Our "Life is a Lottery" Culture

One of the things President Obama is famous for is dissing the successful as "life's lottery winners." This parallels his charge that successful businesses don't deserve the credit for their success, saying "You didn't build that." This is politically shrewd, because it taps into two basic weaknesses of human nature: envy and greed. His philosophy, and that of many liberals in generals, conveys the message that voters are justified in their envy of success and wealth. Voters are encouraged to demand income redistribution because the wealth of others was not earned.

Fairness doctrine dominates the ethos of liberals and lies at the heart of their increasingly successful efforts to punish success by government regulation and taxation policy. If success is due to circumstance and luck, then it is only fair to push for more equal outcomes in the efforts of people to succeed. Voters, perhaps now a majority of them, like the idea of leveling the playing field by taking from the successful and giving to those who have not succeeded.

At the other end of the spectrum, the lottery mentality offers an excuse for those whose lives are mostly marked by failures. Their problem is bad luck, or exploitation by the successful. This is another example of unfairness, perhaps even of the mendacity of those who have won life's lottery. No longer do we have to blame failure on bad choices and decisions or on laziness. Poverty or antisocial behavior can't be blamed on freely chosen actions. Those who fail can find scapegoats and blame them.

Politically, liberal politicians have found the guarantee of success: convince people they are victims and pledge to punish the perpetrators and restore fairness. As Jeff Bergner put it in his essay, "One cannot build a cult of victimhood on the soil of personal responsibility."

It is not just craven politicians who reject personal responsibility. Many brain scientists have arrived at the same conclusion from highly flawed experiments that seem to show that a person makes choices and decisions well before their claim of when they made them. This research has been interpreted to mean that the unconscious mind makes the decision and later that becomes known consciously. Thus, the decision cannot be made freely. It is driven unconsciously by our genes and past learning experiences.

Thus, scientists provide support for redistributionist and retributionist social policies, because life success is not based on merit. We now have defense lawyers arguing "diminished capacity" for criminal clients. We even have clerics who argue from original sin and predestination perspectives that we can't help our bad morals.

I am writing a book on "Making a Scientific Case for Free Will." So far, despite my track record of science-publishing success, no publisher will touch it. Has free will become politically incorrect?

So why try? If you succeed, you won't get credit. You will get diminished, perhaps even punished. If you fail, you won't get blame. In fact, you will get compensated. This is what life in America is coming to in this new age of "life's lottery."

Sources:

Source for quote: Bergner, Jeff. 2015. The fame of life. The Weekly Standard, June 29, p. 25-26.

Source for critique of free-will research: Klemm, W. R. 2010. Free will debates: simple experiments are not so simple. Advances in Cognitive Psychology. 6: (6) 47-65.

Political Liberals: Hidden Agendas That Go With Disbelief in Personal Responsibility

The latest mass-murder episode at a Batman movie premier raised once again the argument that people are compelled by bad brains to do bad things. Academics, scientists, philosophers, and political liberals increasingly endorse the view that humans do not have free will―that it is an illusion. The idea is that genes, neurotransmitters, and life experiences make us what we are. They should not be blamed for the bad they do, nor do they deserve credit for the good. So, it is convenient to claim when things go wrong, it is not our fault. Holding that premise requires also to make excuses for others who do wrong or bad things.

Likewise, if you believe there is no free will, you can't take credit for your success. This notion resonates with President Obama’s recent claim that entrepreneurs don’t deserve credit for their business success. He said they could not have done it without the government, citing for example the Internet. Actually, government did not create the Internet, and certainly not Al Gore. The Internet arose from the invention of the TCP protocol by Vinton Cerf, the concept of hyperlinks by Tim Berners-Lee, and the implementation of the Ethernet precursor by Xerox.

Those who want to believe that free will is an illusion turn to science, which in recent years has generated a host of research reports claiming to have provided evidence that all our actions are subconsciously generated and our notions of free will are illusory. I, and others before me, have pointed out flaws in the design and interpretation of this research (Klemm, 2010). Since my critical review, several new reports have presented evidence that also refute the notion of illusory free will. Yet the illusory free-will crowd clings to its unproven position. Why is that?

What I have most recently started to realize is that those who push the idea of illusory free will may have hidden ideological agendas, which even they may not realize. For example, I am struck by how often these zombians, as I like to call them, seem compelled to tell us they are atheists. Why does this matter? On the surface, atheism does not seem to compel a disbelief in free will. But maybe it does. Virtually all religions hold that there is a God who holds humans responsible for their beliefs and moral codes. Thus, it is convenient for those who don’t like the challenge of being held responsible for their actions to reject religion. That gets them off the accountability hook. So, there seems to be some sort of synergistic relationship between disbelief in God and disbelief in free will.

A similar synergism may exist in politics. It may not be an accident that many zombians are intellectually elite and politically liberal. In tune with President Obama, they seem to hold that people don’t deserve their misfortune, nor have they earned their success. It seems that most of the academics, scientists, and philosophers in this elite group also believe that free will does not exist. Thus, any disparities in life status and wealth are inherently unfair, and it is government’s job to expand welfare to the poor and redistribute the wealth of the successful. It harkens back to the old Marxist doctrine that “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”). We should note also that atheism is a cornerstone of Marxist doctrine.

Klemm, W. R. 2010. Free will debates: simple experiments are not so simple. Advances in Cognitive Psychology. 6: (6) 47-65.

Blaming the Rich for Not Paying "Their Fair Share"

President Obama’s re-election campaign theme is to raise taxes on investment income to 30% for individuals and to 54.5% for corporations because he blames the rich for not paying “their fair share.” But this blame is misplaced and wrong at all levels of analysis.

First, the charge is not even true. Not only do the rich pay vastly more taxes than anybody else (the top 10% earners pay 70% of the federal tax revenue), but the rich pay the same rate as everybody else. Warren Buffet’s secretary pays 15% on investment income just as Buffet does. And he pays 30% on non-investment income, while she pays a lower rate because her income is lower and our tax system is “progressive.”

Second, middle-class wage earners commonly have investment income that they don’t pay any taxes on now, because the income is accruing tax deferred in pensions, 401 Ks and IRAs.

No matter rich or poor, investment income can be taxed three times, once on corporations before they distribute the income to their investors, again on the investors when they receive it, and yet again when investors pass on inheritance.

The President’s policy is especially unfair to retired people, most of whom rely on investment income and pensions that in turn rely on investment income.

Obama is unfair to corporations because the higher tax would diminish the capital they have for growth of their business and the number of workers they support. This is particularly onerous for start-up and small businesses which typically have a compelling need for capital. Since small businesses create most jobs, higher investment income tax kills jobs, which is yet another way it is unfair to individuals.

Obama is unfair to the government and the taxpayers as a whole, because economic data show that high investment income taxes actually yield less total tax revenue. In the face of such taxes, individuals invest less and thus starve business of capital for growth, and corporations move jobs overseas. So, in trying to punish the rich, the President would end up punishing everybody.

Finally, Obama is unfair to Congress and his fellow Democrats by beating up on them for a tax policy they have supported ever since 1978. As just explained, there are good reasons why both Democrats and Republicans have supported lower tax rates for investment income. Moreover, Obama is misleading the public into thinking that if re-elected he will get investment income tax rate raised to 30%. Not even the Democratic Senate will vote for that.

In short, President Obama doesn’t really care about being “fair.” This blame-game campaign theme is a cynical ploy to get unthinking voters to vote for him.