"Remember when we...?"; Why Sharing Memories is Soul Food

Christmas Memories (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Amanda Barnier and Penny Van Bergen, The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/remember-when-we-why-sharing-memories-is-soul-food-35542

Families and friends share memories all the time; “You’ll never guess …”, “How was your day?”, and “Do you remember when …” are rich daily fodder.

Sharing memories is not only a good way to debrief and reminisce, we’re beginning to realise the process plays an important role in children’s psychological development and protects our memories as we advance in age.

Telling stories draws us together

We share memories of the past for many reasons. By telling a sad or difficult story - perhaps a fond memory of someone we have lost since last Christmas - we strengthen shared connections, offer sympathy and elicit support.

By telling a funny or embarrassing story - perhaps the time the dog stole the Christmas ham - we share feelings of joy or recognition of difficulties overcome, large or small. By sharing similar or not-so-similar experiences, we empathise with and understand one another better.

Talking about the past also helps create and maintain our individual and shared identities. We know who we are - whether as individuals, groups or communities - because our memories provide a database of evidence for events we have experienced and what they mean to us.

Even when some people missed out on an event, sharing a memory of it can shape their identity. Developmental psychologist Robyn Fivush and her team demonstrated this when they asked American adolescents to recount “intergenerational” stories: events from their parents’ lives they learnt via memories shared within the family, often around the dinner table.

Fivush found that the adolescents she tested could easily retell many of their parents’ memory stories. Most importantly, they made strong connections between these second-hand family memories and their own developing sense of identity: “my dad played soccer when he was young, so that got me started”.

Children who showed these kinds of family memory-self identity connections reported higher levels of well-being.

Teaching children how to remember

For young children, telling memory stories teaches them how to remember. From as young as two years of age children begin to show signs of autobiographical memory: memories of themselves and their lives.

Although these earliest memories often are fleeting (it is not until our third or fourth birthday that we start forming memories that last into adulthood), they are important because they show that children are learning how to be a rememberer.

Research by developmental psychologists consistently shows that the way parents and others talk to young children about the past is crucial for their memory development.

One of the best ways is to use what we call a “high elaborative” style. This involves prompting the child’s own contributions with open-ended questions (who, what, why, how) and extending on and adding structure to the child’s sometimes limited responses. Together, the parent and child can then jointly tell a memory story that is rich, full and comprehensible.

Children whose parents use this elaborative reminiscing style subsequently show stronger and more detailed memories. sean dreilinger/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Consider this example from one of our studies where a mother and her four-year-old son reminisce about a favourite Christmas ritual:

Mother: … and you and Daddy put the Christmas tree up together, and then you put on decorations! What decorations did you put on?
Child: Um … the Christmas balls!
Mother: That’s right! Daddy bought Christmas balls and stars to hang on the tree. What colours were they?
Child: Red and gold.
Mother: Red and gold. Pretty red balls, and gold stars.
Child: And there was the paper circles too.

Notice how the mother guides the progress of her son’s recollections. She is mindful too of letting him contribute as much as he is able, scaffolding his memories with appropriate, open-ended and informative cues. She also reinforces and praises his contributions.

Not surprisingly, children whose parents use this elaborative reminiscing style subsequently show stronger and more detailed memories of their own past experiences.

Preschool children who are exposed to this style of reminiscing also develop stronger comprehension, vocabulary and literacy skills. And because we tend to remember and talk about emotionally meaningful events - events that make us happy, sad, scared - elaborative reminiscing helps children understand and learn to navigate difficult emotions and emotional memories.

These early practices have long-term consequences. Older children whose families narrate and discuss emotion-rich stories around the dinner table report higher levels of self-esteem and show greater resilience when faced with adversity.

It’s fine to disagree

Conversations about the past often require some degree of negotiation. Many studies highlight the value of collaborating in recall. That is, giving everyone a voice rather than letting one narrator dominate; particularly one voice that narrates other people’s memories as well as their own.

But what if someone seems to be telling the memory wrong? You’ve probably experienced the frustration of a brother, sister or cousin down the other end of the Christmas table mixing up the details of an event you both experienced. Or worse yet, claiming and recalling a childhood experience that you know happened to you and not to them.

It’s fine to disagree so long as everyone gets a voice. Evgeni Zotov/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

With young children still learning to remember, contradicting or ignoring their memory contributions - even if they contain source errors or inaccuracies - can shut the conversation down and discourage joint remembering.

But as we get older, we realise that others may have a different perspective on events. We realise that 100% accuracy is not the only or even the most important goal of remembering. As adults, disagreements about the past may in fact be a sign of a robust remembering system.

Scaffolding memory as we age

Sharing memories may also “scaffold” or support memory as we age. In a study just published, we first asked older adult couples (aged 60 to 88 years old) to individually remember various events experienced with their spouse over the past five years. All had been married for over 50 years, making them long-term, intimate life and memory partners.

One week later, we asked half of the couples to talk in detail with their spouse about their events and half to talk in detail with just the experimenter.

Compared with young adults, older adults working alone typically find it difficult to recall autobiographical memories in great detail. But when our older couples remembered with their spouse their memory stories were more detailed than the stories of couples who remembered alone.

Although collaboration did not lead young couples (aged 26 to 42 years old) to remember more, those who reported closer relationships with their spouse tended to recall more details of events shared with that spouse, even when they remembered alone. In other words, at this earlier stage of life, shared experiences and memories might primarily be serving intimacy and identity goals.

For older couples who have invested in strong, intimate relationships, they increasingly might need and look for external memory scaffolding as their internal memory abilities decline. These older couples may then start to reap the cognitive benefits of what they sowed with their partner, families and friends in a long life of living and remembering together.

If you have no immediate kin close by or close, do not despair. This research shows that it is how we talk about the past with loved ones that counts, not simply the biology of who we talk to. So this Christmas, come together with your “families”, whoever they are, and share one of the greatest, uniquely human, gifts of all: the gift of memory stories.


This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Walking: The Secret Ingredient for Health, Wealth, and More Exciting Neighborhoods

Photo: Shutterstock

by Jay Walljasper, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/walking-is-going-places

Walking is going places. Over recent decades, walking has come to be widely viewed as a slow, tiresome, old-fashioned way to get around.

But that’s changing now as Americans recognize that traveling by foot can be a health breakthrough, an economic catalyst, and the route to happiness.

Is walking the next big thing?

Look to the media to give you an answer. Popular lifestyle magazine Real Simple declared it “America’s Untrendiest Trend” on its February cover. A month later Builder, a construction trade journal, announced something similar on its cover: “Walkability. Why We Care … and Why You Should Too.”

A new book called A Philosophy of Walking, reviewed in The New Yorker, asserts that walking “makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing.”

And one of the year’s top music videos, “Happy” by soul singer Pharrell Williams, shows all kinds of people strutting, stepping, striding, and sashaying down city streets. It’s an exuberant celebration of walking and has been viewed more than 500 million times on YouTube.

There is sure to be continuing coverage of foot power next year when the Surgeon General’s office releases a Call to Action on the health and social benefits of walking and walkable communities - a step some are comparing to the 1964 Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of smoking.

Already the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends all adults engage in 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, such as walking, five days a week. It has been proven to lower incidences of major medical problems - not just heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as you might expect, but also depression, dementia, and other serious conditions.

This flurry of attention about walking is more than a flash in the pan. Evidence that millions of Americans are now rediscovering walking to fulfill their transportation, fitness, and recreation needs is as solid as the ground beneath our feet. 

Americans Are Getting Back on their Feet

“Walking is the most common form of physical activity across incomes and ages and education levels,” explained Thomas Schmid of the federal CDC at a conference in Pittsburgh last fall. The CDC’s most recent research shows that the number of Americans who walk for leisure or fitness at least once a week rose to 62% in 2010 from 56% in 2005 - that’s almost 20 million more people on their feet.

Walking is already more prevalent across the United States than most of us realize. Paul Herberling of the U.S. Department of Transportation noted that 10.4% of all trips Americans make are on foot - and 28% of trips under a mile. For young people, it’s 17% of all trips. Americans walk most frequently for exercise, errands, and recreation, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Last year the first ever Walking Summit was held in Washington, D.C., drawing more than 400 people from 41 states and Canada. A second summit is scheduled for October 28-30, 2015, in D.C.

The 2013 summit, which sold out weeks in advance, marked the birth of a new walking movement committed to: encouraging everyone to walk more; and boosting policies, practices, and investments that make communities everywhere more walkable.

It was convened by the Every Body Walk! Collaborative, a joint effort involving more than 100 influential organizations across many fields to promote walking as part of the solution to problems ranging from chronic disease and health care costs, to climate change and the decline of community.

Walking also strengthens our social connections, which have been shown to be as important to health as physical activity, says Kaiser Permanente Vice-President Tyler. The more we are out walking, the more people in our community we come to know.

Americans overwhelmingly view walking as a good thing, according to a national survey . Here’s what it found:

- Good for my health (94 percent)
- Good way to lose weight (91 percent)
- Great way to relax (89 percent)
- Helps reduce anxiety (87 percent)
- Reduces feelings of depression (85 percent) 

Americans Are Voting With Their Feet

Even the American dream is being remodeled to meet the public’s growing enthusiasm for walking. 60% of Americans would prefer to live in neighborhoods with stores and services within easy walking distance, according to a recent survey from the National Association of Realtors - nearly twice as many who want to live where stores can be reached only by car.

This is especially true for the millennial generation, which is now entering the workforce and housing market in large numbers and will shape the future of American life as dramatically as the baby boomers did in the 1960s and 1970s.

“With drastically different views of transportation from those of generations that came before them, millennials are transforming communities,” notes another report from the National Association of Realtors. “Millennials own fewer cars and drive less than their predecessors. They’d rather walk, bike, car-share, and use public transportation - and want to live where that’s all easy.” 

Why Walking? Why Now?

What’s driving the growing passion for walking? “It’s a convergence of factors,” says Christopher Leinberger, a real estate developer, George Washington University business professor, and a leading advocate for walkable communities. Those factors are:

1. The well-established link between walking and better health , which is reinforced by recent research pointing to the dangers of sitting for long periods of time. A comprehensive study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition that charts 240,000 Americans between ages 50 and 71 found that “overall [time] sitting was associated with all-cause mortality”.

2. The accelerating costs of owning one, two, or more cars, which many Americans, especially younger people, find a poor investment of their resources. Transportation is now the highest cost in family budgets (19%) next to housing (32%). In auto-dependent communities - where walking is inconvenient and unsafe - transportation costs (25%) approach housing costs (32%).

3. Metropolitan areas with many walkable neighborhoods do better economically than those with just a few. Leinberger’s recent report “ Foot Traffic Ahead“ finds that walkable metropolitan areas “have substantially higher GDPs per capita” and a higher percentage of college graduates. Office space in walkable locations enjoys a 74% rent-per-square-foot premium over offices in auto-oriented developments in America’s 30 largest metropolitan regions.

4. More people discovering the personal satisfactions of walking. “Seeing friends on the street, walking to work, strolling out for dinner or nightlife” are among the pleasures of walking that enrich our lives, says Leinberger. 

Walking Means Business

Firms in the booming tech, information, and creative industries are at the forefront of the trend toward walkable communities because the coveted young talent they need to stay competitive want to work in places that are a short stroll from cafes and cultural attractions.

The first thing Google did after buying the electronics firm Motorola Mobility was to move its headquarters away from the freeways and strip malls of Libertyville, Illinois, to the walkable environs of downtown Chicago.

“They felt like they couldn’t attract the young software engineers they needed” to an isolated 84-acre complex, says Leinberger. Other companies that recently moved from suburban Chicago to the city include Medline, Walgreen’s, Gogo, GE Transportation, Hillshire Brands, and Motorola Solutions.

“Two things seem to resonate for businesses about the importance of walkability - how to attract the best workforce and wanting to locate in communities where health costs are lower,” says Mark Fenton, a former U.S. National Team race walker who now consults on public health planning and transportation. Employees with more opportunities to walk at work and at home are healthier, meaning lower insurance rates for their firms.

From his vantage point at the CDC, Thomas Schmid observes, “If a business is located in a community that is not healthy, they’re paying more to be there. Think of it as a tax or cost of doing business because of health care costs.” One company relocating to Chattanooga, he said, would do so only if a walking and bike trail was extended to their facility. 

The Challenges to a More Walkable America

The walking movement has picked up a lot of momentum in a very short time. “The wind is behind our sails,” says Kate Kraft, a public health expert working with EBWC and America Walks. But she goes on to note that “it took 80 years to make America unwalkable, and it will take a lot of work to make it walkable again.”

Last year’s national survey on attitudes about walking accentuates these challenges. By a huge majority, people say that walking is good for them but admit that they should walk more (79%) and that their children should walk more (73%). Only 11% say they meet the CDC’s recommended daily minimum for walking - half an hour a day, five days a week.

Common reasons cited for not walking are:

- My neighborhood is not very walkable (40 percent)
- Few places within walking distance of my home (40 percent)
- Don’t have time (39 percent)
- Speeding traffic or lack of sidewalks (25 percent)
- Crime in my neighborhood (13 percent) 

Solutions for a More Walkable America

Here are some of the promising developments, strategies, messages, and tools that are now emerging to promote walking:

Vision Zero for Safe Streets: As many as 4,500 Americans are killed crossing the street every year - a tragedy that very few people acknowledge. But there’s hope that will change now that New York City, San Francisco, and other places are implementing Vision Zero campaigns to reduce traffic deaths through street improvements, law enforcement, and public education. Similar policies in Sweden cut pedestrian deaths in half over the past five years - and reduced overall traffic fatalities at the same rate. “Vision Zero is the next big thinking for walking,” says Alliance for Biking & Walking President Jeff Miller.

Federal Action Plan on Pedestrian Safety: New U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx recently announced an all-out effort to apply the department’s resources to boost bike and pedestrian safety the same as they do auto and airline safety. Secretary Foxx - former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina - notes that pedestrian deaths rose 6% since 2009. “Bicycling and walking is as important as any other form of transportation,” he says.

Safe Routes to Schools: Half of kids under 14 walked or biked to school in 1969. Now it’s less than 15%. Safe Routes to School campaigns work with families, schools, and community officials to identify and eliminate barriers that block kids from getting to school under their own power. “We’re finding that the best interventions include both infrastructure improvements and programming. You put the sidewalks in but also get parents involved,” explains Margo Pedroso, deputy director of the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership.

Walking as a Basic Human Right: Walking has been shown to optimize our health and strengthen our communities, which means everyone should have equal opportunity to do it. But low-income people often find it difficult or dangerous to take a walk in their neighborhoods, which often lack sidewalks and other basic infrastructure. Studies show that pedestrians in poor neighborhoods are up to four times more likely to be injured in traffic accidents. This theme is now being addressed by many transportation activists and professionals.

Communities for People of All Ages: The mark of a great community is whether you’d feel calm about letting your 80-year-old grandmother or 8-year-old son walk to a nearby park or business district, says Gil Penalosa, former park director of Bogota, explaining why he founded 8-80 Cities. Too many young and old people today live under virtual house arrest, unable to get anywhere on their own because driving is the only way to go.

Complete Streets: The simple idea that all streets should offer safe, convenient, and comfortable travel for everyone - those on foot, on bike, on transit, in wheelchairs, young, old or disabled. Twenty-seven states and 625 local communities across the U.S. have adopted Complete Streets policies in some form.

The Healing Properties of Nature and the Outdoors: Not all exercise offers the same health benefits, according to a growing body of research showing that outdoor physical activity, especially in nature, boosts our health, improves our concentration, and may speed up our natural healing process. A walk in the park is not only more interesting than a workout at the gym, but it may also be healthier too. The Wingspread Declaration - recently signed by 30 of America’s leading health officials, researchers, and non-profit leaders - calls for business, government, and the health care sector to step up efforts to reconnect people with nature.

Walking as a Medical Vital Sign: There’s an initiative afoot among public health advocates to encourage health care professionals to chart their patients’ physical activity the same as they do weight, blood pressure, smoking, and family health. Ascension Health (with 1900 facilities in 23 states), Kaiser Permanente (648 facilities in 9 states), Group Health (25 clinics in Washington state), and Greenville Health System (7 facilities in South Carolina) are among the health providers already doing it.

Walk With a Doc: Walking has the lowest drop-out rate of any physical activity, which is why Ohio cardiologist David Sabgir started Walk With a Doc: to sponsor events in parks and other public places where people can talk to health care professionals while taking a casual walk. Walk With a Doc now operates in 38 states.

Signs of the Times: Many people are so out of practice with walking that they don’t realize how convenient it is. That’s why architecture student Matt Tamasulo posted signs in Raleigh, North Carolina, explaining that key destinations were only a few minutes away by foot. The city soon embraced his guerrilla campaign, and official walkway-finding signs can now be found around town. Tamasulo has launched Walk [Your City] to help other communities show how easy it is to get around on your own power.

Walking is Fun: “Walking is still not seen to be as sexy as biking,” says Robert Ping, program manager for Walking and Livable Communities Institute. “We could focus more on walking as recreation - the stroll through the neighborhood after dinner, going around the block, walking down to the park, meeting your neighbors. Something that’s not only utilitarian and good for the environment, but that’s fun!”

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Jay Walljasper writes, speaks, edits and consults about creating stronger, more vital communities. He is author of The Great Neighborhood Book and All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. He is also a contributor to Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference, from YES! Magazine. His website: JayWalljasper.com.

Lonely Over Christmas: A Snapshot of Social Isolation in the Suburbs

Scorpions and Centaurs/Flickr

by Melanie Davern, University of Melbourne and Lucy Gunn, University of Melbourne

Social isolation and loneliness are becoming common in our large cities.

Our cities are sprawling, housing is becoming more unaffordable, people are travelling further and longer in their cars and household size is shrinking.

These factors all affect our physical and mental health resulting in increasing chronic diseases and often more socially isolated and lonely people.

During the festive season, these problems can be intensified.

So what exactly is social isolation? Socially isolated people don’t have strong social connections or interactions with other people placing them at risk of low self-esteem, higher levels of coronary heart disease, depression, anxiety and below normal levels of happiness or subjective wellbeing.

A community snapshot of metropolitan Melbourne, Melbourne Vital Signs 2014, reveals a number of factors likely to influence social isolation.

The report reveals that in Melbourne one in five households spent more than 30% of their household income on housing. It shows that incidences of family violence have increased by 16% between 2012 and 2013. More than 13% of youth aged 15-19 years are not engaged at all in work or study. Finally, more than 18,500 people are estimated to be homeless in metropolitan Melbourne.

These are just a few of the factors related to where and how people live that contribute to social isolation in the suburbs.

Transport accessibility is another important influence of social isolation. It not only links people to work and study opportunities but also to socially connect with people, linking people to places where social interactions occur.

Getting around is difficult for many people living beyond the transport rich areas of inner city and close to 25% of Melburnians report inconvenience to their daily lives arising from transport, with the oldest and youngest having the most trouble getting around.

Life also becomes more car-dependent in the outer suburbs and a recent local government community survey found that 81% of residents drive to work, leaving little time or energy to connect or volunteer with local community.

Limited transport affects people’s ability to access employment and education opportunities associated with feelings of achievement and productivity and social interactions. More generally, it’s very hard to socialise, build relationships and new networks (needed to get a job) when transport is limited or restricted to car ownership.

So what would the ideal neighbourhood look like if it promoted wellbeing and reduced social isolation?

It would be safe, attractive, socially cohesive and inclusive - and environmentally sustainable. It would include diverse and affordable housing. There would be convenient public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure that was linked to employment, education, public open space, local shops, health and community services, and leisure and cultural opportunities.

It would be a neighbourhood that provides for the needs of all people across the lifespan - children, youth, adults and older adults - embraces diversity and difference, and has active, informed and engaged residents.

Melbourne has been named the world’s most liveable city for the last 4 years. There remain, however, many challenges we need to work at to reduce social isolation in this city and many others across the country.

People need to access services they need within close distance, a “20 minute city” where neighbourhoods have key services available within a 20 minute distance. Higher densities that provide more local employment opportunities and greater services reducing sprawl and helping to connect people to places, and most importantly, more easily to each other.

Social isolation is not an issue specific to the festive season but it can be harder for those people who have few people to connect with. So over the coming weeks, as life becomes busier in the lead up to Christmas and the end of the year, it might also be a good time to reflect on our own lives and think about how we can create more connected and inclusive communities.

It might be as simple as saying “hello” to someone on the train, talking to a neighbour or smiling at someone when you’re shopping or walking in your local area. Think about donating a gift or toy for someone who needs it more than you, volunteering your time like 6 million other Australians, or inviting someone without family or friends to join your Christmas meal.

These might sound like very simple activities - but if everyone put their phone down for a little while maybe we could just bring a little more human kindness to the world and improve social isolation in the suburbs.


This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Age of Loneliness is Killing Us

by George Monbiot, The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us

‘Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity.’ Photograph: Feri Lukas/Rex

What do we call this time? It’s not the information age: the collapse of popular education movements left a void filled by marketing and conspiracy theories. Like the stone age, iron age and space age, the digital age says plenty about our artefacts but little about society.

The anthropocene, in which humans exert a major impact on the biosphere, fails to distinguish this century from the previous 20. What clear social change marks out our time from those that precede it? To me it’s obvious. This is the Age of Loneliness.

When Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the state of nature, before authority arose to keep us in check, we were engaged in a war “of every man against every man”, he could not have been more wrong. We were social creatures from the start, mammalian bees, who depended entirely on each other.

The hominins of east Africa could not have survived one night alone. We are shaped, to a greater extent than almost any other species, by contact with others. The age we are entering, in which we exist apart, is unlike any that has gone before.

Three months ago we read that loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults. Now we learn that it is just as great an affliction of older people. A study by Independent Age shows that severe loneliness in England blights the lives of 700,000 men and 1.1m women over 50, and is rising with astonishing speed.

Ebola is unlikely ever to kill as many people as this disease strikes down. Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity.

Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents - all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.

Yes, factories have closed, people travel by car instead of buses, use YouTube rather than the cinema. But these shifts alone fail to explain the speed of our social collapse.

These structural changes have been accompanied by a life-denying ideology, which enforces and celebrates our social isolation. The war of every man against every man - competition and individualism, in other words - is the religion of our time, justified by a mythology of lone rangers, sole traders, self-starters, self-made men and women, going it alone.

For the most social of creatures, who cannot prosper without love, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individualism. What counts is to win. The rest is collateral damage.

British children no longer aspire to be train drivers or nurses - more than a fifth say they “just want to be rich”: wealth and fame are the sole ambitions of 40% of those surveyed.

A government study in June revealed that Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are less likely than other Europeans to have close friends or to know our neighbours. Who can be surprised, when everywhere we are urged to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin?

We have changed our language to reflect this shift. Our most cutting insult is loser. We no longer talk about people. Now we call them individuals. So pervasive has this alienating, atomising term become that even the charities fighting loneliness use it to describe the bipedal entities formerly known as human beings.

We can scarcely complete a sentence without getting personal. Personally speaking (to distinguish myself from a ventriloquist’s dummy), I prefer personal friends to the impersonal variety and personal belongings to the kind that don’t belong to me. Though that’s just my personal preference, otherwise known as my preference.

One of the tragic outcomes of loneliness is that people turn to their televisions for consolation: two-fifths of older people report that the one-eyed god is their principal company. This self-medication aggravates the disease.

Research by economists at the University of Milan suggests that television helps to drive competitive aspiration. It strongly reinforces the income-happiness paradox: the fact that, as national incomes rise, happiness does not rise with them.

Aspiration, which increases with income, ensures that the point of arrival, of sustained satisfaction, retreats before us. The researchers found that those who watch a lot of TV derive less satisfaction from a given level of income than those who watch only a little.

TV speeds up the hedonic treadmill, forcing us to strive even harder to sustain the same level of satisfaction. You have only to think of the wall-to-wall auctions on daytime TV, Dragon’s Den, the Apprentice and the myriad forms of career-making competition the medium celebrates, the generalised obsession with fame and wealth, the pervasive sense, in watching it, that life is somewhere other than where you are, to see why this might be.

So what’s the point? What do we gain from this war of all against all? Competition drives growth, but growth no longer makes us wealthier.

Figures published this week show that, while the income of company directors has risen by more than a fifth, wages for the workforce as a whole have fallen in real terms over the past year. The bosses earn - sorry, I mean take - 120 times more than the average full-time worker (in 2000, it was 47 times).

And even if competition did make us richer, it would make us no happier, as the satisfaction derived from a rise in income would be undermined by the aspirational impacts of competition.

The top 1% own 48% of global wealth, but even they aren’t happy. A survey by Boston College of people with an average net worth of $78m found that they too were assailed by anxiety, dissatisfaction and loneliness.

Many of them reported feeling financially insecure: to reach safe ground, they believed, they would need, on average, about 25% more money (and if they got it? They’d doubtless need another 25%). One respondent said he wouldn’t get there until he had $1bn in the bank.

For this, we have ripped the natural world apart, degraded our conditions of life, surrendered our freedoms and prospects of contentment to a compulsive, atomising, joyless hedonism, in which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. For this, we have destroyed the essence of humanity: our connectedness.

Yes, there are palliatives, clever and delightful schemes like Men in Sheds and Walking Football developed by charities for isolated older people. But if we are to break this cycle and come together once more, we must confront the world-eating, flesh-eating system into which we have been forced.

Hobbes’s pre-social condition was a myth. But we are entering a post-social condition our ancestors would have believed impossible. Our lives are becoming nasty, brutish and long.

Hell-Oh Neighbor: On Being a Good Neighbor

by Amy Alkon, Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201404/hell-oh-neighbor

One day, I came home to find bags and boxes brimming with garbage dumped on the grassy strip lining my cute Venice, California street.

Amidst food cartons and wrappers from just-purchased socks and underwear were a UPS invoice and a boarding pass. I paid a visit to Uncle Google and quickly tracked the names on them to a top foreign surgeon and his wife.

I messaged each on Facebook to come pick up their trash. No response. Grrr. Well, I thought, surely their trash had to miss them.

I boxed up a sampling of it with a photo of their dumping and a scoldy demand that they clean it up. And then, for a very well-spent $3.69, I mailed it to a ritzy address in the Pacific Palisades (from the UPS invoice), where they were apparently visiting American friends.

I never heard a word of denial or apology from them, but the experience underscored something: One of the best ways to stop feeling victimized is to refuse to roll over and take it like a good little victim. And I have to say, it's hard to keep feeling victimized while snickering about somebody's tony friends calling them up to ask whether they maybe littered in Venice.

You've probably experienced similarly piggy behavior in your neighborhood. Sure, there are laws against some violations, like 4 A.M. stereo blasting and persistently yapping dogs, but just try getting them enforced.

Gregg Segal

This isn't to say it should be the job of the police to intervene, and it doesn't have to be if we just understand and accept an essential fact about human nature: We're all jerks. Or, as the late psychologist Albert Ellis put it, to be human is to be "fallible, f*cked up, and full of frailty." And that's on a good day.

We want what we want, when we want it, and we'd like other people to shut up and scurry out of our way so we can get it already. As depressing as it may seem to see ourselves like this, being honest about our jerkitude is the best way to personally dispense less of it and to decrease others' emissions - and maybe even prevent them.

Frankly, if you get off on the wrong foot with one of your neighbors, a good fence will need to be patterned on the Great Wall of China.

Many of us make the mistake of keeping to ourselves until a neighbor does something annoying. Bad idea. If your first contact with the guy next door is letting him know how rude he is, you encourage him to achieve his natural potential for jerkishness. Better neighbor relations instead start with canny strategizing and proactive neighborliness.

Gregg Segal

Machiavellian Altruism

Sixteenth-century political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli may have been mislabeled a bad guy for writing The Prince, a self-help book on how to be a royal scheming user. The truth is, scheming doesn't have to require anyone getting screwed over. In fact, you can manipulate your neighbors for the greater good while manipulating them for your own good.

Rutgers University anthropologist Robert Trivers came up with the term "reciprocal altruism" to describe showing generosity to others at a cost to yourself, in hopes that they'll repay you in kind in the future. Absolute altruism is giving with no expectation of getting anything in return. But as Trivers points out, there's likely no such thing as pure altruism.

If you're sacrificing for somebody related to you, it benefits your genetic line, and if you're sacrificing for somebody unrelated, you get a bump in reputation if others see what you're doing, and probably a bump in self-respect if they don't.

A little calculated generosity can also help you deter all sorts of ugliness from those living around you. When new neighbors move in, bring them a plate of cookies. And don't forget to look out for those who've been living around you for a while.

Text them when they've forgotten to move their car on street-cleaning day. When their package gets chucked in your bushes, bring it to their door. Replace their porch lightbulb when it goes out while they're out of town (and leave a note telling them so).

It's not only nice to be nice, it's in your self-interest. There's a growing body of research suggesting that doing kind acts for others gives you a helper's high and makes you feel happier and more satisfied with your own life.

Plus, in the time spent baking cookies for a new neighbor, you're putting positivity into the world: making them feel welcome, creating community, and generating or reinforcing a social norm for neighborliness. At the same time, you're also inoculating yourself against that person suddenly going all lifelong blood-feud on you because your sprinklers killed their nap.

How the Nice-Neighbor Sausages Are Made

A little preemptive gift-giving can have such a transformative effect, thanks to our powerful drive to reciprocate. A couple of million years ago, in the harsh environment in which we evolved, being seen as a mooch could mean getting booted from one's band - a likely death sentence.

Being an easy mark posed other survival and mating issues. To keep our giving and taking in balance, humans developed a built-in social bookkeeping department.

There's some little old lady in a green eyeshade inside each of us who pokes us - "Wake up, idiot!" - when somebody's mooching off of us so we'll get mad and try to even the score. When somebody does something nice for us, our inner accountant cranks up feelings of obligation, and we get itchy to repay that person.

For example, in a study by Cornell psychologist Dennis Regan, subjects were told they were participating in research on art appreciation. The actual study - on the effects of doing a favor - took place during the breaks between a series of questions about art. Regan's research assistant, posing as a study participant, would leave the room and either come back with two Cokes - one for himself and one for the other participant - or he'd come back empty-handed.

After the art questions were completed, the research assistant asked the participant a favor, explaining that he was selling raffle tickets and that he'd win a prize if he sold the most. He added that anything "would help, but the more, the better." The subjects who received the Coke ended up buying twice as many tickets as those who'd received nothing.

Regan's results have been replicated many times in the lab and out - by Hare Krishnas, who see a marked increase in donations when they give out a flower before asking for cash; and by organizations whose fundraising letters pull in far more money when they include a small gift such as personalized address labels.

A TV soap actress moved in next door to me and started throwing all-night backyard parties, complete with campfire-style guitar sing-alongs. Asking her to be more considerate was useless. The way she saw it, why should her neighbors' silly sleeping hobby take precedence over her drunken friends' need to belt out "This Land is Your Land" at 3am?

Gregg Segal

What finally changed this was an email I sent to my more neighborly neighbors, warning them about a spate of break-ins. I didn't have Soap Snot's email address, so I printed the email and slipped it under her gate with a note scrawled at the bottom: "You aren't very considerate of those who live around you, but I don't think you should be robbed because of it, so FYI." I added that I would keep an eye on her house during the day, when she's away.

Amazingly, from that day on, there were no more wee-hours guitar-apaloozas. A few weeks after leaving her the note, I ran into her and she said, "Hey, just wanted to let you know I'm having some friends over tonight, but only for a dinner party, and we'll go inside at 10." As soon as I could rehinge my jaw, what was there to say but, "Uh ... thanks"?

A Neighborhood Watch That Doesn't Require Watching

Sitting in a lawn chair by your mailbox with your twin Rottweilers and a shotgun is a highly effective way to keep passing dog walkers from letting their pooch violate your lawn. Should you find this impractical, you might take advantage of our evolved concern for preserving our reputation and post a photo of human eyes on your mailbox, tricking passersby into feeling they're being watched and possibly improving their behavior accordingly.

It seems even a drawing of eyes triggers this sensation, according to research by UCLA anthropologist Daniel M.T. Fessler and then-grad student Kevin J. Haley. In a computer game they designed to measure generosity, when a stylized picture of eyes was displayed on the computer's desktop, participants gave over 55 percent more money to other players than when no eyes were displayed.

These findings were repeated in a study by Newcastle University ethologist Melissa Bateson and psychologist Daniel Nettle, in which people put nearly three times more money into a coffee room "honesty box" during the weeks when a photograph of eyes was posted above it.

So, in neighborhood terms, poop happens, but tape a picture of eyes to your mailbox, and that Great Dane's dung mountain just might get lugged home instead of being left in a steaming pile for you.

Gregg Segal

How to Defuse the Problem Next Door

Confronting a neighbor can be tricky. A self-important Hollywood bigwhoop started walking his dog down my street at 5am - while shouting showbiz lingo into his phone at colleagues in different time zones. He stopped after I typed a note in big letters, printed it on hot pink paper, and posted it on my fence: "Hey, guy on cell phone at 5am: The houses on this block are actually not a Hollywood set, but real homes with real people trying to sleep in the bedrooms. Thank you."

Empathy, the Great Panty-Unwadder: In many conflicts, like when the guy next door leaves his trash cans in front of your property, the injury we feel is largely symbolic. Deep down, we're all large, easily wounded children. More than anything, we want to be treated like we matter.

Take the case of Christine. From time to time, her children's balls would fly over the fence into her neighbor's yard. The first time, she and the kids knocked on the neighbor's door. The lady seemed friendly, and she let them into the backyard to get the balls. But, the next few times, the balls were tossed back over the fence, slashed. Creepy. And really mean.

But in trying to resolve conflict - even when people act horror-movie ugly to your children - it helps to try to consider where they're coming from.

For example, do the balls maybe bounce against the windows, startling the lady? Is she infirm, making it hard for her to get to the backyard and throw the balls back over? It's possible she's just an awful person, but by trying to call up empathy you'll deflate some of your anger - improving your ability to approach the offending party in a calm, solution-oriented way.

A Handwritten Note: The pen tends to be far less inflammatory than face-to-face conversation. A handwritten note about an issue puts time and distance between you, your criticism, and the criticized person, giving them the chance to cool down and respond in a more reasoned way.

And yes, it's best to handwrite your message rather than email it, which makes it too easy for you to dash off something rash and for your neighbor to dash back an angry reply. I suggested that Christine write a card with an apology, expressing empathy for the neighbor and saying the kids were trying to do better.

She might even include a $10 Starbucks card. Beyond gift-giving's power to ramp up goodwill, research suggests that a costly apology is a more meaningful apology - more likely to dissolve anger and lead to forgiveness.

Honesty, the Worst Policy: Calling a person on her bad behavior in anything but a roundabout way tends to provoke denials, which are basically angry attempts to save face. A less provoking approach is to present an issue by appearing to give your neighbor the benefit of the doubt - even when you both know she doesn't deserve it.

Say, for example, the lady next door has been letting her unleashed dog run over and poop on your lawn (this is not a secret to her because she's on her porch shouting, "Muffin, go poop in the neighbor's bushes!").

You still need to pretend otherwise, writing her a note: "You probably don't know this ..." This approach allows the two of you to maintain a polite fiction in which you both pretend that you don't find her about as genteel as an ass boil, which is the best way to keep your lawn from continuing to be her dog's free-range litter box.

The Tragedy of the A**hole in the Commons: There are homeowners who'd start the second Hundred Years' War to defend the sanctity of their property, but half a block from their property line, anything goes.

The "Ain't my land!" excuse for allowing the trashing of public spaces illustrates what ecologist Garrett Hardin referred to as "The Tragedy of the Commons" in his 1968 essay on overpopulation. In a space owned by nobody and shared by many, the piggy can take advantage by grabbing more than a fair share of resources or by slopping up the space, ruining it for everyone.

What stops this piggery is acting like we have shared ownership of public spaces, and getting as indignant about people polluting them as we would if they were redirecting traffic across our front lawn.

When You're the Problem: Selfish, self-absorbed little beasties that we are, listening doesn't come naturally to us. And because we tend to fly off the handle when criticized, listening calmly when we're in the hot seat takes preplanning: being mindful of our bratty tendencies and resolving that we'll take some deep breaths and hear a critic out.

Considering things from a complaining neighbor's point of view may require a field trip. Michael's neighbors complained about the thumping bass line from the music he plays. I suggested that Michael say something like, "I want to solve this; I don't want to torture you," and ask to come over and listen from their place so he can hear what they hear (just letting your neighbors know you're willing to investigate means a lot).

The Power of I'm Sorry: The deep need we feel for an apology after we're wronged emerged out of the evolution of human cooperation, which makes it possible for us to live together in groups. We have an evolutionary adaptation that helps guard against being chumped, making sure that we aren't all-give to people who are all-take.

When our sense of fairness is violated, we need a sign from the violator that we aren't idiots to trust them in the future. An apology can't undo a wrong that's been done, but it's an offering suggesting that one's future actions will be more partnerlike than selfish jerk-like.

Don't Be Geographically Snobby: Being around strangers all the time, as we often are in our society, can be cold and alienating unless we regularly take steps to remedy this state with some generosity of spirit. The way I see it, a neighbor is anybody you treat like a neighbor.

Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky of UC Riverside has studied generosity toward others, finding that it's one of the main ways (along with expressing gratitude) that we can increase our happiness. Showing another person a little generosity is also likely to put them in the spirit of "paying it forward." A bare minimum of one kind act a day should be our self-imposed cover charge for living in this world. We get the society we create - or the society we let happen to us.

Adapted from: Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck by Amy Alkon. Copyright © 2014 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Griffin.

Resilience on the Home Front: Creating a Farm

Photo: Alex Wilson

by Alex Wilson, Resilient Design Institute: http://www.resilientdesign.org/resilience-on-the-home-front-creating-a-farm/

Two years ago, when I launched the Resilient Design Institute, was a time of transition.

I was pulling back from BuildingGreen, the company that I had started in 1985, and my wife, Jerelyn, and I had just bought an old Vermont farm a third of a mile down the road from where we had lived for 30 years.

We were beginning what would be a long process of figuring out what to do with the house and property.

Indeed, the house planning, design, and reconstruction was a major undertaking. After having written about energy efficiency, renewable energy, and green building for more than 35 years, there were countless ideas, materials, and innovative products I wanted to try out.

This would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a model of sustainability, accessible design (where we can age in place), and resilience.

Renovating (really rebuilding) the house cost a lot more than we had anticipated and took a lot longer than expected - a nearly universal complaints of those involved with such projects - but we are very happy with the outcome.

We moved in around the first of January, 2014, just in time to give the superinsulated house a real test in what would turn out to be one of the coldest Vermont winters in decades.

We found that, indeed, the single, 18,000 Btu/hour, air-source heat pump was able to keep the house comfortable; we only used our back-up wood stove eight or nine times to supplement the point-source heat pump or provide the ambiance that only a wood fire can provide.

View of our barn and lower garden from above - from a helicopter ride I 

happened to get a few weeks ago! Photo: Alex Wilson

This ability of a house to maintain reasonably comfortable (safe) conditions on the coldest winter nights - even if power is lost - is a key tenet of resilient design, and I was very pleased that our house did so well.

Though we hope the house to be net-zero-energy in its operation - with space heating, water heating, cooking, and almost everything else, powered by a 12 kW solar-electric system - we can heat the place just fine with our small wood stove if we need to. 

Moving our focus outdoors

As the cold of winter gradually ceded control to the sunshine of spring, I was only too ready to turn my attention to the out-of-doors.

I had been thinking a lot about resilience and what exactly that meant for a rural landowner. We had done a good job with the house, and we are planning how to provide water during power outages - likely using a modern hand pump of the type I’ve written about - but resilience is also about food.

Ten pounds of beans in our last picking - lots in the freezer. Photo: Alex Wilson

I wanted to create a homestead with the capacity to become close to self-sufficient in food production should circumstances call for such a need - for example, if a long-term drought in the West and Midwest with no snow pack in the Rockies and Sierras curtails agricultural production in the grain belt and California’s Central Valley.

In such a scenario, the supply-line of grains, vegetables, and meats from points west becomes compromised - not a likely scenario, but a possible one. How could our land at Leonard Farm provide some level of food self-sufficiency?

Creating an orchard

With snow still on the ground, I began planning a fruit and nut orchard. Our property has three open fields: two at an acre to an acre-and-a-half each and one that’s 7-8 acres. One of the smaller fields, on a rise just west of the house on an east-facing slope, would make a great orchard, I decided.

Mulching fruit trees with wood chips this past May. Photo: Jerelyn Wilson

After having spent parts of two years pushing the encroaching woods back, I spent weeks this spring pouring through catalogs and deciding on trees to put in.

I created a design for the field showing how I could fit in several dozen fruit trees, a chestnut grove of a dozen trees, and an extensive berry patch for blueberries, raspberries, black currents, and gooseberries - all that could be fenced in to protect it against our ubiquitous deer.

It was a very late spring, and I didn’t plant the trees until late-May. Fortunately, I had a huge pile of wood chips to mulch the trees, though I haven’t gotten fencing up yet. This year I planted a dozen fruit trees and ten Chinese chestnuts; next year I hope to put in a dozen or so more trees plus berries. I’m hoping to get fencing in this fall.

Planting the lower field

While I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time for gardening this summer - as we prepare for our daughter’s wedding on the farm at the end of August - I did want to get something into the ground to begin improving the soil.

Figuring that pumpkins and winter squash, once they spread out, would shade the ground and control weed growth, I opted for that.

I learned that a local beer brewer who has just moved to the area (Hermit Thrush Brewery) was looking for several varieties of heirloom pumpkins (White Cushaw, Musque de Provence, Jarrahdale, and Galeux D’Eysines), which I planted, along with a row of New England Pie Pumpkins and two rows of winter squash (four varieties).

New England Pie pumpkins coming right along. Photo: Alex Wilson

These rows are nearly 200 feet long, so if all goes well we should have lots of pumpkins and squash - probably way more than the brewery can use, so I’ll be looking for other markets for weird-looking pumpkins that no one has ever heard of! Let me know if you’re looking for organically grown squash and pumpkins this fall!

We also planted lots of sunflowers and zinnias for the wedding and some more typical vegetables for home consumption: tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, green beans, basil, etc. We didn’t plant greens or root vegetables, as those are higher maintenance, and I thought they would require better soil that will take a while to build up.

While my initial plan was for low-maintenance farming, the garden has been a fair amount of work! I’m using an old Troy-Bilt rototiller I’ve had for 30 years for some of the cultivating, but mostly I’ve been using a European wheel hoe that I bought close to 30 years ago when Green River Tools was going out of business and selling their tool inventory.

I find the wheel hoe works really well (with its oscillating stirrup-hoe blade that cuts pushing and pulling) if I keep after the weeds - cutting them off before they get too large (I tilled the garden initially with my Kubota tractor and a PTO-drive rotovator). Yes, I’m sore, but working the soil and transforming it from turf this year has been very satisfying.

Three-quarters of our lower garden is now covered with pumpkin and winter

squash vines. In the foreground are butternut squash. Photo: Alex Wilson

Livestock?

I remember reading a Time magazine interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he was asked what one change he’d like to see in American farming to improve it. He replied: putting livestock back on the farm - for nutrient cycling. We want some animals at Leonard Farm, but we’re not sure just yet what that will look like.

We will probably put in a chicken coop next spring, and down-the-road may put in a pen to raise one or two pigs each year. Goats? A family cow? The fertility from those animals will help the gardens and minimize our need for purchased fertilizer. We’re hoping for brewing waste from the brewery for livestock feed and compost.

Our first sunflowers are blooming. Photo: Alex Wilson

Resilience takes time

I’ve been reading Ben Falk’s book, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, and learning what Ben created in the Mad River Valley of Central Vermont. What he has done in bringing back a long-neglected hill farm is impressive, though he has done this with a cadre of interns working with him; I’m not convinced Leonard Farm will ever have such a robust labor force.

I’m curious how far I’ll get in our goal of being able to source 75% of our food from our property. It will be hard work getting there, but a fun challenge. I hope that circumstances will not require us to become largely self-sufficient, but it will be comforting to know that that would be possible if necessary.

Sidebar: Five Steps to Resilience on a Rural Farm

1. Achieve passive survivability with your house

Build or renovate the house so that it will maintain habitable conditions in the event of loss of power or interruptions in heating fuel. This is the concept of passive survivability I’ve long promoted. In a rural area with access to firewood, this should be relatively easy.

2. Provide a resilient water system

This is much easier in a place like Vermont than in the West, where available water may be too deep underground to pump by hand and rainwater harvesting may not be adequate to meet needs. But getting fresh, clean water is still often the biggest challenge in Vermont when power is lost. We will have both gravity-flow water from our pond located about 100 feet in elevation above the house and a hand pump for drawing water from our deep well when we lose electricity.

3. Provide food security

Growing and storing your own produce is the best way to achieve a resilient food system. We have a long way to go here - particularly with storage (food dehydrating, root cellars, canning, etc.).

4. Provide for resilient transportation

Think about how you will get access to critical services and supplies in the event of a gasoline shortage or inability to pump gas. When we looked for a place to buy one of our criteria was bikability to town. With a cargo bike we could easily do a weekly shopping trip into Brattleboro for food and other supplies.

5. Build community

In many respects, the social aspects of resilience are more important than the physical ones. During times or emergency or stress, we need to rely on a larger community for support. Our new farm backs up to West Dummerston Village, which has roughly 30 houses clustered in a tight-knot neighborhood. At one point we were thinking of creating a co-housing community at Leonard Farm, but we have decided to focus instead on helping to build a stronger community as part of the village.

Along with founding the Resilient Design Institute in 2012, Alex is founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. To keep up with his latest articles and musings, you can sign up for his Twitter feed.

The Best Investment Cities Can Make (and New York's Already Doing It)

by Gijs van Wulfen, Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140513064204-206580-free-wifi-for-everybody-as-new-york-will-have-soon

Internet access is always a big annoyance to me while traveling.

On a business trip I need to check my email and write my LinkedIn posts.

On a holiday trip with the family, including two teenagers, internet access is essential to keep the peace.

At those moments I am really pissed off when hotels charge you ridiculous fees for internet access per day (and sometimes even per device). It makes me feel exploited, because they know you can't do without.

So that's when I go out to find a Starbucks, McDonalds or local lunch cafe, which provides me with free wifi, having my fingers crossed the connection is up to speed.

That's why I loved to read that New York City wants to build one of the largest public wifi networks. The request for proposals was announced on May 1, looking for the installation, operation, and maintenance of up to 10,000 hotspots. It will be ready in four years.

Wikipedia reports free wifi is available in some way across 150 cities in the world like: Bangkok (Thailand), Blackpool (UK), Helsingborg (Sweden), Toronto (Canada), Denver (USA), Guadalajara (Mexico) and Stellenbosch (SA). Business Insider report 9 cities with the best free wifi among which are Helsinki (Finland), Taipei (Taiwan) and Hong Kong (China).

In the Netherlands there is a start-up, planning to build free wifi-networks in 38 cities, costing €10 million. It was launched last year in Tiel, a small city of 41,000 citizens.

At the moment, 16,000 unique visitors in Tiel use the free wifi for 20,000 hours per week. Other cities like Leiden (115,000 citizens) and Zwolle (120,000 citizens) are offering free wifi in The Netherlands too. And more will follow soon.

Cities offering free wifi is an excellent idea!

Free wifi makes cities attractive. Both tourists and citizens will benefit from free internet access. Free wifi will promote cities as being cool and accessible. It will make tourists and people from out of town stop at your restaurants, shop in your stores and visit your museums.

It will connect everybody in your community, giving them access to information. Having every visitor and citizen connected will bring all kinds of new commercial opportunities too for local stores, museums, schools, restaurants, hotels and events.

Offering free wifi is perfect city marketing

I'd like to appeal to city councils to promote free wifi for everybody. Why? Free wifi is perfect city marketing. It's innovative too. Wikipedia reports there are only around 150 cities offering free wifi out of around 40,000 cities in the world. So offering free wifi on short term will make your city innovative.

Do I want free wifi always? Well, perhaps not on a quiet holiday, but that's a matter of finding the off-switch of your devices isn't it? I probably won't spend a quiet holiday in the city anyway.

Looking forward to coming to the NYC again, this time with free wifi. I hope a lot of other cities will follow NYC's example soon.

The Commission of Audit Wants to Rip Up Australia's Social Contract

by Veronica Sheen, Monash University

The recommendations in the Commission of Audit’s report, which was released yesterday, would, if implemented, erode the fundamental building blocks of Australia’s social contract.

The social contract - the suite of policies, legislation, programs, health care and social services - has served to ensure that every Australian is able to have a basic but decent standard of living.

It has been carefully crafted over the 20th century since Federation.

The social contract has also served to ensure that extremes of poverty and inequality have been largely avoided, with some important exceptions.

Growth of the working poor

The Commission of Audit believes that the minimum wage should be set at 44% of average weekly earnings (AWE), which is a measure of average earnings across both part-time and full-time employment.

Using AWE as a benchmark, rather than full-time average earnings, significantly erodes the value of the minimum wage because it includes the wage of people who are either underemployed (around 7% of the Australian workforce) or who choose to work in part-time jobs.

If the Commission of Audit’s recommendation is implemented, the current minimum wage of A$622.20 per week would be reduced to A$488.90 per week.

Of great concern would be its effect on people in part-time, casual jobs. It would reduce the current hourly rate of $16.37 to $12.80 per hour (plus a casual loading). For many people, including the 10% of the female workforce that is underemployed, this would be a large loss of income.

The recommendation on the minimum wage would shift the foundation of adequacy in wage setting as enshrined in the 1907 Harvester Judgment. It would take us down the track of an American-style working poor with all the negative social and economic consequences for society.

Big holes in the social safety net

The recommendation for reducing the minimum wage also needs to be set in the context of recommendations across the income-support system. There was no attempt to address the low level of unemployment payments in the form of the Newstart Allowance.

However, the Commission of Audit wants to make life harder for people forced to live on these low payments. Currently, earned income between $100 and $250 per fortnight reduces fortnightly payment by 50 cents in the dollar. The Commission of Audit recommendation means it would be reduced by 75 cents in the dollar.

This undermines efforts of people to sustain themselves while on low Newstart payments through a small amount of part-time work. This new taper rate would apply across the board to all benefits and pensions.

If implemented, the recommendation means that there will be a greater disincentive for people to take on any work as it will be more trouble than what it’s worth.

It is exactly counter to the type of help a government would want to give people to get off income-support payments. It erodes people’s capacity to help themselves through paid work and will increase poverty. It could also extend participation in the grey or black economy.

The recommendation that young people on unemployment payments will eventually be required to move to areas with higher employment opportunities sounds like a bit of nasty social engineering.

Historically, young people have moved to areas with greater opportunities and they don’t need a government regulation to do so. But they do need jobs with decent wages to go to.

A squeeze on age pensions

The change to indexing arrangements in the age pension, as recommended by the Commission of Audit, will erode the pension’s value if implemented. The current arrangements ensure a modest but adequate standard of living for Australia’s older population.

The erosion of adequacy sets the ground for the pauperisation of some groups of older people, especially single women (a group highly reliant on the full age pension) and those in rental accommodation.

There is a case for high-value housing to be included in the assets test. However, there would need to be a very careful assessment of the level at which this is set.

The Commission of Audit also recommends raising the pension eligibility age to 70 to take effect by 2053, linking the pension eligibility age to life expectancy. This long lead time is better than a transition as early as 2030 as some reports suggested.

However, other factors still need to be taken into account, particularly the health status of workers in occupational and industry sectors where working to 70 will be very difficult to achieve.

Altogether, the recommendations across social welfare would create big holes in the Australian social safety net - one that has been carefully crafted since Federation. The fact that Australia has a well-targeted and efficient social welfare system is entirely overlooked.

The Commission of Audit, chaired by Tony Shepherd, ignored that Australia has a well-targeted and efficient social welfare system. AAP/Lukas Coch

The end of universal health coverage

The Commission of Audit recommendations on Medicare would fundamentally change the basis of our universal, publicly funded health system. The recommended GP co-payments are large at $15 and would be very hard on low-income earners. If implemented, this would undermine one of Medicare’s chief goals: to ensure everyone could see a doctor when they needed to.

However, it is also alarming that the Commission of Audit thinks that the well-off should be entirely out of Medicare for basic health services and should pay for them through the private system.

This recommendation would lead to Australia having a dual health-care system - one for the well-off and one for everyone else. This sets up the conditions for the higher-income groups to continually contest expenditures on a health system that they do not have access to themselves.

This is why a universal system works so well. It ensures social solidarity on the provision of health care. The Commission of Audit’s recommendation has the potential to set up the type of inequalities in health care combined with the exorbitant costs of the system that we see in the US.

Conclusions

The Commission of Audit has made much of the affordability of Australia’s core areas of social spending.

But it might also have considered whether Australia can afford to rip up its long-standing social commitments on decent wages, an adequate social safety net and a universal health-care system. The costs of many of its recommendations may ultimately be too high.


Veronica Sheen does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.