2003, Reviewed
The New York Times asked various writers and thinkers to comment on the year's most underrated and overrated ideas. Here are two of my favorites:
OVERRATED: Repeal of the Estate Tax
We pay taxes only because the alternative is worse: no taxes, no government; no government, no army. Among our myriad taxes, none is as efficient and painless as the estate tax. It's like a lawyer's contingency fee: injured parties who couldn't otherwise afford legal access can try to recover damages because lawyers are willing to forgo their fees unless they win.Similarly, the estate tax lets us finance valuable public services with a surcharge that kicks in only if we end up among the wealthiest 1 percent. It also permits lower income-tax rates, encouraging effort and investment. It stimulates charitable giving, reducing the need for tax-financed public services. And a tax levied after death is surely less unpleasant than one collected from the living.
But if the estate tax is so great, why do 70 percent of surveyed voters favor the Bush administration's efforts to repeal it permanently? Perhaps this tax would fare better if pollsters began with a question like this: "If the estate tax were repealed, which other taxes should be increased, or which government services should be eliminated, to make up for the lost revenue?"
--Robert H. Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University and author of the forthcoming book "What Price the Moral High Ground?"
UNDERRATED: Link Between Money and Happiness
In conferences around the globe this year, psychologists reported that measures of human happiness scarcely change when national income grows. Citing this finding, many social critics now insist that income growth no longer promotes well-being.Experience suggests otherwise. Years ago, when I was a graduate student with two children in diapers, my wife called in distress to report that our 10-year-old clothes dryer had died. That evening I scanned the classified ads, made numerous calls and the next day drove out to inspect several machines. After haggling with the owner of a five-year-old Kenmore, I wrote a check we could barely cover. I drove a friend's truck across town to pick it up, then drove 25 miles to take the old machine to the dump. Four days and numerous hardware store visits later, we again had a working dryer.
I now earn many times what I did then. Recently my wife called to say that another dryer had died. "Call Werninck's," I suggested. When I got home that evening, the old machine was gone and a new one already up and running. Money doesn't guarantee happiness. But having enough can make life a lot less stressful.
--also by Robert H. Frank
The rest are here.
I liked the ones on beauty (overrated) and honesty (underrated). Now, I have to get back to my stress-inducing, multi-tasking, overworked life.
Happy New Year to all!
david at December 31, 2003 8:59 AM
A few thoughts on Robert H. Frank and his comments about money buying happiness.
It was indeed gratifying to see "psychologists" actually beginning to have some small ray of light in their otherwise somnolent beans.
6 billion people on the planet, and no less than 6 billion different versions of reality running around. When you see a person walking toward you, you can also see their swirling dustcloud of illusions travelling with them, spinning about their heads like mini-cyclones. People long ago decided that reality was just to rapaciously rapier-like, so they set about inventing all manner of lies, dreams and illusions to assuage their fears, seperate themselves from reality, and in general, leave them floating high above the turmoil of this hard piece of dirt we've come to call Earth.
The money myth, like all of their other craftily constructed canards, is a illusion invented to try to bring them happiness and feel better about themselves. Understandable. But in reality, of course, just like every other fiction, while it's invention was born of good intentions, in practice it only serves to further weaken and disempower people.
I can remember reading a few practioneers of chit-chat(psychologists) a few years ago. They were commenting on how lucky people were that hadn't achieved financial success, because they still had the illusion that someday, somehow, if I just get that money, everything will be different.(See, all you poor folk, just how dang lucky you are).
The world-famous bottom line, as they say, is this. We are all the unwitting architects of our own miseries. This occurs with the numerous expectations we invent for ourselves (money, soulmates-te he, understanding the appeal of Paris Hilton, etc.). We either attain our goals, and the satisfaction lasts for a few hours, or a few days and then abates, or we never attain them, the most likely outcome, given the sheer mass of humanity, and spend an entire lifetime trapped in the ennui, misery and self-loathing that these failures wreak upon ourselves.
I was in a house a while back. But I don't know if "house" is really apropo. It was more like a pyramid, set atop a mountain, that had been erected to satisfy the ego of this proud mountaintop pyramid owner.
Well let me tell you folks, when I say big...OH IT WAS JUST TO DIE FOR!!!!!!!! If my friends could have just seen me there why they'd be so green....well... When I say big folks, I mean big. When I spoke my voice echoed for 4 maybe 5 minutes. When I finally got the strength up to actually tour the house, I saw St. Bernards roaming the halls, in case i should get lost. The backyard had stately trees and even statues(I thought one of me would have been a nice touch but...)
As I left, I couldn't help thinking back to when we were all kids. There we all were, playing in our sandboxes building mounds as high as we could. And the kid who built the biggest sand house would yell, "Look at me mommy, my house is the biggest". As if to say, "Hey look at me, look at me, I'm important over here". And, the biggest irony in all of this nonsense, is that the person isn't really chasing the biggest house or the nicest car, they're really chasing people, just like they were when they were kids.
One final news item. A little over three ago, Mark Hughes, founder of Harbalife, with annual sales of over 1.7 billion, was found dead. His body was discovered in his 25 million dollar Malibu mansion. He died of a lethal combination of alcohol and anti-depressant medication. He was in his early forites. He died alone.
For what it's worth.
Chris Volkay
Chris Volkay at December 31, 2003 9:52 AM
Too bad Rebecca Solint repeats a fairy tale to demolish capitalism--Sitting Bull didn't give his salary from the Buffalo Bill shows to 'street urchins". He was paid up-front, and his family kept the money while he was on tour. What a crock!
Roberto at December 31, 2003 10:00 AM
Paula J. Caplan: '[...] these days you would think that there is no such thing as normal, thanks to the hand-in-glove working of the drug and insurance companies with the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the handbook of 374 "mental illnesses." If you are still grieving a loved one's death two months later, you fit the category of "major depressive disorder."'
Diagnoses are proliferating, no doubt, but I don't know why she characterizes it as a conspiratorial collaboration between insurance companies and the American Psychiatric Association. Insurance companies only reimburse for diagnoses, so the APA comes up with more of them. The insurance company's expense is the psychiatrist's income. Their interests are much more oppositional than "hand-in-glove working" implies. If there were no such thing as "major depressive disorder," shrinks would have to listen to sad people talk for free. And that would make them miserable too.
PS: Call it shameless self-promotion, but I'd like to suggest another under-rated idea: Sex with Middle-Aged People.
Lena at December 31, 2003 11:47 AM
To: Lena Horne-y
are you suggesting what i think you're suggesting?
More snatch?
chris at December 31, 2003 3:41 PM
Come and get it, Chris-babe.
Lena at December 31, 2003 4:31 PM