Amitai Etzioni Notes

Does having kids make you less happy?

Like the annual outbreaks of flu, every year brings a new round of attacks on having and raising children. Some years, it takes the form of articles pointing out how expensive children are. You could buy a fully loaded Porsche for the $250,000 a child costs you these days, we are told.

Some years, those who have no children complain that the tax code and workplace discriminate against them, denying them tax breaks and time off that parents enjoy. The theme this year is that children are not a reliable source of happiness. Indeed, several researchers claim that they take the fun out of many marriages, causing a "happiness hit."

Read the rest at CNN.com.

 

The End of China's Rise

Just as most everybody has come to agree that China is the rising global power—with an economy that shortly will supersede that of the United States, a model of state capitalism preferred by many Third World nations over democratic capitalism, colonization of parts of Africa and Latin America and increasing influence among its neighbors—the world’s largest emerging power is already plateauing. While China weathered the financial crisis that has bedeviled the West since 2008, it faces serious challenges of its own. If major trends continue to unfold, those who wrote that we are about to enter a Chinese century will soon discover that it ended before it started.

China’s exceptionally high economic growth rate is what first called attention to its rising power. Strong economies can play a key role in the global marketplace and pay for major military buildups. However, China’s growth rate has slowed from 10.4 percent in 2010 to 7.5 percent in 2012. The rate, which economists predict will only decline further, may already be lower. The figures used by the media are based on Chinese data, the veracity of which many question.

Read the rest at The National Interest.

Obama Should Pull a Truman

More speeches, photo ops, and minor policy modifications will not save the flailing Obama presidential campaign. He needs to produce a drama, an event that will highlight the core of his message in ways that will deeply speak to the public and stay with it. I am not speaking of drama for drama's sake, to grab headlines, but for a showdown on a very real issue. In effect the number one issue: the way the gridlock in Congress prevents the economy from recovering, by not enacting the jobs bill and blocking a deficit cutting deal.

To proceed, Obama should pull a Truman. In 1952 the United States economy was threatened by a strike by the steel workers, whose employers refused to make a deal. (In those days, steel was a crucial commodity for a well functioning economy.) When the strike dragged on and on, President Truman invited the head of the steel workers union and a representative of the steel industry to the White House. On arrival they were told "this is not a social visit." Truman informed them that he would keep them in the White House until they struck a deal. It was reached the same day.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post.

It Is a User Fee

It is not a bird, plane, penalty or tax, but a user fee -- to be collected from those who seek to rely on the health care system but would rather avoid paying for it, the "free riders." The whole idea of insurance of any kind, as even a diehard capitalist will agree, is to throw some money into a communal piggy bank to cover the costs of those who will eventually need it. Some may end up taking out of the "bank" less than others, some a great deal, but because health care costs can be enormous, it is rational to purchase insurance at a reasonable fee and, as they say, share (or 'pool') the risk.

Most Americans already contribute to the health care insurance pool, either by purchasing insurance themselves or by getting it from their employers. Others are covered by Medicare or by Medicaid, soon to be expanded under the new law. The roughly one percent who are left, and hence are to be charged a user fee if they do not get insurance, must be reminded that unlike most other insurances -- for cars, fire, earthquakes and such -- which one can reasonably hope to never need, sooner or later, we all will need health care.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

The Folly of Nation Building

There is a growing consensus that the United States can’t afford another war, or even a major armed humanitarian intervention. But in reality, the cost of war itself is not the critical issue. It is the nation building following many wars that drives up the costs.

For every war of the kind we are waging in Afghanistan, we could afford five hundred interventions of the type America carried out in Libya in 2011. The war in Libya cost the United States roughly $1 billion, according to the Department of Defense, and the war in Afghanistan so far has cost over $500 billion, according to the National Priorities Project.

Read the rest at The National Interest.