The other day my wife and I read an editorial which listed the unpleasant situation facing young people today, which cited the difficulties they faced, one of which was that more than half of the people aged 18-34 worked in a job to pay the bills, not because it was a career choice. Then we looked at each other and laughed.  We weren’t laughing to ridicule anyone, but because the entire idea of “career choices” is so American and so recent a phenomenon… and yet it’s almost a given today that it’s a hardship not to have a “career choice.”  Except for the upper class and upper middle class, which comprise perhaps ten percent of the population, there haven’t been many career choices for most people in the United States for most of its history. Throughout history, young people either followed in their parents’ craft or trade or in that of another crafter who needed a spare pair of hands.  People felt fortunate to be able to make ends meet, and many could not even do that.

For most of us who predate the Baby Boomers, even if we were able to find a job in a field of our choice, the positions open were usually limited and involved more than a few trade-offs, including moving all over the country.  There were usually many qualified applicants for each job, and in many fields this is still true.  There are usually several hundred applicants, if not more, for each opening in my wife’s profession, and in our entire working lives, neither of us ever has had the luxury of making a choice between two jobs, and more than once took jobs that were anything but ideal to “pay the bills.” This was true for most people of our not-quite-that-advanced age.

So… it’s no surprise that we laughed at the idea that “taking a job to pay the bills” was thought to be such a mighty hardship on younger workers. Jobs exist to fill the needs of those who offer them, not to meet the career aspirations of workers.  That’s frankly one reason why I wrote long hours after the day job for years… because it was the only way I could get to where I wanted to be, and I know I’m exceedingly fortunate to have been able to get where I am – and it’s also why I still work long hours… because I never want to be at the whim of an employer again.  But… to even hint that career choices are some sort of right or that today’s young workers are facing an unprecedented change in not having that many “career choices”… that is laughable.

What I find actually amazing is that we as a society have progressed over the past century or so to the point where half the young workers are actually working in a field of their choice. If that is indeed true, then it marks real progress… but it also wouldn’t hurt to remember that such is not the case in all too many countries across the globe… and it’s anything but a “right.”

According to a recent article in the Economist, the United States has become “America the Overregulated,” and that’s quite a claim, especially from a British publication. There’s been a great deal of rhetoric about the amount of “unnecessary” federal regulations, particularly from the far right, but also across the political spectrum.  Given the opposition to excessive regulation, why does it continue?

The simple, and largely accurate, answer is because there’s political pressure for more regulations to protect everything from workers to threatened and endangered species.  Personally, I believe the majority of that pressure comes because of real concerns, but that raises another question.  Why do we need regulations to deal with these concerns?

That’s where matters get interesting.  One reason often cited is that, in a world economy, goods are purchased largely on price, and companies will do anything they can to keep costs down – unless effective regulations preclude practices that are unsafe, unhealthy, polluting, or environmentally degrading.  Yet… over the past two years, U.S. corporate profits have soared, while wages have remained largely stagnant.  At the same time, more and more wealth and income have gone to the top 1/10^th of one percent of the U.S. population.  People – those who have jobs – are working harder and longer, and usually under more stress, just to keep what they have… but the rich get richer.

Maybe… just maybe, we’ve been looking at only part of the problem.  Would all of those regulations be necessary if there weren’t so much pressure to be more and more profitable?  And that such profitability depends on lower costs and greater productivity?  What if those at the top of the pyramid, and I’m talking about the 1/10^th of one percent, not the top one or two percent, didn’t get to keep over 85% of their income?

Would investment bankers and CEOs be quite so inclined to push everything and everyone to the wall to get their $100 million bonuses if the government took 90% of everything over, say, $10 million?

A study from the University of Southern California found that a high percentage of young investment bankers who worked 80-120 weeks developed a wide range of stress-related illnesses and conditions that would likely reduce their life expectancy and that such conditions contributed to the high rate of burn-out in the field. We’ve also seen a huge growth in the use of steroids and other substances that build muscles in young adulthood, especially for young men seeking a professional athletic career, but such artificially enhanced muscular abilities almost invariably result in early death among those who wish to be professional athletes.  Would the temptation be quite so great, if 90% of those $10-$100 million contracts went to the government? Would all the outsourcing take place if there weren’t so much pressure to be more and more profitable?

It seems to me that a great deal of the excesses in our society have been driven by greed… but if government were the beneficiary of the greatest excesses of that greed… would the pressures be so great to cut all the corners?  Would regulation after regulation be so necessary to curb the excesses of the financial sector?  Or to protect workers from greater and greater pressure to produce more and more with less and less?

Just a thought.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently declared that President Obama’s acts as President were about “some phony theology… not a theology based on the Bible.” Frankly, I find an assertion such as this incredibly disturbing, because what Santorum is effectively saying is that public policy should be based on his reading of Christian theology.  As I’ve noted before, as have Constitutional scholars for more than a century, while the Founding Fathers did mention the Deity, they made it very clear that specific theologies – or theological belief systems – were not to be a part of government.  Yet Santorum is apparently attacking the president – and anyone else who doesn’t believe as Santorum does – for failing to base their policies and acts upon specific doctrinaire theological points.

Like it or not, the President of the United States and the Congress are responsible for the health and welfare of all the people of the United States and for allowing all of them the same freedoms, as set out in the Constitution and as interpreted, again, like it or not, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, according to the best figures I can find, 75% of Americans define themselves as members of faiths considered Christian by most theologians.  Fifteen percent are atheists, and the remaining ten percent belong to other faiths.  Of those considered Christian, 25% are Catholic, 15% Baptist, and 4% evangelical or Pentecostal Christians, meaning that, in rough terms, essentially half of the American people, assuming they follow the theological guidelines of their faiths, might agree with Senator Santorum’s theological beliefs. The problem with Santorum’s position is that as much as half the population might well not agree, and fully one quarter of all Americans are not believing Christians at all.

In addition, a study conducted by Baylor University, based on interviews with 35,000 people, definitely a healthy sample, showed that more than 40% of the people had changed their faith and belief at least once in their lifetime, which also suggests that “faith” is far less constant than the protections in the Constitution.

Even more to the point, Santorum is not talking about freedom of religion, but about imposing restrictions on all members of society, restrictions based on his theological biases, and restrictions with which tens of millions of Americans do not agree.  Those who agree with the senator are not precluded from following exactly, and with no persecution whatsoever, the dictates of their own conscience insofar as their own property and bodies are concerned.  Under the Constitution and current law, however, they are precluded from imposing those beliefs on others, and effectively limiting the rights of half the population [women]. The senator clearly wants to change this.

It’s taken a long time to reduce discrimination based on color, creed, or gender… and Santorum’s use of religion, whether intended or not, would essentially turn the clock back to a time of greater discrimination under the guise of “true religion.”

Putting power in the hands of religious true believers has been a disaster wherever it’s happened, whether in the time of the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the ayatollahs in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or any other number of instances.  Doing so here wouldn’t be any different… and it would be a betrayal of the Founding Fathers that all so many of those of Santorum’s stripe quote so much when it suits their needs… and ignore when it doesn’t.

From the considerable amount I’ve read about the early history of the United States, one of the goals of the Founding Fathers was to protect the government – and the people – from the heavy hand of religion… and to keep organized religion from infringing the rights of the people.  So, it’s with a sense of irony that I find so many religious zealots of so many types complaining essentially about what the Constitution was designed to do – to stop government from being a tool of religion.

When the Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that women had a right to abortion, the Court essentially came down on the side of individual freedom, asserting that the “right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Under the Constitution, that sort of finding is the Court’s to make, and unless Congress and the states see fit to amend the Constitution, or the Court extends, modifies, or reverses its ruling, that ruling is the law of the land.  Period.

When a state legislator proposes laws to forbid schools from teaching about birth control unless it’s abstinence and only abstinence, that legislator is attempting to restrict the freedom of information, and to determine exactly what information is to be conveyed, for religious purposes. This is particularly heinous because it restricts an individual’s knowledge.  When legislators oppose civil unions for same-sex couples, they’re effectively declaring that the state sanction such a legal union only on the basis of religious traditions and practices.  When states or legislators require businesses to close on Sunday – as many did at one time – that is imposing the requirement of Christian religions on commerce.  Why not require closure for the Jewish Sabbath… or on Saturday for Seventh Day Adventists?

One of the founding principles underlying the Constitution of the United States was an understanding that there’s a significant difference between freedom of religion and state imposition of religious requirements on everyone. It’s one thing to allow someone to close their business on their holy days.  That’s allowing individual freedom.  Requiring everyone to close on Sunday is using government for religious purposes.  Several years ago, here in Utah, constituents pressured local lawmakers to forbid civic functions on Monday nights because that interfered with the LDS practice of Monday home evenings.  Thankfully, such prohibitions weren’t imposed.

Virtually all widely accepted ethical, moral, or religious beliefs agree that such acts as theft, assault, forgery, fraud, murder, rape should be prohibited, and their practice punished.  The obvious conflict between freedom and legal codes lies in the gray areas where various beliefs and religious codes disagree.  But under the U.S. Constitution, as articulated by the Founding Fathers, personal freedom of action or speech should not be restricted unless it poses a clear and present danger to others…. And all too many “religiously-associated” attempts to restrict freedom of action and of speech have little or nothing to do with preventing such clear and present dangers, and far more to do with imposing restrictions on others in furtherance of one religious doctrine over another.

It’s official, or at least semi-official:  the United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any industrialized nation in the world… and by a huge margin.

Why?  Obviously, there’s no one single cause, but the largest factor is our drug laws, which criminalize possession of small amounts of drugs and the use of marijuana.  One of the associated problems with criminalizing marijuana is that the drug is ubiquitous and widely used, and that means prosecution and incarceration for use, possession, or distribution is in most cases highly selective, and selective enforcement is anything but just.  On the other hand, busting everyone who uses marijuana is essentially physically impossible.

As a matter of practicality, it’s becoming clearer and clearer, not that it hasn’t been so for a long time, if anyone really cared to look, that the massive criminalization of drug use is anything but healthy for the United States.  Prisons now cost most U.S. states more than they spend on all forms of education, and those costs are rising.  The massive amounts of money and profit from illegal drugs are fueling gang violence in both the U.S. and Mexico, and, in general, police efforts have a modest effect, at best, on even holding that violence in check.

So what if we changed our approach to drugs?  What if we just legalized their use for adults over 21?

Immediately, the outcry is likely to rise – What about all those poor drug victims?

Well… what about them?  What about handling the issue the way we generally deal with alcohol?  We tried outlawing alcohol for everyone, and that was a disaster.  The compromise was to forbid its use and consumption by people under 21 [or sometimes 18], and to prosecute those who supplied it to underage drinkers.

The anti-drug legalization forces tend to focus, whether they realize it or not, on saving people from their own worst impulses. This is, unhappily, a selective approach, in our society, applied in some areas and not in others, and it’s an approach that works in some cases and not in others.  Seatbelt laws work as well as they do, I’m convinced, because in a very real sense, they’re really not more than a minor change in behavior.  As a matter of fact, in a car, in any car, you really can’t move around that much anyway.  A seat-belt law restricts that movement slightly… and saves tens of thousands of lives annually – and it doesn’t lead to the development of a trillion dollar underground economy in seat-belt cutters, or the like.  The same sort of argument can be made for many [but not all] health and safety regulations.

What we might better consider is legalizing drugs, requiring standards for them – and holding drug users totally responsible for their actions.  In other words, if someone chooses to use drugs and commits a crime either under the influence or to obtain funds for such drugs, the penalties should be even tougher… because they made the choice to use drugs, knowing the possible consequences.  Likewise, penalties for pushing drugs to those underage should be extraordinarily severe.

But, of course, none of this will happen, because no one really wants to hold people responsible for their actions, whether those people are students who want good grades without working hard and without studying, or politicians who haven’t the nerve to tell constituents that they can’t have more government services without more taxes, or Silicon Valley internet companies who want free content without paying for it, or Wall Street financiers who escape prosecution for what was essentially fraud and misrepresentation….

No… someone else is always to blame.