As the editors of Evonomics, we recognize the importance of moral and political behavior in economic systems. This essay explores voting behavior in the United States as a way to see how different ideological tribes make sense of economic issues.Evonomics
The classical economic of choice is therefore far too simple as it does not capture what goes on in people’s brain when they make choices. “It is also much too static to capture the sensitivity and dynamics of the process,” he said.
Daniel Little McFadden (born July 29, 1937) is an American econometrician who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Heckman. McFadden's share of the prize was "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice". He is the Presidential Professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California and Professor of the Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley. —Wikipedia
As the great linguist Charles Fillmore discovered in 1975, all words are cognitively defined relative to conceptual "frames" -- structures we all use to think all the time. Frames don't float in the air; they are neural circuits in our brains. Frames in politics are not neutral; they reflect an underlying value system. That means that language in politics is not neutral. Political words do not just pick out something in the world. They reflect value-based frames. If you successfully frame public discourse, you win the debate.
A common neuroscience estimate is that about 98 percent of thought is unconscious and automatic, carried out by the neural system. Daniel Kahneman has since brought frame-based unconscious thought into the public arena in what he has called "System 1 thinking." Since frames carry value-based inferences with them, successfully framing public discourse means getting the public to adopt your values, and hence winning over the public by unconscious brain change, not by open discussion of the values inherent in the frames and the values that undergird the frames....
The reason that those of us in the cognitive and brain sciences write so passionately about framing issues is that unconscious thought and framing are not generally understood -- especially in progressive circles. Most progressives who went to college studied what is called Enlightenment reason, a theory of reason coming from Descartes around 1650 -- and which was historically important in 1650. The Cartesian theory of how reason works has since been largely disproved in the cognitive and brain sciences.
The Cartesian theory assumes that all thought is conscious, that it is literal (that is, it fits the world directly and uses no frame-based or metaphorical thought), that reason uses a form of mathematical logic (not frame-based logic or metaphorical logic), and that words are neutral and fit the world directly. Many liberal economists have been trained in this mode of thought and assume that the language used in economic theory is neutral and just fits the world as it is. They are usually not trained in frame semantics, cognitive linguistics, and related fields. The same is often true of liberal journalists as well. Both often miss the fact that conservatives have successfully reframed economic terms to fit their values, and that the economic terms in public discourse no longer mean what they do in economics classes.
Part of what the Cartesian theory of reason misses is the real brain mechanism that allows the conservative communication theory to be effective. By framing language to fit conservative values and by getting their framing of the language to dominate public debate, conservatives change the public's brains by the following mechanism. When a frame circuit is activated in the brain, its synapses are strengthened. This means that the probability of future activation is raised and probability of the frame becoming permanent in the brain is raised. Whenever a word defined by that frame is used, the frame is activated and strengthened. When conservatives successfully reframe a word in public discourse, that word activates conservative frames and with those frames, the conservative value system on which the frames are based. When progressives naively use conservatively reframed words, they help the conservative cause by strengthening the conservative value system in the brains of the public.
Liberals, in adhering to the old Cartesian theory of reason, will not be aware of their own unconscious values, will take then for granted, and will think that all they have to do is state the facts and the public will be convinced rationally. The facts are crucial, but they need to framed in moral terms to make moral sense and a moral impact....
The word at issue is "redistribution." The subject matter is the flow of wealth in the society and what it should be. This is a fundamentally moral issue, and the major political framings reflect two different moral views of democracy itself....The Huffington Post
Can Science Explain Tea Partiers’ Rage? (via Moyers & Company)Metaphors! They are more than a fancy way of emphasising some point – that is, their power goes beyond meagre linguistic construction. The research suggests they are part of our deep mental or neural capacity, which we draw on to sort out facts and ideas. They are conceptual devices intrinsically linked to the way we think abstractly. Metaphorical language reinforces our ideology (worldview) and so it is no surprise that political parties have become very interested in framing their messages using simple and common metaphors which resonate with the way we feel about things. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, considers we do not make our political choices on the basis of rational dissection of competing facts and arguments but rather respond to central (or grand) metaphors with reinforce our worldview. We thus consider facts or argument within that framework of thought. I am doing a bit of work in this area as a way of understanding why central Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) propositions (which are so patently obvious and have strong explanatory capacity) evade acceptance among people, even those who express liberal perspectives (in this context meaning – are open to new ideas).Bill Mitchell – billy blog
In the 2012 book written by Anat Shenker-Osorio – Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy – we learn that language is a tool that conservatives use to limit what we might consider to be possible. They construct the “economy” in such a way as to distort the way we comprehend economics.
Why do people act morally? Why do people act altruistically, keep their promises, or act fairly? It is sometimes held that a part of the answer is that people have "moral emotions", and these emotions play a key role in the creation of moral actions.
What is a moral emotion? I'm sure that there are specialists who would offer different definitions of this concept; but I suggest that a moral emotion is a feeling or affect that is responsive to the situation of other living beings. Sympathy, compassion, humor, affection, and respect are all examples of moral emotions; but so are antipathy, rivalry, envy, and racial animosity. This inventory shows that what I'm calling "moral emotions" are not necessarily "moral" -- taking pleasure in the suffering of others is morally unattractive, but falls in the category of a feeling that is responsive to the situation of the other.
There is a related category of emotion that philosophers sometimes refer to as "cognitive emotions." These are feelings that are dependent on possessing certain kinds of beliefs. Feeling grateful is a cognitive emotion; it doesn't make sense to attribute this mental state to someone without also attributing to the person some set of factual beliefs about what has occurred in light of which being grateful makes sense. (Andrew Ortony, Gerald Clore, and Allan Collins provide some theoretical discussion of this topic in The Cognitive Structure of Emotions.)
These two categories do not fully overlap. There are moral emotions that have a cognitive basis. But there are also moral emotions that do not have a cognitive foundation -- for example, the emotional response most people have to a smiling infant. And there are cognitive emotions that do not have a social component -- for example, fear of illness.Understanding Society
It is clear that normal human beings experience these kinds of emotions and feelings. How should we factor them into our theory of action? How do emotions affect behavior? Some emotions seem to have an immediate causal power to create dispositions to specific kinds of action (dispositions that can nonetheless be overridden by higher functions of self-control). An angry person is disposed to lashing out at others. A person experiencing sympathy is disposed to providing aid to people in immediate need. A frightened person is disposed to retreat from the frightening situation. A person experiencing sadness may be inhibited from any kind of action. So emotions have a fairly direct relationship to action....
Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way human behavior and culture is understood.AlterNet
President Obama has detailed the vast range of harms that the sequester would bring. They are well-known. And they are not necessary. The president sees the sequester, if it happens, as an enormous self-inflicted wound, inflicted on America by a Republican-dominated House elected by Americans.
But pointing out Republican-caused harms to millions of people -- many of them Republicans -- does not sway the ultra-right. Why? Democratic pundits say that Republicans want to hurt the president, to show government doesn't work by making it not work, and to protect "special interests" from higher taxes. All true. But there is an additional and deeper reason. Ultra-conservatives believe that the sequester is moral, that it is the right thing to do....
They believe that Democracy gives them the liberty to seek their own self-interests by exercising personal responsibility, without having responsibility for anyone else or anyone else having responsibility for them. They take this as a matter of morality. They see the social responsibility to provide for the common good as an immoral imposition on their liberty.
Their moral sense requires that they do all they can to make the government fail in providing for the common good. Their idea of liberty is maximal personal responsibility, which they see as maximal privatization -- and profitization -- of all that we do for each other together, jointly as a unified nation.
They also believe that if people are hurt by government failure, it is their own fault for being "on the take" instead of providing for themselves. People who depend on public provisions should suffer. They should have rely on themselves alone -- learn personal responsibility, just as Romney said in his 47 percent speech. In the long run, they believe, the country will be better off if everyone has to depend on personal responsibility alone.Moreover, ultra-conservatives do not see all the ways in which they, and other ultra-conservatives, rely all day every day on what other Americans have supplied for them. They actually believe that they built it all by themselves.
So for them the sequester is not a "self-inflicted wound." It is justice. The sequester is not merely about protecting "special interests." It is about the good people who pursued their self-interest successfully, got rich, and have acted "morally" in avoiding taxes that pay for public provisions by the government....
They are not merely trying to harm their own constituents just to hurt the president politically. Yes, they think hurting the president politically is moral, and they believe that any constituents they are hurting need to become more personally responsible. They see the sequester as serving that purpose.
In short, the sequester is not just about money and political power for the Republicans in the House. It is mostly about what they see as the right direction for the country: maximal elimination of the public sphere.The Huffington Post
How our modular brains lead us to deny and distort evidence
If you have pondered how intelligent and educated people can, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, believe that evolution is a myth, that global warming is a hoax, that vaccines cause autism and asthma, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, conjecture no more. The explanation is in what I call logic-tight compartments—modules in the brain analogous to watertight compartments in a ship....Scientific American
1. Spending Cuts Spur Growth
2. Only Private-Sector Job Growth Matters
3. Public Employees Are a Problem
4. Education and Training Restore Family-Supporting Wages to Dislocated Workers
5. The “Skills Gap”
6. American Corporate Taxes Are Among the Highest in the WorldAlterNet
So we have another gap between what is “true” in the conservative media bubble and the objective facts. In the real world, we spend about $25 per day on the needy. But, according to Fox News, the figure is $168.AlterNet
Schofield | December 14, 2012 at 8:26 am
To paraphrase David Sloan Wilson in his article “The New Fable of the Bees” conservatives “demonically strive to widen their slice of the pie while remaining oblivious to the size of the pie.” Wilson calls this the fundamental problem of social life. The principal motive for MMT’s development is the recognition it can make the pie bigger and, therefore, how a society can best make the pie bigger should be a goal of “framing” arguments.
The New Fable Of The Bees: Multilevel Selection, Adaptive Societies, And The Concept Of Self Interest
Schofield | December 14, 2012 at 9:07 am
If David Sloan Wilson is implying that conservatives are not open to new ideas about increasing the size of the pie because they are obsessive about increasing their slice of the pie then it follows that they are unlikely to be open to expanding their understanding of a fundamental aspect of money’s nature. They will struggle to understand that money like our DNA coding mechanism is a “conceptual communication system,” that it allows labor to be instructed to use resources to produce goods and services including the social exchange of goods already produced or indeed benefit from the social effects of services already funded (e.g. improved policing). This failure leads to not seeing that a healthy economy requires an optimal of money of money for both active spending and prudent saving. Accordingly the lack of conservatives “openness” has to be framed by progressives as detrimental to advancing an economy just as obsessiveness with part of the pie rather than the whole pie is too.
LRWray | December 14, 2012 at 9:23 am
Schofield: I like the wilson point on the pie–it has always been the conservative approach to “distribution”: a fixed pie so if I get more, you get less. I also like your analogy to DNA–could be something important there for developing the alternative framing.
Schofield | December 14, 2012 at 9:47 am
The phrase “conceptual communication system” for one aspect of money’s utility is a straight lift from the following article:-http://www.toriah.org/articles/abel-2004.pdfIt seemed to fit since I was interested in exploring what we know about any rational argument concerning the origin of cooperation at the molecular and cell level of life. Precious little it would appear. But since money is a social technology that helps us to cooperate with each other to meet our needs then so is DNA coding to help cells survive and meet their objectives.
Schofield | December 14, 2012 at 10:27 am
To paraphrase Trevors and Abel in their article referenced about the property of “value” in money relates to the operation of a “linear digital algorithmic program.” So a simply coded program would incorporate the understanding that if too much money is injected into an economy relative to resources availability “value” will tend to fall and vice-versa. Additional coding, for example, could support Steve Keen’s observation about economic performance being related to income and the quantity of increase or decrease in private debt but it obviously also impinges on money’s “value.” A good algorithmic program would obviously help determine the parameters affecting “value” and clearly this relates to Wynne Godley’s life-time’s work on Sectoral Accounting Balances. So money is like DNA it’s subject to algorithmic programming.
Language works so that the conservative name "right to work" evokes the conservative political ideology in the brains of those who hear it without wincing. The more an idea is activated in the brain the stronger it gets. Thus, the use of the conservative name strengthens the conservative ideology in the brains of the public.The Huffington Post
The press is not being neutral in using the Republican name for the law. Journalists too, in just using the name, are supporting both the Republican framing of the law and conservative ideology. The press is not being balanced -- which is what journalists typically claim to be. Balance would be to use both the names "corporate servitude law" and "right to work law" and to explain the differences in the progressive and conservative understanding of what the law is and does.
Of course, to do so would change a false view of language that journalists too often internalize, namely, that language is neutral. To see that it isn't, just try speaking or writing of "Michigan's corporate servitude law" and listen to conservatives scream bloody murder over a truth that does fit their view of democracy. And listen to them keep screaming because it is important to keep repeating the true name of the law if the public is to understand what the law really does.
The monetary system is a wonderful creation. It allows for individual choice while giving government access to resources needed to allow it work for us to achieve a just society.
The monetary system spurs entrepreneurial initiative. It finances, organizes, and distributes much of the nation’s output. It is one of the primary mechanisms used by government to accomplish the public purpose.
There could be a better way to organize production and distribution. There could be a better way to allocate resources between public and private. There could be a better way to induce the private to serve not only its own interest but also the public interest. But if so, we have not yet seen it—at least not since the end of tribal society, and I’m not sure I want to go back there.
Until that better system comes along, we need a progressive meme for the monetary system we’ve got. Progressives have been in retreat for the past three or four decades. Yes, they’ve won some battles—mostly in the social sphere. They’ve lost almost all economic battles, however. At least some of those losses are due to adoption of the wrong meme for money.New Economic Perspectives
Deficits and Debt are probably the most terrifying topic that MMT addresses. We need to be careful. We are treading on moral (or religious) grounds. We know that one should not be a debtor (or, a creditor)—most religions tell us so. One who proclaims that deficits and debts are OK is automatically engaged in blasphemy of various sorts, not least of which is a crime against morality. Let’s try to frame the discussion.New Economic Perspectives
When government spends more than it taxes, we not only get the services and infrastructure that we need but we also get to accumulate net financial wealth. We are richer in both real terms and financial terms. Government also offers to pay us interest on that financial wealth if we prefer to hold treasuries rather than HPM.
Government spending greater than taxing should not be called a “deficit”, rather, it is government’s contribution to our saving; government bonds are not “debt”, they are our net financial wealth.
Deficits and debts are bad framing; saving and wealth are good framing.
Government always spent by notching hazelwood, imprinting clay, stamping coins, chalk on slate, or “running the printing press”. There has never been another alternative. These marks or electronic entries represent government IOUs.
No matter what time period we are talking about, I would have received government payments as “Government Owes Me’s”.
Obviously, government cannot run out of these. Government can “afford” to buy what’s for sale in its own currency.
The question is not about affordability but rather concerns effects on the value of the currency and impacts on the pursuit of private interest.New Economic Perspectives
We take care of our own We take care of our own Wherever this flag’s flown We take care of our own
Let me repeat and clarify my purpose in this series. I am attempting to initiate a discussion among progressives on how to frame discussions about money and related issues. My perspective is MMT. To be sure, on one level MMT is a description. It provides a correct description of the operation of a sovereign currency system. Some commentators have objected to my progressive framing; they assert that one can accept MMT without the progressive bias. Sure they can. One can understand how money “works” but prefer NOT to use money in the public interest.New Economic Perspectives
