Get the Close-up View of MAPS 3 Pie Chart
Here’s the full view for those who want to see our pie chart in all its glory! Pie chart was constructed from the following figures available on City’s website.
$280 million Convention Center
$130 million Park
$130 million Transit
$60 million River
$60 million Fairgrounds
$50 million Senior Centers
$40 million Bike Trails
$10 million Sidewalks
MAPS 3 Madness
Oklahoma City residents have a choice to make on Tuesday, December 8. Do we continue to pay a penny of sales tax to support some new stuff for our City or not?
Many reporters and bloggers around town have already weighed in on one side or the other. One point that appears to have gone unnoticed is that of basic fairness. So, let’s look at fairness.
First, let’s go back to those wonderful memories of economics classes we took in school.
To be specific, let’s talk about progressive and regressive taxation. If the terms progressive and regressive are not part of your most treasured memories from school, read this next paragraph. Otherwise, skip on to the next!
Progressive taxes are those that impose higher rates for those taxpayers who have the greatest ability to pay. That is, the wealthiest taxpayers, or those in the highest income brackets, pay higher tax rates than those who have less income or wealth. Regressive taxes are taxes that place a heavier tax burden on those with less wealth or lower income. For example, a sales tax is regressive since low-income families have little choice but to spend everything they make and thus pay sales taxes. They pay a higher percentage of their income in sales taxes than do those who are wealthy enough to save or invest—those who need not spend their entire paycheck just to cover basic necessities. Some cities and states attempt to remedy this situation by exempting groceries from sales taxes, or providing some sort of tax rebate for low-income taxpayers. Our City does not have any program to remedy the regressive nature of sales taxes.
Note that both MAPS projects have been financed by sales taxes. Cities find sales taxes easy and inexpensive to administer. Imagine the difficulty in implementing a city income tax! Still, there are some important questions to ask about MAPS 3.
Where is the money going?
Where is the money coming from?
Who benefits?
The various projects are listed and described on several sources listed below.
City Government Website
Doug Dawgz Blog
Oklahoma Gazette MAPS 3
Oklahoma Gazette Voter Opinion Article
Oklahoma Gazette).
So, vote on Tuesday, December 8! And when you do, ask yourself if a new convention center paid for by regressive taxes, is what our city needs. I don’t think so.
Arden Rea lives in Oklahoma City.
Health Care in the Land of Oz
The newest arguments over health care makes me feel like I just landed in Oz, or maybe even Kansas, but certainly not Oklahoma!
The proposal to curb Medicare spending, in order to provide insurance coverage for more Americans is making Oklahomans angry. Who could have imagined—Oklahomans who are angry about DECREASED government spending?
And there’s more…. Oklahomans are crying their eyes out because they fear doctors will not be fairly compensated if there are cuts in the Medicare budget. Huh? Our state has a history of resenting the educated elite! When I was growing up, doctors and lawyers were described as “people who thrive on others’ misfortune.” And what about our attitude when union workers have to take pay cuts? Oklahomans generally say, “Serves ‘em right–they’re greedy.” Suddenly doctors, who command six-digit salaries, send their kids to private school, and take vacations several times a year are going to be cheated by lower Medicare payments?
Still keeping an eye out for flying monkeys.
Warning⎯Competition Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
Economists like competition, and politicians all over the country have acquired this mindset as well. Politicians here in Oklahoma are especially enamored with competition (except when it involves third parties!) and become very braggadocious when discussing their love of competition. We are proud of how tough we are! Our ancestors were pioneers and cowboys! Because we are so tough, we can face any competition thrown at us, and it’s only those sissy city slickers who might be afraid.
I was reminded of our love of competition when a friend sent me an article about our national health care dilemma. It’s quite a long article, but well worth reading1. The subject is the perplexing high costs of medical care in two different cities in Texas. (Oklahomans always enjoy puzzling over the quirks of our southern neighbors.)
An economist, the thing that jumped out at me was competition. Competition sometimes hinders the quality of medical care and simultaneously raises costs, and this can occur at several different levels within the medical-industrial complex. The article relates a situation in which physicians who are reluctant to collaborate with colleagues in delivering medical care duplicate tests and prescribe unnecessary procedures. It is not difficult for us to envision doctors’ refusal to collaborate¬. After all, pride alone would lead to wanting to be the only star on the patient’s horizon. Then there are the questions about exactly who gets to prescribe what, and to whom financial rewards go. The resulting lack of cooperation leads to a duplication of services, unnecessary services, and extra expense with no better health outcome for the patient. In some cases, the outcome is even worse, due to risks associated with tests and procedures. A combination of pride (concern of students of human nature) and greed (concern of economists but called “profit motive”) interact and the result is unfortunate.
Additional examples of medical insanity include the relatively new practice of advertising. There is no need to elaborate about the proliferation of often-embarrassing advertisements in American media. Creative people are working to bring us advertising to encourage us to “choose” hospitals, clinics, and medications. With all the problems our society has, couldn’t these bright energetic people be using their talent somewhere else?
Anywhere else!
And one of my all-time favorites involves high-tech mega-gadgets purchased by hospitals. A terrific example is the introduction of the Gamma knife in the mid 1990s. Everyone wanted a Gamma knife, though the types of ailments for which a Gamma knife is needed are quite rare. One surgeon threatened to leave a hospital if he didn’t get his Gamma knife. Every hospital administrator felt her hospital would “lose out” in the race to profitability if she didn’t buy a Gamma knife. The result, of course, was too many Gamma knives, under-utilization, and bloated costs for everyone2.
The long-accepted economic theory, that competition is the inescapable best solution to all human ills, falls flat. But we find it hard to turn loose of the idea. We feel we must assume the worst about our neighbors; they are our competitors—they will take advantage of us if they have the chance. This assumption can bring out the worst in us, and so it goes.
Mayo clinic is often seen as an example of an alternative economic arrangement. Doctors are not financially rewarded for each medical procedure. My question is, how did the Mayo clinic arrive at this model? Did they dig up the writing of radical economists and read about wasteful competition? Were they motivated by knowledge of human nature or psychology? What cultural factors would have to exist in order for a Mayo clinic model to work? Our confidence in competition, our certainty that it is an inevitable natural law, and the acclimation of our culture to competition has led us to a very dark place. We need a new vision.
Arden Rea lives in Oklahoma City.
FOOTNOTES
1. Atul Gawande, “The Cost Conundrum,” New Yorker, November 12, 2009
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande.
2. George Anders, “High-Tech Health: Hospitals Rush to Buy A $3 Million Device Few Patients Can Use — Surgeons Want Gamma Knife For Certain Brain Cases And Often Get Their Way — Two Machines 10 Miles Apart,” The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 1994, pg. A.1
Book Review–To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise
To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise
by Bethany Moreton
Harvard University Press, 372 pages
0674033221
At some point during my childhood, my mother began shopping at a new grocery store in our western Oklahoma town. She told my sister and me not to tell our grandfather that she was shopping there. You see, the new grocery store was a dreaded CHAIN STORE! The owners of the store did not live in our town, and they owned TWO other grocery stores—one of them in Kansas! Many Oklahomans of my grandfather’s generation did not like chain stores! My sister and I pledged our secrecy, and my grandfather suffered no ills (at least not because of my mother’s grocery shopping).
What a difference forty years makes! Now, no self-respecting Oklahoman would do anything other than shop at chain stores (indeed there is hardly anywhere else to acquire necessities). We have one special favorite chain store—Wal-Mart! How did things change so much?
Yale graduate, and University of Georgia professor, Bethany Moreton, attempts to answer this question and does so masterfully.
Her analysis revolves around the culture of the Ozarks, where Wal-Mart began. Her penetrating discussion of the company, the folkways of the Ozarks, the religious faith of the customers and employees, and broad political and economic factors give the reader a sweeping panorama of the past fifty years. “Wal-Mart country” has expanded geographically, indeed to global proportions, taking Scots-Irish folkways and evangelical Christianity with it.
Though most of us in Oklahoma don’t identify immediately with the Ozark culture, there are many similarities between that tradition and our rural, agricultural, oil patch heritage. Indeed, many elements of Ozark culture are common throughout the rural South. These various social norms are part and parcel of Moreton’s writing. Rather than taking a simplistic view that interprets Wal-Mart solely as the product of the Ozarks, Moreton paints a complex picture of interaction with and among various cultural threads. Wal-Mart is influenced by the prevailing culture of Sam Walton’s Bentonville, but in turn, Wal-Mart country has been influenced and unquestionably shaped by the behemoth retailer.
Moreton does not write with a bias for or against Wal-Mart. This is an evenhanded treatment seeking to simply take in the various aspects of an international phenomenon. The book is extensively documented with over 100 pages of footnotes and index. This makes it a little shorter than most non-fiction books. It seems a few ideas could have been better developed, and possibly were summed up a little too quickly in the interest of brevity. Nonetheless, this is a great first book from a young Ph.D. We can expect great things from this lady. Read the book.
Of Blue Berries and Big Boxes
High on our list of favorites here in Oklahoma are Veggie Tales cartoons and big box discount retailers. At first blush, there is no obvious connection between these two, but the book, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton, made me remember Madame Blueberry.
Let’s recall this all-time great Veggie Tales episode. This dramatic work opens with Madame Blueberry feeling very blue. She spends her days envying her neighbors, who have more stuff. Though she has a lovely tree house, she is very blue. An adventure ensues when three guys who resemble skinny green onions show up at her door representing a newly opened big box retailer, Stuff Mart. She immediately rushes to Stuff Mart where she buys all sorts of stuff. When she arrives home with her stuff, she discovers that her house can’t really hold it all, and that’s a problem when you live in a tree. It’s not a pretty picture. In the end, she learns that happiness does not come from a store, and sometimes, we would do well just to be thankful for what we have.
It’s a little odd, though, that the only person who learns a lesson here is Madame Blueberry. The skinny green onion guys are off the hook. No problem that they exploited her weakness (envy) to sell her stuff she did not need and could not even store in her small but charming tree house. No mention of easy credit made available to vegetables with insufficient incomes. No mention of overseas children working at slave wages to manufacture this unnecessary merchandise, the poor quality of the merchandise that will soon find its way to the landfill, or the wasted resources devoted to advertising all this. No, the only problem here is Madame Blueberry who should have known better than to buy all that stuff.
I’m not excusing Madame Blueberry, and I like Bob the Tomato as well as any other Oklahoman. And I am not really intending to disparage Veggie Tales. After all, it’s a thirty-minute cartoon intended for kids. The complexities of our globalized economy can hardly be dealt with in a thirty-minute cartoon.
But, we adult Oklahomans sometimes tend to look at complex situations armed with the intellect, moral judgment, and discernment of an 8-year-old Bible schooler. That is, we apply a Veggie Tales mentality to situations that are beyond the complexity of Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. For example, here in Oklahoma, our response to the sub prime mortgage crisis has been outrage. But outrage directed at whom? What I hear and see is disdain for the individual homebuyers who took out loans for a home, and were subsequently unable to keep up their payments. Negative comments about homebuyers who bought “beyond their means” abound. Same for those with staggering credit card debt. It is quite possible that many Madame-Blueberry-wannabes bought houses or consumer goodies that were simply beyond their families’ budgets. What about the loan officer or credit card company making this loan? Clearly those who are paid to loan money and assess the potential for repayment were asleep at the wheel. The lending institutions had the upper hand in a lopsided power relationship. Yet, one hears little criticism of these institutions here in Oklahoma. Like the skinny-green-onion-guys and Stuff Mart executives, they seem to be only sideline characters.
We tend to see many situations as a mistake by a single individual, even when a powerful institution (business or government) clearly had more power than the individual involved. Did Madame Blueberry cause us to see things this way? Of course not. But we tend to interpret economic circumstances as matters of individual action or choice, while failing to notice the influence of large institutions. Maybe we need to reconsider our analysis of Madame Blueberry!
Arden Rea lives in Oklahoma City.
Religitics
It is dangerous, and generally unwise, to talk about politics and religion. The trouble is, here in Oklahoma, they’re the same thing.
Christian fundamentalists have long dominated Oklahoma, and when I was young most fundamentalists were Democrats. That changed with the election of Ronald Reagan. At that point fundamentalism became Republican. Fundamentalists, who had always had enormous strength of conviction about religious matters, expanded these convictions to include free-market economics and other right-wing political positions. Suddenly de-regulation and union bashing were on par with doctrines of redemption and atonement. Oklahomans responded to those who questioned for-profit health care as if the questioner had advocated atheism or moon worship.
Americans who live outside the Bible Belt might be puzzled and ask why we can have such a blind faith in markets that sometimes fail catastrophically. How did a religion founded by a guy who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” come to embrace dog-eat-dog capitalism? To understand this, one really needs to understand the theology that is prevalent in Oklahoma.
Oklahomans believe strongly in sinfulness⎯especially the sinfulness of their neighbors. Each Oklahoman knows he is redeemed, but he also knows that each person meeting him on the street is sinful. This belief, unfortunately, leads us to mistrust others. When the idea of a free market came to the fore, bringing with it the idea that each individual acts in her own self interest, maximizing her own welfare with no particular obligation to others, the idea dovetailed nicely with the way we already perceived each other. It was easy enough for Oklahomans to meld the conventional economic theory of homo economicus into the religion of Oklahoma orthodoxy.
So, what am I arguing for? Two things.
First, a reexamination of Oklahoma orthodoxy. Yes, all of us make mistakes, some big some small. Some mistakes have far-reaching consequences; some are almost meaningless. We are capable of great evil, or great good. We are free to choose which path we will pursue. We do not need to assume the worst about others. Oklahomans lack of trust in their neighbors leads to an exaggerated sense self-reliance that sometimes borders on the ridiculous.
Second, let’s learn our history. The idea that greed is part of a system (Invisible Hand) that leads to maximizing community welfare came from Adam Smith, an 18th century Scottish philosopher. Smith was a deist, rather than a Christian, and he never claimed any sort of relationship between his ideas and Christianity.
A willingness to examine long-held beliefs, accompanied by knowledge of history could give Oklahomans a chance to form a different perspective. We no longer need to accept laissez faire economics as the inevitable reality that can and need never be changed.
Arden Res lives in Oklahoma City.
Book Review ⎯This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood
This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood
by Sharon Beder, Wendy Varney, and Richard Gosden
Pluto Press , 352 pages
0745329152
Released in May of this year, This Little Kiddy, gives parents some perspective on modern childhood. Oklahomans, and most Americans, will immediately notice the international flavor of the book. The authors are Australian, but rather than focus their analysis strictly on Australia, they spot trends from most English-speaking countries of the world. Beder, who wrote most of the book, has several books to her credit already, and all of them reflect an amazing ability to understand human nature across continents.
Early chapters deal with the ever-more-clever techniques used by advertisers and marketers to entice children. Most parents will recognize the “nag” factor when shopping with kids in tow. Of course, this is old news, but if misery loves company, U.S. parents may appreciate knowing they aren’t alone. Parents all over the English-speaking world share our pain.
Moving past these sad-but-all-too-familiar images, the subject becomes even more ominous. After a chapter on corporate-sponsored “educational” materials supplied to cash-strapped schools, we move to “Turning Schools into Businesses” in Chapter 6. This isn’t just your soft-drink vending machine type of school business, this is an exposé of for-profit schools. The reader learns of strategies employed by education entrepreneurs to undermine public schools, leaving a profitable niche for private schools.
The discussion moves on; we learn of methods used to influence policy for and in public schools. Exactly what do corporations want from public schools? Answer: a product⎯yes, a student is a product. Further, the type of product a corporations wants to “buy” (hire) is a compliant, docile, obedient worker who does not ask many questions! ‘
If you are of a left-wing political persuasion, you might say, “I knew this all along,” while those with more of a right-wing mindset may say, “Baloney/poppycock/balderdash!” The claims in the book are extensively documented (44 pages of footnotes to be exact).
Thus, this book is great food for thought for anyone interested in the next generation in this or any country.
Martin Sheen, Are You Hiring?
I want a boss like Martin Sheen (and I always thought he’d make a good president too!) Just saw the movie, Imagine That. Okay, so now you know I belong to a dollar-movie family.
In the movie, Evan Danielson, (Eddie Murphy) is a hard-driving financial consultant with a charming daughter, Olivia (Yara Shahidi). He discovers Olivia’s imaginary world when she spends a week with him⎯it’s obvious he has neglected his child and exasperated his ex-wife. He almost allows Olivia and her imagination to become a means to an end. Olivia’s creativity inspires him to reach fantastic career goals, and he benefits from the encounter with her imaginative way of looking at life while continuing a chase for the Almighty Dollar. At the last minute, he realizes she comes first, and he walks out of a business meeting (on a Saturday) to the shock and surprise of his colleagues. The purpose for Danielson’s exit is to attend Olivia’s school choir program. Coincidentally, Olivia regains her faith in her dad and has a significant “growing-up” experience that he would have otherwise missed. In the storybook ending, Dante D’Enzo, a mega-millionaire businessman, (Martin Sheen), locates Danielson and gives him a fantastic job, partly because D’Enzo admires Danielson’s devotion to his daughter.
The points made in the movie are very timely for our overworked American society. The tendency of adults, to chase after career goals and think that maintenance and nurturing of family and social relationships can be postponed, is widespread. And this postponing, even for what seems a short time, can result in unrecoverable loss.
But, here’s the clincher. We can’t all work for Martin Sheen. Many adults find themselves looking at an all-or-nothing deal when it comes to employment. A movie can portray a guy who refuses to work on a Saturday, walks out of a business presentation, and gets an even better job (or at least still keeps his old one), but few real-life employees feel they can refuse any demand an employer might make, including pay or benefit cuts!
In his thought-provoking book, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Richard Sennett discussed the possibility that the way our society has structured employment policies has led to many of the social ills we witness around us. Our inclination is to blame the individuals involved⎯Tom and Mary just didn’t have the commitment to keep their marriage together; Joe just didn’t have the willpower to beat his alcoholism; Roger simply placed his career ambitions ahead of his kids so they became delinquents. But what if Roger’s workplace demanded 60 hours per week and the alternative was no job at all, no health care or hope for college for the kids, and no home (no matter how modest) for the family?
It is tempting to say, “If only Roger’s boss were like Martin Sheen (the mythical Dante D’Enzo)”. But bosses can blame stockholders for the unrelenting pressure to keep profits up. Stockholders can claim a need for a secure retirement in the face of rising costs, especially for medical care. Doctors can point to frivolous lawsuits. And we all know what they say about attorneys!
It is easy to see fault in individuals (other than ourselves). More difficult, is knowing how to deal with a system where everything appears to be out of control and out of balance. Paul Tillich said this:
Man is supposed to be the master of his world and of himself. But actually he has become a part of the reality which he has created. He is an object among objects, a thing among things, a cog within a universal machine to which he must adapt himself in order not to be smashed by it. But this adaptation makes him a means for ends which are in reality means themselves, and in which an ultimate end is lacking.
We participate in the system. We are both victim and victimizer, some of us closer to one end of the spectrum than the other. It is beyond me to suggest a way out of the system, but recognizing where we are must surely be a start. Until we find an answer, I still want to work for Martin Sheen.
Arden Rea lives in Oklahoma City.
Big = Good, Except When It’s Not
The various proposals for health care reform in Washington have people talking here in Oklahoma. Even though a single-payer system is apparently not an alternative Congress is considering, some Oklahomans are convinced it is a highly likely outcome. Many Oklahomans seem to feel that a government that is powerful enough to provide health care for everyone is, well, just too powerful. Governments should have limited power–enough to start and conduct wars, manage nuclear weapons, put people in prison–little things like that, but not the amount of power necessary to provide health care. That would be overstepping the bounds of a safe and manageable government.
The puzzling thing is Oklahomans (and many other Americans too) seem to believe that government of bathtub-drowning proportions is ideal while insurance company proportions can be gargantuan with no ill effect. Insurance companies can refuse to sell insurance to people who are likely to need care, drop people who become ill, make mysterious impossible-to-explain “mistakes” that delay payments, and pay top executives ridiculously high salaries. Oklahomans face this very bravely. But the government really scares us.
We don’t especially like insurance companies, but our distrust of government is much greater than our distrust of corporations. How to explain this? We know we can’t vote for the leaders of corporations. Even though we can elect the leaders of our government, we don’t trust them. (And why should we when they get campaign contributions from insurance companies?) We see the private sector as “good” and the public sector as “bad.” We always like the word “free,” and when the business sector can mention the term “free enterprise” or “free market” that sounds really good to Oklahomans. Perhaps if the government described itself as a “free republic”–as in free from King George III–we would like it more.
For most of us Oklahomans however, the issue seems to come down to taxes, costs, and ultimately, how we view our fellow citizens.
Let’s take taxes first. We fear that a government health plan would take too much money in taxes. We would rather pay that money to an insurance company in premiums than see a government plan that would take our money in the form of taxes. That way, people who can afford it pay the insurance company. Then, they fight the insurance company to get claims paid. But, the silver lining is, since it is so difficult to cajole the insurance company into paying even legitimate claims, we can rest assured there are very few fraudulent claims paid.
And this brings up the second big fear–cost. We fear that the government will rubber-stamp any sort of crazy high-cost medical procedure someone might want (or a doctor might prescribe). You never can tell when someone might just decide to have a tonsilectomy for fun or an amputation just for a sense of adventure. And since doctors make money doing these sorts of things, a doctor just might tell someone to have brain surgery for a hangnail. Or a doctor might bill for a liver transplant while actually treating a wart. Did I mention our trust in doctors is, well, lukewarm at best?
And thirdly, we are so fiercely independent, we find it difficult to trust anyone–even each other! We feel we must constantly be on the lookout for rip-off artists. We feel each family should be all but completely self-sufficient. We have grave difficulty with the idea of pooling resources (in the form of tax money) to provide health care for all. We have a suspicion that our neighbors will game the system or that doctors will over-prescribe medical treatments. It’s more than a little amazing that we are willing to pool risk (by buying health insurance) at all!
Yet, we have to wonder… Are the administrative costs of the insurance system eating up so much money and resources that our fears of a government system are simply laughable? Or are the possibilities of fraud (and there have been some zingers within Medicare) that might be associated with universal single-payer health care substantive enough that we should continue to live with the current system? Is our lack of trust in “others,” whoever they may be, rational, or a form of collective paranoia?
Our current system, with the attitudes that underlie it, is very costly; just ask an uninsured Oklahoman.
Arden Rea lives in Oklahoma City.