Asserting Kindness

Maybe it’s just my shameless faith in the power of love (yes, I grew up in the 80's listening to Huey Lewis), but recently the solution to all my problems seems to be kindness. Not just as an abstract ideal, but as an active choice.

Kindness is a de facto meme in scientific research and popular culture— from “random acts of kindness” to the Dalai Lama’s Center for Compassion and Altruisim Research and Education at Stanford Medical School.

Dacher Keltner of U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, argue that a growing body of scientific research shows that human evolution is wired to reward acts of kindness.

In his critically acclaimed The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs traces the life of an African American boy from Newark who receives a full scholarship to Yale, only to succumb to the drug trade and addiction. A key thread is importance of compassion — and its alternately stark and subtle absence in our criminal justice system, our neighborhoods, andour elite schools.

In the New York Times best-selling youth novel Wonder, by R.J. Palaccio, a boy with a dramatic cranio-facial anomaly teaches an entire community about kindness through his example. Palaccio, quoting Christoper Nolan, cites kindness in reverential tones:

“It was at moments such as these that Joseph recognized the face of God in human form. It glimmered in their kindness to him, it glowed in their keenness, it hinted in their caring, indeed it caressed in their gaze.”

Maybe its because of my belief in the power of kindness, then, that I am saddened by decidedly unkind rhetoric in our nation’s political debates, such as the current attacks on President Obama’s trade agenda.

I feel compassion for our President. Leadership is lonely. It sucks sometimes. And for what it’s worth, I am so looking forward to seeing what he will do post-presidency, when he can freely leverage his passion, talent, and influence to help Americans, starting with supporting men like Robert Peace as he is doing with his My Brother’s Keeper program.

In the meantime, he deserves our support for his remaining priorities, and faith in his process.

As I see it, the main criticisms of trade promotion authority (TPA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the landmark trade agreement with 11 Pacific countries excluding China, come down to two concerns: 1) income inequality and 2) corporate power.

Income inequality

Critics fear that the agreement will further suppress U.S. wages by exporting jobs to countries where wages are low, exacerbating an already vast gap between the rich and poor, and encouraging downward mobility.

Income inequality has become a fact of life in the U.S. And it’s easy to claim that TPP make it worse due to past experience. However, the world today is different from the days of NAFTA, and trade expansion — if accompanied by the reduction of other barriers like outdated customs laws and high shipping costs — could significantly benefit U.S. entrepreneurs with the rise of an overseas middle class.

Rather than using trade policy as a proxy for solving income inequality, we need to address the issue head on, starting with major investments in infrastructure and education. We also need to reform the public sector — a leading provider of stable middle class jobs, particularly for blacks — so that it operates more efficiently and so that tax payers feel their money is being well spent.

Ambivalence about public sector mismanagement, crippling pension plans, and inefficiency is driving the desire for tax cuts, which in turn eviscerates a leading source of middle class jobs. Public education, another source of stable middle class jobs, needs to be turned around through a massive investment in R&D, as convincingly argued by Dr. Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators.

Corporate Power

Critics likewise argue that the agreement is about not about free trade, per se, but about protecting U.S. corporate investments and profits overseas, through intellectual property laws and ISDS, an international body for resolving disputes that could protect corporate interests at the expense of local government freedom (or, some may argue, abuse and corruption).

It’s common knowledge that public corporations exist to maximize returns to shareholders. This can lead them to act in ways that don’t always benefit their customers, their employees, society, or the environment. And there’s no arguing: investment professionals and corporate executives are highly compensated, to an extent that is often unfair relative to their value generation.

But if we want to fix this, we should close loopholes in our tax code (e.g. capital gains tax). We shouldn’t make a trade agreement a referendum on corporate greed. And, we shouldn’t forget that many shareholders in corporations are individuals on Main Street who invest in them indirectly via mutual funds and 401(k)s. If corporate profits go up, so do the retirement savings of millions of Americans.

Asserting Kindness

Opposing trade deals because we oppose corporate power and income inequality is like opposing water limits for farmers in drought-imperiled California because their fields provide wetland habitats for endangered birds. The action doesn’t match the problem.

It the pressing need for a strong alliance in Asia to ensure checks and balances on China.

China is growing more assertive by the day, both economically and militarily. The Chinese government now views itself as a super power. However, it remains to be seen whether, as a super power, it will be benevolent and principled or (as the recent theft of 4 million federal worker’s social security numbers would suggest) self-dealing, authoritarian, repressive, and shame-based (I also speak from experience: I am half-Chinese and grew up in Beijing in the years leading up to the Tiananmen massacre). So while critics oppose the TPP based on protecting American ideals, they do so at the peril of those same ideals.

Protecting an American-led world order is ultimately about asserting kindness as a universal human value.

But kindness resides in deeds, not in rhetoric. The Obama administration needs to do its part to honestly examine the details in TPP that are causing critics concern. The rest of us need to focus our energy back on fixing income inequality and corporate greed head-on, within our borders.