Hamilton Nolan

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“The First Order Of Business Should Be Creating A Fair Tax System”

August 25, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Months before the first 2011 Occupy protest in Zuccotti Park, economist Joseph Stiglitz was bemoaning the 1%, doggedly working to put a spotlight on wealth inequality and the rigged system that abets it. These days, he feels the discussion has evolved but there haven’t been any real material changes. 

Gawker took a break from being yeesh! long enough to allow Hamilton Nolan to do his typically smart work, interviewing Stiglitz about how disparity can be mitigated. Simply put, he doesn’t believe fairness can be achieved through charitable donations but will require systemic changes. An excerpt:

Question:

Is there a red line level of inequality past which you think there will be some sort of tipping point?

Joseph Stiglitz:

We’re always gonna have some inequality. There is a small enough level of inequality that, while you might worry about it, it doesn’t have a corrosive effect. We’ve reached a level of inequality where it’s unambiguously clear to me and to most observers that it’s interfering with our economic performance. It’s having a corrosive effect on the way our democracy works. It’s having a corrosive effect on the way our society functions. So we’re in the bad regime. We’re facing very large costs.

The other question that you’re asking is, “Is there a tipping point, a dynamic where things get more and more unequal and increasingly hard to pull back?” I would say yes, and what that point is depends on a number of factors, including the political landscape. I believe a lot of inequality is a result of the policies we make. Those policies are a result of political processes. Political processes are affected by the rules that [govern] how money gets translated into politics. So if you have a political system like the US, where money talks more than in Europe, that is going to have a more corrosive effect—a lower tipping point. I try to be optimistic. I wouldn’t be working so hard if I believed we were over that tipping point. There’s some chance we are over it, but there’s some chance that we’re not. The fight right now is to make sure we don’t go further over it.

Question:

Is it possible to rein it in with our current campaign finance system?

Joseph Stiglitz:

It’s possible, and difficult. We’ve seen successes in the minimum wage campaign. We’ve seen successes in when the Republicans try to restrict voting rights in Pennsylvania, it backfired and people got so angry that they came out and voted. So every once in a while you see an outpouring of democratic forces.

Question:

Where would you set the income tax rates, if it was up to you?

Joseph Stiglitz:

The first order of business should be creating a fair tax system, so that we tax dividends and speculators at the same rate that we tax ordinary income.•

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“If We’re Going To Wait For Capitalism To Disappear, People Are Going To Wait Along Time”

April 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fresh from his Reddit Ask Me Anything, moral philosopher Peter Singer discusses his new book about altruism in a Gawker Q&A conducted by Hamilton Nolan, a consistently intelligent and passionate voice on the New York media scene. Among other topics, the two discuss the continued viability of capitalism and the validity of revolutions predicated on income inequality. An excerpt:

Gawker:

Can capitalism solve these problems, ultimately? Is capitalism equipped to address human poverty in the long run?

Peter Singer:

I don’t think capitalism alone is going to solve the problems, but capitalism supplemented by enough concerned individuals who would both donate some of their resources and lobby governments to prevent some of the possible abuses of capitalism, I think that could deal with the problem of poverty. If we’re going to wait for capitalism to disappear, people are going to wait a long time. I think most of them will be dead before that happens. So I don’t think that’s the right approach. We have to try to do things within the framework we have.

Gawker:

With the U.S. presidential election coming up, do you have any endorsements? Any issues you’d like to see get attention?

Peter Singer:

I don’t know that any candidate wants my endorsement! I certainly think that America’s aid to the global poor is shamefully low, and most Americans have no idea how low it is. All the surveys that ask Americans “How much of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid?” they come back with a median figure of 15%. And if you ask them what they think would be the right level, they’re somewhere between 5-10%. And the actual level, of course, is 1%… The other big issue is climate change. Climate change needs to come up. That’s one of the critical moral challenges we face in this century.

Gawker:

Economic inequality has become a big part of the political conversation in America. How does that tie into the poverty and altruism issues you’re writing about?

Peter Singer:

I agree that inequality in America is a problem, but I think that what a lot of Americans don’t realize is that if you look at the picture globally, they’re the top 1%. Not all Americans, but if you’re $52,000 a year, that puts you in the top 1% globally. So if people think it’s bad that there’s this top 1% in the United States, they should think it’s much worse that there is this much steeper inequality.•

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“We’re Experiencing The Best Year In Our History”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

You get the feeling sometimes that people with money aren’t necessarily very good at economics, or perhaps their politics are more informed by ego and privilege than reality. The U.S. economy does not have to be a zero-sum game as some seem to think.

From death panels to massive layoffs to runaway inflation, many threats have been leveled at President Obama’s policies, particularly during the 2012 election, by the Romneys, Palins, Trumps, Fiorinas, Wynns and Welchs of the world. From a Hamilton Nolan Gawker post about Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel, who said he’d be forced to fire all his employees if Obama was reelected:

“Siegel—also known for being the subject of the documentary The Queen of Versailles about his doomed attempt to build himself and his wife America’s largest house—did not end up firing everyone directly after Obama won the election. But what about now, two years later? The pernicious effects of Obama’s socialistic policies have had ample time to take hold. What horrible fate has now been visited upon Siegel’s employees after the Obama administration has see to it that he is thoroughly ‘taxed to death,’ as Siegel warned in his letter?

In October, Siegel raised his company’s minimum pay to $10 an hour. ‘We’re experiencing the best year in our history,’ Siegel said.”

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“When You’re In The Oil (Or Weapons) Business, The Stakes Are A Lot Higher On Individual Deals”

May 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening question of an Ask Me Anything that Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan moderated with journalist Ken Silverstein, author of The Secret World of Oil:

“Question:

Is the oil industry actually more corrupt than other major global industries? If so, why?

Ken Silverstein:

Yes, it actually is. The only industry that’s remotely as corrupt is weapons and partly for the same reason. If you’re selling widgets or paper towels or T-shirts, you make a relatively small amount of money on a lot of contracts. When you’re in the oil (or weapons) business, the stakes are a lot higher on individual deals. You may be chasing an energy concession worth tens of billions of dollars that could be generating revenue, and profits, for decades. That encourages you to use any tactic that will reel in that deal, and that often means paying off government officials. Keith Myers, a London-based consultant and former BP executive, told me, ‘Corruption isn’t endemic in the energy business because people in the industry are more corrupt or have lower morals but because you’re dealing with huge sums of capital. A million dollars here or there doesn’t make any difference to the overall economics of a project, but it can make a huge difference to the economics of a few individuals who can delay or stop or approve the project.’

A related reason is that a lot of the energy resources that we want to run our factories and heat our homes and fill our gas tanks is sitting in Third World countries headed by corrupt governments. Or as our illustrious former vice president and Halliburton exec, Dick Cheney, once put it, ‘The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes.'” 


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“Although I Regret The Unnecessary Killing Of Dogs And Cats, I Don’t Think That Should Be Your Main Focus”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts | Permalink

I don’t look at Gawker very much anymore, unless, of course, the site has an interview with moral philosopher Peter Singer and allows him to do an Ask Me Anything with readers. Singer is the author of the great book Practical Ethics and has sharp and controversial opinions about animal rights and charitable giving, among other topics. Beginning March 1, the Princeton professor is offering a MOOC ethics course. Below are excerpts from the post by Hamilton Nolan in which Singer answers a couple of Gawker questions and a couple from readers.

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Gawker:

What are the implications of your thoughts on charity for the arts? It seems that your position tends to cause outrage among fans of the arts who think that you’re not counting the arts as a real charity.

Peter Singer:

I’m not saying the arts are not a real charity, I’m just saying that in the world as it is, it’s not a charity that I would give the highest priority to. I think it’s great for people to promote and encourage the arts. But I do think you have to look at the world we live in. And if we could get out of the situation where we have a billion people living in extreme poverty, if we could meet basic needs… and provide some minimal education and health care and so on, then I think would be the time to say, “Yeah, let’s help to promote the arts.” But I just don’t think that the differences you make by donating to a museum or an art gallery really compare to the differences you make by donating to the charities that fight global poverty.

Gawker:

Sometimes you’re perceived as not having gratitude for charitable donations from the rich, i.e., saying someone like Bill Gates could donate more money. Is there a role for gratitude in your ethics?

Peter Singer:

Sure. I think there’s a place for—I’m not sure gratitude is quite the right word—I would say rather appreciation and recognition are what we should give to Bill Gates. And it’s true that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates could give more, but I don’t spend a lot of time saying that or criticizing them, because I think what they’re doing is fantastic. I think they have made a huge difference to the world, they’ve saved millions of lives, they’ve set an example of what wealthy people can be doing. They’re not saints or angels, but nor am I.

________________

Reader Question:

What can we do as a species to stop the needless and endless slaughter of dogs/cats in America?

Peter Singer:

Look, I like dogs and cats too, but the numbers matter… in the US, nearly 10 BILLION animals – chickens, pigs, cows – are slaughtered for food each year, and that’s completely unnecessary too, plus they mostly have MUCH worse living conditions than dogs and cats. That’s why, although I regret the unnecessary killing of dogs and cats, I don’t think that should be your main focus – and if you are actively participating in the slaughter of chickens, pigs and cows by eating them, you really have no basis to object to the killing of dogs and cats.

Reader Question:

What would you say is a more valuable use of time: Working for a huge corporation for the sake of making as much money as you can so you can give it to or finance your own charity of your choice, or leaving the corporate world and taking on a life of relative poverty devoted to directly helping those in need, like becoming a nun or something? Are one of those inherently more valuable, less harmful, or a better use of time and energy in your opinion?

Peter Singer:

Depends.. on the corporation and what it is doing, and whether you can have any influence on that.. also on whether you will be able to maintain your giving despite being part of a culture that doesn’t give a lot… But there are good arguments for saying that “earning to give” can, in the right circumstances, be the most effective thing one can do. See www.80000hours.org for more discussion.

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“The Great Omniscient Government Spy Looking Over Your Shoulder Is Real”

June 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’m not a defeatist about all the problems of our world. I think, for instance, income inequality can be remedied, and we can achieve social progress in a number of areas. The demographics are on our side. But I’m not an optimist when it comes to controlling guns or ensuring privacy, areas where technology makes limitation almost impossible.

I’ve talked about guns before, so I’ll discuss privacy today.

Gawker‘s Hamilton Nolan always makes lots of good points in his posts. His latest, a piece about the surveillance state we find ourselves in, is no exception. We’re now a place where government, media and the odd hacker can watch us, can learn what we’re thinking. Nolan’s contention is that we can stop these intrusions. I don’t think that’s true.

9/11 and the Patriot Act hastened this world, made for an excellent excuse for its installation, but it was going to happen anyway. There are two reasons for that.

First of all, no one ever builds tools to not use them, and they only get cheaper and easier to use. Drones were the size of planes and then birds and soon fleas. Cameras are in our pockets–in our glasses–let alone attached to our streetlamps. We drop data everywhere we go–even when we’re sitting still. And a decentralized media is in everyone’s hands, which means many great things can happen but also that a virtual anarchy rules. And this new normal is already such a bedrock of our society that I don’t think it would be possible to turn back even if we wanted to. 

And I don’t think we really want to.

That brings me to the second reason: People really, really want attention at any cost. It makes them feel appreciated and safe. I’ve been constantly surprised by the extent of this. Social networks and other information-extracting services are a reflection of our desire to be connected, to feel important. We’ve traded so much for it already, namely our privacy, because, we want to be noticed, we want to be watched over. It’s a scary world and everyone wants a brother, even if it’s Big Brother.

Perhaps that will change when a government overreach causes a scandal that has a very human face. But I doubt it. The widespread News Corp wrongdoing, with the face of a murdered child attached to it, hasn’t changed much. I think privacy as we knew it, from governmental or other intrusion, is over, like it or not.

The opening of Nolan’s post:

“Ever since 9/11, the American government has been busily constructing the most comprehensive surveillance state in this country’s history. This vast and invasive bureaucracy is too big to hide, but the public has done its part by politely ignoring it. No longer. Now is when we, the people, choose whether or not we will accept the end of privacy as we know it. If history is any indication, we will.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the public’s consent was explicit: Do Whatever It Takes. As passions faded and the ‘War on Terror’ morphed into a quasi-permanent state of being, our consent became implicit. The public never asked for the surveillance state to stop. Over the past decade, journalists have periodically revealed details of the breadth of our government’s spying mechanism: the Washington Post the breathtaking size of the secret intelligence-industrial complex; Jane Mayer NSA whistleblowers who said that the agency was vacuuming up email and phone records from all Americans. These stories, meticulous though they were, made only a temporary splash. This week’s stories are different.

Over the past two days, two incredibly important stories about the U.S. government’s spying capabilities broke one after another. First, the story that the NSA is collecting the phone records of all Verizon Business Services customers—which may well include all Verizon users—on a daily, ongoing basis; and then, yesterday, the existence of the PRISM program, in which the NSA and the FBI tap directly into the data streams of the world’s biggest internet companies, allowing it to pull out virtually any and all communications data, allowing them to ‘watch your ideas form as you type.’   (The vague denials of the various internet companies likely hinge on the technical mechanisms of their cooperation, rather than on the existence of their cooperation itself.)

The great omniscient government spy looking over your shoulder is real. This is the type of spying program that makes conspiracy theorists sound mild in comparison. Even in the context of the wholesale erosion of the very concept of ‘civil liberties’ since 9/11, this is sobering stuff. We have consented, without our knowledge, to giving faceless, unaccountable government representatives access to everything we say and do.”

 

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“Happy Are The Ones Who Have Stupid Enemies”

May 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I don’t think it’s a proverb, but it should be: Happy are the ones who have stupid enemies. The GOP which has gone increasingly apeshit over the past few decades has now reached the point of certifiable. But the lords of the party aren’t just wrong-minded about their politics but their strategies as well. Those they demonize have nothing to worry about. Two examples:

1) Smirking crapbag Dick Cheney, whose sheer incompetence and dishonesty in regards to Iraq got nearly 5,000 of our soldiers killed and likely more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis, has stated that Hilary Clinton should be subpoenaed in regards to Benghazi. And it’s completely fine to fully investigate that horror and its aftermath, but for someone who fucked over the entire world to be treating Clinton like a war criminal because several people were tragically killed in the madness of the modern-day Middle East shows just how much of his own poison Cheney has gulped. The lack of accountability and proportion is stunning.

2) The Koch brothers want to buy lots of newspapers and use them as propaganda for their right-wing madness, and while that would suck for the fine journalists who work at various papers, it shows how out of touch these dunderheads are. Instead of using their money in effective ways, they are going to buy media in its twilight and appeal to a dying demographic. From Hamilton Nolan at Gawker: “Evil corporatist archconservative billionaires the Koch brothers are considering making a bid to buy several big newspapers from the Tribune Co., including the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. Unions and liberal politicians are justifiably alarmed by this prospect. They’re trying to pressure the shareholders not to sell to the Kochs. Here’s another, perhaps more productive idea: let the Kochs buy that crap.

The Koch brothers, much like fellow archconservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch, are old. Old, and rich, and conservative. This means a few things:

1. They feel (wrongly, not that it matters) that the media has an incorrigible liberal bias against their interests.

2. They have enough money to buy media outlets.

3. They don’t understand new media.

Therefore, rich old conservatives, like Rupert Murdoch or Philip Anschultz or the Koch brothers love the idea of buying newspapers. They don’t care that the era of newspaper dominance of the media is now permanently over.”

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“George McDonald Is Already Better Than Any Mayor Has Ever Been At Addressing The Most Obstinate Social Problems In This City’s Modern History”

February 7, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Two of the heroes in New York City’s ongoing struggle against poverty are Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem’s Children Zone and George McDonald of the Doe Fund. The opening of Hamilton Nolan’s excellent Gawker post about the latter organization, a homelessness-ending program started by McDonald, who is running a quixotic candidacy to be New York’s next mayor:

“The next mayor of New York City will not be George McDonald, though George McDonald is running for mayor. That’s OK. George McDonald is already better than any mayor has ever been at addressing the most obstinate social problems in this city’s modern history.

Homelessness. Poverty. Unemployment. These problems are usually seen as intractable, overwhelming, and hopelessly complex. They certainly can be, for those suffering their effects. But solving these problems is not a mystery at all. There is a nonprofit group in New York City called The Doe Fund that has developed perhaps the single most effective formula in existence for moving people from the streets to productive society.

Here is what they do: They take in homeless people, referred to them by places like Bellevue Hospital. Many of these people are fresh out of prison, with little safety net. They house them. They ensure they’re sober and make them abide by a schedule. They give them a job for starters—cleaning up trash around the city, for a month. The men in all-blue jumpsuits you see pushing brooms and emptying trash cans throughout New York are Doe Funders.

After that, the fund gives them classes in life skills and specific job training (they can choose between pest control, catering, building maintenance, and other specialties) for the next six months or so. There are mock job interviews, to get the pitch right. Then they send each one out to pound the pavement and find a job. When they find a job, they find them a place to live. By the time a year is up, the Doe Fund has transformed a homeless person into an employed person with a place to live.”

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“The Purpose Of This Discussion Is Not To Impugn The Character Of Billionaires”

January 10, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan thinks that everything is terrible and everybody is horrible. He’s probably right. In his post “Do the ‘Good Rich’ Exist?” Nolan references a great 2006 essay by philosopher Peter Singer and a new book by historian Robert F. Dalzell to consider if the super-rich who give away great wealth while still in possession of even greater wealth are actually deserving of our praise. An excerpt:

“The purpose of this discussion is not to impugn the character of billionaires. It is to ask: What is the cost to society of the perception that we should be grateful to these wealthy men for their generosity? The assumptions implicit in that view are A) that the wealthy are fully entitled to their money because they earned it on the basis of their own talents, and B) that the need for society and its laws to protect the entitlement of the rich to their own wealth outweighs the aggregate societal needs that could be cured or ameliorated by that wealth (poverty, disease, etc.). Gratitude towards the great philanthropists is based on the assumption that they are not and should not be expected to give their wealth back to the world; it is based on the assumption that the normal, default, acceptable behavior for the very wealthy is to hoard most of their wealth and put it solely to their own use. It is a view in which society grovels at the feet of great men who have succeeded where the rest of us have failed.

Warren Buffett himself has attributed most of his success to the society he lives in—its governmental protections, its rule of law, its fair and transparent markets, its educational system, and so on. The wise rich (and anyone realistic about the role of chance in the outcomes of all of our lives) recognize that personal talent is but one minor ingredient of vast success. If society is responsible for the vast majority of the success of the rich, then returning the vast majority of that wealth back to society is the least that the rich can do. (Really, it’s the least, considering the fact that they would still be left incredibly wealthy.) This level of giving back to the society that spawned them should be expected of the rich. Yes, society owes them its gratitude—the same gratitude that it owes you for paying your taxes, and volunteering, and making your annual donation to UNICEF. The same gratitude, regardless of the number of zeroes on the check. The gratitude that comes when someone does a good thing that they are expected to do. The gratitude you get for fulfilling your role as a responsible member of society.

To the extent that we should be grateful to the great philanthropists, we should be grateful to them for fulfilling a duty. And to the extent that that duty is to be truly generous, it is a duty that none of them have fulfilled.”

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“It Was Also A Sloppy, Ethically Dubious Project”

June 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

John Cook and Hamilton Nolan are consistently good reads at Gawker. The former can sometimes be extreme–his takedown of Mike Wallace went too far, I think–but even in his excess a lot can be learned. Here’s the opening of Cook’s reconsideration of those Watergate wonders Woodward and Bernstein:

“Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigation into the origins of the Watergate break-in—which took place 40 years ago yesterday—is one of the most highly mythologized episodes in the history of journalism. It represents the Platonic ideal of what journalism-with-a-capital-J ought to be, at least according to its high priesthood—sober, careful young men doggedly following the story wherever it leads and holding power to account, without fear or favor. It was also a sloppy, ethically dubious project the details of which would mortify any of the smug high priests of journalism that flourished in its wake. The actual Watergate investigation could never have survived the legacy it helped create.”

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