punish individuals financially for supplying more labour.”

It is not entirely clear what withdrawal rate she has in mind, but if you only wanted to give welfare payments to the poor, then you would probably be talking about a 100% withdrawal rate, which would make our current effective marginal tax rates look pretty low.