Fiscal preferences and fiscal knowledge at the local level

In this article some results are reported from a large scale survey organized by the authorities of a Belgian municipality. The local character of the survey and the fact that it was organized by the municipality itself are interesting features of our data base. The research questions were: How is knowledge on fiscal matters spread over the population?; Who wants an expansion of the public sector?; What taxes are the least impopular? It is concluded that predictions based on the (narrow) economic and on the psychological approach both meet with varying success. It is argued that most results fit into a model in which people try to maximize their own, subjectively defined, self-interest, but are constrained by external factors in the social and psychological environment. This approach works remarkably well to interpret the effect of the income variable.     

Abortion,women and national development: the Nigeria experience

The author argues that, if women have the right of self-determination, it is immoral of society to withhold or limit women's access to abortion services in Nigeria. Morality must pertain to society as well as women. In Nigeria, the abortion argument tends to focus on the rights of the fetus or the third party's interest. The abortion issue must involve understanding the rationale that is used by abortion-seeking women. Denial of access to abortion services dehumanizes women and reduces growth in national development. Women carry the burden of responsibility associated with child bearing and rearing. Unwanted pregnancies impose severe psychological, physical, social, and medical dangers on women. Impaired psychological and physical illness creates pain and suffering and limits productivity. "Doing good" is not necessarily accomplished by either abortion or unwanted childbearing. Society both discourages the taking of a human life and supports the health of its citizens, many of whom are women. A child brought into this world who is not adequately taken care of will be a burden to society. When society pursues its own self-interest in preventing abortion as a choice for women, then society becomes immoral and selfish. A woman pursuing her own self-interest is not necessarily immoral. The decision becomes immoral if the woman acts against the wishes of the father. Morality is not necessarily the opposite of the promotion of one's self-interest. Women who seek to terminate a pregnancy for health reasons seek a virtuous option of enhancing the well-being of every individual in society. The right to life for the fetus is very different from the right to self-determination for the abortion-seeking woman. When the Yoruba define a wife as a servant to the husband, the Yoruba deny women personhood. Women know best what serves their self-interest and that of society.     

Exploiting one’s power with a guilty conscience: An experimental investigation of self-serving biases

In our experimental investigation powerful managers use their discretion power to their own advantage and admit that their behavior is unfair. This contradicts studies stressing self-serving biases. Self-serving biases are often identified by asking people what fairness standards apply in situations with alternative income distributions. Nevertheless, when the response to a question is connected with a distributional decision, only the reply, but not necessarily the fairness standard, is biased. Social preference models envisage decisions as a compromise between self-interest and social concerns (norms). A model-based estimation of social concerns, as provided by this paper, is capable of identifying different sorts of self-serving biases. Higher income triggers higher fairness scores, but there are no indications that a relatively higher income compared to the peers is generally perceived as fairer than a relatively lower income.     

Creative work and health

Employees with greater control over their own activities have better health. People who are employed give up some control over their own activities for pay, yet employment is associated with better health. Perhaps paid jobs provide resources for productive self-expression that make up for the loss of autonomy. We find that paid employment is associated with lower autonomy but greater creativity of one's work or other main daily activities. Both have positive associations with health. Creativity's association is larger more statistically significant, and found in follow-up models as well as cross-sectional ones. The health advantage of being at the 60th versus the 40th percentile of creative work is equivalent to that of being 6.7 years younger or having two more years of education or 15 times greater household income. Education reduces the amount of autonomy lost in employment. Managerial authority and occupational attributes influence autonomy and creativity but otherwise have little or no association with health.     

Self-interest and the theory of action

The concept of self-interest remains underdeveloped in sociology although central to economics. Recent methodological and social trends render sociological indifference to the concept untenable. The term has enjoyed historical predominance in the West since the sixteenth century. While it is seen in modern economics as a singular motivating force, Adam Smith regarded self-interest in economic action as necessarily moderated by sympathy. In addition to its problematic economic conceptualization self-interest has an experiential basis in unequal power relations. An alternative to the concept of self-interest is presented by Amartya Sen in his account of commitment; its inconsistencies, however, render Sen's statement unsatisfactory. Differences between present and future interests indicate that the distinction between self-interested and other-interested action is not sustainable.     

The development of collective moral leadership among parents through education organizing

It is often assumed that parent participation in schools is primarily based on self-interest and that this is a frequent source of contention between parents and teachers. This article examines the experiences of members of the Jamaica Plain Parent Organizing Project (JP-POP), a community-based organization in Boston, and reveals that some parents have learned to act beyond their individual self-interest and to organize on behalf of the entire community as a result of their participation. The authors present qualitative data from interviews with JP-POP members to ascertain the motivations behind their initial decisions to become involved in education, the benefits they derive from their participation, and the gradual evolution of narrow definitions of self-interest to more communal understandings. Finally, they draw out implications for the potential capacity enhancement of community-based organizations in education at both the institutional and district levels.     

Mythology, Joseph Campbell, and the socioeconomic conflict

This article shows that the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell indicates a solution to what might be called the socioeconomic conflict: the conflict between self-interest and the individual's need to be part of a community of shared values. That solution is to “follow your bliss” or the wisdom of your own heart rather than the dictates of some impersonal social system. This rule brings an individual the greatest possible happiness while at the same time it revitalizes his or her community of heroes following their bliss whose values are that of personal creativity and integrity. Cambell's own scholarship exemplified the ideals of socioeconomics since he considered himself a generalist who read widely in many fields looking for and finding a transcendent message.     

“My God,What Am I Gonna Say?”: Class Reunions as Social Control

Autobiographical occasions are perceived as an apportunity to constitute an identity, to lay claim to one's own life, to the right to tell one's own story. Using high school class reunions as a case study, I argue that those social moments that require accounts of one's life also generate a major threat to the identities constructed, by constituting an informal process of social control. The requirement to narrate one's life story and cope with its limits is a force through which the social order is confirmed and one's identity within that order defined and assigned. While reunions create a community and an opportunity to speak up, they generate at the same time classification, hierarchy, and evaluation processes that might not otherwise appear in modern society.     

Die Gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz der Sozialhilfe

This article examines on which grounds the German population is willing to support a social policy program targeted towards minorities such as social assistance. Using our own survey data and applying linear regression analysis, we test several hypotheses concerning the influence of self-interest, justice- orientations, and victim-blaming attitudes towards welfare recipients on two indicators of support for social assistance. A central finding is that the effects can be interpreted in line with the concept of a “moral economy”, in that the justice orientations of the respondents as well as their attitudes towards welfare recipients correspond with the norms incorporated in the institutional architecture of social assistance.     

On 'class exploitation' in Canada†

Two things make Carl Cuneo's recent (1978) paper on 'rates of exploitation' in Canada remarkable. The first is the magnitudes involved. Cuneo's preferred measure of surplus value (RSV₇), for instance, shows a more than seven-fold increase from 1917 to 1971, indicating a quite spectacular shift in favour of capital in relative income shares in Canadian manufacturing industry. The second thing that makes Cuneo's paper remarkable is the extent to which his findings are inconsistent with findings on income shares reported by 'bourgeois' economists. In a survey of the literature Pen (1971: 164 ff.), for example, reports that in the advanced capitalist economies, the share of income accruing to labour in the economy as a whole has increased substantially and that even if one confines one's attention to the private sector the share of manual workers has not decreased but remained more or less constant in spite of the relative decline in their numbers.¹ Now, it is true that the studies reviewed by Pen approach the problem of income shares with the categories of 'bourgeois' economics while Cuneo approaches the problem with what he regards as Marxist categories, and it is conceivable that this might have accounted for the radical difference in the findings. But still, differences of such magnitude in the trends reported in the shares of capital and labour both give pause and urge a close scrutiny.     

The changing national policy system: complexity, Medicare, and implications for aging groups

Changes in congressional processes, health agendas, and competitive positions of physician and hospital groups in the 1980s have produced important setbacks for such group interests within Medicare. Though united and successful in opposing Carter's 1977-79 hospital cost-containment proposals, these groups were subjected to severe new limits on hospital reimbursements under the 1982 budget reconciliation act. Thereafter, problems in protecting their interests continued or increased. Disagreements among hospital groups (e.g., the American Hospital Association and the former Federation of American Hospitals) surfaced over the Prospective Payment System introduced in 1983. In 1984, Congress instituted a freeze on physicians' Medicare fees despite AMA opposition. This projected narrow self-interest, thus decreasing the AMA's credibility. Further cost restrictions were imposed in 1985-86 budget acts. The problems of these organizations indicate that if aging groups are to protect their own stake in Medicare in the new political context, they must be particularly concerned with unity, credibility, and long-term perspectives.     

Equality of opportunity and the distribution of long-run income in Sweden

Equality of opportunity is an ethical goal with almost universal appeal. The interpretation taken here is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if it is the case that what individuals accomplish, with respect to some desirable objective, is determined wholly by their choices and personal effort, rather than by circumstances beyond their control. We use data for Swedish men born between 1955 and 1967 for whom we measure the distribution of long-run income, as well as several important background circumstances, such as parental education and income, family structure and own IQ before adulthood. We address the question: in Sweden, given its present constellation of social policies and institutions, to what extent is existing income inequality due to circumstances, as opposed to ‘effort’? Our results suggest that several circumstances, importantly both parental income and own IQ, are important for long-run income inequality, but that variations in individual effort account for the most part of that inequality.     

The Changing National Policy System

Changes in congressional processes, health agendas, and competitive positions of physician and hospital groups in the 1980s have produced important setbacks for such group interests within Medicare. Though united and successful in opposing Carter's 1977-79 hospital cost-containment proposals, these groups were subjected to severe new limits on hospital reimbursements under the 1982 budget reconciliation act. Thereafter, problems in protecting their interests continued or increased. Disagreements among hospital groups (e.g., the American Hospital Association and the former Federation of American Hospitals) surfaced over the Prospective Payment System introduced in 1983. In 1984, Congress instituted a freeze on physicians' Medicare fees despite AMA opposition. This projected narrow self-interest, thus decreasing the AMA's credibility. Further cost restrictions were imposed in 1985-86 budget acts. The problems of these organizations indicate that if aging groups are to protect their own stake in Medicare in the new political context, they must be particularly concerned with unity, credibility, and long-term perspectives.     

Ist mein Einkommen gerecht?

Based on the “Status-Value-Theory”, “A New Theory of Distributive Justice” and the exchange theories it can be concluded that individuals evaluate their own income as being just or unjust according to the average reference incomes, income inequality and their social position within an income hierarchy. In order to analyze this issue, a web-based survey with an integrated experimental set-up was carried out in the beginning of 2012. The analysis of the experimental data of 906 participants shows that the respondents based their income justice evaluations on average incomes of people with same professional qualifications and supports the “Status-Value-Theory”. Evidence for the impact of the income distribution among the reference group on justice evaluations, as stated by “A New Theory of Distributive Justice”, could only be found for respondents ranked at the lower end of the income scale. A similar pattern could be found for the effect of a respondent’s social position on his or her income justice evaluations that was expected on the basis of the exchange theories. The social position affects the income justice evaluations only in case that incomes are sufficiently unequally distributed. This article may also be of interest to readers who are rather interested in methodological issues than in the topic of income justice. The stimuli used in this study were designed by taking into account the information provided by the respondents (dynamic stimuli).     

More than self-interest: Why different classes have different attitudes to income inequality

The connection between social class and political preferences is among the most well established in the social sciences. This association is typically taken as prima facie evidence of economic self-interest: Classes hold different attitudes, values, and party preferences because they have different economic interests. However, this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. In this article, we use survey data from 18 West European countries to examine why classes differ on a central aspect of political preferences, namely their views on the desirability of income inequality. We find that only a moderate proportion of differences between employee classes in support for redistribution can be accounted for by contemporary differences in resources and risks; differences in economic interests to some degree account for the anti-redistributive preferences of the professional middle classes compared with the working class. However, the preferences of the self-employed have a different explanation; autonomy is a better explanation of the right-wing preferences of the self-employed compared with the working class.     

What's Wrong with Being Poor? The Problems of Poverty,as Young People Describe them

This article explores how young people living in low‐income neighbourhoods problematise their own lives, using data generated as part of a participatory policy project with five groups of young people, aged 11–21. Three common problems were identified; housing, education and crime, as well as one common silence around their own agency. This silence is perhaps substituted by a focus on collective agency and politics, suggesting that perhaps young people can see poverty as a more collective problem than previous research may highlight.     

Mary Renault's The Charioteer: The Boys in the Theban Band

The author uses Mary Renault's novel, The Charioteer: A Modern Love Story, as a moral and ethical guide to life since he first read it in 1959. This essay explores the values--such as acceptance of one's gayness, loyalty to one's friend/lover/partner, and believing in the possibility of love, courage, endurance, and survival--that have directed his life since first reading Renault's book.     

Nonprofit Lobbying Strategy: Challenging or Championing the Conventional Wisdom?

Research on nonprofit lobbying conceives of strategy in various ways. This article presents a more comprehensive view encompassing four components: lobbying motivation (lobbying for organizational or self-interest as well as for societal benefit), concentration (lobbying in a narrow versus wide range of policy domains), type (lobbying policymakers directly or indirectly), and target (lobbying different levels of government). Based on the analysis of the population of nonprofit organizations that registered to lobby in the State of North Carolina in 2010 (N = 402), findings demonstrate the complexity and distinctiveness of nonprofit lobbying strategies: Most nonprofits register to lobby for organizational and societal benefit, in multiple policy domains, directly and indirectly, and at several levels of government. The article discusses the findings and their implications and suggests a research agenda on nonprofit lobbying strategy that would incorporate the roots of these strategic choices.     

Judgment of distributional inequality in networks

Why is income inequality perceived and judged differently across a society? Following the social comparison theory, one reasonable explanation suggests that individuals are exposed to different local reference groups in social networks. We design a vignette experiment to study how income distributions are judged by individuals structured in networks. The experiment shows that perceptions of distributional inequality are high when network ties are unequally distributed across individuals, suggesting that network inequality contributes to distributional inequality. Beyond the network effect, inequality judgment is found to be driven by a mix of self-interest and other-regarding preference: people are in favor of group-beneficial income distributions wherein they rank high, but not extremely high, in the group. It shows that people care about not only their relative affluence, but also where others stand in the distribution.     

Einkommenseinbu?en durch Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland:

The article analyses the consequences of unemployment for earned income after reentering employment. The magnitude of these effects and their changes over the life course are described on the basis of existing research as well as own empirical analyses. The latter are based on administrative data from the German Pension Insurance (Versicherungskontenstichprobe VSKT 2006). Since previous studies differ with regard to both, sample definitions and the applied methods of causal analysis, our own empirical analysis of age- and gender-specific effects is based upon various methods of analysis while using a common dataset. We can show that income and wage penalties due to unemployment increase significantly with age. Moreover, women??s overall financial losses are higher than men??s, especially in the youngest age group.