Re-Balancing Economics with Ethics

Life Members (co-sponsored by the New Hampshire Life Members Affinity Group)

3:30PM – Refreshments
4:00PM 5:00PM – Talk

Paul H Carr, Ph.D. IEEE Life Fellow, AF Research Laboratory Emeritus

The Golden Rule of ethics must re-balance our economy. At present, those with the gold make the rules. “Any economic system should serve people, not the other way around” (Pope Francis message to the World Economic Forum 2014).

According to economist Thomas Piketty’s recent “Inequality of Capital,” the top income earners now have 60% of our national income. From 1942 to 1980, however, the same high income people had only 34%. I will show what happened after 1980 to bring about our present income inequality. It has contributed to the unexpected political success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

How does income inequality in the US compare with other countries? Is “trickle-up” economics a better way to approach equality than “trickle down?” Adam Smith (1776) proposed that the “invisible hand” of lasses-faire economics led the pursuit of individual gain towards the common good. How can this be balanced with the “Tragedy of the Commons,” of William Forster Lloyd (1833), in which the pursuit of individual gain leads to negation of the common good?

Biographical Sketch of Paul H. Carr: BS MIT, PhD Brandeis U, IEEE Life Fellow. From 1967 to 1995, he led the Component Technology Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Bedford, MA. His branch developed the surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology used in compact, signal-processing filters for radar, cell phones, and TV. After his retirement from AFRL, he taught philosophy courses at U Mass Lowell that inspired his book, Beauty in Science & Spirit (2006). He published “Weather extremes from anthropogenic global warming” in Natural Science, Jan 2013 and participated in an IEEE Climate Discussion/Debate on NewTV in August 2014. His web page: www.MirrorOfNature.org

The meeting will be held at the Lincoln Lab Auditorium, 244 Wood Street. Lexington, MA at 4:00 PM and is being co-sponsored by the New Hampshire Life Members Affinity Group.

Refreshments will be served at 3:30 PM. Registration is in the main lobby.

Foreign national visitors to Lincoln Lab require visit requests.

Please pre-register by e-mail to reception@ll.mit.edu and indicate your citizenship.

Also, please register on the IEEEBostonwebsite or at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1V-AilJpIQcNFtHRFLVEMNUhuJKiQXUjNESNXoXl0WE/ so we can plan for the meeting and refreshments.

Please use the Wood Street Gate. For directions go to http://www.ll.mit.edu/ For other information, contact Steve Teahan, Steve.F.Teahan@raytheon.com or Paul H. Carr, paulcarr@alum.mit.edu

To assist us in planning this meeting, please pre-register at http://www.ieeeboston.org/Register/.