【アメリカ語勉強日記 12/23】

Finished reading Tyranny of merits. It was impressive and clearly analyze the disease of modern society. I will make a summary and critique soon (in Japanese.)
I think I’ve written my impression up to chapter 6. So here is a quick summary and my impression of Chapter 7. 

Chapter 7 prescribes a solution to today's meritocratic society. He proposed taxation (especially) on the financial industry as we do in alcohol or tax. He explains two reasons for doing this. 

First, while the financial industry is contributing to boost GDP, it doesn't contribute to growing real economy citing some research. Many people justify financial industries for their necessity to grow GDP. However, He points out something like HFT will never contribute to the real economy. 

Second, the taxing of financial industries is effective to show what is desirable work. By taxation on gambles or alcohols, we show some moral standards that drinking and doing poker is worthless than buying books or something. Today's American society imposes a lower tax on capital gain than normal labor. For example, Buffet said that his secretory pay more tax for his/her income than Buffet pays for income from an investment. By doing so, American society implies "money game is more valuable than normal labor".

Another Chapter 7 point is working is where people grow dignity and connection to the community and just redistributing the money won't heal the poor American whites. He shows that poor whites are deprived of dignity by this meritocratic society and the slur on poorly educated people is ignored. Actually the "death of despair " rate is much higher in non-college graduates.

For me, the second proposal by Sandel was not attractive. First, it is a bit unrealistic to apply a different tax based on the type of work. Second, I doubt it will help people to grow their dignity. At least, subsidiary on agriculture is really common but that does not look like to grow farmers pride. Probably, paying less tax is not the point. Forcing some workers to pay more tax is the point. I also think without harsh but strong investment culture, Americans cannot resist to Chinese strong economy.
However, I think GDP is the wrong KPI to run the country is a good point.