Misconceptions, and What People Do or Don't Believe

Here are some excerpts from, as I believe, a Motley Fool article I found online.

Misconception No. 1: Most of what Americans spend their money on is made in China.

Fact: Just 2.7% of personal consumption expenditures go to Chinese-made goods and services. 88.5% of U.S. consumer spending is on American-made goods and services.

Misconception No. 2: We owe most of our debt to China.

Fact: China owns 7.6% of U.S. government debt outstanding.

Misconception No. 3: We get most of our oil from the Middle East.

Fact: Just 9.8% of oil consumed in the U.S. comes from the Middle East.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe," said Andy Rooney.

And, as I read comments on Huffington Post, I see that what Rooney says is very true: People tend to just flat-out refuse to believe something when it contradicts what they already believe or want to believe.

What's Wrong in the US--A Serious Problem

I have been hearing over and over that a major problem in the US concerns "fiscal" problems, notably the budget deficit. And anyone commenting on that also notes the lack of adequate attention to the problem by the government. And then they go on to point out the lack of political action, leadership, vision, and so forth.

I don't know if this is typical across the whole country, but in this area (Chicago), the last Congressional election sent to Congress maybe some half-dozen young, new, Conservative Representatives. Many or all of these are young, male, and Tea Party–leaning or –backed.

The main enterprise or objective of these Representatives has been, not to do anything constructive, but to obstruct. I hesitate to blame youth. I will blame lack of wisdom, and putting ideology before anything else, including the welfare and needs of the country as a whole.

Of course any criticism of who our legislators are must peer behind the curtain and look at who elected them. Of course the answer is, The voters. In the days in which the new nation of The United States was being set up, some of the Founding Fathers were very skeptical of democracy—because they had limited faith in the wisdom or intelligence of the voters. Now, nearly 250 years later, I think it's becoming more and more clear that maybe those voices were right. Voters are too easily seduced by things like a pretty face, a loud voice, simplistic slogans, and empty promises of positive change.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Believe Statistics, or Believe That Guy You Know?

When someone who smokes is confronted with statistics that show the harm of smoking—for example, the increased rate of lung cancer among smokers—they are likely to say something like, "My grandfather smoked four packs a day, from the age of 9 until he died, and he lived to be 101!"

Of course it's not valid or logical to point to one case, when the correlation between smoking and increased risk of cancer depends on looking at a large population—thousands or tens of thousands of people who smoke. That is what the scientists and researchers who study things like that do. It's called epidemiology.

Another example: A man will ask his neighbor, "How do you like your Rodeo BroncBuster [car or SUV]?" Again, he's going to look at one instance rather than taking advantage of statistics on owner satisfaction which are available from several sources: JD Power, Consumer Reports, and so forth.

People seem to prefer the anecdotal and the familiar or close-by. Somehow, the experience of your neighbor, your brother-in-law, etc., carries more weight or impresses you more. Maybe we just trust people we know more than someone's numbers. Statistics are cold, distant, impersonal. You want someone in the flesh, standing right there, to tell you—not in numbers but in language, about his experience.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Yet Another Issue to Divide Americans

There is a transportation-funding bill before the US Congress. US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has called it "the worst transportation bill in 35 years." (LaHood, it should be pointed out, served in the previous administration of President George W. Bush and thus was not originally an Obama appointee, and is in fact a Republican.)

A Republican spokesman defends the bill as providing for improved roads and bridges, and also implies that it will provide jobs and lower the cost of gasoline.

US roads and bridges are deteriorating and need improvements, but the bill will cut funding for urban mass transit in cities like New York and Chicago.

Thus the bill pits the big cities against the suburbs and rural areas—the mass transit riders and the car owners. This should not be surprising and might even be a deliberate intent of the bill, because the cities have tended to be liberal and Democratic, while rural and suburban areas are more often Republican. Thus the Republicans, who currently control Congress, are aiding those they consider their supporters and penalizing those they feel would most likely oppose them in any election.

The US is becoming proverbially polarized, into Red and Blue states. Now one more divisive and polarizing issue has been found.

Update, February 9, 2012.
I have been corrected in a comment (which see): Transportation Secretary LaHood was in fact appointed by Obama.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Some Random Thoughts for the Day

The news included an item about a group of ministers who assembled at the site of a murder, a Church's Fried Chicken restaurant. Presumably it was to pray there, but I can imagine their using the slogan, "From church to Church's."

I was thinking back on my childhood and the parenting style of my mother. There needs to be a word smotherhood.

A friend of mine forwarded to me a video: you may have seen it because it's gone viral. It shows the Japanese tsunami of a year ago, sweeping over the land, carrying with it hundreds of cars along with other stuff. I thought it needed a caption, something like, "Lord, I know I mentioned to You that I needed to get the car washed, but. . . . "

What Are 'Cultures'?

I recently wrote about euphemism and its use in the political sphere. You might say that euphemism is the unwillingness to call a spade a spade. (That expression supposedly comes from the US Army which, on a list of supplies, listed a spade as an "entrenching tool").

Of course euphemism is also used in the marketing sphere. Here is a small example. Yogurt, and especially any yogurt sold for its "probiotic" virtues, is claimed to contain "cultures." But what are cultures? How many people know what "cultures" really are? (I heard a woman giving one of those talks or lectures on PBS, talking about yogurt and cultures; and not once did she give what I'd consider a forthright definition of "culture." I don't think she herself understood completely clearly.)

Cultures are nothing more nor less than bacteria. Or, if you will, germs.

But I don't consider it out-and-out malice when cultures are called by that term. I am sure that the term culture is very old and predates the advent of microscopes, when of course we first became aware of the microscopic world and thus found out that what had been called "cultures" for centuries--not only in yogurt-making but in brewing beer and making wine, vinegar, and some bread—were microscopic organisms, either bacteria or yeasts.

But ignorance sometimes is bliss--to use another old saying. Possibly some people would be turned off to know that they were eating billions of bacteria. My mother loved mushrooms, but after I told her (perhaps inaccurately) that mushrooms are grown in manure, she wouldn't eat them anymore. I'd inadvertently deprived her of one of her pleasures.

So it must be remembered that, although we think of bacteria as harmful and causing disease, there are those that are beneficial or even (as in the case of the bacteria in our guts) vital to our good health.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Manipulating Us with Words

There's a fellow I know who sometimes comments on my blog. Probably he has no idea how much thought one thing he wrote has provoked in me.

Let me hasten to state that this guy is intelligent and very able and I respect him. But I have not been able to stop thinking about a perhaps rather casual choice of words he made when he wrote about "school choice."

I actually had to stop a moment to figure out what that means. Then I realized he was talking about what are generally called school vouchers. And it was his using school choice rather than saying school vouchers that has caused me a lot of thought.

I already wrote that I consider that a euphemism. It's kind of like when the Republicans wanted to arouse opposition to the restoration of the estate tax (which, by the way, applies only to large estates—I think to those over $2.5 million). So they came up with the term "death tax." Now, put that way, who would favor a tax on death? Probably no one; but it's not really a tax on death per se.

Also similarly, those who oppose abortion call themselves pro life. Someone figured out that it's better to make yourself sound like you're in favor of something rather than opposed to something. And when that term is used, by implication your opponents are anti life.

When the term school choice is used, you are saying—again by implication—"My opponents—those bad guys—want to take my choice of schools away from me." Rather than saying, "I favor using tax dollars to support religious education," which to my mind would be the more honest way to state it.

I could go into how these sorts of tricks of language have been used by heads of state and other political figures over a long period of time, often with sinister objectives.

Let me hasten to add—always trying to be fair-minded!—that the types of rhetorical tricks I'm talking about are by no means the sole province of the Right or Republicans or conservatives. If you want to look at fund-raising letters—those mass mailings sent out by political and social-change organizations to try to get contributions—a letter from a left-leaning organization sounds an awful lot like one from a group on the other side, and the same types of devices and tricks are used. (For example, they're always trying to alarm you: "Give us money to help us fight this or that bad guy or dangerous movement"--gay marriage, whatever.) The people who write these things can, and probably sometimes do, move from a left- to a right-leaning organization, or vice versa, pretty easily.

What I find of real concern is that the general public may not be equipped to recognize what is going on. Rhetorical tricks like I'm talking about have been used in politics and in advertising (it's really basically the same thing, if you stop and think about it) for well over 150 years, and people have examined and criticized some of the tricks of advertisers probably for almost as long. (There was a notable 1957 book called The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard and it's again in print.) But consumers and voters need to be equipped—I'll even say armed—to deal with these tricks. And I don't think these things are commonly taught in our schools, and not even to all college students.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein