The Virtue of Radical Honesty
- 6 years ago
The Virtue of Radical Honesty
Our numbers look bad because so much of our health care spending is funneled through employers,
but when you add this private social spending to state social spending, America has the second-highest level of such spending of the 35 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, after France.
That is to say, Pinker doesn’t spend much time on the decline of social trust, the breakdown of family life, the polarization of national life, the spread of tribal
mentalities, the rise of narcissism, the decline of social capital, the rising alienation from institutions or the decline of citizenship and neighborliness.
There is a mood across America, but especially on campus,
that in order to show how aware of social injustice you are, you have to go around in a perpetual state of indignation, negativity and righteous rage.
“When poverty is defined in terms of what people consume rather than what they earn, we find
that the American poverty rate has declined by 90 percent since 1960,” Pinker writes.
For example, we’re all aware of the gloomy statistics around wage stagnation and income inequality, but Pinker contends
that we should not be nostalgic for the economy of the 1950s, when jobs were plentiful and unions strong.
This week I asked a group of students at the University of Chicago a question I’m asking students around the country: Who are your heroes?
The big problem with his rationalistic worldview is
that while he charts the way individuals have benefited over the centuries, he spends barely any time on the quality of the relationships between individuals.
Pinker has data like this in sphere after sphere, marking the progress we’ve made in health, the environment, safety, knowledge and overall happiness.
Our numbers look bad because so much of our health care spending is funneled through employers,
but when you add this private social spending to state social spending, America has the second-highest level of such spending of the 35 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, after France.
That is to say, Pinker doesn’t spend much time on the decline of social trust, the breakdown of family life, the polarization of national life, the spread of tribal
mentalities, the rise of narcissism, the decline of social capital, the rising alienation from institutions or the decline of citizenship and neighborliness.
There is a mood across America, but especially on campus,
that in order to show how aware of social injustice you are, you have to go around in a perpetual state of indignation, negativity and righteous rage.
“When poverty is defined in terms of what people consume rather than what they earn, we find
that the American poverty rate has declined by 90 percent since 1960,” Pinker writes.
For example, we’re all aware of the gloomy statistics around wage stagnation and income inequality, but Pinker contends
that we should not be nostalgic for the economy of the 1950s, when jobs were plentiful and unions strong.
This week I asked a group of students at the University of Chicago a question I’m asking students around the country: Who are your heroes?
The big problem with his rationalistic worldview is
that while he charts the way individuals have benefited over the centuries, he spends barely any time on the quality of the relationships between individuals.
Pinker has data like this in sphere after sphere, marking the progress we’ve made in health, the environment, safety, knowledge and overall happiness.