Douglas Beal The Financial Case for Nations and Corporations to Put People and the Planet First Douglas Beal We are in a period of increasing societal disruption. Pressure is mounting to ad- dress the climate crisis. Racial equity issues have moved to the forefront. And the COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold suffering and death and upended economies around the globe. In the past, addressing such issues has been seen primarily as the responsibility of government. But increasingly, there are expectations that the private sector must play a leading role in driving progress on major societal challenges. I, along with my colleagues at Boston Consulting Group, have spent the last decade supporting nations and corporations in addressing social and environmental issues—and measuring how their efforts impact country GDP and company financial performance. My work in this area began with economic development, helping nations to advance in a way that improved the living standards of citizens. More recently I refocused on private sector work, helping companies and investors create strategies to deliver both business and societal value. The research and client work I’ve done in both areas reveal a powerful insight: whether one is talking about a country’s economic growth or a company’s prof- its or returns for shareholders, performance is not degraded by focusing on how decisions impact people and the planet. Rather, the evidence is mounting that integrating such factors into strategy enhances financial performance. Putting Well-Being at the Heart of a Nation’s Strategy BCG’s insight on these dynamics started with our work in the area of economic development. As we supported presidents and prime ministers around the world in honing their development strategies, it became clear they were looking for a way to measure their progress beyond the purely financial benchmark of GDP. This reflected their acknowledgement that robust GDP per capita growth in the short term means little if living standards are undermined in the long term (by poor health, underinvestment in education, a degraded environment, and a widening gap between rich and poor). The Sustainable Development Goals had not yet been put in place at this time, meaning a globally-recognized holistic framework for measuring country progress did not exist. We set out to create one. This led to some deep conversations about what really matters for a society. As Robert F. Kennedy said, GDP “measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” We had to ask our- selves: What actually makes life worthwhile? We thought about general measures of happiness, for example, and whether levels of citizen happiness would be a good barometer for a nation’s performance. Ultimately, we decided that happiness would be too subjective for what we wanted to achieve. Instead we decided to focus on well-being , the conditions and quality of life people experience. We then asked ourselves: how do you measure well-being—and how can a government contribute to it? We spoke with numerous experts and dug into the re- search on well-being to determine what factors should comprise our measure. We eventually zeroed in on 10 dimensions: income, economic stability, employment, health, education, infrastructure, equality, civil society, governance, and environment. We identified a series of indicators for each—a total of 40 in all. The result was the Sustainable Economic Development Assessment, a diagnostic tool and measurement framework launched in 2012. SEDA allows us to track how a country’s well-being compares to that of other nations, determine the pace of progress over time, and identify areas in which countries are performing well or need to improve. SEDA revealed valuable insights. First, not surprisingly, countries with higher levels of wealth tended to have higher well-being. Norway, for example, has had the highest level of well-being relative to the rest of the world every year since we launched SEDA. Second, not all countries convert their wealth (GDP per capita) into well-being at equal rates. Some deliver well-being levels that are beyond what one would expect given the country’s wealth—and others deliver well-being far be- low what would be expected. In recent years Vietnam has been among the leading countries in terms of converting wealth into well-being—outpacing countries such as Germany, France, and the US on this metric. Third, inequality—and not just income inequality—has a major impact on well-being. Certainly, income inequality gets significant attention in political and media circles. But SEDA captures a broader view, assessing not only income inequality but also the lack of equity in access to health care and education as well. And our analysis last year found, somewhat surprisingly, that high levels of social inequality are a greater drag on well-being than high levels of income equality. Over the years, as we continued to assess country levels of well-being, public sector clients, journalists, and others often raised a similar question. While it was clear that countries with higher levels of wealth or growth had more resources to advance well-being, we were frequently asked if the reverse was true. So, was there evidence that countries with a better record on well-being ultimately posted more robust GDP growth? In 2018 we decided to take a stab at answering that question. By then we could access ten years’ worth of SEDA data—enough time to give us confidence we could identify a long-term trend if it existed. Drawing on data for all 152 countries in our data set, we looked at a country’s initial well-being performance relative to its wealth in the period leading up to and including the financial crisis (from 2007 through 2009)—and its growth rate in the decade that followed. We found that on average, countries that produced better well-being for their population given their level of wealth did in fact have a higher GDP growth rate in the future. Our analysis also found that countries that had a better record at delivering well-being for citizens were more resilient during the financial crisis, taking fewer months to recover to pre-crisis GDP levels than countries with weaker records on well-being. It turns out that taking care of people and the planet is good economics. Focusing on Total Societal Impact As we worked with nations on development strategies, we urged them to think strategically about integrating the private sector into those efforts. This included understanding where the country’s most pressing needs existed and identifying the industries and companies that could play a role in addressing those needs. Banks, for example, can be key partners in expanding access to capital for entrepreneurs. Food manufacturers that expand their supply chain to include small-holder farmers can help raise incomes for those individuals and reduce poverty rates overall. And biopharmaceutical companies that move to expand access to medicine can play a vital role in improving health outcomes. Time and time again my economic development work in the public sector rein- forced the importance of the private sector in advancing important societal issues. In 2016, I started focusing more on working directly with large multinational corporations to find ways to improve both business returns and their positive impact on society. At that time, academic research had shown that integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance into investment decisions led to better returns from a portfolio perspective. What that meant for individual businesses was not quite as clear. Most of our clients are large corporations—and they had a lot of questions. First, CEOs and CFOs were grappling with whether they should think of good ESG performance as a cost or an opportunity. They also wanted to understand what specific ESG topics were most important for their industry. So, we set out to prove that in fact ESG is an opportunity—not a cost—and to identify those topics that matter for specific industries. In 2017, I joined a group of colleagues in the Social Impact practice to conduct a detailed study of ESG performance in four industries: biopharmaceuticals, oil and gas, consumer packaged goods, and retail and business banking. We assessed company performance in dozens of ESG topics, such as ensuring a responsible environmental footprint or promoting equal opportunity. We looked for any correlation with market valuation multiples and margins. Our goal was to determine whether companies that excelled in those areas, enhancing what we call Total Societal Impact (TSI), saw a difference in financial performance versus companies that lagged in those ESG areas. Now, as members of the Social Impact practice, we were of course hoping we’d find a link. In fact, the results exceeded our expectations. Nonfinancial performance (as captured by the ESG metrics) has a statistically significant positive correlation with the valuation multiples of companies in all the industries we analyzed. In each industry, investors rewarded the top performers in specific ESG topics with valuation multiples 3% to 19% higher, all else being equal, than those of the median performers in those topics. And top performers in certain ESG topics had margins that were up to 12.4 percentage points higher, all else being equal, than those of the median performers in those topics. The bottom line: not only was there no penalty for focusing on ESG, but companies that performed well in critical ESG areas were rewarded in the market. The Moment of Truth Our work in SEDA and TSI were completely different—looking at different players, using different methodologies, and conducted at different times. Yet the results yielded strikingly parallel insights: putting people and the planet at the center of strategy improves financial performance. Those insights have major implications for nations and companies as they navigate the current period of turbulence and disruption. Certainly, it is too early to know which countries around the world will prove more resilient in the face of the pandemic. However, our research does support the view that those nations that design recovery strategies that support citizen well-being are likely to fare best. In particular, governments should design economic re- vitalization programs that don’t just position their nation for economic success in the future, but also ensure the benefits of any gains are equally shared among citizens. And those that created massive stimulus programs must leverage them as an opportunity to accelerate progress in fighting climate change. For companies, the imperative to transform in ways that create positive societal impact is equally strong. Companies should protect employees by ensuring work- place safety, while also reskilling workers and accelerating hiring where feasible. And as they transform their business in the face of the pandemic, they should integrate a societal impact lens into the effort. They can, for example, improve the resiliency of supply chains while also reducing carbon emissions and environmental impact. They can look for new product opportunities that yield real societal benefits. And they can partner with other companies or organizations to maximize impact. There are early indications that companies with a strong focus on their impact on society are faring better right now. Some key MSCI ESG indices, for example, have outperformed non-ESG benchmarks since the start of COVID-19. The challenges facing society today are grave—and daunting. But nations and corporations have massive leverage to move the needle against climate threat, racial inequity, and the devastating pandemic. Without their leadership, it is hard to see how we can make progress in any of these areas. Lucky for us, the evidence shows it is in their economic interest to do so. Previous Next

Richard Wu Teotl vs. Tao: Comparing Tlamatinime and Taoist Thought Richard Wu Today, academic scholars and the general public primarily remember the Aztecs for their bloody human sacrifices, towering pyramid temples, and glittering gold wealth. However, lesser-known about the Mexica (Aztecs) is their rich tradition of philosophy, which flourished in isolation from its Old World counterparts. This research paper examines Mexica philosophy, drawing comparisons to another similar school of thought: Taoism in ancient China. Though separated by thousands of miles, Aztec thinkers in Mesoamerica and Taoist sages in China both independently arrived at the idea that the universe exists as a dialectical monism (a unified whole manifested through opposing forces). To the Mexica, the universe was in- fused with Teotl, a divine life-force analogous to the notion of Tao in Taoism. Like the Taoist conception of opposing-yet-interconnected yin and yang forces, Teotl was seen as a unified, interdependent duality. This common perception of the universe’s existence as a dialectical monism prompted both Mexica and Taoist philosophers to ponder the question: How should people live in a world permeated by duality? Interestingly, the two different philosophies reached the same conclusion: a moral, virtuous life is a life of balance. Thus, for Aztecs and Taoists alike, philosophy was not solely confined to the realm of intellectual inquiry; rather, philosophy became an integral part of everyday life. When Spanish conquistadors arrived at the Mexica (Aztec) capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519, they were astounded to encounter one of the world’s largest cities of the period. In fact, Tenochtitlan’s canals, markets, gardens, and temples so impressed the Spaniards that the conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo would later compare the Mexica capital city to an enchanting dream (1). However, within the next two years, this enchanting dream would be destroyed, both physically and ideologically. The Spanish razed Tenochtitlan to the ground during their conquest of Mexico, covering the ruins of Aztec buildings with what would become Mexico City. Accompanying the conquest was the substantial destruction of Mexica cultural heritage—zealous Spanish clergy members replaced Aztec gods with Jesus and the Virgin Mary, ended the use of the Mesoamerican calendar, and burned countless codices. Further, the Spanish conquest erased another essential facet of Mexica culture: the Aztec school of philosophy. Mexica philosophers, called tlamatinime (literally ‘knowers of things’ in the Aztec language, Nahuatl), developed a rich intellectual tradition in complete isolation from Pythagoreanism in Greece, Confucianism in China, or any other philosophy of the Old World (2). In regards to philosophy at large, much of Western academia has historically dismissed non-Western philosophical inquiry, including Mexica thought. However, newer works of the past few decades—such as Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s paper “The Western Blindness to Non-Western Philosophies”—argue against this Euro- centric view of philosophy, validating the rich history of philosophical engagement in non-Western cultures (3). In this context of wider philosophical discussion, this work intends to shed light on a topic that has received relatively little academic attention, thereby adding to recognition of non-Western thought. This paper seeks to compare and contrast Mexica tlamatinime thought with another non-Western school of philosophy: Taoism in ancient China. The first half of this paper examines the historical context, metaphysics, ethics, and societal implications of Aztec philosophy. The second half includes a comparative examination of Taoism and its historical context, metaphysics, ethics, and societal implications. Though seemingly irrelevant to one another, these two philosophies share many similar ideas regarding metaphysics and ethics––notably, the concept of the universe as a dialectical polar monism, as well as an emphasis on balance. Despite the ideological resemblance, however, these philosophies also developed within different sociopolitical contexts, leading the tlamatinime and the Taoists to diverge in their views on the applications of philosophy. I. Aztec Philosophy Note: Though the Spanish destroyed most of the pre-Columbian Aztec codices following the conquest of Mexico, many post-conquest era documents from both native and Spanish sources exist today. In addition, poems composed prior to the conquest survived through oral transmission. From these remaining sources and archaeological studies, scholars can glean an understanding of Mexica thought today. A. Origins and Context of Aztec Philosophy Although Aztec philosophy may have had precedents in the earlier Teotihuacano or Toltec civilizations, the scarcity of written documents from these older civilizations precludes historiographic study of pre-Mexica thought in central Mexico. However, philosophical inquiry blossomed in Mesoamerica by the time of the Aztecs. In his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, historian and writer Charles C. Mann references many surviving Nahuatl manuscripts that describe Mexica tlamatinime meetings in cities like Tenochtitlan (4). The fact that the tlamatinime frequently met for intellectual exchanges and discussions indicates that the Aztecs already had a flourishing philosophical tradition prior to the Spaniards’ arrival. Interestingly, this philosophical tradition emerged from the Aztecs’ obsession with a central problem: the transience of existence. Mortality and impermanence permeated many aspects of Mexica culture, from religion to society to intellectual thought. In religion, human sacrifices sought to prolong the universe’s existence by sustaining the gods with human blood (5). In everyday society, annual death celebrations—which have survived to this day in the form of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) festivities—reminded all of the inevitability of mortality (6). Finally, in intellectual circles, the tlamatinime grappled with the philosophical implications of life in a transitory world (7). A poem ascribed to Nezahualcoyotl, a tlamatini (the singular of tlamatinime ) and tlatoani (ruler) of Texcoco, serves as a memento mori in its contemplation on the ephemeral nature of existence: I, Nezahualcoyotl, ask this: Do we truly live on earth? Not forever here, only a little while. Even jade breaks, golden things fall apart, precious feathers fade; not forever on earth, only a moment here (8). The question presented at the beginning of Nezahualcoyotl’s poem is one that Mexica thinkers contemplated: “Do we truly live on earth?” (9). When analyzing this question, the words ‘truly’ and ‘earth’ should be emphasized for their nuances in the Nahuatl language. The Nahuatl word for ‘truth,’ neltiliztli , also means ‘rootedness’ (10) since the Aztecs believed “what was true was well-grounded, stable and immutable, enduring above all” (11). Indeed, this was what the tlamatinime sought: to find what was true and enduring while living in an impermanent world fraught with hazards. The Nahuatl word for ‘earth,’ tlalticpac , also denotes “a narrow, jagged, point-like place surrounded by constant dangers” (12). When these linguistic nuances are placed together into the poem’s context, the answer to Nezahualcoyotl’s question emerges: people do not ‘truly’ live on earth because humans’ earthly existence is fleeting, and even the short duration of that existence itself is filled with struggle. This implied answer to Nezahualcoyotl’s question echoes the response seen in the poem: “Not forever here, / only a little while” (13). According to Nezahualcoyotl, not only is human existence fleeting, but even the most valuable materials—gold, jade, precious feathers—are also subject to the ravages of time. The sobering realization that nothing in the world lasts forever prompts the questions that drive Mexica philosophy: What is enduring and true? How can humans, “beings of the moment[,] grasp the perduring?” (14). Most importantly, how should people live on the tlalticpac ? B. Ideas of Aztec Philosophy To address the transience of existence and find a source of rootedness on the hazardous tlalticpac , the Mexica tlamatinime turned to metaphysics. Central to the Aztecs’ conception of the universe is Teotl (literally ‘spirit’ or ‘god’ in the Nahuatl language), an unending, divine life-force that simultaneously transcends and permeates all of existence. According to the tlamatinime , this life-force not only comprises everything in the universe, but also presents itself in the “ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar-yet-complementary opposites” that pervades the cosmos (15). The worldview espoused by Mexica metaphysics can best be described as a “dialectical polar monism,” a term which can be broken down into its constituent words for further insight (16). ‘Monism’ posits that everything in the universe is part of a single, seamless whole. ‘Polar’ implies that this single whole consists of opposing halves. ‘Dialectical’ suggests that these opposing halves are not separate but rather constantly interacting, like two sides debating in discourse. This perception of the world as a dialectical polar monism can be observed in surviving Mesoamerican artwork. Archaeological investigations have found half- face-half-skull masks that depict both life and death in locations such as Tlatilco and Oaxaca (17). Similarly, the Life-Death Figure sandstone sculpture displayed at the Brooklyn Museum portrays a living manifestation of the deity Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl on its front and a skeleton manifestation of Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl on the back (18). These artworks, which can be said to represent a state of being “neither- alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once,” convey the inextricable na- ture of life and death: life inevitably ends in death, but death gives way to new life (19). Figure 1. Split-Face Mask (20) Image Credit: Photo Courtesy of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (Licensed Under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0) Figure 2. Life-Death Figure (21) Image Credit: Huastec. Life-Death Figure , 900-1250. Sandstone, traces of pigment, 62 3/8 x 26 x 11 1/2 in. (158.4 x 66 x 29.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Frank Sherman Benson Fund and the Henry L. Batterman Fund, 37.2897PA. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: 37.2897PA_front_PS11.jpg) In a similar fashion, the tlamatinime saw other pairs of opposites—male/female, light/dark, etc.—as mutually-intertwined dualities infused with Teotl . Thus, with the view that the universe is a dialectical polar monism permeated by the spiritual energy of Teotl , Mexica metaphysics gave the tlamatinime an interpretation of the transience of existence. The unending dialectical oscillations between the universe’s polar extremes prevent any kind of long-term stability or rootedness. Despite this lack of stability, Teotl exists with reliable consistency. Scholar James Maffie comments: .... Teotl is nevertheless characterized by enduring pattern or regularity. How is this so? Teotl is the dynamic, sacred energy shaping as well as consti- tuting these endless oscillations; it is the immanent balance of the endless, dialectical alternation of the created universe’s interdependent polarities (22). Significantly, Teotl endures because it exists in a state of “immanent balance” that permeates the entirety of existence (23). While the dialectical nature of Teotl can give rise to short-term or localized polar extremes, the oscillations of Teotl ultimately balance out those extremes, promoting long-term overall balance throughout the universe. From this understanding of Teotl , the tlamatinime arrived at the conclusion that only through attaining balance and avoiding extremes can humans succeed in finding rootedness on the precarious tlalticpac . C. Ethical/Societal Impacts of Aztec Philosophy The Mexicas’ metaphysical focus on duality and balance led to the development of Mexica ethics. The tlamatinime believed that a virtuous, moral life promotes balance and abstains from excess. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Aztec and Maya gives an overview of Mexica ethics and morality: Aztecs were generally agreed as to what constituted good behavior. Ac- cording to Bernardino de Sahagun, author of General History of the Things of New Spain , virtuous Aztecs...brought energy to their work, without overin- dulging in sleep but rising early and laboring for long hours. They ate and drank in moderation; drunkenness was particularly frowned upon. They did not make a great noise when eating, thought carefully before speaking, and were circumspect in what they said. They dressed and behaved with modesty (24). Indeed, the Aztec education and law systems exhibited the importance Mexica philosophy placed on living a balanced life. In education, Aztec schools strove to instill moral virtues in young students. These schools, which often hired tlamatinime as teachers, allowed Mexica philosophy to shape the growth and development of Aztec youth (25). A common Nahuatl instructive proverb of the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century codex documenting Aztec culture, demonstrates the impact of tlamatinime thought on Mexica education: “ Tlacoqualli in monequi . [Translation and meaning:] Moderation is proper. We should not dress in rags, nor should we overdress. In the matter of clothing, we should dress with moderation” (26). By teaching younger generations to lead moderate, balanced lives, the Mexica education system successfully integrated and adapted the teachings of the tlamatinime . Similarly, Aztec laws display the influence of tlamatinime thought. The renowned tlamatini and tlatoani Nezahualcoyotl, who transformed his city into “‘the Athens of the Western World,’” enacted Texcoco’s law code (27). Under Nezahualcoyotl’s legal reforms, the judicial system criminalized actions and behaviors which were viewed as disruptive to societal balance, including “treason against the king, adultery, robbery, superstition, misuse of inherited properties, homicide, homosexuality, alcohol abuse, and military misconduct” (28). As stated by the chronicler Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, Nezahualcoyotl’s new legal code was considered so advanced and efficient that even the “kings of Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan [the other two most significant cities of the Aztec Empire] adopted Nezahualcoyotl’s laws and governmental standards” (29). The tlamatinime not only played a crucial role in fostering Aztec intellectual life; they also nurtured a more balanced and harmonious society. Unfortunately, as Mann laments in 1491 , the loss of the Mexica philosophical tradition after the Spanish conquest “was a loss not just to [the Aztecs]...but to the human enterprise as a whole” (30). II. Taoist Philosophy Note: This section will consider another school of philosophy, Taoism, and compare and contrast Taoism with Aztec philosophy. The romanizations ‘Taoism’ and ‘Daoism’ refer to the same school of thought; for the sake of consistency, the name ‘Taoism’ will be used in discussion from here on. However, since the alternative romanization ‘Daoism’ is also commonly accepted in academia today, some quotations will contain the name ‘Daoism’ instead of ‘Taoism’ or refer to the philosophical concept of ‘Dao’ instead of ‘Tao.’ A. Origins and Context of Taoist Philosophy More than a millennium before the rise of the Aztec Empire in Mexico, China’s Zhou Dynasty splintered into a multitude of warring kingdoms. In the turbulent era of warfare and chaos that followed, an unexpected development occurred: the blooming of Chinese philosophy, a phenomenon later referred to as the “Hundred Schools of Thought” (31). Because of the political fragmentation of the time, no intellectual orthodoxy existed to restrain philosophical inquiry, and China’s warring states were thus open to various different schools of thought. The intellectual diversity of this period sprouted many of imperial China’s foundational philosophies, such as Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, and Taoism. Of these philosophies, Taoism bears much resemblance to Aztec philosophy. Few historical records about the early history of Taoism survive today due to the Qin dynasty’s book-burning campaigns, but remaining Chinese sources trace Taoist philosophy to the teachings of the legendary sage Laozi, purported author of the Tao Te Ching , and the philosopher Zhuangzi, who is credited with writing the Zhuangzi (32). Unlike the Confucians of the time, who were primarily interested in applying theories of ethics to human relationships, Taoists stressed “meta-ethical reflections [which] were by turns skeptical then relativist, here naturalist and there mystical” (33). Thus, from a metaphysical standpoint, “Daoism is naturalistic in that any first-order moral dao [way] must be rooted in natural ways” (34). In other words, Taoist philosophers were skeptical of Confucianism’s rigid ethical emphasis on society and human relationships; instead, they looked beyond the human world to metaphysics and the natural environment to guide their reflections on ethics, a philosophical pursuit somewhat similar to that of the Mexica tlamatinime . Political history often greatly shapes the development of philosophy. While the tlamatinime of the Aztec Empire lived during a time of political unity and prosperity, Taoism and the other Chinese philosophies among the “Hundred Schools of Thought” were established during the Spring-Autumn and Warring States periods, when China was filled with political strife and divided into separate states. As a result, Mexica thought is a more unified body of philosophy than the diverse schools of traditional Chinese thought. Further historical developments complicate the disparities between Mexica and Taoist thought. Due to imperial China’s later history of relative political and cultural unity, “many philosophers of the time [Song through Qing dynasties] developed theories and methods of self-cultivation that mixed Confucianism with Buddhism and Daoism” (35). The philosophical and religious blending of later Chinese history highlights an important difference between the schools of thought. Whereas Chinese zhe xue jia (philosophers) could build upon these other theories, Mexica tlamatinime, as the product of an isolated, cohesive philosophical tradition, did not have significant contact with other philosophies, and thus they lacked the opportunity to engage with external ideas. B. Ideas of Taoist Philosophy Taoism centers around the concept of Tao . Often translated to English as “way,” the Tao drives the main question behind Taoist philosophy: What is the right way for people to live? Like the tlamatinime, who asked how humans should live on the tlalticpac , Taoist thinkers did not pursue philosophy for the sake of philosophy. Rather, they aimed to reach an understanding of how to best approach everyday life. To the Taoists, the concept of Tao as “way” is central to this understanding. With that said, the term ‘way’ inadequately describes Tao in many contexts. Sinologist Arthur Waley notes that the Chinese word Tao comes with multiple connotations: ...[Tao] means a road, path, way; and hence, the way in which one does something; method, doctrine, principle...in a particular school of philosophy whose followers came to be called Taoists, Tao meant ‘the way the universe works’; and ultimately something very like God, in the more abstract and philosophical sense of that term (36). Waley’s definition of Tao as “the way the universe works” is a more elaborate and accurate description than the simple “way,” but this designation still does not fully capture the essence of Tao (37). According to scholar Chad Hansen, Tao “appears more metaphysical than ‘way,’” (38) an assertion which is supported in the Zhuangzi by Zhuangzi’s statement, “Fishes breed and grow in the water; man develops in the Dao ” (39). This analogy implies that the Tao is like an endless metaphysical ocean that surrounds and encompasses all of existence. Zhuangzi’s conception of the Tao is analogous to Mexica philosophy’s idea of Teotl: Teotl and Tao are both seamless totalities that make up the universe and everything in it. Another important aspect of the Taoist worldview is the notion of yin and yang forces. Yin is associated with darkness, coldness, and passivity, while yang refers to light, warmth, and action. Taoism posits that these “correlatives are the expressions of the movement of Dao ...not opposites, mutually excluding each other... [but rather] the ebb and flow of the forces of reality: yin / yang , male/female; excess/ defect; leading/following; active/passive” (40). In the Tao Te Ching , Laozi presents the nature of the yin-yang duality through several seemingly paradoxical statements: It is because every one under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty, that the idea of ugliness exists. And equally if every one recognized virtue as virtue, this would merely create fresh conceptions of wickedness. For truly ‘Being and Not-being grow out of one another; Difficult and easy complete one another. Long and short test one another; High and low determine one another. Pitch and mode give harmony to one another. Front and back give sequence to one another’ (41). Laozi’s first claim that the recognition of beauty begets the idea of ugliness initially appears contradictory. Upon further inspection, it becomes apparent that a perception of what is beauty also requires an understanding of what is not beauty, and thus, of what is ugly . Likewise, the other opposites in the pairs mentioned—virtue/wickedness, being/non-being, difficulty/easiness, and so on—appear to be mutually exclusive antitheses, but are in reality inseparable and interdependent entities. This cyclic nature of duality portrayed by Laozi and other Taoist thinkers parallels the dialectical oscillations of Teotl in tlamatinime thought. In examining the concepts of Tao and yin-yang in the context of Taoist philosophy, a noteworthy conclusion arises: Taoist metaphysics, like Mexica metaphysics, perceives the universe as a dialectical polar monism. Both philosophies view the universe as a cyclical, oscillating whole permeated by balance between polar extremes. In the case of the tlamatinime , this balance is an aspect of Teotl ; in the case of the Taoists, this balance is an aspect of the Tao . Visually, an artistic interpretation of this idea can be seen in the Taijitu symbol associated with Taoism (42). The Taijitu symbol consists of a black sliver (representing yin ) and white sliver (representing yang ) melded together into one circle, which represents the unity implicit in duality described in the Tao Te Ching . Each sliver contains a dot of the opposite color, indicating that yin and yang are mutually interconnected—in yin can be found yang , and in yang can be found yin . The Taijitu symbol bears striking aesthetic and ideological similarities to Aztec designs pictured in the Codex Magliabechiano (43). The Aztec designs, known as xicalcoliuhqui motifs in Nahuatl, represent the universe’s dialectical “motion-change...[that] nourishes and renews existing cycles [of Teotl ] as well as initiates new cycles” (44). Figure 3. Taijitu Symbol (45) Image Credit: Image Courtesy of Gregory Maxwell (Public Domain) Figure 4. Codex Magliabechiano Illustrations (46) Image Credit: Photos Courtesy of Ancient Americas at LACMA (ancientamericas.org) C. Ethical/Societal Impacts of Taoist Philosophy Like the Aztec tlamatinime , Taoist philosophers also applied their metaphysics to ethics. In Taoist ethics, the definition of Tao as “way” is relatively fitting, as Taoist ethics seeks to understand the right way to live. But how can this way be applied to everyday life? The Tao Te Ching provides an answer: Those who possess this Tao do not try to fill themselves to the brim, And because they do not try to fill themselves to the brim They are like a garment that endures all wear and need never be renewed (47) In this passage, Laozi uses the imagery of a bucket filled to the brim with water to describe people who lead lives of overindulgence. Like the bucket—which contains an excess of water and cannot be easily carried without spilling and wasting some of its contents—people who lead lives filled with excess gluttony, greed, or lust will end up wasting their resources, leading to an unsustainable way of life. Thus, Laozi believes that people can maintain a sustainable life by avoiding extremes and excess. By not filling up the bucket completely to the brim, one will be able to carry the bucket without spilling and wasting any water. Therefore, those who lead lives of balance and moderation “need never be renewed” (48). Laozi’s advice echoes the tlamatinime teachings seen from phrases such as tlacoqualli in monequi (moderation is proper). Thus, for both the Taoists and the tlamatinime , balance and moderation play a crucial role in ethics. Despite the significance of balance in both Taoist and Mexica ethics, the two philosophical traditions approached societal institutions differently. While the tlamatinime actively encouraged balanced, proper behavior through educational and legal systems, Taoist philosophers saw human institutions—including schools and laws—as a source of imbalance to the universe’s natural harmony. This Taoist opinion rejected Confucianism’s obsession with order and rule-setting. Scholar Ronnie Littlejohn comments: Confucius and his followers wanted to change the world and be proactive in setting things straight. They wanted to tamper, orchestrate, plan, educate, develop, and propose solutions...Confucians think they can engineer reality, understand it, name it, control it. But the Daoists think that such endeavors are the source of our frustration and fragmentation [because such acts create imbalance]...They believe the Confucians create a gulf between humans and nature, that weakens and destroys us (49). The differing historical contexts of Aztec and Chinese philosophies explain their contrasting attitudes toward societal institutions. As noted earlier, unlike Mexica philosophy, Taoism was not isolated from other schools of thought, and thus it was subject to influences from other philosophies, especially Confucianism. Here, disagreement with the perceived excess of Confucian order and rules fueled the Taoist disapproval of government and other societal institutions (which were often led by Confucians). Hansen describes this sociopolitical stance as resembling “anarchism, pluralism, [and/or] laissez faire government,” which markedly contrasts with the active role of the tlamatinime in the Mexica government (50). Since Taoists sought to avoid entanglement in government and politics, Confucians eventually dominated China’s educational and legal systems. However, Taoism did not become irrelevant in Chinese society; the Neo-Confucian ideology of later dynasties integrated Taoist metaphysical influences with Confucian ethics (51). Taoist philosophy also impacted Chinese intellectual culture and aesthetics, as seen in Taoist contributions to various subjects, such as martial arts, meditation (52), astronomy, mathematics (53), medicine (54), art, and poetry (55). On a larger scale, Taoism played a role in revolutionizing world history; inventions including gunpowder, printing, and the compass trace back to Taoist thinker-scientists’ experimental efforts to understand the nature of the Tao (56). III. Conclusion If brought together into a philosophical discussion today, the Aztec tlamatinime and Taoist sages would likely agree on many metaphysical and ethical ideas. The Mexica focus on Teotl and duality is remarkably similar to the Taoist conception of the Tao and yin-yang , as both philosophies see the universe as a dialectical polar monism. With this shared metaphysical outlook, the two schools of thought concur that balance and moderation enable humans to lead moral, virtuous lives. However, in discussions on the practical applications of philosophy—such as the pros and cons of government—the tlamatinime and Taoist thinkers would likely diverge in their views. Imagining this theoretical discussion between tlamatinime and Taoists provides us with some insight into the nature of humanity. Though people may appear to be divided by dichotomies—Western/non-Western, liberal/conservative, rich/ poor, male/female, tlamatinime /Taoist—humankind is ultimately one, similar to the metaphysical conception of the universe as a dialectical polar monism. When looking at the bigger picture, this similarity between the human world and the abstract metaphysics of the universe also reflects the oneness between the existence of humanity and the universe we live in. Endnotes 1 Castillo Bernal Díaz del, and John Ingram Lockhart, The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo , (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1844), 219. 2 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 121-123. 3 Scharfstein, Ben-Ami, “The Western Blindness to Non-Western Philosophies,” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy , No. 1 (1998): 102-108, DOI: 10.5840/wcp20-paideia19985122. 4 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , 123. 5 Phillips, Charles M., and David M. Jones, “Many Types of Blood Offering,” in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aztec & Maya: The History, Legend, Myth and Culture of the Ancient Native Peoples of Mexico and Central America , (London: Hermes House, an imprint of Anness Publishing, 2010), 58-59. 6 Morgan, John D., Pittu Laungani, and Stephen Palmer, Death and Bereavement Around the World: Death and Bereavement in the Americas , Vol. 2, (Amityville: Baywood Publishing, 2003), 75-76. 7 Maffie, James, “Aztec Philosophy,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Martin: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2005), https://www.iep.utm.edu/aztec/. Accessed May 2019. 8 León-Portilla Miguel, Earl Shorris, Sylvia Shorris, Ascensión H. de León-Portilla, and Jorge Klor de Alva José, In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present , (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002), 146. 9 Ibid, 146. 10 Maffie, “Aztec Philosophy.” 11 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , 122. 12 Maffie, “Aztec Philosophy.” 13 León-Portilla, Miguel, et al., In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present , 146. 14 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , 122. 15 Maffie, “Aztec Philosophy.” 16 Ibid. 17 Markman, Peter T., and Roberta H. Markman, Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica , (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 89-90. 18 “Life-Death Figure,” sculpture, 900-1250 AD, Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ opencollection/objects/118927. Accessed May 2019. 19 Maffie, “Aztec Philosophy.” 20 “Cabeza de La Dualidad,” sculpture, 500-800 AD, Museo Nacional de Antropología, http://mediateca. inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/objetoprehispanico%3A20534. Accessed December 2020. 21 “Life-Death Figure.” 22 Maffie, “Aztec Philosophy.” 23 Ibid. 24 Phillips, Charles M., and David M. Jones, “Wise Governance, Strict Punishment,” in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aztec & Maya: The History, Legend, Myth and Culture of the Ancient Native Peoples of Mexico and Central America , (London: Hermes House, an imprint of Anness Publishing, 2010), 108. 25 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , 121. 26 Reagan, Timothy G., Non-Western Educational Traditions: Alternative Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice , (Mahwah: Taylor and Francis, 2005), 103. 27 Tuck, Jim, “Nezahualcoyotl: Texcoco’s Philosopher King (1403–1473),” Mexconnect, 2008, https://www. mexconnect.com/articles/298-nezahualcoyotl-texcoco-s-philosopher-king-1403%e2%80%931473. Accessed May 2019. 28 Lee, Jongsoo, The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics , (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 120. 29 Ibid, 120. 30 Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , 123. 31 Liu, Zehua, “The Contending Among the Hundred Schools of Thought During the Warring States Period and the Development of the Theory of Monarchical Autocracy,” Chinese Studies in Philosophy, No. 1 (1990): 58–87, DOI: 10.2753/csp1097-1467220158. 32 Hansen, Chad, “Daoism,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , (Stanford: Stanford University, 2003), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/daoism/. Accessed May 2019. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Kohn, Livia, Daoism Handbook , (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 643. 36 Laozi, and Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought , (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 30. 37 Ibid, 30. 38 Hansen, Chad, “Daoism.” 39 Zhuangzi, and James Legge, “The Great and Most Honoured Master,” Zhuangzi Chinese Text Project, (Cambridge: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2006), https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/great-and-most-honoured-master. Accessed May 2019. 40 Littlejohn, Ronnie, “Daoist Philosophy,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Martin: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2015), https://www.iep.utm.edu/daoism/. Accessed May 2019. 41 Laozi, and Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought , 2. 42 Maxwell, Gregory, “Yin-Yang,” Wikipedia Commons, 2005, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/1/17/Yin_yang.svg. Accessed May 2019. 43 Florimond, Joseph, duc de Loubat, and Ancient Americas at LACMA, “Codex Magliabecchiano (Loubat 1904, Page 5 Verso),” Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, 2013, http://www.famsi.org/research/ loubat/Magliabecchiano/page_05v.jpg. Accessed December 2020. 44 Maffie, James, “Weaving the Aztec Cosmos: The Metaphysics of the 5th Era,” Mexicolore, 2011, https:// www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/aztec-philosophy. Accessed May 2019. 45 Maxwell, Gregory, “Yin-Yang.” 46 Florimond, Joseph, duc de Loubat, and Ancient Americas at LACMA, “Codex Magliabecchiano (Loubat 1904, Page 5 Verso).” 47 Laozi, and Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought , 15. 48 Ibid, 15. 49 Littlejohn, Ronnie, “Daoist Philosophy.” 50 Hansen, Chad, “Daoism.” 51 Berthrong, John H., “Neo-Confucian Philosophy,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Martin: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2005), https://www.iep.utm.edu/neo-conf/. Accessed May 2019. 52 Hansen, Chad, “Daoism.” 53 Camilli, Joseph A., “Taoism: The Exploration of Philosophy and Religion in a Chinese Cultural Context,” Chinese History, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Klinger College of Arts and Sciences, 2002), https://academic. mu.edu/meissnerd/camilli.html. Accessed May 2019. 54 Little, Stephen, and Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China , (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), 13-14. 55 Chang, Chung-Yuan, Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry , (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 8-177. 56 Little, Stephen, and Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China , 47. Bibliography Berthrong, John H. “Neo-Confucian Philosophy.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Martin, TN: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2005. Accessed May 2019. https://www.iep.utm.edu/neo-conf/. Cabeza de La Dualidad . Sculpture. 500-800 AD. Museo Nacional de Antropología. Accessed December 2020. http://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/is- landora/object/objetoprehispanico%3A20534. Camilli, Joseph A. “Taoism: The Exploration of Philosophy and Religion in a Chinese Cultural Context.” Chinese History. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Klinger College of Arts and Sciences, 2002. Accessed May 2019. https://academic.mu.edu/meissnerd/camilli.html. Castillo Bernal Díaz del, and John Ingram Lockhart. The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo. London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1844. Chang, Chung-Yuan. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1970. Florimond, Joseph, duc de Loubat, and Ancient Americas at LACMA. “Codex Magliabecchiano (Loubat 1904, Page 5 Verso).” Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies , 2013. Accessed December 2020. http://www. famsi.org/research/loubat/Magliabecchiano/page_05v.jpg. Hansen, Chad. “Daoism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2003. Accessed May 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/daoism/. Kohn, Livia. Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Laozi, and Arthur Waley. The Way and Its Power: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought . New York, NY: Grove Press, 1997. Lee, Jongsoo. The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. León-Portilla, Miguel, Earl Shorris, Sylvia Shorris, Ascensión H. de León-Portilla, and Jorge Klor de Alva José. In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present . New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002. Life-Death Figure . Sculpture. 900-1250 AD. Brooklyn Museum. Accessed May 2019. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/118927. Little, Stephen, and Shawn Eichman. Taoism and the Arts of China . Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000. Littlejohn, Ronnie. “Daoist Philosophy.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Martin, TN: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2015. Accessed May 2019. https://www.iep.utm.edu/daoism/. Maffie, James. “Aztec Philosophy.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Martin, TN: University of Tennessee at Martin, 2005. Accessed May 2019. https:// www.iep.utm.edu/aztec/. Maffie, James. “Weaving the Aztec Cosmos: The Metaphysics of the 5th Era.” Mexicolore, 2011. Accessed May 2019. https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/aztec- philosophy. Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Markman, Peter T., and Roberta H. Markman. Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Maxwell, Gregory. “Yin-Yang.” Wikipedia Commons , 2005. Accessed May 2019. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Yin_yang.svg. Morgan, John D., Pittu Laungani, and Stephen Palmer. Death and Bereavement Around the World: Death and Bereavement in the Americas . Vol. 2. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing, 2003. Phillips, Charles M., and David M. Jones. “Many Types of Blood Offering.” In The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aztec & Maya: The History, Legend, Myth and Culture of the Ancient Native Peoples of Mexico and Central America . London: Hermes House, an imprint of Anness Publishing, 2010. Phillips, Charles M., and David M. Jones. “Wise Governance, Strict Punishment.” In The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aztec & Maya: The History, Legend, Myth and Culture of the Ancient Native Peoples of Mexico and Central America . London: Hermes House, an imprint of Anness Publishing, 2010. Reagan, Timothy G. Non-Western Educational Traditions: Alternative Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice . Mahwah, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2005. Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. “The Western Blindness to Non-Western Philosophies.” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy , No. 1 (1998), 102– 108. DOI: 10.5840/wcp20-paideia19985122. Tuck, Jim. “Nezahualcoyotl: Texcoco’s Philosopher King (1403–1473).” Mexconnect , 2008. Accessed May 2019. https://www.mexconnect.com/articles/298-ne-zahualcoyotltexcoco- s-philosopher-king-1403%e2%80%931473. Liu, Zehua. “The Contending Among the Hundred Schools of Thought During the Warring States Period and the Development of the Theory of Monarchical Autocracy.” Chinese Studies in Philosophy 22, No. 1 (1990): 58–87. DOI: 10.2753/csp1097-1467220158. Zhuangzi, and James Legge. “The Great and Most Honoured Master.” Zhuangzi Chinese Text Project . Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2006. Accessed May 2019. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/great-and-most-honoured-master. Previous Next

Vance Kelley Civil Disobedience and Desert Theory of Punishment Vance Kelley I. Introduction In this paper, I discuss how the state ought to punish civil disobedience given a desert theory of punishment. By “desert theory of punishment,” I mean the view that lawbreakers ought to be punished according to what they deserve. Other considerations, such as what would best deter or incapacitate lawbreakers, are to be ignored according to desert theory. Since there are many distinct notions of “civil disobedience,” I will also clarify my use of this phrase. I use “civil disobedience” to mean “breaking the law in order to communicate to the public and the state that a policy violates the lawbreaker’s moral convictions.” My definition leaves aside whether civil disobedience is nonviolent or a last resort (as John Rawls supposes), although these features could marginally affect how civil disobedience ought to be punished (1). Ultimately, I conclude that states ought to punish all civil disobedience less harshly than typical offenses. I arrive at this “mercy for all” view in a roundabout way. In fact, I initially point out a shortcoming with this view in Section III. In Section IV, I examine an alternative view that advocates lesser punishment only for civil disobedience done from correct moral convictions. I argue that this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view is impractical, since the state cannot identify who disobeyed from correct moral convictions and who disobeyed from incorrect ones. This leads me to argue in Section V that the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the correctness of civil disobedients’ moral convictions. I then conclude that the best uniform punishment is indeed to treat all civil disobedience with mercy, since this avoids over-punishing those who act from correct moral convictions. II. Why Desert Theory? As I have said above, my central claim is that given desert theory of punishment, the state ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. Some may find it perplexing that my central claim accepts desert theory as the correct theory of punishment, and indeed this needs to be justified. Simply put, I accept desert theory because it best captures our intuitions about disciplining lawbreakers. Most of us share the intuition that it is wrong to punish innocent people as well as the intuition that it is wrong to over-punish the guilty. Desert theory offers an explanation of these intuitions; it is wrong to punish the innocent and to over-punish the guilty because these conflict with what people deserve . Innocent people do not deserve to be punished at all, and guilty people deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crimes. Yet alternatives to desert theory—such as theories that recommend punishments based on their incapacitation or deterrence value—have a difficult time explaining why we hold the above intuitions (2). In fact, these “consequentialist” theories of punishment would suggest punishing the innocent or over-punishing the guilty if doing so deterred or incapacitated lawbreakers. For example, suppose that by executing a petty thief the state could deter all would-be thieves from stealing others’ property in addition to incapacitating the executed criminal. Consequentialist theories of punishment would recommend executing the petty thief even though this conflicts with our intuition that over-punishing him with death is wrong. Therefore, the problem with consequentialist theories of punishment runs even deeper than what Walen suggests. Not only do consequentialist theories fail to explain our intuitions about punishment; they also render verdicts that directly conflict with these intuitions. Of course, one could write volumes on the merits of different theories of punishment, and what I have written above merely scratches the surface. But I hope to have at least made the argument that desert theory is compelling, and my do- ing so should assuage concerns that I am unduly neglecting what consequentialist theories would say about punishing civil disobedience. Desert theory is the most plausible account of how we ought to punish lawbreakers, and I will now move on to my central concern: how should the state punish civil disobedience? III. The Shortcoming of “Mercy for All” One initially plausible view is that given desert theory, all civil disobedience ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenses. Kimberly Brownlee discusses this “mercy for all” view in her Stanford Encyclopedia entry, writing that civil disobedients deserve mercy because they are motivated by moral convictions. The idea is that lawbreakers generally deserve mercy if obeying the law would have been very difficult for them, and civil disobedients’ moral convictions indeed make obeying the law quite difficult (3). Additionally, perhaps civil disobedients deserve mercy because their motives are less reprehensible than those of typical offenders. Breaking the law because of one’s moral convictions seems far less shameful than doing so out of self-interest, and this has long been held by legal scholars (4). The view that all civil disobedients deserve mercy because they act from moral convictions may therefore seem plausible, but it is not quite right. Surely, granting mercy even to civil disobedients who have incorrect moral convictions is too broad. These misguided disobedients do not deserve lesser punishments than typical offenders, and an example shall make this clear. Suppose a man publicly refuses to obey a law that protects gay citizens from discrimination. Believing that homosexuality is immoral and that the law unjustly protects wrongdoers, the man refuses to serve same-sex couples at his restaurant as a way of protesting the law. Clearly, the fact that his disobedience is done from a moral conviction does not make the man deserve lesser punishment than normal offenders (5). His moral conviction is severely misguided, detestable, and undeserving of mercy. Therefore, it seems that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve reduced punishments. IV. The Impracticality of “Mercy for Correct Moral Convictions” I have just shown that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve mercy. Disobedience done from incorrect moral convictions, on the other hand, deserves no lesser punishment than normal. On desert theory, then, it seems rather straightforward that states ought to punish civil disobedients who hold correct moral convictions less harshly than normal offenders, while those with incorrect moral convictions ought to be punished at the standard level. However, this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view faces a significant problem. In practice, the state cannot administer the different levels of punish- ment that the view calls for. During sentencing, judges would need to discern who disobeys from correct moral convictions and who disobeys from incorrect ones. Yet typically judges will not be able to discern this, and instead they will view both types of civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions. This is because all civil disobedience expresses moral convictions contrary to those of lawmakers—that is the entire point of civil disobedience—and typically lawmakers’ convictions will also be held by judges. After all, in most democratic systems, lawmakers choose judges whose views accord with their own. Given that judges’ own moral convictions will agree with those of lawmakers and conflict with those of civil disobedients, judges will regard all civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions, for it will not matter that some civil disobedients’ convictions actually are correct and some are not. Admittedly, there may be cases where acts of civil disobedience convince judges that their moral convictions are wrong and that the disobedients’ convictions are correct. In such cases, judges could perceive that civil disobedience is being done from correct moral convictions, since here they do not allow their own moral convictions to cloud their judgment. That said, these cases are rare. Civil disobedients often fail many times before persuading the state that their moral convictions are correct. For example, the civil rights period in the United States lasted many years and required numerous instances of civil disobedience before judges and lawmakers were persuaded to end Jim Crow segregation. Generally, judges will view civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions even if some actually are correct; consequently, the state cannot give the different types of civil disobedients the disparate punishments that they deserve. V. “Mercy for All” Revisited So, how can the state punish civil disobedience? It cannot discriminate between disobedients who have correct moral convictions and those who lack them. In- stead, the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the truth of disobedients’ moral convictions. This may cause us to conclude that desert theory is false if “ought implies can.” If states only have moral obligations to do what is possible, then it is not the case that they ought to give different punishments to civil disobedients depending on the truth of their moral convictions. As I have shown in the previous section, it is generally impossible for the state to assess the truth of these convictions and give out different punishments for them. Yet “different punishments depending on the truth of civil disobedients’ moral convictions” seems to be exactly what desert theory entails. The view claims that states ought to punish lawbreakers according to what they deserve, and civil disobedients deserve different punishments depending on the truth of their moral convictions. Since desert theory seems to entail a false conclusion, it appears to be false. However, there is a way around this problem for the view. We can add a proviso to desert theory that handles cases where the state is unable to give lawbreakers the different levels of punishment that they deserve. According to this proviso, if a state cannot identify and administer these different levels of punishment, then it no longer ought to give lawbreakers these different levels. Instead, the state ought to choose a uniform level of punishment that gives no one harsher punishment than she deserves, even if this lets some lawbreakers receive undeserved mercy (6). One may wonder why this proviso places so much emphasis on treating no one worse than she deserves. But in fact, many people agree with the spirit of the proviso. We often say that it is better to let guilty people go free than to imprison someone who is innocent; this idea was formalized by British jurist William Blackstone and has remained a part of jurisprudence ever since (7). With this proviso added to desert theory, it no longer imposes a moral obligation that violates “ought implies can.” Now, states are simply obligated to impose a uniform level of punishment on civil disobedients, and this should pose no practical difficulties. Given this proviso, what uniform level of punishment does desert theory recommend for civil disobedience? This could take one of two forms (8). First, the state could show no mercy to any civil disobedients and punish all of them at the lev- el appropriate for normal offenders. But this would over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and deserve mercy, so it is ruled out by the proviso. Alternatively, the state could show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. This under-punishes civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions (who deserve full punishments), but it avoids over-punishing those with correct moral convictions. Since this second option avoids over-punishment, it is favored by the proviso. Therefore, states ought to show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. VI. Conclusion I have shown that given desert theory, we ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. I began in Section II by justifying and accepting desert theory, which claims that people ought to be punished according only to what they deserve. Then, in Section III, I examined my preferred view that all civil disobedients ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenders. I initially argued that this “mercy for all” view has a shortcoming: civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions do not deserve mercy. Nonetheless, I returned to this view after recognizing in Section IV that it is impractical to give mercy only to disobedients with correct moral convictions. As I then explain in Section V, punishment of civil disobedience must therefore be uniform with respect to the truth of lawbreakers’ moral convictions. After adding a proviso to desert theory which accounts for this fact as well as our intuition that under-punishing is preferable to over-punishing, I return to the “mercy for all” view and accept it as the only one compatible with justice. Endnotes 1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Harvard Belknap Press, 1971. 320, 327. 135 2 Alec Walen, “Retributive Justice”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2020 Edition. https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/justice-retributive/. Section 1. 3 Kimberlee Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2017 Edition. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/. Section 4.2. 4 Harrop A. Freeman, “The Right of Civil Disobedience”. Indiana Law Journal, Vol 4 Iss 2, 1966. https://www. repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3628&context=ilj. 228-254. 5 It might be hard to imagine the “normal offender” for this case. Here, it would be someone who refuses to serve gay citizens but does not do so to protest the antidiscrimination law. Perhaps this person thinks that serving gay citizens will cause him to lose the business of homophobic customers. 6 One might question why the new level of punishment must be uniform. For example, perhaps different levels of punishment could be administered on a random or arbitrary basis. But surely, such punishments would be unjust. 7 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1893. 358. 8 It could also take a third form, at a level somewhere between what the two groups of disobedients deserve. But this would obviously over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and be thrown out by the proviso. Previous Next

Author Name < Back Against the Mainstream: How Modern Monetary Theory and the Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight Challenge Conventional Wisdom Justin Lee Introduction Changing entrenched beliefs about economics is a difficult task, for it is challenging to distill fragmented facts into prudent judgements. As economic theories rely heavily on assumptions and macroeconomic statistics, a critical divergence exists between ideas most persuasive to the mainstream and those best supported by logic and empirical evidence. In this paper, I will analyze the central tenets of the modern monetary theory (MMT), a recent proposal that governments with sovereign currencies, rather than domestic taxpayers, solely finance all public spending. Furthermore, I will relate the misconceptions about public spending, which MMT rebuts, to the idea of millionaire tax flight, a novel refutation against claims of the severity of debt crises. I will demonstrate parallels in the history of reception and ideological grounds of these two concepts where epistemic and social structures preclude the acceptance of such arguments among “mainstream” economic ideas. Lastly, I will provide an overview of the possible groups that not only have vested interests in blocking these ideas but have also created certain inhibitive barriers to them. This report will use evidence to advocate on the two arguments’ behalf and will identify their shared characteristics that make them distinct from other contemporary policy issues. Background President Ronald Reagan once proclaimed: “We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.” Such conventional wisdom forms when the vast majority of people come to accept a group of ideas as fact. The misconception that the federal government cannot “spend beyond its means” and that millionaires flee high-tax areas by any means necessary has been propagated through numerous channels - most notably, media outlets such as Fox News - over the years by combining both personal experience and “common sense.” What happens, however, when there is new data presented that goes against the stream of ideas already established? What if these novel ideas rely upon an entirely different logical foundation for their support? What if the “common sense” originally used as the basis for prior justifications was incomplete or even flawed? An idea does not become “conventional wisdom” and gain “acceptance into the mainstream” for its proven veracity; rather, it becomes accepted as an absolute truth through its promotion by influential media outlets and politicians. Recent history has taught us that some “plausible ideas” should not deserve their wide acceptance as scientific inquiry demands. Since the 1980s, for example, the concept of a non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) has been prominently accepted as an influential theory among most economists. A NAIRU is the unemployment rate of an economy associated with a constant rate of inflation; a rise in unemployment is associated with a decrease in inflation, whereas a decline in unemployment causes an increase. Despite the success of Milton Friedman's explanation for the “natural” rate of unemployment throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s, economic data in the years since the mid-1990s have weakened Friedman’s case. The US economy has seen low unemployment and low changes in inflation as well as high unemployment and high changes in inflation. In fact, Robert Gordon pointed out the external supply shocks caused during the early 1970s in an effort to display “inflation initiated not by excess demand but by commodity shortages,” circumstances that are quite noticeable in the fluctuating consumption patterns and supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. In spite of these recent developments and their implications on Friedman’s original hypothesis, the NAIRU remains “an important building block of business cycle theory.” Figure 1: Unemployment Rate and the Percent Change in the CPI since 1950 Routinely, little efforts have been made to temper an “inflation equals bad” mentality that plagues the public in the United States every few years. Similar futile simplifications are made about raising taxes for the rich as politicians claim that the wealthy will flee in droves, causing large drops in tax revenue – a claim that relies largely on hypothetical posturing rather than definitive evidence in its favor. The resolution of these two policy problems requires the reversal of hardened opinions among the general public and hard-nosed experts alike. Rising prices can be inconvenient for many – businesses may need to change their “sticker” prices while workers may not be able to renegotiate with their employers for higher wages until the end of their current contracts. Likewise, most Americans are neither millionaires nor billionaires and may often have an incomplete perception of what their life decisions would be like if they were not burdened by personal financial pressures. Such misunderstandings include failing to account for one’s close network of friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers that shapes one’s decisions to move. These circumstances are what make it so difficult to propose ideas that run counter to what many have grown to accept as convention. Analysis Perception versus reality Misconceptions about both MMT and millionaire tax flight stem from fundamental differences between public perceptions of the two phenomena and their true implications. The media is partly to blame for this misalignment. From deficit hawks in Congress to political pundits on talk shows, the term “government deficit” is commonly used as a pejorative to counter any argument in favor of increased public spending. While prominent public figures, including billionaire Elon Musk, may perceive the government budget as identical to the personal spending habits of everyday Americans or even small, local businesses, the reality is that the United States federal government – specifically the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve – is the only entity that retains the right to issue dollars. As a nation with a sovereign currency, the United States has complete discretion over its money supply and interest rates; it can also issue intergenerational debt. This could not be further from the truth for a household, which relies upon income to buy goods and services, or a business, which uses profits to fund production, investment in inventories, and innovation. As I will examine in further detail in a later section, the fallacies underlying perceptions of the federal budget reverberate across the political spectrum, ranging from cries for a smaller government during the Reagan/Thatcher era to proclamations of “tightening belts” by President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union Address. “Crowding out,” the idea that economic activity contracts with deficit-financed expenditures, is one of the most common rebuttals to increased public spending. The neoliberal view of the crowding out effect entails the government competing with private entrepreneurs for capital to finance public spending. However, proponents of the idea that private investment will be “crowded out” if a government spends “beyond its means” fail to consider that the United States is an issuer of its own sovereign currency. Any amount of public spending that exceeds tax revenue is merely printed and issued by the US Treasury. The purpose of selling bonds after an increase in government expenditures is not necessarily to finance these payments but rather to “prevent a large infusion of reserves from pushing the overnight interest rate below the Fed’s target level.” When the federal government chooses to increase deficit spending, US Treasuries take the place of the reserve balances and maintain the aggregate quantity of reserves in the financial system. In other words, “Uncle Sam [does not] enter the market in competition with other borrowers,” such as Citigroup or Morgan Stanley. We see a similar divide between perception and reality for the myth of the millionaire tax flight. According to the Global Wealth Report of 2021, only eight percent of Americans are considered millionaires, those presumably most knowledgeable about millionaire migration. However, the perception that millionaires will definitely flee their well-nested homes for lower tax regions lingers in a large segment of the non-millionaire population. In reality, while 47% of millionaire migrations in the United States from 1999 to 2011 were from high-tax to low-tax states, roughly 32% of such migrations occurred in the opposite direction. While this result is not insignificant, there is no discernible causal relationship in which a tax hike will dramatically force millionaires to states that have lower taxes - a prospect state governments may fear will drive down local tax revenues. Figure 2: Percent of US population migrating An interesting case study is seen in the counties that border the states of Oregon and Washington, all of which are located in a region with the highest relative difference in income taxes between bordering states. Logically, one would expect more millionaires to live in the state with relatively low income taxes – Washington – rather than the state with relatively high income taxes – Oregon. However, the data shows that millionaires tend to cluster in Oregon rather than Washington even after considering tax codes that have been in place for many years. While the story of the Oregon-Washington border is unusual – most data indicates that in other border regions, millionaires “tend to cluster on the low-tax side overall” – there is no evidence that outlines a significant causal relationship between areas of greater taxation and areas with higher rates of millionaire migration. Figure 3: Counties bordering Washington and Oregon Doomsday is coming! When new public spending measures are proposed to combat a recession, cries about the “debt ceiling” from fear-mongering politicians usually arise. Other figures, such as former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, flirt with the fallacy of cratering tax revenues caused by millionaire migration. If the rift between perception and reality presented earlier can be attributed to a lack of detailed economic expertise among the general public, then the parallels between MMT and the myth of millionaire tax flight presented here demonstrate how reality has been warped into shaping false narratives about the potential for drastic economic reform. Recent data indicating that unemployment and inflation do not perfectly align with the NAIRU theory presented in the background section may signal the dogmatic nature of academics within the field of economics. To illustrate this point, it is worth scrutinizing academic discourse relating to the 2008 financial crisis. For instance, “too big to fail” was a common platitude offered by economic “experts” in the early 2000s as a way to divert public scrutiny from concerning behavior among Wall Street banks, such as the rising number of mergers and increasingly predatory loans. However, once an impending economic disaster loomed and the federal government stepped in to rescue Wall Street, these same experts responded with confusion over where their models had gone severely wrong. As Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes, “more important [than economists’ predictive failure] was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.” Meanwhile, the Troubled Asset Relief Program was welcomed with open arms by financial institutions seeking to rid their balance sheets of illiquid assets. Yet when it came to increasing public expenditure to support low- and middle-income Americans affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, academics such as then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers deemed public spending to be excessive and costly. This 180-degree shift in tone lies at the core of the MMT argument; the federal government had the ability to both provide greater fiscal stimulus and purchase Wall Street’s toxic assets because the United States is an issuer of its own sovereign currency. Figure 4: How MMT accounts for market/government interactions on taxation and public spending Likewise, politicians have boldly proclaimed that tax hikes on millionaires will lead to their disastrous departure. Using data from the same study presented earlier on millionaire migrations between 1999 and 2011, we see that overall migration patterns among millionaires tend to be very subtle with only 2.4% of them choosing to migrate. Only a small portion – just 0.3% – of the total millionaire population chose to migrate from a high-tax state to a low-tax state. Beyond ignoring the clear evidence that makes the millionaire tax flight argument dubious, politicians also downplay the importance of location as a crucial form of social capital. Figure 5: Migration Rates by Age, for Different Levels of Education While there are numerous interpersonal factors that contribute to a person’s decision to move, the strongest drivers of migration include the prospect of greater economic opportunity or an immediate danger that threatens personal safety, neither of which are of particular concern for the average superstar athlete or hedge fund manager. For a person who has attained a certain level of “elite income,” interpersonal relationships and connections are “immobile” factors that influence this person’s wellbeing far beyond their marginal tax bracket. Such considerations, which are undoubtedly important to the social interactions of any group of people, are conveniently left out in the propagation of the myth of millionaire tax flight. Like the challenges that proponents of MMT face, these obstacles prevent substantial reforms towards more equitable taxation laws. The bulwarks against change Contemporary discourse on public spending conveniently fails to acknowledge the ability for the Federal Reserve to curb massive inflation through their control of interest rates and untapped potential revenues from higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. As discussed, deficit-averse politicians use fear-mongering and scare tactics to deter support for these ideas. Their adamance reveals a similarity between those who stand to lose if such policies are enacted. MMT economists view public spending as a way to stimulate a lagging economy and use their novel theory as a means to justify higher expenditures in areas such as social welfare, healthcare benefits, and infrastructure investments. The beneficiaries of such programs include the elderly, the poor, and the sick – more generally the non-millionaire/billionaire class. Since the start of neoliberalism’s grip on Washington in the 1980s, deficit hawks have decried the prospect of increased government spending on social programs. Yet, these same government officials openly endorsed the $8 trillion “War on Terror” as well as the allocation of billions of dollars in discretionary spending to the Pentagon every year. On the flip side of the deficit debate, tax reform has been on the legislative agenda for years, but in recent decades, such reforms have been more regressive than ones made in the past. Any effort to stymie raising taxes on millionaires has brought about a constant propagation of the myth of the millionaire tax flight by politicians and academics alike. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein claims that higher state taxes on the wealthy have little effect on redistributing income and merely lead to greater migration by the wealthy. Such misrepresentations of government finance and migration trends may originate from the entrenched view of such matters within economics. However, it is certain that political lobbying, particularly in the years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, has allowed the interests of the wealthy to be overrepresented in legislative decisions on public spending and tax reform. We often see that these obstacles prevent substantive action for other policy problems as well, such as combating climate change, dismantling the prison industrial complex, or engaging in international trade wars. In all of these instances, the vested interests of the donor class take charge. MMT and the myth of millionaire tax flight occupy unique positions among these challenging policy problems due to their potential for dramatic economic change among the benefiting stakeholders. It is even possible to create a parallel between the two ideas, as MMT views progressive taxation as a means to promote a more equitable society rather than as a hindrance for public programs. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that America’s millionaires use arguments such as the myth of millionaire tax flight to prevent higher taxation on the wealthy and the alarmism over deficits in order to curtail social spending. The rhetoric of politics Appealing to conventional wisdom is often a politically convenient argument to employ. Explaining every minute aspect of government finance takes time and effort and is – more importantly – unrelatable for most voters. The stagnation of real wages since the 1970s has forced middle- and lower-income households to grow accustomed to restricting their spending habits. Listening to rhetoric of their elected officials “wasting away” their hard-earned tax dollars can incite ire among constituents, making ideas such as modern monetary theory appear far-fetched. One study conducted by Kendall, Nannicini, and Trebbi indicates that such rhetoric has a meaningful impact on politicians’ public perceptions. This is perhaps the reason why the politicians mentioned in (Section A) were unanimous in agreement over concerns about the fiscal deficit. While the degree of this agreement varies between politicians, there appears to be a reluctance to take the MMT perspective on this issue. Perhaps the word “deficit” being written in big, red letters on the minds of voters on Election Day is political suicide for anyone who dares to be portrayed as a proponent of reckless spending. The convenience of political arguments against higher taxes on the rich is similar to that of arguments echoed in the debate against higher corporate taxes – that the wealthy and resourceful create jobs for others and therefore require lower tax rates to create opportunities for wealth that “trickle down” to the rest of the population. These long-established views have become entrenched in the common sense of the public and have rendered idiosyncratic ideas incapable of breaking into the mainstream. Conclusions and a Way Forward Both ideas examined in this paper rely upon very basic truths – (1) no one outside of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve can issue US dollars, and (2) millionaires, no matter how much wealthier they may be than the average American, rely upon and seek to maintain their established social networks. Accepting these two statements as facts can drastically alter policy discussions on both public spending and taxation on a federal level. Time is arguably the most critical component to changing public perceptions of social spending and equitable tax reform. Even Stephanie Kelton, one of the leading experts on MMT, admits that she herself was skeptical upon her first encounter with the theory. The benefit of hindsight has revealed the shortcomings of the global economic order, especially in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The crisis presented itself as an opportunity for decisive action in a new direction, but instead, haste and imprudence allowed fiscal austerity to captivate the minds of leaders and economists around the world. While MMT is far from a panacea for all economic uncertainties, even economists who are more supportive of the traditional view on fiscal deficits, such as N. Gregory Mankiw, have recognized that MMT provides some useful insights that the traditional view may have historically overlooked. The COVID-19 pandemic may serve as an inflection point for a more active role of governments in markets as countries around the world have increased their public spending to avoid recessions. It is here, however, that an important limiting rule of MMT must be mentioned - inflation. In the event of large spikes in prices - as is the case at the time of this writing in Spring 2022 - using MMT as a blank check to drive up public spending would not be prudent and would likely make the inflationary crisis worse. During such times, coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities to adjust interest rates and temper expectations of future inflation is vital. Despite these limitations, circumstantial anomalies should not render the entire idea invalid. To truly tackle challenging policy problems, we must look to audacious economic ideas such as Modern Monetary Theory and refute arcane, baseless ones such as the myth of millionaire tax flight. If governments can admit wrongdoing on policy decisions and millionaires can recognize the value of their social circles, conventional economic wisdom too has the potential to adopt bold, new ideas. Works Cited Aftergood, Steven, and Neta C. Crawford. “Economic Costs.” The Costs of War. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, September 2021. Ball, Laurence, and N. Gregory Mankiw. “The NAIRU in Theory and Practice.” Journal of Economic Perspectives , Volume 16, No.4, p.134. Fall 2002. Blyth, Mark. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.” Oyez. Accessed December 10, 2021. Congressional Research Service. CRS Report: Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2019. United States Congress. Del Negro, Marco, Michele Lenza, Giorgio E. Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti. 2020. “What’s up with the Phillips Curve?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity , Spring, 301-373. 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Non-Self Through Time Anita Kukeli Author Hansae Lee Koda Li Nahye Lee Editors Buddhism, like other major religions, has a particular philosophical framework underpinning its teachings. In other words, Buddhism and other religions might be thought of as offering a set of answers to philosophical inquiries, such as questions about moral right and wrong or questions about our position in the universe. The area of philosophical inquiry with which this paper is concerned is the philosophy of self. What does it mean to be a person? Buddhism engages with this debate. Foundational Buddhist thought, or Theravada Buddhism, offers a particular conception of personhood called anatman , or “non-self.” The idea here is that the commonly accepted notion of the self if mistaken; we are not selves. Ordinarily, pre-philosophical reflection on the question of what a person is, one might likely respond that a person it a unified individual entity, such as you or me. Philosophical views depart from this common concept to varying degrees. Some define a person as a human body, comprised of cells and ultimately governed by biological processes. Alternatively, perhaps a person is a mind, constituted most fundamentally by their beliefs and feelings and decisions. Maybe personhood is some mix of the two, or something else entirely. In contrast, the Buddhist conception of personhood rejects the notion of the self as a definable single entity entirely. At first glance, this may seem unacceptable to someone unfamiliar with Buddhist teachings. However, by reproducing the arguments presented in early Buddhist texts, I will show that anatman is on its own a plausible view. I will argue that the real trouble for anatman arises when considered within the broader tradition of Buddhist thought, especially in regard to samsara and karma . Samsara refers to the Buddhist idea of a cycle of rebirth, closely related to karma. Both samsara and karma involve the self persisting from one lifetime to the next. But, if there is no self, how can it persist? Surely, for something to persist through time, that thing must exist. So, it seems that if we accept anatman , and there is no such thing as a self, then we cannot accept samsara or karma. To resolve this tension, there must be a description of this persistence through time that does not require the existence of a self. I will argue that the Buddhist concept of dependent arising accomplishes this, and therefore resolves the tension between anatman on the one hand and samsara and karma on the other. Anatman The argument for anatman derives from the concept of the five aggregates. This is a Buddhist concept that refers to five constitutive parts of a person. The five aggregates are translated various ways, but for the purposes of this paper I will offer them in simple terms. The five aggregates consist of 1) material form, 2) sensation, 3) perception, 4) volitional force, and 5) consciousness. A foundational Buddhist text, the Questions of King Milinda, includes a conversation in which a Buddhist monk named Nagasena purports that the self does not exist. His interlocutor, King Milinda, then asks, what is it that the name Nagesna is denoting? Does it refer to material form? To sensation? He continues through each of the five aggregates, and Nagasena responds that it is none of these (Milinda’s Questions 36). To explain how that may be, he uses an analogy of a chariot. A chariot is not its wheels nor its axle nor its pole, though it is also not an entity separate from these things (37). In this case, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, the chariot, as an entity, doesn’t exist. Rather, “chariot” is merely a term used to denote a collection of things and nothing more. Similarly, Nagasena’s name is just a useful term referring to the collection of constitutive parts called aggregates, but not to an individual self (34). The self cannot be reduced to any one of the five aggregates, and it is also not an entity separate from them. Indeed, when understood in this way, the self simply doesn’t exist. Samsara Samsara , or the cycle of rebirth, is another foundational Buddhist concept. It posits that when someone dies, they are reborn. This means that each of us have past lives that we don’t remember, from which we died and were reborn. So, we persist through one lifetime into the next. This notion of samsara is closely related to the Buddhist concept of karma , which ascribes a desert component to this cycle. Karma drives the rebirth cycle by attributing the quality of the life into which a person is reborn to the actions of their past lives. If someone commited immoral acts in their past lives, they would face the consequences by being reborn into a hellish miserable life. Conversely, if someone committed good acts, they would be reborn into a happy beautiful life (Sayings 203). This causal explanation between the actions someone undertook in their past lives and circumstances of their current life is what’s referred to as karma . In foundational Buddhist thought, Karma governs the persistence within a person from one lifetime to the next, and thus is related to samsara . The concepts of saṃsāra and karma , hand in hand, appear to be incompatible with anātman . If we grant that no person can point to any of the five aggregates and claim — “That is me!” — but, at the same time, a person is nothing more than those aggregates, we can accept the claim that the self does not exist. That is the structure of the argument presented above by Nagasena. However, accepting that the life a person is living right now is a consequence of a life they lived in the past requires that that person is persisting over time. That is, if we are to correctly say that Anita, for instance, deserves the poor quality of her life because she undertook immoral actions in her past lives, it must be that the Anita experiencing this poor-quality life is the same Anita who undertook those immoral actions. Otherwise, the immoral actions of the past lives couldn’t be attributed to the person who is living the consequentially poor-quality life. So, karma and saṃsāra require persistence. However, if the self doesn’t even exist, surely it cannot have the quality of persisting over time. Persistence necessitates existence. This is the tension that arises with the consideration of anātman in conjunction with saṃsāra ; it seems we cannot accept one without rejecting the other — unless, that is, we have an account of non-self that involves persistence through time. Dependent Arising The concept of non-self can extend through the dimension of time with the inclusion of dependent arising. In another early Buddhist text, the Buddha delineates a series of causal chains. He says, “Conditioned by ignorance there are volitional forces, conditioned by volitional forces there is consciousness, conditioned by consciousness there is mind-and-body, conditioned by mind-and-body there are the six senses…” until he arrives at suffering (Sayings 210-211). This causal chain is called dependent arising. Within this series of states, each caused by an earlier one and causing the next, we find the five aggregates: between volitional forces, consciousness, and mind-and-body. So, the five aggregates we refer to when we speak of the self are themselves just parts within a system that extends beyond them. In this way, the non-self is positioned within a greater system of causal chains. If this understanding is applied to the earlier concepts of saṃsāra and karma , the tension between them and anātman may be resolved. Initially, the idea that there is a cycle of death and rebirth called saṃsāra seems to presuppose the existence of a self, particularly as an individual entity that persists through time. Moreover, the proposition, known as karma , that the conditions of one’s present life are a consequence of past lives ascribes continuity within a self as it undergoes multiple life cycles. It seems to follow from this that one’s past actions result in one’s current experiences, meaning that the person who commits the actions must be the same person who has the current experiences. So, there must be a self that persists. But, if the cycle of rebirth driven by karma is reconsidered through a lens of dependent arising, there is no need to account for the existence of an individual entity called a self. It need not be the case that there is a self who at one point both committed certain actions and is now experiencing the effects. There need not be an individual entity to which these actions are attributed. Rather, there can be certain actions committed and resultant effects being experienced. Indeed, the constitutive parts of a person, the five aggregates, are nothing more than steps within a greater causal chain. By accepting dependent arising, we can understand what was once necessarily the persistence of the self through time as, instead, a causal relationship and no more. Earlier states bring about later states. There is no self. Conclusion By including an account of non-self over time, such as dependent arising, the tensions between saṃsāra and anātman are resolved. The argument for anātman in a given moment, what I’ve referred to as static non-self, derives from the five aggregates. As expressed in the chariot analogy, a person is not any one of the five aggregates and a person is not anything more than them. Therefore, the existence of a unified self is a mere illusion. This is an important claim within Buddhist thought because it is included in a foundational teaching: that clinging to the self is the cause of suffering. This might be enough to motivate letting go of the idea of the self, for the purpose of ending suffering. However, the idea that clinging to the self causes suffering isn’t enough to justify the plausibility of non-self. It must also be consistent with other teachings in Buddhism. Initially, it seems to be incompatible with the teachings of saṃsāra and karma . These teachings seem to necessitate a self that persists through time, because surely it must be the same person who lives through the multiple lives involved in a particular cycle of rebirth driven by their own karma . But, if the self doesn’t exist even for a given moment, how can it exist from one moment to the next? Indeed, it doesn’t. This can be explained through the concept of dependent arising, a dynamic picture of non-self. Through this lens, the five aggregates are placed in a causal chain of events. This way, there can be causal continuity within a person's life — or lives — without there necessarily being a self. Past events cause later events, and so goes the cycle of rebirth. Finally, there is no incompatibility between anatman and the rest of Buddhist teaching, and it can be justifiably accepted as a plausible account. In this manner, dependent arising resolves the tension initially faced between anatman and saṃsāra . References Gethin, Rupert. 2008. Sayings of the Buddha : a selection of suttas from the Pali Nikayas, Oxford world's classics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press.

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Schedule F And The Future Of Civil Service Protections Sasha Bonkowsky Author Abstract Civil service protections in the United States, such as merit-based hiring, employee tenure, and the dismissal appeal , have come under attack in recent years, most notably from former president Donald Trump’s proposed Schedule F that would strip those protections from many federal employees. Under Schedule F, thousands of federal positions would become political appointees who could be dismissed at-will. This paper examines the history and justifications for exempting positions from traditional civil-service protections, as well as the feasibility for Biden’s Office of Personnel Management to forestall Schedule F. I conclude that Schedule F would likely have negative effects on government performance and morale, but that the OPM may not be able to effectively prevent implementation of Schedule F in the event of Trump’s re-election. Word count: 4,059 Introduction Throughout President Donald Trump’s administration, he frequently attacked the federal bureaucracy for what he saw as its inefficiency or refusal to enact his policies. He was elected on promises of “draining the swamp” in American government; after the 2016 election, he repeatedly attacked a supposed “deep state” of insider operatives within federal agencies and departments who were ideologically opposed to him and used their positions in the bureaucracy, from which it was hard to dismiss them, to hamstring and block his agenda. Where Trump had appointment power, such as with agency heads or other political appointees, he was quick to remove those he saw as disloyal. However, many of his attacks were limited to mere invective. In the vast American civil service comprising more than two million employees, only 4,000 of those are political appointees that the president can remove at will. And in comparison to other democracies like the UK, France, or Japan, which all have similar civil service systems,, the US actually has many more political appointees. The rest are career employees. Career civil servants are usually hired using a merit-based, competitive examination system, in which all prospective employees are given the same exam, and those meeting or exceeding a particular score are hired. Once in the federal bureaucracy—and after a probationary period of several months to a year—employees usually cannot be dismissed unless they are found to be significantly derelict in their duties, and they can appeal a firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which can investigate and reinstate an employee if they have been unlawfully dismissed. There are certain exceptions to this process, known as Schedules A through E, but they are only used when the usual processes are deemed “impractical.” In October 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13957, which would have significantly increased the number of political appointees. It created a new category of positions within the federal bureaucracy—known as Schedule F positions—that would be exempted from regular civil service hiring procedures. Instead of the examination process, the president would be able to handpick employees for positions that fell under Schedule F and dismiss them at will without worrying about an appeal to the MSPB, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in its analysis of the order. President Biden repealed the executive order during his first days in office, writing that it “undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles.” But such an action is hardly permanent—after all, another future president could easily reissue the executive order. To avoid that, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a proposed rule in late 2023 that would prevent career employees from being excepted under Schedule F or a similar order. The proposed rule also stated that any employee who was reclassified as political appointee would still possess the same protections from being fired and could appeal any dismissal to the MSPB. However, it’s unclear if this proposal will take effect before the 2024 election and a possible transition of power. This paper first examines civil service protections and common exemptions—especially those for current political appointees—in more detail, before turning to the possible effects of Schedule F and attempts to block it. Data from the past 10 years of OPM rulemaking demonstrates that, on average, rules take about a year to be finalized, meaning that if this civil service rule follows the usual timeline, it may be too late to go fully into effect before a Republican president or Republican Congress could repeal it. Civil Service Exceptions The US civil service already allows certain positions to be excepted from the competitive service in five categories: Schedules A, B, C, D, and E. Typically, prospective civil service employees must take a general exam, from which the highest scorers (and those with veteran’s preference) can be selected for hiring. However, this process can be slow, and does not cover specialized knowledge that an agency might require. Positions excepted under one of these schedules can be hired without this usual examination process when it is determined that the exam would make it impractical to recruit adequate numbers of students from qualifying institutions, (under Schedule D), when urgency is required (under Schedule A), or when selecting for particular experience (under Schedule B), among others. Only one schedule deals with political appointments—Schedule C—and it functions most similarly to the proposed Schedule F. Schedule C allows excepted hiring for “positions which are policy-determining or which involve a close and confidential working relationship with the head of an agency or other key appointed officials”. These are often positions like press secretaries for individual bureaus within agencies, White House liaisons, or confidential assistants to secretaries and undersecretaries. There are usually between 1,500 and 1,800 Schedule C appointments at any given time, with 1,725 at the end of the first Bush administration, 1,538 at the end of the Obama administration, and 1,566 at the end of the Trump administration. These political appointments within the civil service didn’t always exist, and like the present-day Schedule F, Schedule C was the subject of significant controversy when it was first carved out in 1956 under the Eisenhower administration. One Democratic senator decried Schedule C as “an attempt to turn the civil service into a Republican grab bag” on the Senate floor, and the Democratic Party platform of 1956 stated that the Eisenhower administration’s policies “reflect prejudices and excessive partisanship to the detriment of employee morale”. The director of the Civil Service Commission defended them in the New York Times , writing that “the American people in 1952 expected your Administration to put into effect your announced policies…it is of the most vital importance that…policy-determining officials should be subject to change with any change in political administration”. Yet despite this public criticism, the Democratic-controlled Congress passed no legislation curtailing or ending Schedule C, and presidents of both parties have made use of Schedule C’s hiring authority. Several restrictions are placed on Schedule C positions and the ways in which they can be assigned. There are no “vacant” Schedule C positions which may be filled at will by the President—instead, any Schedule C positions must be approved by the director of OPM, and OPM’s authorization for those positions is automatically revoked when an employee leaves. Additionally, when requesting Schedule C exception, the head of the requesting agency must submit a statement to OPM that the position was not created in order to detail the employee to the White House—that is, assign them to work in the White House while still being paid by their original agency. This requirement was added after a 1990 GAO report found that Schedule C appointees were being inappropriately detailed to the White House rather than performing the specified duties of their positions. Though Schedule F and Schedule C may appear similar in their creation of low-level, politically appointed positions, the proposed Schedule F category would carve out much broader exceptions to the competitive service. Schedule C restricts its exceptions to appointments of a “confidential or policy-determining” character; Schedule F would allow exceptions to the competitive service for positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy -advocating character.” Policy-making or policy-advocating are much broader terms than merely policy-determining, and their definitions are statutorily vague, meaning they could be applied to a much greater number of employees. The executive order drew its legal basis from Section 7511 of Title 5 of the US Code, which excludes employees “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character” from competitive examination procedures and protection from dismissal. Determination of whether an employee’s job fits these requirements are made by the President and required to be authorized by the head of OPM. This exception, however, had never been put into practice before. The effects of Schedule F implementation are unclear. The executive order was issued in late October 2020, directing that agencies should submit a list of positions that would fall under Schedule F and their reasons for selecting those positions within 90 days (on January 19, 2021). Agencies were also directed to submit petitions to the Federal Labor Relations Authority to determine whether excepted positions under Schedule F would also be excluded from collective bargaining authorities. Few agencies—15 in total, out of over 400 federal agencies—submitted information to OPM, many claiming that they needed more time. Of those, just four agencies submitted names and lists of positions for conversion: the International Boundary and Water Commission proposed converting just 5 employees of its 234, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed 579 employees of its 11,000, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed 836 of its 1,166 employees, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed 436 of its 527 employees. One issue is these agencies are not particularly representative of the bureaucracy as a whole—the IBWC and FERC are independent commissions, and OMB is deeply embedded in the White House—and so it remains unclear exactly how many employees would be affected by a future implementation of Schedule F. However, the authors of Schedule F have definite intentions for its use and assumptions of how many employees it might affect. The executive order was largely crafted and written by James Sherk, a member of the Domestic Policy Council focusing on labor policy. In 2017, he submitted a memo entitled “Proposed Labor Reforms,” in which he argued for the possibility that “Article II executive power gives the president inherent authority to dismiss any federal employee. This implies civil service legislation,as well as other protections for federal employees, (such as preventing their dismissal for joining a union) are unconstitutional. If so, the President could issue an Executive Order outlining a streamlined new process for dismissing federal employees”. Three years later, he would see that executive order realized in the creation of Schedule F. At a panel discussion for the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in 2023, he continued to argue in favor of this proposition, saying that “every federal employee should serve at the pleasure of the president”. Given the limited data submitted by agencies, there’s no set number of employees Schedule F might affect. Experts, and Sherk himself, have estimated around 50,000, although Sherk noted the number as a low estimate., In the same NAPA seminar, he said that “I think there's ways you could broaden the scope of the order…I think you could expand it beyond 50,000. Say to like, 200,000. 300,000.” Former Trump administration officials have reportedly “saved lists of previous appointees…as well as career officers they viewed as uncooperative and would seek to fire based on an executive order to weaken civil service protections”, although such lists have not been made public. But having the ability to fire employees, or doing so, doesn’t necessarily mean the administration would be able to fill the positions. The Trump administration was slower than other administrations to nominate officials to key positions, other civil servants rated Trump appointees as less competent than previous Republican administrations or career civil servants, and the Trump administration faced difficulties finding even officials to fill top-level positions. While the Trump administration was able to authorize and fill about as many Schedule C positions as previous administrations, that doesn’t necessarily mean they would be able to fill Schedule F positions given the vastly larger number of them. Besides the numerical scope of its effects, Schedule F was also defended as necessary to improve the efficiency of the federal bureaucracy. The text of the executive order itself cited “long delays and substandard-quality work for important agency projects” as part of its rationale, and stated “agencies need the flexibility to expeditiously remove poorly performing employees”. Many stakeholders that GAO interviewed acknowledged that the speed of federal hiring should be improved, and that Schedule F would streamline that process; one also told GAO that “employees in Schedule F positions should be…more motivated to quickly and effectively implement the President’s policy agenda”. Criticism of a slow-moving and unresponsive bureaucracy, in which onerous hiring procedures and strict removal protections hamstring the agencies themselves, has been long-standing. Presidents and agencies alike have bipartisanly seen problems in the hiring process and sought to reform it: the US National Performance Review in 1993 wrote that “hiring is complex and rule-bound” in the civil service; a Bush-era report from the Merit Systems Protection Board wrote in favor of reform that would “provide agencies the flexibilities they need to effectively manage” and recommended that OPM should “speed the process” of federal hiring; and the Obama administration in turn issued guidance on simplifying and overhauling the civil service hiring process. The picture is little better in terms of firing underperforming employees: it’s long been understood that civil protections reduce the power of incentives, such that employees in government see little connection between performance and job security. But Schedule F seems unlikely to accomplish these reforms in a way that benefits government performance. Several of the stakeholders which GAO spoke to said that Schedule F could make recruitment of federal employees more difficult, as potential applicants might be leery of taking a Schedule F position if they believed they could be removed after a change in administration or for other political reasons. This is in line with the theory advanced by Gailmard and Patty, which states that civil servants are incentivized to build expertise when tenure provides them the stability to make such an investment. David Lewis writes in his book The Politics of Presidential Appointments, drawing on the example of the OPM in the 1980s and 1990s, that, while “politicization helped change policy,” it came at the expense of “long-term agency capacity and reputation…experienced career professionals left the agency and it was hard to replace them [or] recruit bright young people to work in the agency.” New meta-analysis of the meritocratic civil services on government performances found that associated practices such as tenure or merit-based hiring are broadly associated with stronger government performance and lower corruption. With an eye towards a potential future reissuing of the executive order, authors conclude that “converting career employees to Schedule F and removing their civil service protections is likely to degrade government performance”. Rulemaking To Prevent the Reinstatement of Schedule F The Biden administration and Democrats more broadly share similar concerns about Schedule F’s potential impact on the federal government were it to be reinstated by Trump or another future administration. Congressional Democrats have attempted multiple times to pass bills which would prevent Schedule F’s reinstatement or add amendments blocking Schedule F to must-pass defense appropriation bills. However, their efforts have been blocked by Republicans. Bypassing the legislative method, Biden’s OPM released on September 18, 2023, a proposed rule entitled “Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit Systems Principles,” aimed as a regulatory method to prevent future administrations from reissuing Schedule F. The rule would: allow employees moved from the competitive service to the excepted service to retain their civil service protections unless the employee voluntarily relinquishes them. redefine “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating”—the language which Sherk and the Trump White House relied on to craft the executive order—to mean only non-career, political appointees. allow employees moved from the competitive service to the excepted service to appeal the move to the MSPB. This would, in essence, cut out the heart of Schedule F: removing its legal basis and specifying that converted employees retain tenure protections, such that converting their positions to the excepted service does not make them at-will employees. OPM draws its authority to make these changes from Chapter 75 of Title 5 of the United States Code, specifically 5 U.S. Code § 7514 and 5 U.S. Code § 7504, both sections which give OPM broad discretion to regulate civil service protections for federal employees. OPM also asserts its authority based on 5 U.S.C. 1103(a)(5) and 5 U.S.C. 1302 to make specific regulations about the procedures of moving employees between the competitive and excepted service, pointing out that OPM has repeatedly exercised that authority in the past (and indeed, regulated that movement in the implementation of Schedule F). The proposed rule closed its 60-day comment period on November 17, 2023, during which time it received 4,096 comments. With the strong support of the Biden administration and the leadership of OPM behind it, the rule is expected to move forward. However, the proposed rule has been the target of criticism by Republicans and people associated with the Trump 2024 campaign—which gives OPM a potential impending deadline. Almost certainly, if Trump wins the 2024 election and the rule is not finalized by his inauguration, he will direct the OPM to drop it; and even a finalized rule could be subject to overturning by a potential Republican Congress under the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a tool that Congress can use to overturn federal regulatory actions, which was enacted as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act in 1996. The CRA requires that agencies submit finalized rules to Congress and the GAO 60 legislative days before they take effect: if Congress passes a resolution of disapproval of the rule within that time period and the President signs it, or if Congress passes such a resolution over a presidential veto, then the rule cannot go into effect. Because of the threat (and exercise) of presidential veto power, rules have been overturned under the CRA only immediately following a change in presidential administration, in 2001, 2017, and 2021. However, the deadline for finalized rules to avoid CRA review by a potentially hostile Congress or President is not just 60 days before a new president could be inaugurated (that is, late November). Congress has 60 legislative days to consider rules—and if Congress adjourns sine die during that period, the 60-day period resets in its entirety beginning on the 15th day of the new legislative session, in what’s known as a “lookback” period. In 2017, that meant that the Republican Congress was able to disapprove of rules finalized as far back as May 2016. Thus, in order to be certain that it will go into effect, OPM must finalize its rule by mid-2024. But the question is if it will be able to do so by then. In the 2023 Fall Unified Agenda, published by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), OPM specified that it is targeting April 2024 for publication of a final rule. Based on historical precedent, this would provide the rule enough time to avoid reconsideration and potential disapproval from the next Congress. But OPM’s projected timeline may be overly optimistic, given its past timelines in publishing final rules. I collected data on finalized OPM rules between 2023 and 2013 in the Federal Register and examined how long it took between publication of the proposed rule and publication of the finalized rule. Since OPM’s proposed rule at hand of upholding civil-service protections has been defined as “significant” under Executive Order 12866 (likely due to its potential to “raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates [or] the President’s priorities”), I restricted my search to only those rules which were similarly deemed significant, as they require a full review by OIRA that lengthens the rulemaking process. I also did not include OPM rules that were issued only as interim final rules rather than undergoing a full notice-and-comment period. The full list of all OPM rules meeting these criteria and their timelines can be found in Appendix A. Below are the summarized results: FIGURE 1: OPM RULEMAKING AVERAGE TIMELINE Notes: The timeline of OPM rulemaking is defined as the number of days between OPM’s publication of a proposed rule and the publication of a final rule. Several outlier rules took more than three years to be finalized. Data sourced from the Federal Register, 2013-2023. FIGURE 2. OPM RULEMAKING TIMELINE BY YEAR Notes: OPM published no significant final rules in 2017. Data sourced from the Federal Register 2013-2023. On average, it took 473 days between OPM issuing a proposed rule and OPM issuing a final rule. Even after eliminating the major outlier rule that took nearly 6 years to finalize, the data still suggests that it generally takes over a year to finalize a rule after it is proposed. Though the timeline varies slightly year by year, there is no clear pattern that would allow us to infer that the OPM of 2023-2024 finalizes rules significantly faster or slower than the OPM of, say, 2013-2014. If this timeline holds for OPM’s rule undercutting Schedule F, we can project that OPM will finalize the rule sometime in December 2024—too late to avoid a potential disapproval under the CRA. However, one case study of similar civil-service rulemaking demonstrates that potential CRA review is not the same as certain CRA review. On September 17, 2019, the OPM under Trump issued a proposed rule that would more strictly enforce the probationary period before employees were accepted to a competitive service position and sought to streamline civil service removal procedures. In many ways, this rule was a precursor to Schedule F, drawing on the same language and reasoning about an ineffective federal government that couldn’t remove underperforming employees. The rule was finalized on October 16, 2020, a timeline which would have allowed the 117th Congress under unified Democratic control to review and disapprove it. They didn’t. It’s not entirely clear why not: congressional disapproval of rules cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and 20 days after their proposal can be discharged for a floor vote by a minority of 30 Senators. More likely, the Democratic Congress preferred to let rollback occur through the agency processes: there were only three rule disapprovals in total in 2021 of Trump-era rules, but many more were overturned by agencies’ new leaders. But that process takes time, and so it was only in November 2022 when OPM finalized its rollback, meaning the Trump-era changes were in place for almost two full years of the Biden administration. The OPM’s proposed anti-Schedule F rule would likely follow a similar track. An OPM under Trump would certainly seek to undo it, even if the rule is successfully finalized and put into effect without disapproval—but as in the case above, it would likely take them months or years to do so. A rule undoing this one would also be open to legal challenges that an executive order would not be, and the Trump administration faced significant challenges in successful rulemaking. Previous administrations succeeded in roughly 70% of challenges to agency actions, while the Trump administration had a dismal 23% success rate in legal challenges due to bypassing procedural requirements, providing incomplete analyses of policy effects, or taking action which exceeded an agency’s statutory authority. Conclusion Whether or not OPM manages to finalize its rule and put it into effect successfully, the fight over the structure and protections of the civil service is unlikely to end in 2024 or beyond. In recent years, long-held civil service practices of non-politicization and tenure protections that were largely taken as established have come under increasing attack, largely from Republican officials and presidential candidates. In recent years, it’s the executive branch which has been most involved in determining the structure of federal civil service, from the Schedule F executive order to OPM’s proposed rulemaking, and attempts for similar legislation have been blocked or stalled out before making major progress, and research has largely focused on the president’s and agencies’ influence. But Congress has historically been the instrument of major changes to the civil service, from the Pendleton Act to the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978—and it’s only recently that Congress has ceded that power to the executive. While research such as this examining the direction, scope, and timing of executive influence over civil service is certainly beneficial given the political context, one potential direction for further research could be an examination of Congress’ role in civil service in the past, and what potential legislative actions would be beneficial in future. 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United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Plum Book), 2020 . U.S. Government Publishing Office, 1 Dec. 2020. DGPO , https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-PLUMBOOK-2020 . Wagner, Erich. “Schedule F Architects Say the Plan’s Critics Are ‘Hyperbolic.’” Government Executive , 29 June 2023, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2023/06/schedule-f-architects-plans-critics-hyperbolic/388118/ . ---. “Year of the Living Dead: How Schedule F Continued to Threaten to Upend the Civil Service in 2022.” Government Executive , 28 Dec. 2022, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/12/year-living-dead-how-schedule-f-continued-threaten-upend-civil-service-2020/381257/ . Young, Philip. “Civil Service and Eisenhower Texts.” The New York Times , 1 Oct. 1956, p. 14. Tables Table 1: OPM Significant Rules, 2013-2023 Rule Name Date Finalized Date Proposed Time Passed (Days) Appointment of Current and Former Land Management Employees 12/6/23 5/15/20 1300 Fair Chance to Compete For Jobs 9/1/23 4/27/22 492 Federal Employees' Retirement System; Present Value Conversion Factors for Spouses of Deceased Separated Employees 9/28/23 7/14/23 76 Retirement: Members of Congress and Congressional Employees 5/17/23 11/16/22 182 Access to Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) for Employees of Certain Tribally Controlled Schools 4/13/22 9/3/21 222 Enhancing Stability and Flexibility for the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP)-Abbreviated Underwriting, Applications for FLTCIP Coverage, and Technical Corrections 11/16/22 6/3/22 166 Probation on Initial Appointment to a Competitive Position, Performance-Based Reduction in Grade and Removal Actions and Adverse Actions (repeal) 11/10/22 1/4/22 310 Temporary and Term Employment 12/1/22 9/14/20 808 Opportunities To Enroll and Change Enrollment in the FEHB Program During a Lapse in Appropriations; Continuation of Certain Insurance Benefits During a Lapse in Appropriations 4/2/21 7/20/20 256 Promotion and Internal Placement 6/8/21 12/16/19 540 Representative Payees Under the Civil Service Retirement System and Federal Employees' Retirement System 10/8/21 3/8/21 214 Federal Employees Health Benefits Acquisition Regulations: Self Plus One and Contract Matrix Update 3/25/20 4/2/19 358 Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Program: Clarifying Annual Rates of Pay and Amending the Employment Status of Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims 9/24/20 6/29/18 818 Probation on Initial Appointment to a Competitive Position, Performance-Based Reduction in Grade and Removal Actions and Adverse Actions 10/16/20 9/17/19 395 Compensatory Time Off for Religious Observances and Other Miscellaneous Changes 4/29/19 8/30/13 2068 Examining System 5/3/19 10/29/18 186 Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program: Extension of Eligibility to Certain TRICARE-Eligible Individuals; Effective Date of Enrollment 6/7/19 11/19/18 200 Federal Employees' Retirement System; Present Value Conversion Factors for Spouses of Deceased Separated Employees 9/23/19 5/28/19 118 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program Flexibilities 4/27/18 12/19/17 129 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Removal of Eligible and Ineligible Individuals From Existing Enrollments 1/23/18 12/1/16 418 General Schedule Locality Pay Areas 12/7/18 7/9/18 151 Veterans' Preference 12/7/18 12/27/16 710 Weather and Safety Leave 4/10/18 7/13/17 271 Career and Career-Conditional Employment 12/8/16 1/6/14 1067 Family and Medical Leave Act; Definition of Spouse 4/8/16 6/23/14 655 Access to Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) for Employees of Certain Indian Tribal Employers 12/28/16 8/31/16 119 Special Rights for Transferred Employees Under the Dodd-Frank Act Regarding Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance 9/1/16 1/6/14 969 Personnel Management in Agencies 12/12/16 2/8/16 308 Recruitment, Selection, and Placement (General) and Suitability 12/1/16 5/2/16 213 Designation of National Security Positions in the Competitive Service, and Related Matters 6/5/15 12/4/10 1644 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program Self Plus One Enrollment Type 9/17/15 12/2/14 289 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Enrollment Options Following the Termination of a Plan or Plan Option 10/8/15 1/7/15 274 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: FEHB Plan Performance Assessment System 6/30/15 12/15/14 197 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program; Subrogation and Reimbursement Recovery 5/21/15 1/7/15 134 Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program Eligibility Changes 10/30/15 11/13/14 351 Managing Senior Executive Performance 9/25/15 12/10/14 289 Solicitation of Federal Civilian and Uniformed Service Personnel for Contributions to Private Voluntary Organizations 10/23/15 8/17/15 67 Collection by Offset From Indebted Government Employees 1/6/14 5/2/11 980 Nondiscrimination Provisions 7/29/14 9/4/13 328 Phased Retirement 8/8/14 6/5/13 429 Electronic Retirement Processing 11/18/13 3/5/13 258 Excepted Service-Appointment of Persons With Intellectual Disabilities, Severe Physical Disabilities, and Psychiatric Disabilities 2/22/13 2/7/12 381 Garnishment of Accounts Containing Federal Benefit Payments 5/29/13 4/19/10 1136 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Members of Congress and Congressional Staff 10/2/13 8/8/13 55 Expanding Coverage of Children; Federal Flexible Benefits Plan: Pre-Tax Payment of Health Benefits Premiums: Conforming Amendments 10/30/13 7/20/12 467 General Schedule Locality Pay Areas 1/24/13 11/26/12 59 Programs for Specific Positions and Examinations (Miscellaneous) 12/2/13 9/7/10 1182 AVERAGE: 473 days

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, PAUL KRUGMAN: Inequality, Artificial Intelligence, Technological Disruption, and Assortative Mating Paul Krugman is an economist and writer, who currently serves as professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and as an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Prior to his appointment at Princeton, Krugman served on the faculty of MIT; his last post was Ford International Professor of Economics. He has also taught at Yale and Stanford Universities, and prior to that he was the senior international economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers, under Ronald Reagan. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Group of Thirty. He has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, as well as to a number of countries including Portugal and the Philippines. In December 2008, Mr. Krugman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2008, honoring his work in international trade patterns. Fall 2019 JPPE : With US income and wealth inequality at a historical high, economists like Daron Acemoglu and David Autor have discussed the issue of job polarization and the idea that artificial intelligence and other modern labor-saving innovations might contribute to the widening of that skills gap and the further privileging of high skill work. Are you concerned that modern technology will make inequality worse? Krugman : I’m concerned but I’m not convinced. The belief that we’re living in an era of radical technological change has a problem, which is, if we were in such a period, we should see rapidly rising productivity. What we’re actually seeing is rather sluggish productivity. Rising productivity is just not being shown in the data. And then once you adopt that attitude you can ask yourself how—thinking about the kind of tangible technological innovations of our time—are we really seeing radical progress? The rise of the original smartphone or the iPhone was a really big deal. How excited are people about this year’s latest smartphone? You really can convince yourself that we’re starting to plateau. And that may not last, but it’s not clear that this is a time of very radical technological change. Aside from the fact that rapid technological change isn’t so obvious, the argument that technology is driving income polarization runs up against several problems. I think Autor does great stuff, and that “U shape” he finds is really interesting. But there is a problem if wage developments don’t seem to be following the kinds of labor that he says are being devalued—i.e. if middle-skill work isn’t experiencing worse wage gains than lower-skill work, which is the part that's growing. So if we’re seeing an economy that is polarizing with a greater number of low skill jobs, why are home health aids not getting better paid? Those are service sector jobs, so that makes you question whether there is some statistical artifact about the whole thing. It’s not for sure, but I’m unconvinced. And then there’s the general point that if we have technology that’s biased against labor, it needs to be biased towards something, which would be capital. This means returns to investments would be high, but the corporate sector is behaving as if returns on investment are low. They are not investing heavily despite extremely low interest rates. So I just think the whole thing is a story you can tell, and it might be true in the future but there really is no slam dunk evidence that it’s what is happening now. JPPE : Research by Robert Allen on the “Engels’ Pause” shows that because technological disruption tends to improve productivity, it also temporarily increases inequality as wages stagnate and returns to capital rise. Then eventually some leveling force brings it down. Do you think that that’s a fair way of looking at how theoretical technological disruption causes inequality? Krugman : It can happen. To the extent that we have a theoretical analysis of what technology does, that analysis says that it depends on the technology and it depends on the bias of the technology. Technology that replaces a worker with lots of extra capital should have a negative impact on wages and increase inequality. That’s not a particularly new insight. David Ricardo had it in 1821, and the reason he had it is because there’s a pretty good case that that’s what happened during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. There’s an endless debate about what happened to real wages between 1800 and 1840, but the fact that we’re even having that debate tells you that there isn’t sufficiently convincing evidence of rising real wages to override the counterarguments. So stagnating wages due to technology is possible. It’s not clear that it has happened again since the Industrial Revolution. There is an argument that there was a kind of technological bias towards highly educated workers, which was driving the rise in income inequality in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s more debatable, but it’s also a story that doesn’t help much in developments since 2000. So technology can have an effect, and it’s very easy to write down a model in which technological change is, for some period—and maybe even an extended period—, bad for substantial groups of workers. But it depends on the story you tell. JPPE : There was economic research that found assortative mating was responsible for twenty percent of the rise in inequality since the 1980s. Is there anything college students can do about this, or are they just the vehicles of widening inequality? Krugman : It's not just assortative mating; it’s assortative lots-of-stuff. At the highest levels, everyone was roommates at Harvard. But I think a lot of those assortative mating things are mostly relying on inequality as measured by survey data, which doesn’t capture the really huge incomes at the top. Those incomes are measured by other things, and that’s a large part of the inequality. But, look, if we can restore adequate funding for high-quality public education so that we can have more great students at a wider variety of places, then maybe the mating won’t be so assortative. I’m not big on the notion that any intervention in people’s lives is evil socialism, but telling people who fall in love with is beyond even what I would consider. JPPE : Fair enough. Walter Scheidel came out with The Great Leveler where he wrote a history of inequality. His thesis was that periods of high inequality only ever get remedied by mass military mobilization, plague, civil war, or government collapse. In a time of historically high inequality, are you worried about that? Or do you think that effective policy and effective politics can actually play a role in reducing inequality? Krugman : The middle-class society that I grew up in—now gone— was the creation of policy. It was not the result of the invisible hand of the market, but a dramatic increase in unionization, the squeezing of wages, wage differentials, the establishment of norms, and changes in taxation, all of which were associated with World War II. So massive total war was the background for the Great Compression. Do we know that this is the only way that reducing inequality can happen? No. It’s the only way we’ve seen it happen in the past, but we don’t have a whole lot of samples, and you have to hope that we can do it differently. And I would say that there were significant equalizing reforms during the Progressive Era, and it’s true that some of the stuff took place after World War I, but some of it took place before. So I don't think history should give you total pessimism about our ability to enact change. And I'd like to see more equality and not total war.

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEW, ANDRE PERRY: Andre Perry is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work centers around issues of race, structural inequality, and education. His book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities , was published earlier this year, and he has had his work featured in MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, among others. May 2020 JPPE: Hey everyone, welcome to “The Difference Principle: Power and Inequality in America.” I’m speaking with Andre Perry, who is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a Scholar-in-Resident at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work tends to focus on race, structural inequality, and education, and it’s been featured in MSNBC, the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Post, CNN, among other places. He’s also the author of a new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, and the report deals with the devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods, which deals with findings he produced at Brookings in a study and presented to the U.S. House of Representatives. Hi Andre, how are you? Andre: I’m doing well, good to see you. You forgot to add that I was a fellow when you were an intern at the Brookings Institution, so good to see you again. JPPE: Good to see you again. So the first question is: when you look at the recent movements to shine light on race inequality in the US, what do you see? Andre: Oh, I see an opportunity to really transform policy in the United States in a way that produces equity and upholds the values that the constitution and other similar documents have promoted but not necessarily operationalized. So for me, as a researcher of policy, it’s encouraging to have so many different types of people marching in the streets, demanding change—structural change. So that just gives me the cover to really produce the kind of research and analyses I think is needed during this moment, but it is also part of my life’s work. I’ve been writing and researching structural inequality for years, and so this is my time— this is (my) equivalent of a super bowl—when it comes to structural inequality. There’s so much at stake, and we have an opportunity to truly change and transform the way we distribute resources and services in this country, so I’m looking forward to the years ahead. JPPE: And I saw that you began your earlier work with a focus on education. You spent time as an educator, and as a dean I saw as well, which I didn’t know, actually. And your most recent book and a recent report that you wrote for Brookings deals with these issues of housing, and you set up your book with what I thought was a really interesting anecdote where you describe your family background with an estranged biological mother and a father who was killed in prison at 27, and then you discuss it in the context of these feelings of not belonging and seem to extend that to the black experience in America. In your testimony in front of the House you said, “The value of assets building schools leadership and lend itself are inextricably linked to the perceptions of black people. How much of the demand that impacts housing price is affected by how people are perceived,” and it seemed that in your book you emphasized this point through the case studies that you highlighted in order to show this idea that our concept of equity is corrupted by an idea that white people are the “gold standard.” Practically, this manifested in the tangible form of black real estate being devalued by as much as 156,000,048,000 dollars. So, where did that shift to housing come from, and why did you choose to orient towards that? Andre: You know, kids don’t live in schools; they live in communities. Often times, when we are talking about academic performance, we ignore all of the other structural barriers that impede a child’s education. I wanted to examine all those other structures that impact children, so I could get at how they impact education, and what was clear to me is that it’s almost impossible to isolate education as a root cause of inequality, but a lot of people try to do that. They’ll say, “if we could only fix the school then everything will be alright.” JPPE: Right. Andre: And, you know, that’s just not true. So much of academic performance is predicted by forces outside of school: what kind of job your parents have, what kind of education your grandfather had, home prices, transportation, the criminal justice system. All of these things have an impact on children’s and parents’ lives, which end up playing out in the schools themselves. So I wanted to say, “hey, so enough of blaming schools for society’s problems with policy” because when you blame schools, you essentially have little room but to blame teachers and students and people in that school, and that’s just misguided. I say throughout my book—and it’s become a mantra of mine— that there is nothing wrong with black people that ending racism can’t solve. I say that to get to that we’ve got to stop blaming black people. There’s this white supremacist myth that says the conditions of black cities and neighborhoods are a direct result of people in them, and that white supremacist myth also plays out in our efforts to reform schools. We blame teachers, we blame students, we blame school boards, but we treat school boards and school districts like we treat black districts—we treat black school boards and black districts like we treat black people. “We will take them over, we will impose all kinds of restrictions on them, we do things we would never think of doing to a white district.” And so I started looking at other sectors and said, “hey, teachers are not to blame here.” In particular, black teachers: in my education chapter in Know Your Price, I outline the added value that black teachers bring in particular, and so when you see reform hit hard in many districts, and you see a reduction in the black workforce, you go, “hey, this is contradictory to what to the goal of reform is, and that’s to provide opportunity.” And people have to remember: kids eventually grow up and become adults, and we’re cutting off job opportunities for black folks—what the heck are we educating black people for? So the point is that I wanted to look beyond education in schools, because it is often used—or school reform is often used— to advocate our responsibilities for dealing with all the other structures that impede growth in black children and families’ lives. JPPE: So when you think about those other structures that impede growth, how do you delineate some of the other forces that have played a role in rising inequality since the 1970s that people might talk about: financializiation, technological disruption, globalization, and so on? How do you delineate that from the things that are specifically affecting black communities and the role of racism? Andre: Well, I took an approach where I wanted to identify assets that we could measure in terms of the impact of racism on it. And then what I did was I just started going asset by asset and just examining the impact of racism, and eventually I will have some grand theory of how all these things come together. But at least for now I just started looking at different sectors, and this is where housing came into play. Housing—there’s so much data that you can pull from to measure housing. And what we did in preparation for the book—and it’s sort of the anchor study—we examined housing prices and black neighborhoods where the share of the black population was greater than fifty percent and compared them to neighborhoods where the share of the black population was less than fifty percent. And a lot of people say, “yeah the black neighborhood prices are going to be lower because of crime, because of education.” So, we sought out just to control for many different social factors just to get an “apples- to-apples “comparison. And after controlling for all those things as well as many of the “Zillow metrics” you see, we found that homes in black neighborhoods are devalued by twenty-three percent, about 48,000 per home, accumulative there is about 156 billion in lost equity, and we know that people use that equity to start businesses. In fact it would have started up more than four million businesses based on the average amount blacks use to start up their firms. It would have funded more than eight million four-year degrees based on the average cost of a public four-year degree. It’s a big number. And I look at the devaluation, and the reason I say devaluation is because, again, these assets are strong, but they are devalued, often times purposely, through policy. And so my goal with this is—I’m not quite there where I can offer up a grand theory that could be applied to things like globalization and commercialization and things like that. However, I do know we have plenty of evidence to say that the value of assets are mitigated by their proximity to blackness. And we’re corrupted in terms of how we value these particular assets by the preconceived notions of whiteness and blackness, obviously whiteness being of higher value and blackness being of lower value. That plays out many different ways; you just saw, my study looked at home prices, but there was just a major study that was just released that’s getting a lot of headlines that shows that black communities pay more in property taxes than their white counterparts. Thirteen percent more. JPPE: Wow. Andre: And that generally comes about because there’s always been municipalities that charge black communities higher in taxes because of this perceived over-usage of services. They perceive black people overusing services, so they charge higher rates, but that’s also come from just a negative perception. These things play out many different ways. I just identified, like, six different ways devaluation occurs and hope to keep adding onto those ways so I’ll be able to offer a theory of sorts in the future. JPPE: Well, one question I have just listening to you talk about that is: I kind of wonder how you deal with the issue of hearts of minds, of there being these ingrained ideological forces that are just baked into the psyche of people, where there is a certain underlying racism. How do you deal with something like that? Because it seems like that might be difficult to address with just a single policy. Andre: I wrote the book—it’s a policy book, but it’s narrated using first-person narrative. I use a lot of biographical sketches, lots of case studies because getting at this issue of changing hearts and minds, I think you have to do both. You can’t simply make the head case to people. You also have to make a heart case, and more importantly, you have to make a case for culture change. I wanted to show how these racist ideas and devaluations play out in the lives of researchers, family members so they could see—in sort of real terms—what this means or what this says about our culture and what we need to change. So I think people will be pleased to see that I’m talking about a lot of heady policy ideas, and I try my best to scrub all the jargon off of them and really talk plainly. That’s something I always recommend policy folks do: don’t get caught up in your own policy community and talk your way out of compelling others to join in on the fun. But I purposely really try to bring out the data in the context of the lived experience so that people can really absorb them in a way that can excite change. You can’t do just a heart case or a culture case—you have to have something that addresses the real concerns in terms of intellectual nature of the policy. Is it harmful? Is it negative? And you have to show it in the numbers, and numbers don’t mean much when culture will overrun it. We see that in terms of bad policymaking. We will push bad policy because it fits into our notion of what America is or what we think it should be, and so we have thousands locked up in cages right now along the US-Mexico border because of negative perceptions of brown folks. We have got to look at culture when we talk about policy, and so that’s what I think my book does. JPPE: And when you look at how to build opposition to race inequality, in addition to cultural movements and engaging with people and as you said, changing hearts of minds, there are also these political questions of how you choose to champion policies that can help reduce race inequality and the effects of systemic racism wherever it might appear. One question I want to ask is about how best to do that. One the one hand, you might make the case that by championing general progressive causes that might level inequality and create equality of opportunity. You might be able to address some issues of race inequality through something like that, and it seems like there were subtexts of that when President Obama was running in 2008 when he was championing what became the Affordable Care Act. So how do you weigh the benefits and trade-offs of emphasizing these broad and underlying economic issues that really speak to—or attempt to speak to— everyone versus focusing more narrowly on: how do we deal with the specific problems that are spurring race inequality? Andre: People don’t understand how anti-black legislation negatively impacts the entire country. You can actually produce policy responses to racism that address the anti-black policies of the past while showing how this will have a positive impact on us all. You know, I look at housing devaluation and show how home prices in black neighborhoods are lower. Now, white people live in those neighborhoods too, and their home prices are lower, too. If you address the anti-black nature of housing pricing, then you improve the quality for a whole lot of people, not just black folks. So in addition, we still have to address race and racism. To say that the impacts of red-lining, which by the homeowner’s loan order corporations in thirties which drew red lines around black-majority neighborhoods, deeming them unworthy of investment in the form of low-interest home loans, that practice haunts black people to this day. The wealth gap is enormous. The immediate wealth of white families about 170 thousand and compare to seventeen thousand for black families. About ten times difference between the two. That was created because of anti-black policy, and we have to have remedies for those who have suffered because of that anti-black policy. So, what’s interesting is that after COVID—after three weeks of COVID and social distancing— people were saying, “give me . . . I need relief for my business, I need relief to pay the bills,” and I say, “well, try being socially distanced for generations.” And so yes, black communities need relief. You can call it a relief package, you can call it reparations, you can call it some type of race-based solution, but what COVID made clear is that the federal government has a responsibility of uplifting its citizens when times are hard, particularly when the federal government caused the harm. You know, between slavery, Jim Crow segregation, legal housing segregation, a biased criminal justice system. All of those things have caused harm—extreme harm—to the economics prospects, the social prospects of black Americans, and we need to remedy those. So yes, we can address anti-black policy by showing how it lifts all folks, so to speak, but if we really want to be equitable, the country should rally behind providing the kind of relief to black residents and citizens that is similar to how we provided relief to white people after the depression and other groups. JPPE: And certainly one thing that’s interesting about this moment, too, is that there are a lot of calls for policies and ideas that might have seemed radical a decade ago. Discussions of reparations or defunding the police seem much more widespread, at least to me, and I’m wondering, when you look at policies that are important to champion right now, what are some that you would like to see particularly? And if we removed the question of political feasibility, what are some policies that you ideally would like to see? Andre: Well, I have to say, I am absolutely ecstatic about the “defund the police” movement, and I’ll tell you why. Not only does it get at what is important in terms of increasing economic mobility, it also says that we need to move money in ways that reflect our priorities as a country and as a neighborhood. So, it’s clear that investments in police literally arrest economic mobility of the residents. I say this all the time: nothing says that a black man doesn’t belong in an economy like a police officer carefully kneeling in the back of the neck of a person and taking his life in broad daylight. That’s a statement about belonging in a community, and so for me, we’ve got to really look at this “defund the police” movement seriously as a framework. I’ve been telling people, “what’s your defund the police in education?” It’s obvious you can actually defund policing in schools—there’s a direct link—but the point is, what money are we going to move to excite economic growth? For me, I’m excited about this moment because we’re really putting a spotlight on the barriers—the structural barriers. It’s not upholding the tradition that black people are to blame, that parents are to blame. . . We’re getting at policy, real policy, real practices that have significant impacts on our daily lives. JPPE: I want to conclude with a quote from your book that I think speaks to a lot of what you just said. You said, “I want people to fight for power. It means getting elected. Sometimes it means going out in the streets. It means going into court with devaluation data that I’ve produced. It means suing the appraisal community. It’s going to take a lot of mobilization because again, racism doesn’t just go away. This is a conversation about power and taking what’s rightfully ours.” What do you say to people who say that they don’t necessarily want to work within the system; that it hasn’t gotten better and it won’t so long as they work within the system because the system has continued to find new ways to calcify inequalities on the one hand or generally preserve its towers of privilege? Andre: Well, I say, to them, protests and movements that are directly confronting the systems and the harms of systems—we need that. You don’t get change without outside agitation. And sometimes that might look like something burning in the streets. It might come in the form of marches. It might come from civil unrest in many different forms. But, let’s be clear: you don’t get police reform in this country by working within the system. You get it from what we’ve seen from over the last few months: by hitting the streets, demanding change, crowding the courtroom, and finding alternative means of being. At some point we need different types of housing structures. We need to look at cooperative housing, for instance. We need new ideas around community—neighborhood—safety. We need new systems, and that’s going to come from the outside. It’s going to come from demanding change. So for me, I see my role as an insider—you know I work at a mainstream think-tank—but I get energy from folks on the outside. I want to be a resource for folks on the outside. So now I have cover, as a member of a marginalized group, to put forth research and data that often is devalued because I am also devalued as a black man in a mainstream think-tank. So I’m all for working from the outside. That’s the only way change occurs, really—substantive change. For me, I look at television— I march as well, and I’m, like, giddy. I’m like, “yes, this is what we need: doing the things that insiders won’t do.” And that’s why we’re in the position we are today. JPPE: Andre, thanks so much for your time. Andre: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict Is secession a viable solution? Tathyana Mello Amaral Brown University Author Miles Campbell Ryan Saadeh Ethan Shire Editors Fall 2018 This paper assesses the viability of secession as a possible solution for the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the creation of weak and unstable states that sought to establish their identity and place in the world. It triggered a wave of pervasive ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, led to a number of lasting military conflicts, and brought about the question of self-determination of minor ethnic groups like the Armenians, Chechens, and Kosovians. The Yugoslav Wars marked an important turning point in the history of the post-Soviet region because it resulted in the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008 and created legal precedent for separatist groups. While the right to secede offers an answer to the resolution of ethnic conflicts, some scholars and theorists find it troubling. [1] The dispute between Georgia and ethnic Ossetians of the Transcaucasian region, now known as South Ossetia, highlights how the right to secede is still a point of controversy in international law. Historical Background: Nature of the Conflict Though the enmity between ethnic Georgians and ethnic Ossetians dates back to the 13th century when Ossetians were driven South from the Northern Caucasus Mountains to Georgian territory, it greatly intensified during the Soviet period.[2] During this period, South Ossetia was an autonomous administrative unit within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). As historian George B. Hewitt discusses, language policy was an important point of contention between the ethnic groups since Georgia pursued discriminatory policies against its ethnic minorities.[3] The Soviet Union’s early language policy granted a lot of freedom to ethnic groups as part of a “nativization” effort that sought to liberate and win over oppressed peoples. By the late 1930s, however, fears of emerging nationalism within the federation led to a change in policy to one of “Russification”. Georgia, however, was exempted from such policies until 1953 since its leader Joseph Stalin was a Georgian native. In 1936 Georgian was declared a state language and Georgianization became the policy of the day. In 1938 the state imposed the Georgian alphabet on the Ossetian language and prohibited minority language schooling, causing great tensions between the government and the ethnic minorities.[4] When the Russification policies reached the Georgian SSR, the Georgian Nationalist Movement proposed the 1988 Draft Language Law which aimed to oblige ethnic minorities to master the Georgian language.[5] These Georgian language policies, along with other discriminatory practices, thus created deep resentment among South Ossetians towards Georgians. It is important to note that the small state of Georgia is home to other separatist ethnic minorities, including Abkhazians in the West and Adjarians in the South. Although the Abkhazian-Georgian conflict has paralleled the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict since 1991 when violent conflict first erupted during the Georgian independence movement, this paper will exclusively focus on the South Ossetian conflict. The violent experience of the 1990s was a culmination of hundreds of years of conflict. Political scientist Stefan Wolff writes that “South Ossetians wanted to preserve and remain within the Soviet Union. The Ossetians believed that their survival as ethno-cultural communities distinct from the Georgian majority would be in acute danger in an independent Georgian state.”[6] The relationship between Russia and South Ossetia was reinforced by the fact that ethnic Ossetians had their own autonomous republic within Russia, namely North Ossetia-Alana. With the support of Russia, the South Ossetian separatists managed to put up a strong resistance against the Georgians.[7] In June 1992, shortly after the election of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze as Georgian president, a ceasefire was signed in Sochi under Russian supervision.[8] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent a mission composed of troops from Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia to facilitate negotiations toward a political agreement.[9] The OSCE mission successfully maintained peace until 2003 when President Mikhail Saakashvili rose to power through the popular Rose Revolution, and made the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity a major goal of the new government.[10] The administration’s policy led to a violent flare up in 2004 when the government cracked down on a symbol of interethnic cooperation: the Ergneti Market.[11] Though the black market was a major point of contraband trade, the introduction of a harsh taxation system in the market, as a part of Saakashvili’s anti-contraband operation, significantly harmed Georgian relations with Ossetians. The market was one of the only sites of direct interaction between the two ethnic groups. Relations were made even worse by the fact that one of the targeted groups in this operation was comprised of local officials and businessmen who profited from Russian and Ossetian trade connections.[12] Violence erupted during and after the shutting down of the market. Even more detrimental to interethnic relations, in 2006 it became public that the smuggling operation still existed, but that it was now run but the ruling Georgian elite.[13] The closing of the Ergneti Market was labeled a “missed window of opportunity” for conflict resolution by academic Doris Vogl. She argued that “during the rigorously implemented state-building process of the early Saakashvili government, the informal Georgian-Ossetian relations immediately lost momentum.”[14] The events of 2004 polarized and radicalized both Georgians and Ossetians and intensified the clashes between the ethnic groups in the prelude of the war of 2008. Though Georgia offered South Ossetia federal status in 2004, the leadership rejected this possible resolution.[15] Georgian policies in the early 2000s allowed Russia to offer more substantial and public support to the separatist Ossetians. Russia distributed passports to ethnic Ossetians and intensified political, economic and military ties with the separatist region. Arguably even more important, Russia observed growing relations between Georgia and Western powers like the United States. Georgia received 1.3 billion dollars of American financial aid and oversaw the construction of BP operated Baku–Supsa oil pipeline which runs through Azerbaijan and Georgia.[16] As Georgia began to pursue NATO membership, Russia was threatened by the possibility of having the Western coalition present in its own backyard. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr comment that before the 2008 war, “Georgia was moving rapidly toward Euro-Atlantic integration, and was doing so at a time when an increasingly assertive Russian foreign policy was being shaped by sphere of influence-thinking.”[17] With fears of further NATO expansion and growing US presence in the Caucasus, Russian policy was driven by global security concerns, dynamics of European and global geopolitical power. Also significant is the fact that dominant Western powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France supported and legitimized the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008. This allowed President Putin to cite the “Kosovo precedent” when signing a presidential decree on April 16th that established political, economic and social relations with both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.[18] Rising tensions between the two sovereign nations resulted in a five day war in 2008. Controversy surrounds who actually initiated the war on August 7th 2008,[19] as reports by the European Union and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center agree that while Georgia made the first move, Russia significantly increased the number of troops and armaments in Abkhazia, and later in South Ossetia in the prelude to the war.[20] After five days of violent conflict, Georgia and Russia agreed to sign an armistice and engaged in peace talks sponsored by the European Union, the United Nations and OSCE. Russian military troops remained in South Ossetia in order to prevent Georgia from recovering the territory.[21] On August 25th, Russia recognized the sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Western powers and institutions such as NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations strongly condemned this move as they believed it undermined the sovereignty of the Georgian state. In response, Georgia ceased all diplomatic relations with Russia. This made the peace process slow and ineffective as the co-sponsored EU-UN-OSCE talks in Geneva were the only mechanism for multilateral talks.[22] Since 2008, Russia has increased governmental, economic and social ties with the secessionist regions. The administrative border between South Ossetia and Georgia has also been pushed southwards and since the summer of 2015, South Ossetian-held territory includes a section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline. As Andrews Higgins puts it, the secessionist region is part of Russia’s “Frozen Zone”, which includes areas under Russian control that officially belong to neighboring states, such as Georgia’s Abkhazia, Moldova’s Transnistria, and Ukraine’s Crimea. Higgins also adds that these regions are “useful for things like preventing a NATO foothold or destabilizing the host country at opportune moments.”[23] Issues with the Secession of South Ossetia In his essay “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede”, law professor and political scientist Donald Horowitz outlines a set of assumptions that are made about secessionist states which justify the right to secede. This right assumes that secession will produce a “homogenous successor” that will “respect minority rights,” and where “republican democracy is viable.”[24] It also assumes that secession will “result in a diminution of conflict.”[25] The case of South Ossetia can be analyzed as a natural secessionist experiment of history because the region has been a de-facto independent state for many years. The question then arises: have these assumptions materialized in the case of South Ossetia? In short, they have not. As Horowitz points out, secession “merely proliferates the arenas in which the problem of intergroup political accommodation must be faced.”[26] In the case of Georgia, ample evidence shows that ethnic conflict continues to haunt both Georgia and the de-facto independent state of South Ossetia. There were many reports concerning violations of human rights from both sides during the 2008 war. For example, a Human Rights Watch report showed that there was intentional destruction of Georgian villages by Russian-South Ossetian troops.[27] The majority of ethnic Georgians who resided in South Ossetia fled during the August 2008 conflict, but an estimated 20,000 still live in the disputed territory.[28] The Ministry for Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia reported that there were 34,274 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from South Ossetia as of October 2014.[29] A UN survey shows that 56.9% of IDPs from South Ossetia are unable, but would like to return to their place of origin in cities like Tskhinvali, Znauri, Java, and Shida Kartli. This demonstrates how interethnic accommodations have failed to unfold with the creation of a separate state. Additionally, with no access to the territory except in preparations for the Geneva Discussions, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Georgian authorities have been unable to implement conventions regarding rights of refugees, stateless persons, and IDPs.[30] Russian troops regularly detain Georgian civilians for illegal crossings of the “administrative boundary line” (around 320 villagers were detained in 2015 alone).[31] In fact, the Freedom House Organization states that ethnic Georgians are barred from returning to the region unless they “renounce their Georgian citizenship and accept Russian passports.”[32] Therefore, the freedom of movement of Georgian citizens is constantly threatened in South Ossetia. In July 2017, the South Ossetian authorities also shared plans “to abolish the Georgian language schooling in the region’s ethnic Georgian populated areas beginning from the 2017/2018 academic year.”[33] The language policy proposed by the South Ossetian government recalls the discriminatory policies Ossetians were subjected to at the hand of Georgians during the Soviet period. Regarding the meaningful political participation of ethnic minorities, the Freedom House states that ethnic Georgians have refused or been barred from participating in the electoral process.[34] Freedoms of expression and of organization are also threatened.[35] As Horowitz argues, the treatment of this new ethnic minority is highly discriminatory. Therefore, in the case of South Ossetia, secession does not create a homogenous successor nor does it guarantee the respect of minority rights. In the case of South Ossetia, secession does not seem feasible unless the authorities make a commitment to guarantee the rights of its ethnic minorities. But, as Horowitz warns, “guarantees of minority protection in secessionist regions are likely to be illusory.”[36] While South Ossetia is considered a de-facto independent state, the viability of an independent republican democracy in South Ossetia is questionable when considering its high dependence on Russia. Historians Andreas Gerrits and Max Bader argue that “the economic and intergovernmental linkages with Russia … directly undermine the autonomy of the region.”[37] With a dual executive system, South Ossetia maintains political institutions based on those of Russia. The 2011 presidential election demonstrates the grip of Russia on the region’s politics and shows how the South Ossetian political process is highly susceptible to Russian influence. When a candidate who criticized strong ties with Russia won the popular vote, the Supreme Court annulled the results. Elections were repeated in 2012 with four new candidates, all pro-Russia.[38] As a result of the bilateral agreements signed in 2009, 2010, and 2015 that established economic, governmental and military links between Russia and South Ossetia, South Ossetia developed a high level of dependence on Russia.[39] Russia is South Ossetia’s only relevant trade partner, the ruble is the official currency, and South Ossetia’s imports and investments are exclusively from Russia.[40] More significantly, 91% of South Ossetia’s government budget is made up from Russian financial aid.[41] These limitations arguably derive from a lack of international recognition and from the consequences of the 2008 war. However, as Russian economist Mikhail Delyagin states, “South Ossetia does not exist as an independent economic entity due to its small size and extremely low-level management,” as well as due to its reliance on Russia’s long-term military presence to protect its territory.[42] As a result of this significant dependence on Russian aid, South Ossetia does not have a sustainable future as an independent nation. Another assumption that can be contested is that secession will lead to a diminution of violent conflict. This inevitable reality is highly flawed because devolution merely turns domestic conflicts into international ones. While a political divorce has not officially occurred, South Ossetia has been de-facto independent for at least 10 years. Though ethnic enmities linger, the recent history of the conflict shows how ethnic conflicts can mutate into primarily geopolitical ones when separatist movements thrive. University of Edinburgh Professor Emeritus John Erickson writes that the implications of Georgia’s Western push “are consequently dire for those [including high level Russian officials] who insist doggedly that the post-Soviet ‘space’ in its entirety, encompassing the former states of the Soviet Union, is and must remain a closed Russian geopolitical preserve.”[43] For Russia, the possibility of NATO encroachment on the South Caucasus precludes any significant decision concerning the separatist regions. As historian David J. Smith argues, German Chancellor Angela Merkle sealed the region’s fate when she said that the resolution of internal conflict was a prerequisite for NATO membership.[44] From that moment onwards, South Ossetia became a pawn in Moscow’s foreign policy strategy, described by Svante Cornell as a “revival of a classically modern, Realpolitik culture of security.”[45] The South Ossetian “secessionist” experience, along with that of other separatist states in Eastern Europe, illustrates how ethnic conflicts can be used to further geopolitical interests of powers like the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet space. The internationalization of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict shows how secession does not necessarily lead to a diminution of violence. Therefore, the failure of South Ossetia to protect the minority rights of ethnic Georgians, its continued dependence on Russia, and likely mutation of ethnic conflicts into geopolitical ones suggests that secession is not a viable solution for this conflict. Implications There are no clear answers to Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. Though the director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies Cory Welt argues that “the reintegration of South Ossetia…poses no challenges to conventional understandings of democracy and human rights,” as time passes, the collective consciousness of both South Ossetians and Georgians acquires increasingly negative perceptions of the opposing ethnic group, making future interethnic cooperation difficult to achieve.[46] Additionally, the social linkage between South Ossetia and Russia continues to grow through the Russian domination of the media, the use of Russian as the lingua franca, and the promotion of educational exchange programs.[47] A symbolic link also comes from the large Ossetian diaspora in North Ossetia, an autonomous region within Russia. Thus, South Ossetia’s reintegration into Georgia becomes more unlikely by the day. With most citizens having dual citizenship to South Ossetia and Russia, further integration of South Ossetia into Russia can be anticipated. While Russia has not stated that it will pursue the annexation of the territory, its aggressive support of South Ossetia has managed to destabilize the region, prevent Georgia from joining Western organizations such as NATO. Moreover, through its involvement in Georgia, Russia has reasserted its influence in the Caucasus region. If secession occurred and South Ossetia was recognized as independent state by the international community, Russia would be encouraged to engage in even more aggressive foreign policy in the post-Soviet sphere of influence, possibly resulting in a domino effect of secessionist movements and a higher occurrence of violent conflicts. Georgia is a multiethnic country with two separatist movements (the experience of Abkhazia is very similar to that of South Ossetia), so the secession of one region would likely lead to that of the other. The disputed territories make up about one quarter of the Georgian territory, which means secession would severely destabilize the already weak country. The fear of a domino effect, not only in Georgia, but in other disputed territories that are currently under Russian control (i.e.: Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine; Transnitria, Moldova), is already a reality shaping international geopolitics. If the right to secede is accepted in relation to the South Ossetian dispute, the legal precedent set by Kosovo’s independence will be reaffirmed. With Russia’s “Frozen Zone” in mind, the emergence and legitimization of separatist movements of small and unsustainable regions can lead to the expansion of Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet territory and the further polarization of the present international political dynamics. Conclusion Peace talks and conflict resolution efforts have proven ineffective for almost 25 years, since both sides are committed to achieving predetermined preferential outcomes.[48] Both sides have been haunted by the impatience of political leaders such as President Saakashvili and by a lack of trust from both sides due to the lack of interethnic communication. But, most of all, the sides have been haunted by a pro-separatist Russian mediator. Cory Welt writes that Russia’s “function as a ‘hegemonic balancer’ interposed between conflicting parties resulted in the establishment of a level playing field for negotiations, allowing Abkhazia and South Ossetia to consider themselves equals to Georgia, not subordinates.”[49] While Georgia attempted to reach an acceptable political solution, the support from a major power endowed separatist group with a decisive sense of confidence and security that hindered the resolution of the conflict. Meanwhile, Western states and institutions failed to devise a coherent response to Russian policies that threaten stability and Europe’s own interests in the region. The de-facto independence of South Ossetia encountered a continued threat to rights of ethnic minorities, a strong dependence on Russia, and the quick escalation of violence in 2008 due to the internationalization of the conflict. The region’s experience thus supports the argument that secession is not a viable solution for ethnic conflict in the Caucasus. Endnotes [1] Donald L. Horowitz, “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede,” Journal of Democracy, 11. [2] George Hewitt, Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts, (Leiden: 2003), 22 -23. [3] Hewitt, 41. [4] Sonya Kleshik, "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia" (Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010), 11 - 12 [5] Hewitt, 57 – 58. [6] Stefan Wolff, "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Marietta Konig, "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ," OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004), 242. [10] Ibid, 238. [11] Doris Vogl, "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006)," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: 2010), 68 – 71. [12] Vogl, 70. [13] Ibid. [14] Ibid, 72. [15] Wolff. [16] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 24. [17] Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, eds., The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 4. [18] Ibid, 7 – 8. [19] "The Blame Game," The Economist, October 03, 2009. [20] Ibid; Cornell, Popjanevski and Nilsson, “Russia’s War in Georgia”, 23 – 24. [21] Luke Hardinng and Jenny Percival, “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” The Guardian, September 09 2008. [22] Wolff, "Georgia”. [23] Andrew Higgins, “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia,” The New York Times, October 23 2016. [24] Horowitz, “Cracked Foundations,” 8. [25] Ibid. [26] Ibid, 9. [27] Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009). [28] "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians," Minority Rights Group International. [29] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia, June 2015. [30] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia, January 2015. [31] Vicenews, The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation, VICE News, November 04, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw . [32] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia," Freedom House, 2016. [33] Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia," Civil.Ge, July 28, 2017. [34] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [35] Ibid. [36] Horowitz, 6. [37] Andre W. M. Gerrits and Max Bader, "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution," East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016). [38] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [39] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [40] Ibid. [41] Paul Rimple, “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists,” Eurasianet.org, February 13, 2015. [42] Mikhail Delyagin, "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success," Russia in Global Affairs, March 8, 2008. [43] John Erickson, “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies,” in Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy, ed. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999), p. 260. [44] David J. Smith, "The Saakashvili Administration’s Reaction to Russian Policies Before the 2008 War," in The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 126. [45] Cornell and Starr, The Guns of August 2008, 196. [46] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (2005), 12. [47] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [48] Oksana Antonenko, "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010), 83. [49] Welt, “Balancing the Balancer,” 2. References Antonenko, Oksana. "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 79-93. Vienna: National Defense Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defense, 2010. "The Blame Game." The Economist. October 03, 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14560958 . Cornell, Svante E., and S. Frederick Starr, eds. The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. Cornell, Svante E., Johanna Popjanevski, and Niklas Nilsson. Russia’s War in Georgia: Causes and Implications for Georgia and the World. Singapore: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, August 2008. Delyagin, Mikhail. "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success." Russia in Global Affairs. March 8, 2008. Accessed August 19, 2017. http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_12538. Erickson, John. “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies.” Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan ed. (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999). "Freedom In The World: South Ossetia." Freedom House. 2016. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/south-ossetia. "Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia." Civil.Ge. July 28, 2017. http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=30309. Gerrits, Andre W. M. , and Max Bader. "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution." East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016): 297-313. Goble, Paul A. "Russian 'Passportization'." The New York Times. September 09, 2008. Accessed August 17, 2017. https://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/russian-passportization/?_r=0. Hardinng, Luke and Jenny Percival. “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” The Guardian. September 09 2008. Hewitt, George. Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Higgins, Andrew. “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia.” The New York Times. October 23 2016. Jentzsch, Greg. "What are the main causes of conflict in South Ossetia and how can they best be addressed to promote lasting peace." The BSIS Journal of International Studies (2009). Kleshik, Sonya . "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia." Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010. Konig, Marietta . "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ." OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004). Rimple, Paul. “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists.” Eurasianet.org. February 13, 2015. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia. June 2015. http://www.refworld.org/docid/55e575924.html UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia. January 2015. Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009. Vicenews. The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation. VICE News. November 04, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw. Vogl, Doris. "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006) ." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 59 - 77. Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010. Welt, Cory. “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia.” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 22-36. Wolff, Stefan. "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia." Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians." Minority Rights Group International. http://minorityrights.org/minorities/ossetians/.

Author Name < Back The Relationship Between Education and Welfare Dependency Aiden Cliff Abstract Several studies have described the correlation between welfare dependency and factors such as welfare conditionality, gender, and high school or college graduation rates. Using Annual Social and Economics Supplement Data (ASEC) from 2009 through 2019, downloaded from sources such as IPUMS CPS, this paper crafts an OLS regression model to find the relationship that years of completed education have on welfare dependency status. This paper concludes that there is a negative correlation between higher education levels and lower participation in the welfare system, with the completion of one additional year of schooling suggesting a decrease in the probability of needing welfare by 0.1%. While this correlation is small, it is still statistically significant in the linear probability model due to a large sample size (n = 145,431). After adding other explanatory variables, such as measures for race, biological sex, and employment status to control for endogeneity, further regressions confirm that there is still a statistically significant negative relationship between education and welfare dependency. These results suggest that policymakers should focus on educational subsidies over welfare subsidies to increase social mobility. I. Introduction Education is often referred to as an essential mechanism in promoting social mobility (Haveman, 2006). However, the rising costs of education in America have forced many individuals to require more income to pay off student loans. As a result, families who are enrolled in welfare programs are spending a larger portion of their income on student debt, correlated with an increased reliance on such welfare programs and a positive feedback loop that makes it more difficult to climb out of welfare dependency (Johnson, 2019). In addition, most welfare programs have substantial requirements that, rather than helping recipients to get out of poverty, restrain recipients from escaping the welfare system (Rupp et al, 2020). This, and other societal pressures, have forced lots of students to put a pause on their education and work at low-skilled jobs with minimal pay, keeping them reliant on welfare programs (Johnson, 2019). This vicious cycle will only cause more people to remain trapped within welfare programs, preventing them from escaping poverty and improving their livelihoods. Previous studies have shown that education levels are correlated with the probability of a welfare recipient returning to welfare in the future (London, 2008). Other studies have also shown how changes in the welfare system have improved welfare recipients' education qualifications and subsequently their employment opportunities (Hernaes, 2017). London’s (2008) study focused on how attaining a higher educational degree allows welfare recipients to improve their employment opportunities, reduce their welfare dependency, and reduce their overall family poverty levels by 63%. Meanwhile, Hernaes et.al (2017) found that more conditionality in welfare programs helped Norwegian teenagers from welfare-recipient families reduce their reliance on welfare programs; and lower the country’s high school dropout rate by 21%. In addition, Pacheo & Maloney (2003) found that intergenerational welfare participation differs between genders due to family characteristics such as household size and parents’ welfare dependency. As a result, young females tend to have lower educational attainment and are nearly two times as probable of relying on welfare in the future when compared to their male counterparts (Pacheo et al, 2003). Based on the insights offered by the studies above, this paper aims to contribute to this field by investigating the hypothesis that years of schooling completed reducing the probability of receiving welfare in the future. Factors of endogeneity will also be analyzed through the implementation of explanatory variables such as race (Courtney, 1996), sex (Bakas, 2014), number of children (Arulampalam, 2000), marital status (Hoffman, 1997), hours worked (Bick et al, 2018) and employment status (Arranz, 2004) into the regression model. These variables were chosen due to past publications finding possible links between this psychographics and demographics to welfare benefits. Preliminary hypotheses predict that there will be a negative relationship between the education level attained and the probability that an individual will receive future welfare. Using simple and multi-linear OLS regression analysis and the IPUMS-CPS annual data from 2009-2019, it has been observed that individuals with more years of schooling completed are less likely to be on welfare in the future. Data was chosen from this period because the American economy was beginning to recover from the 2008 Financial Crisis during this time. This allows us to observe correlations between education levels attained by individuals and whether they ended up in welfare programs more clearly. This paper will be presented as follows: Section II will cover previous research on how welfare conditionality, gender, and education levels affect welfare dependency. Section III will present information on how this data was obtained and explain the data-cleaning process along with the types of variables used throughout this paper. This section ends with explanations of how the data is verified through the four OLS assumptions. Section IV will cover econometric methodology which includes alternate functional forms explored and additional X-Variables tested through multiple regression along with methodologies we’ve used to control the endogeneity of independent and explanatory variables to ensure the fairness of the regression model. Section V highlights the results, the sample regression line, and statistically significant information regarding the regression analysis. Section VI contains the paper's conclusions where the results are evaluated and put into context within the field. The paper concludes with section VII, the appendix, where all tables, figures, diagrams, and supporting calculations are represented for reference. II. Literature Review The literature works that are presented here serve as important foundations in the field and provide extensive insight into the relationship between welfare dependency and education levels, along with how other variables might affect this relationship. The study conducted by Hernaes et al. (2017) found that the strict welfare conditionality, linking welfare to certain characteristics or traits in Norwegian welfare programs, has reduced welfare dependency while increasing the high school graduation rate among Norwegian welfare recipients. In the process, they used a logarithmic regression model (LRM) and regressed a dependent dummy variable that identifies welfare recipients who are 21 years old onto an independent variable that consists of family characteristics such as parent’s education background and cumulative income, to control for endogeneity. The study resembles this approach because the dependent variable that they’ve used is also a dummy variable that indicates welfare recipients. In addition, the study used other explanatory variables, in particular the recipient’s parental background, to control for the endogeneity of those variables on the probability of returning to welfare. However, Hernaes et al. (2017) emphasizes how family background affects teens’ probability of returning to welfare in the future through explanatory variables that focus on family characteristics. Whereas this study focuses more on how other individual characteristics such as education level, labor condition, and family status of the welfare recipient have affected the welfare recipient’s probability of returning to welfare programs in the future. Notably, a previous study indicated that there is a correlation between welfare recipients who have obtained a higher education degree with reducing their reliance on welfare programs, but only if they receive additional financial aid to support their college expenses. London (2006) uses data such as college attendance, college graduation rate, and personal characteristics, such as extraversion and race demographics, to predict the welfare recipient’s three outcomes: employment, return to aid, and poverty status. By controlling influencing factors that change over time – such as the rate of college enrollment – and making sure all omitted variables, – such as familial culture and personal motivation – are factored into the result, the study employs instrumental variable econometric models to calculate predictions. The study found that “college attendance, more than graduation, is an important predictor of future employment. At the same time, college graduation better predicts the probability of returning to aid or being poor within five years of leaving welfare” (London, 2006, p. 491). Specifically, the study quoted “college graduation rather than enrollment without graduation has an effect on recidivism, and only in the five-year interval” (London, 2006, p. 489). Their findings support this hypothesis that the education level a welfare recipient attains is crucial to the probability of returning to welfare in the future. Despite the similarities in the use of variables to investigate the issue, predicting the probability of return to welfare using college graduation and attendance is only a part of this study’s objectives. The study also conducts an investigation into how college graduation and attendance affect employment opportunities and family poverty levels. Another earlier study showed that genders might have different levels of welfare participation and education attainment. Pacheco & Maloney (2003) learned that females “have an estimated intergenerational correlation coefficient that is more than double that for males.” (Pacheco & Maloney, 2003, p. 371). The study uses simple regression models and inputs such as the number of years in formal education completed by age 21, family background characteristics (parent’s education qualifications and the number of children in the household), and the proportion of years where parents obtain welfare benefits to produce their findings. In addition, Pacheco & Maloney (2003) found that female welfare recipients whose families have a history of welfare dependency tend to remain in welfare programs. The study uses the same regression model to offer insight into how familial and cultural forces affect male and female probabilities of returning to welfare in the future. Nevertheless, Pacheco & Maloney (2003) offered insight into how gender might have altered the relationship between education levels and probability in return to welfare. III. Descriptive Statistics All of the raw data was downloaded directly from the CPS portion of the IPUMS website, which is a reputable federal source for time series and cross-sectional data. Annual Social and Economic Supplement Data (ASEC) from 2009 to 2019 was downloaded. These years were selected to obtain the most up-to-date data while also analyzing enough observations to create the best regression analysis possible. Twenty-one variables were analyzed within these years, the most important of which were EDUC and INCWELFR, the two variables that were altered and then used for the regression analysis. These variables were raw and included nearly 150,000 observations over the 11 years. The data was meticulously cleaned before running any regressions to test the hypothesis. The first variable cleaned was EDUC. The raw EDUC variable could hold any coded value from 1 to 125. These coded values did not reflect the true years of schooling any individual had, so a new variable was created: EDUC_REV, to accurately reflect the true years of schooling each individual has completed. The values for this new variable were generated using the observations for the EDUC variable alongside the specific numeric code utilized by CPS. For example, an individual who has obtained a high school diploma through 12 years of completed education would receive a value of EDUC=73 within the CPS data set. The data was cleaned so this specific value would now be EDUC_REV=12. This cleaning procedure was used for all possible levels of education within the data set. Individuals who were too young to receive any education at all were also removed from the data set (they were identified through EDUC=1 in the original data set). The focus then shifted toward the INCWELFR variable from CPS. This variable measures the dollar value of the income an individual receives from any source of government welfare benefits. In this study, the focus is on the effect that education has on the reception of welfare at all, not the amount of welfare that was received. This means the analysis is valid if an individual receives any form of welfare payments, and not focusing on the actual dollar value of said payments. So, for this reason, another new variable was created: WELFARE. This variable is a dummy variable that gets its values from the information in the INCWLFR variable. If the individual receives no form of welfare they will be assigned INCWLFR=0 in the data set. This same individual would be assigned a value of zero for the newly created variable (WELFARE=0 when INCWLFR=0). However, if an individual receives welfare in any form, regardless of the amount, they will be assigned a value of one for the new variable (WELFARE=1 when INCWLFR>0). Any individual who was not eligible to receive welfare in any form was denoted by INCWELFR=999999. These observations, many of which were individuals under 18, were removed from the data set to generate a less skewed, and more accurate, sample. Additional variables were also analyzed for the multiple regression analysis. These variables tested the effects of not only education, but also employment status, income, hours worked, marital status, gender, and number of children on the reception of welfare. These variables were used to try and control for endogeneity within the model and are further described in Table 1 of the appendix . Before the new variables could be put through a proper regression analysis, the four assumptions of an Ordinary Least Squares Regression Line had to be tested. If all of these assumptions hold true then the estimators of b1 and b2 would be BLUE (Best Linear Unbiased Estimators) and all of the calculations done through STATA would be completely accurate. The first OLS assumption is that the expected error within a sample will be zero. This is noted as E[WELFARE_RES/EDUC_REV]=0 and this does hold true in this sample. The 95% confidence interval for WELFARE_RES does include zero so it is likely that the expected value of the error is zero and therefore the first OLS assumption is met. The second OLS assumption is that the data is homoscedastic. This is noted as Var(WELFARE_RES/EDUC_REV)=Sigma^2. However, since the dependent variable is a dummy variable, this regression takes the form of a linear probability model (LPM). By definition, every linear probability model has heteroscedastic data. Therefore, the second OLS assumption is not met. The third OLS assumption is that the data is free of clustering. This is noted as Cov(WELFARE_RES_i,WELFARE_RES_j)=0, meaning that the value of WELFARE for one value does not directly influence the value of any other observation within the data set. This influence usually occurs when two observations are within the same geographical unit. While there is no way to test if any observations are within the same geographical unit (such as the same household) due to confidentiality, the sample size is large enough and pulls from each region almost equally, so it would be extremely unlikely for any two observations to come from the same household. Therefore, for the sake of the regression, the third OLS assumption will be met. The fourth and final OLS assumption is that Y is normally distributed. This was tested by creating a histogram for WELFARE and seeing if it roughly resembled a bell curve. When this was done, it was obvious that the data was not normal. This is apparent through a multitude of factors but is most clearly shown by the high skewness, a value of over 16. Therefore, it was concluded that welfare was not normally distributed. However, since the sample size consists of 145,431 observations, the central limit theorem (CLT) is met. So, while the fourth OLS assumption failed to be met for this particular regression, it will not have a significant impact on the regression since the sampling distribution for WELFARE will still be normally distributed. In conclusion, the regression met two of the four OLS assumptions. Therefore, while the regression analysis will not be BLUE, it will still be significant since it is free of serious sampling errors. IV. Econometric Methodology While this paper mainly focuses on the linear probability model and the effect that education has on welfare dependency, other functional forms that could better fit the regression analysis were also considered to develop a more thorough analysis. This was done through the experimentation of the functional forms that the independent variable took. While the previous section discussed the linear form of EDUC_REV, exponential and logarithmic forms of this variable were also considered. The independent variable was only altered since the dependent variable is a dummy variable. Altering the value of the variable will not generate any different results since its domain is limited to {0,1}. Other explanatory variables, and the results they produced, are summarized in Table 5 of the appendix. While all of the functional forms tested would have produced statistically significant interpretations that support the hypothesis, although their interpretations would have been different, the original regression was still the most accurate for this particular data set. Other functional forms included EDUC_REV in quadratic, cubic, and log forms. These functional forms are used to emphasize the effects of EDUC_REV in order to match the data points. The original is the most accurate because it has the highest R-Squared value, a measure of how well the data points fit the linear regression line. These R-Squared values can be found in Table 5 but the linear model has the highest value of .0014. Since the linear regression between WELFARE and EDUC_REV has the most accurate regression line relative to the data set, this regression model was the basis from which all conclusions were drawn. Interaction terms were also analyzed by creating the term EDUC_UNEMP which was EDUC_REV multiplied by UNEMPLOYED. By using this interaction term, the possible effect of EDUCATION on WELFARE varying with UNEMPLOYED can be studied. The regression showed that when UNEMPLOYED is 0, the likelihood of WELFARE is constant plus b2. When UNEMPLOYED is 1 then the likelihood of being on WELFARE increases. This means that individuals who are unemployed are more likely to be receiving benefits from welfare. The motive that drives this is individuals who are unemployed do not receive any form of compensation or income outside of their welfare payments. Slope and Intercept dummy variables are additional variables added to this study. In this situation, the intercept dummy variable is UNEMPLOYED. The presence of UNEMPLOYED is represented with a 1 and causes an increase in the intercept, which translates to an increase in the probability of welfare. When describing this relationship on a graph there are two parallel lines and the difference between them is caused by the slope dummy variable. Both lines have the same slope and the probability gap of being on WELFARE remains the same at all levels. This is not the main difference between someone who is unemployed and someone who is employed. This supports the claims made through interaction term analysis in the previous paragraph. However, while the simple regression analysis supports the hypothesis, there could be other confounding variables that underlay such correlation seen between WELFARE and EDUC_REV. If these possible confounding variables are correlated with both WELFARE (controlling for EDUC_REV) and EDUC_REV, then it could make EDUC_REV an endogenous variable, indicating that EDUC_REV does not necessarily cause the decrease in the probability of an individual on welfare. To test this claim, a multiple regression analysis was run, including both EDUC_REV and a variety of other possibly confounding variables, for their possible effects on WELFARE. The results showed that the three variables with the largest effect on WELFARE were BLACK, MALE, and UNEMPLOYED. These are variables created within the data set describing an individual's race, gender, and employment status, respectively. All of these are strong contenders for possible confounding variables and the true reason the regression effect on welfare was observed, and therefore put EDUC_REV at risk of being an endogenous variable (Courtney, 1996; Bakas, 2014; Arranz, 2004). A full list of the additional X-Variables tested along with the multiple regression output can be found in Table 10 . That being said, this is not enough evidence to conclude that education levels are definitely an endogenous variable when describing the probability of receiving welfare. These possible confounding variables could be further analyzed if a more in-depth regression analysis was performed in future studies. V. Results After the data had been completely cleaned and verified for OLS assumptions, the regression of EDUC_REV on WELFARE was run. This regression showed the noncausal effect that years of completed education have on the probability of receiving welfare. If the hypothesis holds true, the Least-Squares Regression Line should have a negative slope, denoting that the more years of education an individual completes, the less likely it is that the individual receives welfare. The output for the regression analysis, as well as the full, scatter plot showing the Least Squares Regression Line for EDUC_REV against WELFARE, can be seen in Table 8 and Table 9 of the appendix. However, these figures can be summarized by the equation for the sample regression: WELFARE_hat = b1 + b2 EDUC_REV t-statistic = -14.27 WELFARE_hat = .015 - .001 EDUC_REV n = 145,431 (SE) (8.08e-4) (5.68e-5) p-value = 0 *** The most important value within the sample regression line for the hypothesis is -.001, or the slope of the regression line denoted as b2. Since b2 is a negative value, there is a negative correlation between the number of years of completed schooling (EDUC_REV) and the reception of welfare (WELFARE). While this value seems too small to have any real effect, it is still statistically significant. This is because the 99% confidence interval for b2 does not include zero because the standard deviation is extremely close to zero based on the large sample size. A hypothesis test at the critical level of .01 was also run to see if the value generated for b2 could be equal to zero. This test gave a critical value for b2 of -14.27 and a probability of B2 being equal to zero of zero. These results lead to the conclusion that it is statistically significant that as EDUC_REV increases, WELFARE decreases within the regression. In conclusion, while increases in education could have a small effect on the probability of relying on welfare, it is still a statistically significant effect. However, this does not prove that increases in education will decrease the probability of relying on welfare since ceteris-paribus does not hold true for this collected data set and a causal relationship is not established. This regression analysis supports the hypothesis that as an individual's education increases, the probability that said individual will rely on welfare as a source of income decreases (since b2 is a statistically significant negative number). By applying these findings, it was determined that as an individual’s years of completed schooling (EDUC_REV) increases by 1 year, the probability that the individual will receive welfare (WELFARE as a dummy variable) decreases by .001 or 0.1%. This is because the slope of the linear regression model, with a dependent dummy variable, is -.001 and the functional form analyzed is a linear probability model. While this relation is not inherently strong, and years of completed schooling do not have a large impact on the probability of receiving welfare, it is still statistically significant. Within the regression, b1 is also statistically significant. The value of b1 in this sample regression line is .015, or an applied .15%. By applying this value to the context of the study, it was found that the probability of an individual receiving welfare given that they have completed zero years of schooling is .15%. This number is positive so it is technically feasible and within the domain of the study. However, it is extremely unlikely that an individual has received zero years of schooling and is also eligible to receive welfare (Stephens, 2014). For this reason, the value of b1 was not a focus within these results. VI. Conclusion As stated above, this study shows a minor, yet the statistically significant, effect of EDUC_REV on WELFARE. These results indicate that there is evidence to support a possible relationship between higher levels of completed education and lower chances of an individual receiving welfare in the future. The thought process behind this regression is that individuals with higher education are more likely to land better jobs and therefore make more money, thus decreasing their need for welfare. While focusing on the simple regression model for the majority of the paper, important results when controlling for endogeneity through a multiple regression model were also found. This multiple regression analysis was performed while controlling for multicollinearity. Since none of these variables share a strong correlation (r > .8) with each other, it is okay to run a regression model with all of these X-Variables. The full correlation results can be seen in Table 11 of the appendix. AIC, BIC/SC, and R_Squared were also analyzed and are summarized in Table 12. Since the multiple regression model has more X-Variables, it has a larger potential to explain any variation in Y and is likely to be a better fit for the data. Even with the introduction of these additional X-Variables, the initial variable tested in the multiple regression analysis, EDUC_REV, was still statistically significant, as seen in Table 10 . Thus, even with controls for endogeneity, there is still a statistically significant negative correlation between the highest level of completed education and the probability of receiving welfare, only strengthening this paper’s claims. In relation to previous studies in part II, this study aligns with London’s (2006) conclusion that welfare recipients who have received a higher education degree have a lower probability of receiving welfare in the future, with the assumption that both genders fit into the conclusion. However, to what extent education attainment is beneficial to both genders and race remains questionable since the data lacked suitable information to investigate how omitted variables might have affected the relationship between the education level attained and the probability of receiving welfare. This paper has also failed to reproduce the findings that Pacheco & Maloney (2003) found. This paper did not control the age and time of welfare received by the recipient, whereas Pacheco & Maloney (2003) did. In addition, Pacheco & Maloney (2003) factors in the background of the welfare recipient’s parents, such as their income received from welfare, educational background, and race. This study, on the other hand, did not factor family characteristics into the regression model. This paper also failed to reproduce the results that Hernaes et. al (2017) produced because the nature of the data is different from Hernaes et. al (2017). First, Hernaes et. al’s (2017) dataset had the location of each welfare recipient’s municipality. The location variable allows Hernaes et. al (2017) to determine whether the welfare recipient was in a municipality that has stricter welfare policies or not. Second, Hernaes et. al (2017) was able to capture each municipality’s level of conditionality through survey responses collected in a report by a research institute. These are some of the features that the data, unfortunately, do not possess. This paper supports the theory that there is a correlation between the highest level of education completed and the probability of receiving welfare. Thus, more educated individuals are less likely to be dependent on welfare. In a broader context, policymakers could use this information to find more effective means for increasing social mobility, rather than investing heavily in welfare payments. Since there is possibly an inverse relationship between education and welfare, the federal government could create a new program to subsidize education rather than simply making payments to disadvantaged citizens. This would provide an economic incentive for individuals who were previously on welfare to attend school, making the entire nation more educated and more productively efficient as a result (Brown et al, 1991). However, while this paper could be used from a policy perspective, there are some drawbacks. The relationship between education and the probability of welfare is not proven to be causal after this analysis. This is because the ceteris-paribus condition does not hold true throughout the data and regression. In addition, this dataset has a limited scope regarding population characteristics. The dataset indicates the highest education level attained by the individual but does not indicate when they achieved that education. For example, some individuals might have dropped out of high school during their youth and returned to complete their high school degree after a long period of time. If that information is also provided in the dataset, that would open new frontiers on how education-level attainment influences the probability of receiving welfare. Before any change is enacted, especially on a governmental level, first proving a causal relationship would be recommended. This paper merely lays the framework for possible studies regarding welfare analysis in the future. This paper did support the hypothesis that as education levels rise, the probability that an individual becomes dependent on welfare decreases. Through the regression analysis, it was determined that there is a small, yet statistically significant, difference that education has on the probability of receiving welfare in the future. This trend could be utilized by policymakers to stimulate education as a means of reducing welfare dependency, creating a population that is not only less dependent on welfare payments, but more educated, and more productive as a result. Note: see "Full Editions," Volume IV Issue I for appendix. VIII. References Arranz, Jose Ma, and Muro, Juan. "Recurrent Unemployment, Welfare Benefits and Heterogeneity." International Review of Applied Economics . 18, no. 4 (2004): 423-41. Arulampalam, W. "Unemployment Persistence." Oxford Economic Papers . 52, no. 1 (2000): 24-50. Bakas, Dimitrios, and Papapetrou, Evangelia. "Unemployment by Gender: Evidence from EU Countries." International Advances in Economic Research. 20, no. 1 (2014): 103-11. Bick, Alexander, Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola, and Lagakos, David. 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Labour Economics , 48 , 144-156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2017 . 08.003 Hoffman, Saul. "Marital Instability and the Economic Status of Women." Demography 14, no. 1 (1977): 67-76. Johnson, D. (2019). What Will It Take to Solve the Student Loan Crisis. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 29 April 2020, from https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-student-loan-crisis . Kim, Hwanjoon. "Anti‐Poverty Effectiveness of Taxes and Income Transfers in Welfare States." International Social Security Review. 53, no. 4 (2000): 105-29. London, R. (2005). Welfare Recipients' College Attendance and Consequences for Time-Limited Aid. Social Science Quarterly , 86 , 1104-1122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00338 . London, R. (2006). The Role of Postsecondary Education in Welfare Recipients' Paths to Self-Sufficiency. The Journal Of Higher Education , 77 (3), 472-496. Retrieved 28 April 2020, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3838698 Pacheco, G., & Maloney, T. (2003). Are the Determinants of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency Gender-specific. Australian Journal Of Labour Economics , 6 (3), 371-382. Retrieved 28 April 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/46557521_Are_the_Determinants_of_Intergeneration al_Welfare_Dependency_Gender-specific Stephens, Melvin, and Yang, Dou-Yan. "Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling." The American Economic Review. 104, no. 6 (2014): 1777-792.

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