Documentaries on Economic Issues

Documentaries about economic issues are a favorite of mine because they explain in more understandable terms the very complicated economic forces that shape our society. Inequality is a big issue right now; just recently President Obama had declared it the defining issue of our time. In my day-to-day I do not interact with supremely wealthy people. My family and I have never been in that socioeconomic strata, and I am not well-connected with anyone who is. Therefore it was somewhat mind-blowing to realize the magnitude of wealth disparity while watching the documentary Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream. I did not realize just around 400 Americans own most of the wealth in the country, and that many of those 400 live in New York on Park Avenue. Just a few months ago I was interviewing for residency at a hospital on the upper east side of New York, and I distinctly remember an interviewer telling me I would never be rich as a doctor living in the city. Afterwards, a resident was giving the applicants a tour of her apartment close by to the hospital, and told us all the hospital was generous to subsidize rent which brought the cost of her 1bdr (without washer/dryer) down to 3,000+. I almost had a physical reaction to that number (to be fair my salary would have covered rent...just not food or anything else), and then vowed I would never live in the city even though it's the cultural center of the country and a fabulous place to visit. According to the Park Avenue, doctors making 450,000/yr, I think it was, could be considered to be on the bottom rungs of the top 1%, but those at the top of the 1% make billions.

Inequality For All, a documentary narrated by former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich, delved into a deeper analysis of the dangers of inequality. Much of the documentary shows Reich lecturing to his class at Berkely. During his lecture he likes to use a graph showing income inequality of the American people over time. I forget the axes, but the gist of the graph is that the periods of greatest income inequality were in the late 1920s and then again in the 2000s, which correspond to the great market crashes in our country's financial history. Meanwhile, the average income for American has not risen appreciably over the decades, but the average income for those in the top 1% has increased several fold. The movie makes a case that the rise in income inequality is a result of cutting taxes on the rich (Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney were taxed around 15% last year) and the dissolution of labor unions (spearheaded by Reagan), which contributed to diminished workers' rights. To add even greater emotional appeal to the movie, billionaires Nathan Hanauer and Warren Buffet themselves are filmed imploring the government to raise their own income tax rates. Hanauer goes as far to say that it is the middle class who drives the economy, since it is people in the middle who buy the most goods and services that generate demand and therefore business. He asserts that it is the middle class who are the true job creators of this economy.

Inequality For All, by and large tries to dispel the theory of trickle down economics by showing how the middle class is suffering with lower wages and lower buying power, while the wealthiest of the country are wealthier than ever. It seems to be warning against the establishment of an oligarchy of wealthy individuals who use their power to exploit consumers, shareholders, the average citizen. It is becoming increasingly difficult to move up socioeconomically in America, especially with rising costs in education. I know this firsthand; as a medical student, my education up to date has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not everyone can afford this, and despite this huge financial sacrifice there is no guarantee that you will have a job at the end of it as evidenced by our recent match results. I am so angered by the way our system works, and I believe it is utterly unacceptable for people not to have jobs after the 4 years of indentured servitude, I mean medical school/training, we just completed, but that's a different topic for a different post.

My two fundamental beliefs on human nature and society are as follows: 1) Absolute power corrupts absolutely (Baron Acton) 2) The social contract (Hobbes, Locke, etc). Therefore, power concentrated in a few number of individuals, in the form of communism or capitalism, will lead to societal instability. The problem with individual power is that it is human nature to lose accountability to the community once a person gains enough power. There is no stopping them from behaving in wantonly selfish ways. It makes sense to me that the role of government should be to monitor and check the powers of different institutions including its own governmental power as well.

Perhaps my favorite documentary I've seen in the past few days is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. How appropriate that Jeffrey Skillings favorite book is The Selfish Gene! The very same book that almost threw me into an existential crisis Sophmore year of college. I suppose that just goes to show you, Richard Dawkins, what happens when self-interest becomes the sole motivator of ones actions. Yes, you get Enron. When I was in Houston, I used to work in the old Enron buildings, and worked for a company spun off from Arthur Andersen, Enron's ill-fated accounting firm. And yet, I am ashamed to say I knew very little about the Enron Scandal until I watched this documentary. It was horrifying to hear how the Enron traders orchestrated the rolling blackouts in California by producing fake power outages to raise the price of electricity. They were given the power to artificially manipulate the supply-demand curve, and they did so without any regard to the people they were affecting. It's sickening to hear recorded conversations of the traders gleefully disrupting the power grid - positively sociopathic is the only way to describe their behavior. It just goes to show how quickly the moral compass is lost when power gets to people. They get caught up in their own power and disregard the rules of society, and, ironically, the customers / shareholders who gave them the power in the first place. Other human beings become mere pawns and obstacles in the all out struggle for power and money - the survival of the financial fittest.

Documentaries Mentioned:
1) Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream
2) Inequality For All
3) Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Writings: Food stuffs

I have a very low threshold for suffering these days, my own personal suffering that is. I spend my energy trying to live as a hedonist, which is actually kind of a challenge coming out of three years of academic asceticism. I think the one area of my life where I have truly allowed a reckless abandon to my heart's desire is with food. Oh man that makes me sound so fat. In my defense, I have been working out most days (and should you be concerned that I'm exercising too hard, that's a mix of light jogging and Zumba), which makes me positively voracious, almost frighteningly so. The idea at first with the increased fitness was to lose weight, but now I do it more to break up the monotony of the day and to get my heart racing about something. And then I go home and make chicken with caper cream sauce or fry up some smoked applewood bacon because bacon makes everything taste better or sometimes I just take a big scoop of Trader Joe's crunchy cookie butter and eat it straight out of the jar - okay I do that last one everyday. I love the richness of butter, it's creamy undertones and overtones, how it infuses and enhances without stealing the culinary show. In my mind every dish is made better with garlic and onions crisped in oil. I like to eat vegetables roasted in garlic oil and tossed with Parmesan; I like to eat my meats simmered for a long time in wine, peppers, and roux. I always thought if I ate only the food I made , I would be healthier...but I think I'm going to have to rethink that concept now that I've discovered my liberal policies on the use of butter and oils in my cooking.

Potatoes tossed in garlic, oil, and Parmesan - baked until nice and
crispy on the outside, then generously salted. 

I used to go to Whole Foods to buy its broccoli crunch salad. I thought it was delicious: a creamy blend of raw broccoli, cashews, raisins, red onions tossed in a mayo dressing. But yesterday I finally decided to make it myself, and discovered I can make it so much better than the Whole Foods version with the following Allrecipes recipe.

Ingredients for Broccoli Salad
4 slices smoked applewood bacon
1 head fresh broccoli, cut into bite size pieces
1/4 cup red onion, chopped (forgot this)
1/2 cup raisins
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons white sugar
2/3 to 3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sliced almonds

Notes: I only used 4 slices of bacon instead of 10 like the recipe called for. I fried them really crispy and crumbled them into the mayo dressing. I forgot to buy red onions and was so distraught about this that I was about to go out and buy some, but the dish ended up tasting pretty good without it so I didn't bother. The recipe called for a cup of mayo but I put in about 2/3 to 3/4 cups of light mayo and I felt like that was enough for a bunch of broccoli. I also cut up the broccoli stems and added them to the salad so as not to waste them. After mixing all the ingredients together, I let the flavors marinate together for a few hours. Really a creamy, yet refreshing salad. Also sliced almonds > cashews, and crispy bacon > soggy bacon, so take that Whole Foods! Would be great for company. Rating: 5 out of 5.

 Alyson's Broccoli Salad

CNN: In helping young black men, Obama helps all

When A&E was one of five channels I got on TV, I watched a lot of the cop show The First 48 Hours. The show follows police departments in different cities during the first 48 hours of a homicide investigation. I especially enjoyed watching when the homicide unit from my city was featured because most of the crimes on the show were committed in a neighborhood not 15 minutes from where I live. Like any sucker watching reality TV, I was intially mesmerized by the sensational audios and visuals, horrified by the senseless crimes and the murderers who committed them. I vowed never to set foot in that neighborhood. But the more I watched, the more I became disturbed for a different reason: I began to notice how youthful these criminals were; how innocent some of them seemed to be; how young, poor, black, and male they were. I felt wrong sympathizing with the "monster" as the cops stalked his facebook page or when they finally dragged in the sniffling 17 year old crying for his mom. It seemed to me that many of these evil murderers were boys playing with guns and getting mixed up in gangs and drugs. After awhile it was just really heartbreaking to see all this youthful energy and strength go to waste, expended on destruction instead of a future, and ultimately becoming a social liability. And's what's worse is that these kids themselves never expected to amount to anything more than this.

1 in 9 African American males will be incarcerated at some point in life. I feel this is a societal issue that demands attention. But like all things dealing with RACE, it is difficult to approach. That's why I applaud Obama's Brother's Keeper initiative to help young, black men defy the statistics. The details of the initiative are not hammered out, but education seems to be a main focus. The program is privately funded and calls on people to invest in poor, minority youth. More than money, it is asking for faith in these individuals to rise above the oppression and discrimination inherent in the circumstances they were born into. Guns are too easy to come by, while goals and a sense of self-efficacy are scarce. I believe more positive role models are needed, along with structured after-school programs, and community centers to acts as safe havens. The community itself must become empowered to fight against a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is not an easy task to ask of the most oppressed strata of American society. But once they believe they are better than poverty, the rest of society will have no choice but to believe as well.

In helping young black men, Obama helps all

My Brother's Keeper In The Community: Hopes And Aims At Ground Level

The First 48

Book Review: The Age of Atheism: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God, by Peter Watson

In the end, though, even the most fortunate among us must deal with what Freud called “everyday unhappiness.” That, it would seem, is the default human condition. 

"Who speaks of victory? Endurance is everything." - Rilke 

This book review of The Age of Atheism (Peter Watson) speaks to my state of mind of late. For the first time in nearly four years, I am not busy. I am not stressing out about some upcoming exam; I am not worried about impressing an attending; I am not choosing between eating dinner or studying more. You would think I should be happy with my new found freedom, but instead I find myself feeling somewhat empty and purposeless. Though arduous and unpleasant much of the time, my medical training has given me my life goals, values, and religion in a way. I was told this process was called, "discovering my calling". I struggled to remain spiritual through medical school, but faith became secondary to completing tasks and getting the grades. I was surrounded by a community that encouraged selfless devotion to being a "good" medical student. From what I've seen and what I've learned, that's not about being compassionate or patient focused; it's about memorizing more and working harder. And I wonder if God is dead because we decided to become him instead.  

I wish this wasn't so. Power in the hands of mortals can only be used as a tool of oppression; I never aimed to be an oppressor. Today a patient was upset because he said the doctors were acting like Gods, snubbing and ignoring him. Maybe we feel entitled to do so because of the responsibilities we bear...I am not proud of this. But these are the new idols I look up to and aspire to be. I almost cannot believe what I am saying, what I've become. 

I feel as though I'm losing my religion, and so in my Godless state this book may offer me some hope? 

The Age of Atheism: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God

NPR: The Secret Operation To Bring Nazi Scientists To America

This NPR story about Annie Jacobsen's book Operation Paperclip, named after the US government's task force to recruit Nazi scientists following the fall of The Third Reich, reemphasized to me how difficult it can be to balance human rights and scientific advancement. The story talks about Wernher von Braun, a Nazi scientist who later helped Americans build rockets that took man to the moon. In medicine there are countless diseases named after the Nazi physicians who discovered them, e.g. Wegner's syndrome. Now there is a push in medicine to rid these diseases of eponyms tied to Nazism, but the fact remains that we are still using the science discovered by these scientists who condoned senseless torture and genocide, and, even more horrifically, found a way to professionally gain from the suffering of others. It's easy to say in retrospect that the end does not justify the means but I feel sometimes science is blind to this bit of wisdom; in science progress is king.
Being in academia I have sometimes cringed at our treatment of animal and, yes, human subjects. Of course these are not transgressions commensurate with those of the Nazi scientists, and we do not break the law as defined the supposedly humane American legal system. And yet a moral compass inside me objects to the process of reducing human beings down to case studies. But as I become more entrenched in my career I find the voice of rationalization, supported by the community I have chosen to join, oftentimes drowns out any detraction from the end goal of medical progress. The idea is that medicine is for the greater good; it's to help people and society. Even on an individual level, medical training involves a huge amount of personal sacrifice, so maybe because of this the community feels that it is justified in sacrificing the personal freedoms of others for utilitarian aims. It is ever right to sacrifice personal freedoms? But isn't society just a collection of individuals who have agreed to sacrifice some of their personal freedoms for a collective better quality of life?
Sometimes it is difficult to have a conscience, and still be good and efficient in your career. I often am afraid of losing my values in the rat race.

The Secret Operation To Bring Nazi Scientists To America

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Small Dinner Get-together Menu:
One of the ways I try to stay grounded is to spend time with good friends, and one of my favorite things to do with my friends is to cook for them. I had a small girl's night recently and cooked up the following dishes; served with wine, TV, and good conversation.

1) Chicken Marsala with spaghetti and steamed broccoli 



Ingredients:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour for coating
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - pounded 1/4 inch thick
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup Marsala wine
1/4 cup cooking sherry

Notes: I followed the recipe pretty closely. The only things I did different were to decrease the butter by half (maybe increased oil as a result), use a whole box of baby portabello mushrooms, add more marsala wine for more sauce, and splash some heavy whipping cream at the end to thicken the sauce. Changes: Next time I will consider doubling the sauce, especially if I plan on serving with noodles or rice. My chicken was a bit dry; I think I cooked it too long during the browning phase. Will decrease the time for browning. Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Super easy, nice dish for company.

2) Coconut fudge ice cream with banana caramel sauce


Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup superfine sugar
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
4 bananas, peeled and halved lengthwise

Notes: Making caramel sauce is one of my favorite things to do, mostly because it smells so delicious to make. I made half the serving and used regular sugar (I have no idea what superfine sugar is). I think when I added the cream too quickly because I got a few bits of caramel candy in the sauce. Next time will add the cream slower. I used Bluebell's Coconut Ice Cream with Fudge. Rating: 4 out of 5. A nice, special treat. Not something to make everyday, but fun to do once in awhile.