Month: August 2016

What Do Economists Think About a Basic Income?

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In April, I wrote about a new 10-year experiment testing a universal basic income in Kenya. While I find arguments for UBI compelling (especially those made by Matt Zwolinski), it is worth looking what experts are saying about it. Charles Murray has argued that for the UBI to work, it must replace all other transfer systems and bureaucracies. But economists are not so sure.

Granted, this is mainly a response to Murray’s particular brand of UBI. But are there other reasons to be skeptical of UBI? Let’s consider the costs. The Economist reports,

An economy as rich as America’s could afford to pay citizens a basic income worth about $10,000 a year if it began collecting about as much tax as a share of GDP as Germany (35%, as opposed to the current 26%) and replaced all other welfare programmes (including Social Security, or pensions, but not including health care) with the basic-income payment.

Such a big jump in the size of the state should make anyone wary. Even if levied efficiently, on an immovable asset like land, tax rises on this scale would have unpredictable effects on growth and wealth creation. Yet an income of $10,000 is still extremely low: it would leave many poorer people, such as those who rely on the state pension, worse off than they are now—at the same time as billionaires started getting more money from the state.

A universal basic income would also destroy the conditionality on which modern welfare states are built. During an experiment with a basic-income-like programme in Manitoba, Canada, most people continued to work. But over time, the stigma against leaving the workforce would surely erode: large segments of society could drift into an alienated idleness. Tensions between those who continue to work and pay taxes and those opting out weaken the current system; under a basic income, they could rip the welfare state apart.

Lastly, a basic income would make it almost impossible for countries to have open borders. The right to an income would encourage rich-world governments either to shut the doors to immigrants, or to create second-class citizenries without access to state support.

The Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill lists two major objections to a UBI:

  1. “Robert Greenstein argues…that a UBI would actually hurt the poor by reallocating support up the income scale. His logic is inescapable: either we have to spend additional trillions providing income grants to all Americans or we have to limit assistance to those who need it most.”
  2. “Liberals have been less willing to openly acknowledge that a little paternalism in social policy may not be such a bad thing. In fact, progressives and libertarians alike are loath to admit that many of the poor and jobless are lacking more than just cash. They may be addicted to drugs or alcohol, suffer from mental health issues, have criminal records, or have difficulty functioning in a complex society. Money may be needed but money by itself does not cure such ills.”

She instead suggests the possibility of “unconditional payments along the lines of a UBI, but to phase it out as income rises.” But more fundamentally, she notes that “the biggest problem with a universal basic income may not be its costs or its distributive implications, but the flawed assumption that money cures all ills.”

As we wrestle over the best policy to assist the poor and needy, we must be willing to look at it from all angles.

 

Age & Rising Nationalism

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World Bank economist Harun Onder has a post over at the Brookings Institution on his brand new study on rising nationalism and older generations:

Much ink has been spilled against such premises of rising nationalism. But a curious observation remains to be explained: Why do nationalist arguments tend to resonate with old people? Take the recent case of Brexit. Only a quarter of youth (ages 18-24) voted for the “leave” camp. In comparison, six out of ten old people (ages 65+) wanted to leave. The youth were quick to announce the stark contrast in social media and clarify their position! So, what is it that the old know about globalization that the young fail to see?

In a recent study, my colleagues Richard Chisik and Dhimitri Qirjo and I tried to explain how demographic aging—an increase in the share of old people in the country—could shift the economic policy preferences in an economy. Because nationalist sentiments often involve objections to free trade and migration, we paid particular attention to those policies. We came up with three interesting results that may help us understand how aging and nationalism are linked.

These results include:

  1. An aging population is more dependent on imports: “To see this, note that the old consume more services like long-term care and the young consume more goods like smartphones. Therefore, the higher the share of old people in the population, the higher the demand for services, which cannot be imported, and the lower the demand for goods that can be imported.”
  2. When aging occurs, more firms move overseas if trade barriers are low: “If…the aging country imposes egregiously high tariffs on imports, smartphone producers might rethink their relocation decisions.”
  3. Nationalists may have a point about free trade at first glance, but more in-depth analysis proves otherwise: “From the nationalist point of view, erecting barriers at the border, be it made of concrete or import tariffs, may appear to make sense economically. However, this logic is terribly shortsighted: It is based on a static view of a world where actions cause no reactions. More specifically, it fails to recognize that when one country erects barriers its partners will do the same in response. In the end, a trade war may be triggered, only to be accompanied by a rising wave of protectionism, which would hurt the aging country more than the partner.”

Check it out.

Eternity Itself is Laid Bare

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"Family Hands" by melissafong
“Family Hands” by melissafong

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I want to start this post by pulling out a few quotes from different talks that were given during the Friday afternoon session of the October 1973 General Conference

The Church has constantly stressed the importance of the home.

– There Is Need for Repentance by ElRay Christiansen

As children of God, we cannot afford to forget our origin and destiny if we desire the realms of celestial glory.

– The Path to Eternal Life by Delbert L. Stapley

[O]ne cannot forget mother and remember God. One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one.

– “Behold Thy Mother” by Thomas S. Monson

I believe the second two quotes explain the first. “The Church has constantly stressed the importance of the home.” Why?

More often than not—among members and non-members alike—I think the answer is a kind of superficial association of Mormonism with good, old-fashioned, American values. Part of the history of our faith is that after brutal persecution and a period of hostile, mutual alienation, the Church worked incredibly hard to integrate into American culture and society. So Mormons are so family-centric because families are part of American values, and Mormons (at least in America) bought into the whole American dream from apple pies to patriotism to capitalism to family values.

I’m not saying that the pendulum swing between alienation and integration isn’t real, but I will say it obscures the fact that Mormonism’s emphasis on family goes much, much deeper. Our commitment to the ideals of family and home is not an affectation, it is at the core of our theology and central to our concept of life on Earth and in eternity.

The origin and destiny that Elder Stapley refers to are impossible to separate from family. We came from a home, a home where we had a loving Heavenly Father and a loving Heavenly Mother. Family and home are central to our origin. We are headed back home, to live with our Heavenly Parents again and—through the grace of Christ—to become them. Family and home are central to our destiny.

Elder (at the time) Monson’s paragraph is one that I can’t stop thinking about because it is such an arresting violation of the parallel that you expect. “God and mother,” not Heavenly Mother but earthly mothers, are “partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service” and are “as one.”

I think I’ll be working through the implications of this one for a long time, but what we can say immediately is that—once again—the entire Plan of Salvation is inseparable from the concept of home and family and that includes our sacred obligation here on Earth to emulate to the best we can the heavenly home we don’t even remember.

We’re members of the house of God. And here we are on Earth—blind, fallible, and broken—playing at house. Playing at god. Nothing could be more absurd. Nothing could be more serious.

I’ll leave with one more quote:

The Spirit of the Lord will not dwell nor abide in a home where there is constant bickering, quarreling, arguing, discord, or disharmony… A happy Home is where the wife is treated like a queen and the husband is treated like a king.

– There Is Need for Repentance by ElRay Christiansen

If that is the aspiration we’re striving for down here, then we can also understand this much about our hidden heavenly home: that’s what it was like. We all know that there was discord in Heaven on at least one occasion, but our home before this life was defined as a place where “[Heavenly Mother] is treated like a queen and [Heavenly Father] is treated like a kind.” That is how they regard each other. That is how they treat each other. That is the first home that we knew.

In those rare, beautiful moments of transient bliss when pure family love and harmony are revealed for a moment or two through a mundane, everyday experience, eternity itself is laid bare before us.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

“Marriage Brings Adjustments”

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

A couple years ago, I highlighted President Henry B. Eyring presentation at The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Interreligious Colloquium at Vatican City. Julie Smith at Times & Seasons had an excellent insight about the following quote from President Eyring:

[My wife’s] capacity to nurture others grew in me as we became one. My capacity to plan, direct, and lead in our family grew in her as we became united in marriage. I realize now that we grew together into one—slowly lifting and shaping each other, year by year. As we absorbed strength from each other, it did not diminish our personal gifts.

Smith notes,

What I hear him saying is that men and women come to marriage with a different set of roles/characteristics,  but one goal of marriage is for them to teach each other and to adopt each other’s roles. I sometimes hear in LDS venues a rather opposite idea–one I find theologically problematic inasmuch as it suggests that men and women should maintain separate characteristics, something I find incompatible with both the idea of the perfection of Christ and his ability to serve as an example for all both men and women, as well as the idea of men and women striving to themselves become perfected. His thinking here can be a great bridge from older teachings about gender difference to a newer vision where those differences can still be acknowledged but won’t be seen as limiting. I especially like his idea that, as he took on nurturing and his wife took on leading, it didn’t diminish either of them. (Contra language we sometimes hear bemoaning the loss of femininity and masculinity.)

Smith’s observation reminds me of a point made by Texas A&M professor and fellow Latter-day Saint Valerie M. Hudson regarding the telos (“end,” “purpose,” “goal”) of marriage:

What we [Mormons] understand from our doctrine is that the telos of marriage is to ground every human family in real, lived, embodied gender equality.  And then, as a consequence, all reproduction would occur only within that context of gender equality.  If the ideal were lived, then every son and daughter of God would be born into a family that lived gender equality, and thus each would learn how to form such a relationship when they themselves came of age.  Reproduction is the fruit, not the root, of what God intended in establishing marriage. 

That is why it doesn’t matter who’s fertile, and whether a marriage of infertile people is a marriage is beside the point.  The test of whether you have a marriage or not is whether it is gender-equal monogamy.[ref]For Hudson, companionate heterosexual monogamous marriage is a matter of gender equality and human peace incarnate.[/ref]

I was reminded of this as I read from Elder Henry D. Taylor’s Oct. 1973 talk. In it, he states,

Marriage brings adjustments, because each has his or her own personality. Reared in homes with varying backgrounds, marriage naturally will require the making of adjustments.

Marriage, my beloved young brothers and sisters, should not be just taken for granted. It must be worked at, but realize that you can have the kind of marriage that you earnestly desire and for which you are willing to work. Marriage will require giving and taking; it will mean sharing, because life was meant to be shared. A happy and successful marriage means forgetting oneself and thinking of ways in which to make one’s companion happy. It might be well each day for the husband to think, “What can I do today to make Mary happy?” And Mary should say to herself, “What can I do today to make John happy?” A happy Home is where the wife is treated like a queen and the husband is treated like a king. And so, it is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

Later, he says,

President Stephen L Richards, a former counselor in the First Presidency, once aptly remarked: “In the case of marital disagreement, which may lead to separation, the proper remedy is not divorce, but repentance—repentance usually on the part of both husband and wife, repentance for both acts committed and harsh words which have made a ‘hell’ instead of a ‘heaven’ out of the home.”

In order for a married couple to make a “heaven” out of their home, they must realize that repentance, love, faithfulness, humility, and forgiveness are basic essentials in achieving this noble and lofty goal.

A serene home must also be a place where the Spirit of the Lord will dwell and abide. The Spirit of the Lord will not dwell nor abide in a home where there is constant bickering, quarreling, arguing, discord, or disharmony.

Joseph Smith’s famous line about being a “rough stone rolling down [from] a [high] mountain” with “all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there” is pertinent here. As we adapt, repent, and love within our marriages, we are polished and refined. We take on the positive attributes of the other. This is why the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism is friendship and heaven is made up of people: they make us into the gods we are meant to be.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

Piketty vs. Evidence

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Economist Thomas Piketty, author of “Capital in the 21st Century,” says rising inequality requires wealth taxes to redistribute gains. A new study says historical evidence challenges his theory.
Piketty

The Wall Street Journal reported on a new IMF study analyzing Piketty’s hypothesis “that income inequality has risen because returns on capital—such as profits, interest and rent that are more gleanings of the rich than the poor—outpaced economic growth.” IMF economist Carlos Góes

tested the thesis against three decades of data from 19 advanced economies. “I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests.” In fact, for three-quarters of the countries he studied, inequality actually fell when capital returns accelerated faster than output. Those findings support previous work by Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and political scientist James Robinson, now of the University of Chicago, suggesting Mr. Piketty’s thesis was far too simplistic for the complexities of real-world economies that are affected by politics and technology. Mr. Góes says his study also provides evidence that Mr. Piketty’s assumption that saving rates remain stable is flawed. Rather, the data shows changes in the savings rate are likely to offset most of the effects of an increase in capital share of national income.

I’ve written about the criticisms of Piketty before. They seem to be piling up.

Good Boss, Bad Boss: Lecture by Robert Sutton

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Stanford’s Robert Sutton is a favorite of mine among management experts. I’ve been a fan of his work ever since reading his HBR article “More Trouble Than They’re Worth” and the book-length version The No-Asshole Rule. His book Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst is another well-researched, but highly enjoyable read. Sutton offers tremendous advice for those in leadership positions. These include:

  • “Don’t crush the bird”: find the balance between micromanaging and undermanaging.
  • “Grit gets you there”: perseverance toward long-term goals.
  • “Small wins are the path”: break down big challenges and long-term goals into smaller, achievable goals.
  • “Beware the toxic tandem”: be aware of how others perceive you and avoid selfish behavior.
  • “Got their backs”: protect and defend your people.

Sutton highlights this excellent, one-page summary:

You can see a lecture by Sutton below.

 

Raising the Drawbridges

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“Is Poland’s government right-wing or left-wing?” asks a recent article in The Economist.

Its leaders revere the Catholic church, vow to protect Poles from terrorism by not accepting any Muslim refugees and fulminate against “gender ideology” (by which they mean the notion that men can become women or marry other men).

Yet the ruling Law and Justice party also rails against banks and foreign-owned businesses, and wants to cut the retirement age despite a rapidly ageing population. It offers budget-busting handouts to parents who have more than one child. These will partly be paid for with a tax on big supermarkets, which it insists will somehow not raise the price of groceries.

This represents a new kind of political divide; one that is “less and less between left and right, and more and more between open and closed. Debates between tax-cutting conservatives and free-spending social democrats have not gone away. But issues that cross traditional party lines have grown more potent. Welcome immigrants or keep them out? Open up to foreign trade or protect domestic industries? Embrace cultural change, or resist it?” As the British head of YouGov noted, the political ideologies are either “drawbridge up” or “drawbridge down.” The American context of all this is particularly depressing:

In America the traditional party of free trade and a strong global role for the armed forces has just nominated as its standard-bearer a man who talks of scrapping trade deals and dishonouring alliances. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” says Donald Trump. On trade, he is close to his supposed polar opposite, Bernie Sanders, the cranky leftist who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. And Mrs Clinton, though the most drawbridge-down major-party candidate left standing, has moved towards the Trump/Sanders position on trade by disavowing deals she once supported.

The two main forces driving the “drawbridge up” view “are economic dislocation and demographic change.” In turns out that “many mid- and less-skilled workers in rich countries feel hard-pressed. Among voters who backed Brexit, the share who think life is worse now than 30 years ago was 16 percentage points greater that the share who think it is better; Remainers disagreed by a margin of 46 points. A whopping 69% of Americans think their country is on the wrong track, according to RealClearPolitics; only 23% think it is on the right one.” It’s also true that

Rich countries today are the least fertile societies ever to have existed. In 33 of the 35 OECD nations, too few babies are born to maintain a stable population. As the native-born age, and their numbers shrink, immigrants from poorer places move in to pick strawberries, write software and empty bedpans. Large-scale immigration has brought cultural change that some natives welcome—ethnic food, vibrant city centres—but which others find unsettling. They are especially likely to object if the character of their community changes very rapidly.

This does not make them racist. As Jonathan Haidt points out in the American Interest, a quarterly review, patriots “think their country and its culture are unique and worth preserving”. Some think their country is superior to all others, but most love it for the same reason that people love their spouse: “because she or he is yours”. He argues that immigration tends not to provoke social discord if it is modest in scale, or if immigrants assimilate quickly.

There is an optimistic side to all this:

Although the drawbridge-uppers have all the momentum, time is not on their side. Young voters, who tend to be better educated than their elders, have more open attitudes. A poll in Britain found that 73% of voters aged 18-24 wanted to remain in the EU; only 40% of those over 65 did. Millennials nearly everywhere are more open than their parents on everything from trade and immigration to personal and moral behaviour. Bobby Duffy of Ipsos MORI, a pollster, predicts that their attitudes will live on as they grow older.

As young people flock to cities to find jobs, they are growing up used to heterogeneity. If the Brexit vote were held in ten years’ time the Remainers would easily win. And a candidate like Mr Trump would struggle in, say, 2024.

But in the meantime, the drawbridge-raisers can do great harm. The consensus that trade makes the world richer; the tolerance that lets millions move in search of opportunities; the ideal that people of different hues and faiths can get along—all are under threat. A world of national fortresses will be poorer and gloomier.

Your True Identity as a Human Being

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Your True Identity as a Human Being

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

President Harold B. Lee kicked off the October 1973 General Conference with a talk on Friday morning called Understanding Who We Are Brings Self-Respect. The talk was not what I expected at all. “My beloved brothers and sisters and friends who are listening by radio and television, may I now for a few moments make some comments about a condition which is of great concern to all of us today,” he began. And of course, you’re expecting something about wickedness. And, in a way, you’d be right. But he expressed it in a way that certainly brought me up short: “the shocking lack of self-respect.”

I stopped and thought for a while at the end of the first paragraph. And I decided it did make sense. After all, one of the examples of this lack of self-respect was “permissiveness.” As a parent, it’s easy to understand that just allowing your kids to do whatever they want is not a sign of love, or of respect, or of regard for them as human beings. As a parent, if you care for your kids than you try to erect structure and boundaries and routines to keep them healthy, to keep them safe, and to help them learn and grow. Discipline is a sign of regard. If for children, then why not for the self?

And if that’s true, than the kind of person who indulges in sating their every whim and desire is not, after all, acting out of high self-regard. They are, perversely, respecting their appetites at the expense of respecting their true selves.

So the talk won me over, but I couldn’t help but remain surprised all the same. At some points, the language about self-respect almost seemed Randian: the archest of right-wing avatars. And yet within paragraphs a quote like “The first thing to be done to help a man to moral regeneration is to restore if possible his self-respect,” would seem as bleeding-heart as they come. The talk even includes the phrase–not as common in the 1970s as it later became, I think–“self-esteem.”

It’s just another solid reminder that prophets–when they are speaking as prophets–don’t see the world the way we see it. We interpret the world according to our preconceptions and assumptions, and that means we can’t help but see what happens around us as part of a pre-existing narrative. Our politics, our tastes, our personal histories: none of us can prevent these things from traveling outside of ourselves and becoming a part of our perception of the outside world.

Prophets are human, too, and they have the same limitations. But when a prophet prophecies, I believe they catch a hold of a different vision and step outside of their individual perspectives. I think that’s part of what makes them so hard to understand, not to mention disconcerting. It’s also what makes them so important to listen to.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

Forgiveness, Boundaries, and Reconciliation

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors (Matt. 6:12).

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us (Luke 11:4).

I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men (D&C 64:10).

Forgiveness is a topic that I think most Mormons struggle with. What does forgiveness actually mean? What does it look like in practice? Is forgiving the same as forgetting? How does one balance boundaries with that concept of forgiveness, especially those who have suffered violence and abuse? Or are boundaries and forgiveness not mutually exclusive?

There has been a fair amount of research on forgiveness. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley offers this helpful explanation:

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. Just as important as defining what forgiveness is, though, is understanding what forgiveness is not. Experts who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses. Though forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship, it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person who harmed you, or release them from legal accountability. Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind and frees him or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative feelings. In that way, it empowers you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting that pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life.

These findings coincide with Elder Marion D. Hanks’ October 1973 talk: “What is our response when we are offended, misunderstood, unfairly or unkindly treated, or sinned against, made an offender for a word, falsely accused, passed over, hurt by those we love, our offerings rejected? Do we resent, become bitter, hold a grudge? Or do we resolve the problem if we can, forgive, and rid ourselves of the burden? The nature of our response to such situations may well determine the nature and quality of our lives, here and eternally.” Elder Hanks recognizes that forgiveness, at least in part, is about our own well-being. “But not only our eternal salvation depends upon our willingness and capacity to forgive wrongs committed against us,” he says. “Our joy and satisfaction in this life, and our true freedom, depend upon our doing so. When Christ bade us turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give our cloak to him who takes our coat, was it to be chiefly out of consideration for the bully, the brute, the thief? Or was it to relieve the one aggrieved of the destructive burden that resentment and anger lay upon us?” Hanks concludes, “God help us to rid ourselves of resentment and pettiness and foolish pride; to love, and to forgive, in order that we may be friends with ourselves, with others, and with the Lord.” We should always remember: “Christ gave his life on a cross; and on that cross he fully, freely forgave.”

Reconciliation is the ultimate purpose and intention of forgiveness. This seems to be an unavoidable conclusion. Forgiveness mends relationships and makes them sustainable. But forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Relationships are not individualistic, but by definition involve others and their choices. Relationships require trust, boundaries, etc. The violation of boundaries and the erosion of trust may make reconciliation in some instances unlikely. But the release of anger and resentment opens the doorway for relational and personal healing. It can be a fountain of empathy, compassion, and generosity. In short, this “ultimate form of love” can help us align ourselves with the Master we’ve chosen to follow.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

 

A Little Pick-Me-Up on Violence in the World

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A number of terrorist incidents have taken place in this year alone. This doesn’t even begin to cover the controversies over police shootings (both of civilians and officers) or the number of violent episodes that go unnoticed by the public and unreported by the media. With the constant news of blood and horror on this earth, it is easy to think that the world is ready to implode. However, here is a little data-based pick-me-up on the state of violence in the world. In response to Hannity’s disbelief over President Obama’s speech at the White House Summit on Global Development toward the end of July, Reason writes,

Obama has made similar remarks before, and what he’s talking about is the fact, documented by Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, that humans are, broadly speaking, less likely to die violent deaths than ever before in recorded history. Contrary to what Hannity apparently thinks, that long-term trend—which includes deaths by war, genocide, terrorism, and other forms of mass killing as well ordinary homicide—is unaltered by whatever Fox News report happens to be uppermost in Hannity’s mind at any given moment. Updated graphs that Pinker published last year show, among other salutary trends, that the U.S. murder rate has fallen sharply since the early 1990s, that the worldwide death rate from genocide and other mass killings fell from 10 per 1 million people in 1996 to 1 in 2013, that the number of battle deaths per 100,000 people in 2013 was close to the all-time low since 1945, and that the number of civil wars worldwide, although up since 2010, was far lower in 2013 than in the ’90s. 

Looking specifically at deaths from terrorist attacks in Western Europe, which Hannity sees as a refutation of Obama’s claim, there was a spike last year, but the total was still lower than in 2004 and far lower than the averages for the 1970s and ’80s. Worldwide, according to a 2015 report from the Institute for Economics and Peace, the total number of deaths from terrorism has been rising since 2011, with five countries—Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria—accounting for 78 percent of those deaths in 2014. But deaths from terrorism represent a small percentage of all deaths by homicide: less than 3 percent worldwide in 2012, based on data from the United Nations and the National Center for Counterterrorism. They represent an even smaller share of all deaths, and for Americans the risk of dying in a terrorist attack pales beside the risk of dying from a host of quotidian causes that get much less attention from Fox News. 

So, the next time you feel an overwhelming sense of despair regarding the direction of the world, check the numbers. You might feel better.