Both Black and Blue Lives Matter.

Posted on July 10, 2016 by jsh54

This is ill-timed, so it is probably ill-considered. Probably mealy-mouthed as well.

Generally, crime rates in America are down markedly from two decades ago. (This is not true if you live in Chicago.) The drop has not entirely been explained. One explanation, advanced by the police is that aggressive street policing (e.g. “stop-and-frisk”) has taken criminals off the street, deterred many others, and stopped a downward spiral of civic demoralization.[1]

Effective or not, the policy had unhappy consequences that were not, but could have been, anticipated. First, African-Americans are victims of crime at much higher rates than are whites. Since we live in a still-segregated society, this means that most crime is intra-racial, rather than inter-racial. African-Americans are disproportionately both victims and victimizers. Concentrating policing on high-crime areas inevitably assumed a character that could easily be construed as “racist.”

Second, the vast majority of people living in high-crime areas are not criminals. As a result, “stop-and-frisk” involves stopping and frisking lots of innocent people in order to catch a few guilty ones. All those innocent people have every right to feel that they are being harassed merely because they fit some demographic profile. Not much effort seems to have been committed to trying to ease this feeling, if it even would be possible.

Third, policing appears to be a “coarse art,” instead of a “fine art.” Ordinary fallible and flawed human beings have to figure out how to carry out the strategies defined by their superiors. Often they have to carry out these policies while in contact with difficult, non-compliant people. Moreover, America is awash in firearms. Far too often, these interactions end in violent death. Often, but not always, the circumstances are gray rather than black and white. Afterwards, prosecutors, judges, and juries are more inclined than not to reject condemning the police. Politicians pile-on, affirming that the laws are applied in a discriminatory way, or voicing platitudes, or asserting an unquestioning integral defense of police conduct.

If you stay at this policy long enough, you’re going to anger an awful lot of people. It’s like building up the “fuel” for a forest fire. All that is required for a conflagration is a lightning strike or a series of them.

Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Laquan McDonald. Walter Scott. Freddy Gray. All were lightning strikes that set off a conflagration. On the one hand, the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement sprang up. On the other hand, American views on the state of race relations shifted from optimistic to pessimistic. Recently, Baltimore prosecutors have suffered a series of stinging defeats in the effort to prosecute police officers in the arresting-to-death of Freddy Gray. Then, police in Minnesota and Louisiana shot to death two black men in what should have been minor incidents. More lightning strikes.

Protests erupted in many cities. In Dallas, a black sniper used the occasion of one such peaceful protest to kill five police officers.

It has been difficult to hold an intelligent conversation about these matters. For one thing, the subject is both complex and painful. For another, it coincides with other complex and painful controversies. The white populist revolts in both major parties. The mass shootings and terrorist attacks. Are these issues inter-related, with a common solution, or is it just our bad luck that they arose at the same time?

[1] See Barry Friedman, “Thin Blue Lines,” NYT Book Review, 3 July 2016. Friedman reviews Heather Mac Donald, The War on Cops:, and Malcolm Sparrow, Handcuffed.

Campaign Issues 2016 2.

Posted on June 22, 2016 by jsh54

Republicans say that the “War on Poverty” has been lost.[1] Democrats say that it hasn’t been won, yet. According to the New York Times, the conservative stereotype of poor people is that they’re criminals or they’re lazy.[2] According to conservatives, the conservative stereotype of poor people is that they’re intelligent and entrepreneurial, but that liberals have created a set of incentives to dependency. Is there any indication of who is more nearly correct?

According to the Census Bureau,[3] in 2011, there were 76 million families. Of these, 55.5 million consisted of married couples, and 20.5 million consisted of Other families. Among those Other families, 5.4 million were male-headed and 15.1 million were female headed. So, 73 percent were married couples and 27 percent were Other families. Among Other families, 73.6 percent were female-headed households and 26.4 percent were male-headed households.

White, non-Hispanics accounted for 52 million of the households. Of these, 41.5 million consisted of married couples and, 10.5 million consisted of Other families. Among those Other families, 3 million were male-headed and 7.5 million were female-headed. So, 80 percent were married couples and 20 percent were Other families. Among Other families, 71 percent were female-headed households and 29 percent were male-headed households.

African-Americans accounted for 8.7 million of the households. Of these, 3.8 million consisted of married couples and 4.9 million consisted of Other families. Among those Other families, 800,000 were male-headed and 4.1 million were female-headed. So, 43 percent were married couples and 56 percent were Other families. Among Other families, 83 percent were female-headed and 17 percent were female-headed.

Married couples are much less common among African-Americans (43 percent) than among White non-Hispanics (80 percent) or the national average (73 percent). Other families are much more common among African-Americans (56 percent) than among White non-Hispanics (20 percent) or the national average (27 percent). Female-headed households are somewhat more common among African-Americans (83 percent) than among White non-Hispanics (71 percent) or the national average (73.6 percent). African-Americans account for 27.1 percent of the female-headed households, while African-Americans account for about 14 percent of the population.

Current anti-poverty programs include food stamps, housing subsidies, and various tax-credits like the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit. People can obtain these benefits provided that they remain poor. Raise your income and lose the benefits.

Back in 1965, Daniel Moynihan published The Negro Family: The Case for Action.[4] He concluded that “The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.” In short, Uncle Sam displaced black fathers. While there is a lot to criticize here, it is also possible to argue that part of poverty is volitional: don’t have kids outside of marriage; stay in school and don’t disrupt class, then go to a community college; get a job, even if it is a crummy one; then trade-up to better jobs. This issue will not be discussed in the 2016 election.

[1] Oddly, they never say that about the “War on Drugs.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3SysxG6yoE It can be argued that the War on Drugs and the War on Cancer were Republican distractions or alternatives to the War on Poverty.

[2] David M. Herszenhorn, “Antipoverty Plan Skimps on Details and History,” NYT, 15 June 2016.

[3] See: https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action.

Campaign Issues 2016 1.

Posted on June 20, 2016 by jsh54

Currently, Social Security faces two fundamental problems.[1] One fundamental problem is that Social Security is based on a “pay-as-you-go” model: withholding taxes from people who are working pay for the retirement of people who are no longer working. Fine. If there are a lot of people working and a smaller number not working, then the system functions smoothly. What if the number of people working declines relative to the number of those who are not working? That’s more of a problem. Taxes on those still working will have to rise to pay for those no longer working. That is the situation in which Americans find themselves as the “Baby Boom” generation passes out of the work force and into the work-for-me force.

This problem has been around for a long time and people in authority have been trying to devise a solution for a long time. In 1983 a bi-partisan commission investigated solutions. Congress followed the commission’s recommendations by raising taxes and extending the age of full eligibility. That fixed the problem for a while, but—of course–“I’m back!” In a report of 2015, the trustees reported that the Social Security trust fund will go broke in 2034, with the Social Security Administration able to pay less than 79 cents on the dollar of benefits. In 2011-2012, President Barack Obama sketched a budget compromise agreement in which Social Security would be continually eroded by inflation. The Republicans weren’t buying this idea. Another solution, which could be combined with de-coupling Social Security benefits from the inflation index, would be to raise the cap on with-holding taxes. Currently, only income below about $134,000 a year is subject to with-holding. Raising that ceiling would generate a lot of revenue. Taken together, these proposals probably offer a manageable means to solve the Social Security problem for the immediate future.

A second fundamental problem is that Social Security was never designed to be a full retirement pension. It was meant to provide a basic income for retirees, who were expected to save from current income to pay for the bulk of their future retirement needs. However, many members of the “Baby Boom” did not do any significant saving for their retirement.

Now, under the influence of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Democrats have come out for expanding Social Security to make its benefits more generous. Hillary Clinton has pledged to increase benefits for widows and for those who stop working to be care providers for children or sick family members; to resist reduction of cost-of-living increases; and to resist increasing the age for full eligibility. She would pay for these increased benefits through higher taxes on the wealthy. Still, even these proposals don’t go as far as the left wing of the party wants. President Obama has remarked that “a lot of Americans don’t have retirement savings [and] fewer people have pensions they can really count on.” How to make up for this lifetime lack of thrift?

Current proposals include increasing the benefits for all recipients while providing additional benefits for the uncertain number of the “most vulnerable”; and/or increasing cost-of-living adjustments to include medical costs.

Several questions arise out of these problems. First, which “Baby Boomers” did not save and why did they not save? Moral recriminations are going to be a part of this debate. Second, what are these proposals likely to cost? Third, how large a share of the well-off will have to be taxed more heavily? Just the “1 percent” or the “5 percent” or anyone who did manage to save? Fourth, do Americans want to transition Social Security from the current partial pension system to a full-blown national retirement system? What would a long-term system require?

[1] Robert Pear, “Driven by Campaign Populism, Democrats Unite on Social Security Plan,” NYT, 19 June 2016.

The Rise and Decline of Nations.

Posted on June 18, 2016 by jsh54

Back in the day–as young people used to say before they moved on to some other expression up with which I have not caught—I was going to be an economic historian. I came across a book by Mancur (Man-Kur or Man-Sur, depending on who your listening to) Olson.[1] It’s a remarkable book, although—like many another remarkable book—long forgotten.

At the core of the book is a puzzle. Germany and Japan lost the Second World War big time, while the United States won big time. So how come the post-war German and Japanese economies were so dynamic, while the American economy slowed down?

Olson’s answer is one that will be obvious to sailors.[2] You leave the boat in salt-water and it will pick up barnacles. It also will be obvious to heart surgeons. You have too many double bacon cheeseburgers with the twisty fries covered in BBQ sauce and your arteries will get clogged with sludge. In either metaphor, the system gets loaded with stuff that slows down its operation.

What, in economic terms, are these barnacles/sludge? They are the various interest groups that grow up around an established way of doing things: unions, government regulators, tax collectors, and business monopolies and cartels. They grow up with—well, slightly behind– any new industry. They figure out how the system works. They figure out how to work the system. They’re opposed to change because they know how to work the existing system.[3] They fight over shares of the existing pie, rather than over how to expand the pie. Eventually, the contending groups reach agreement on how to divvy-up the pie. These agreements Olson labels “distributional coalitions.” They are the “masters of the crossroads.”[4]

The thing is that the Second World War destroyed all these “distributional coalitions”—the barnacles, the sludge, the interest groups, the barriers to new technology and new relationships–in Germany and Japan. War “emergencies” caused the German and Japanese governments to break down established relationships from the pre-war era. Then the American and British occupations banned many regime-associated groups. In contrast, the victor nations institutionalized their own “distributional coalitions.” American and British unions foreswore strikes, while lots of leading businessmen took “dollar-a-year” jobs with the government.[5] Subsequently, many interest groups dug-in to established positions. So, Germany and Japan were able to achieve rapid economic growth, while the United States merely chugged along and Britain soon fell behind the countries against which it had fought from the first day of the Second World War to the last.

In a sense, then, catastrophic defeat in war serves as a kind of social and economic angioplasty.[6] Obviously, Olson was talking only about already advanced industrial economies. I doubt that anyone expects Iraq to be the next “economic miracle.”

Trite observation though it is, the same analysis might be applied to any organization. For example, colleges facing severe competition either ruthlessly adapt or wither.

[1] Mancur Olson, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (Yale UP, 1984).

[2] Nevertheless, will all the non-sailors please spare me the abusive remarks about me wearing pink—“salmon” in the imagination of my brother-in-law—pants, blue Polo shirts, and Topsiders? Please?

[3] Big Carbon—coal and oil—has a lot more drag with the gummint than does Not-So-Big Renewables.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Legba See also: Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls’ Rising (1995); Master of the Crossroads (2000); and The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004).

[5] See, for example, Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995).

[6] Curiously, this is how mainstream economists saw a business-cycle recession before the Great Depression.

Watch List.

Posted on June 17, 2016 by jsh54

The federal gummint’s terrorist watch list has crested at about 800,000 names.[1] The vast majority of these people are foreigners. Many are candidates for drone strikes. Most never seek entry to the United States. That would just end in a flight to Guantanamo. The “no-fly” list contains the names of about 64,000 people who will not be allowed to board airplanes bound for the United States. “Only” about 25,000-40,000 of the people on the list are Americans. People on the terrorism watch list who try to buy guns are automatically flagged for further FBI investigation. In 2015, the names of 244 people who were on the watch list were sent to the FBI when they tried to buy guns. Apparently, that further check really amounts to applying the normal standards for buying a gun: no history of involuntary commitment for mental illness and/or no criminal record. (So, how does someone with no interest in buying guns get on the watch list? If I went around denouncing the US Government in scurrilous terms, I’d want to have guns for when they got pissed off.[2])

In December 2015, the Senate Democrats offered a bill to give the Attorney General the power to deny the sale of a firearm or an explosive “to a known or suspected terrorist.” Critics of the whole watch list thing point out that inclusion on the list is an administrative decision, while there is virtually no way to appeal against the decision. The Republicans countered with a bill to delay sale for 72 hours to enable the FBI to investigate the purchaser. Neither bill mustered a majority.

Had the Democrats’ bill passed, Omar Mateen would still have been able to purchase the weapons that he used in the Orlando massacre. On the one hand, “suspects” are investigated by the FBI. If the FBI concludes that they are not a current threat, then they are removed from the list of people banned from purchasing firearms or explosives. On the other hand, there is a more or less “black market” for guns to be had on the internet from private dealers.

Perhaps long experience with the ineffectiveness of government regulation explains why Republican support for tighter gun laws fell from 55 percent in March 2000 to 26 percent in July 2015. In any case, in states with Republican majorities in the legislature, mass shootings actually are followed by a loosening of gun laws.[3] Conservatives throw up a smokescreen of rationalizations when their real concern is that liberals will try to disarm the country.[4]

One of the sources of the bitter partisanship that has disabled American democracy is revealed in a comment in a New York Times article. “The “legislation does not specifically require that someone be named on a particular watch list to be considered a known terrorist or a suspect, so it is possible that Mr. Mateen could have been flagged under other procedures implemented by the attorney general.” Yes, yes, yes, the Justice Department says that this means that people once on a watch list and subsequently removed could still be banned. However, what springs to mind in this post-Patriot Act/post-Snowden age is that an endlessly expanding list of people not allowed to buy guns will be created by presidential ukase. Like work permits for illegal immigrants. Like the assertion that the War Powers Act does not apply in Libya.

[1] Alicia Parlapiano, “How Terror Suspects Buy Guns—and How They Still Could, Even With a Ban,” NYT, 16 June 2016.

[2] See an over the top account in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

[3] Neil Irwin, “After Mass Shootings, It’s Often Easier to Buy a Gun,” NYT, 16 June 2016.

[4] Yet national disarmament—as in Britain or Australia—is the only real means to reduce gun deaths. The president needs to speak the truth, rather than run from it. Same goes for drugs, taxes in the middle classes, and a carbon tax.

Millennial Falcons.

Posted on June 9, 2016 by jsh54

“Gen X” are the people born between 1965 and 1980. “Millennials”—often thought of as “Gen Z”[1]–are the 75 million Americans born between 1980 and 2000.[2] They out-number the famous “Baby Boomers.”[3] Stereotypes regarding “Millennials” abound: they have a sense of entitlement; they are self-indulgent; they are work-shy[4]; and they are rule-breakers. Their presence and interests demand a response.[5] Colleges and businesses are obsessed with the market power of this “demographic.”

Farhad Manjoo[6] begs to differ. First, “Macroscale demographic trends rarely govern most individuals’ life and work decisions.” That means that any “generation” is actually just a big collection to individuals. You can’t really tell anything about the particular individual in front of you from their birth year or “cohort.”

Second, generational succession is always accompanied by a sense of unease among the older generation and a sense of suppressed ridicule of their elders by the younger generation. The “Greatest Generation” undoubtedly had grave reservations about the “Baby Boomers.” That unpleasant truth gets lost in the narrow focus on the right-now.

Still, there are common (if not universal) characteristics of “Millennials”: they are socially liberal (they get married later after cohabitating, they are more than OK with marriage equality, white people claim to know black people (and may even do so in a work-related context); they are 420-neutral-to-friendly; they are post-Snowden and post-“Searchlight” suspicious of institutions. Even so, Republican “Millennials” are more socially conservative than are Democratic “Millennials.”

All this makes sense on a certain level. However, as the critics of “macrodemographic” thinking say, the categories are just containers for many individuals or sub-categories. For example, none of this explores the beliefs of the Republican “Millennials.” Similarly, polling data seems to suggest that Donald Trump pulls a certain segment of young people, even while the national media portrays his voters as—well, those tattooed guys with grey pony-tails on Harley-Davidsons that you see on Sunday drives in the far suburbs.

One particularly fascinating figure here is Victor Lazlo Bock[7], the head of human resources at Google. The company runs all sorts of empirical data on its employees, who range in age from sweaty recent college graduates to geezers bored with retirement. Bock claims that there isn’t any significant difference in personality types across the generations, just between personality types across the generations. “Every single human being wants the same thing…” says Bock. “We want to be treated with respect, we want to have a sense of meaning and agency and impact, and we want our boss to leave us alone so we can get our work done.” How do we accomplish this in a small college?

[1] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqQ8Y9Sjp7o

[2] Farhad Manjoo, “Companies In Pursuit Of a Mythical Millennial,” NYT, 26 May 2016.

[3] On the other hand, the “Boomers” have a lot more money.

[4] Or what the Nazis would have called “asocials.” See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBn3FVWkuWM

[5] “And so say all of us.”

[6] I know, sounds like an ISIS recruiter or that kid played by Dev Patel in “Marigold Hotel.” In reality, he’s a media correspondent for the New York Times.

[7] HA! Is joke. His name is Lazlo Bock. Paul Henreid played the Resistance leader “Victor Lazlo” in “Casablanca” (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942).

The 1400.

Posted on May 30, 2016 by jsh54

Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million people. In the first quarter of 2016, it had more than 1,000 people shot—of whom 141 died. That makes the “City of Big Shoulders” the murder capital—sorry, tired phrase—of the United States.[1] Most of the violence appears to spring from wars between drug gangs.

“Da Cops” think that 1,400 young, black men did most of the shooting.[2] It appears that most of those young men belong to a group of “social networks.”[3] In an interesting experiment that smacks of Philip K. Dick,[4] the police have been analyzing 10 variables[5] to assign a likely-to-be-involved-in-violence score to people on its “Strategic Subject List” (SSL).[6] It may not be perfect, but it’s not inaccurate: 70 percent of those who were shot so far in 2016 were in the list.

One question is how to respond. A “public health” response takes the form of visits to the homes of people on the SSL by teams of police officers, social workers, and community organizers. The purpose is to warn them that they have come to the attention of the authorities, and to offer them what meager support a bankrupt city can afford if they want to go down another road.[7] Any life redeemed is a win. One official says that 21 percent of the SSL figures “they had succeeded in talking to”[8] had accepted the offer of help and only 9 percent had been shot since a visit.[9]

Another question is about civil liberties. People who care about civil liberties (practically an endangered species in America, they’re going to end up being released into the wild in Yellowstone or something like that) might be concerned about the fact that 80 percent of those arrested for involvement in shootings, and 117 of the 140 people arrested in a spate of drug and gang raids also were on the SSL. Do the police have any evidence or do they just “round up the usual suspects” based on the SSL? That approach is more cost-effective and emotionally satisfying in a country in love with “getting tough” with everyone except ourselves.

What do the variables themselves tell us? Take “having been shot.” If somebody shot me, then I would certainly want to shoot that person. Fair’s fair. However, I’d settle for the police arresting that person and the courts trying that person, and the judge assigning some inadequate sentence. Walk away grinding my teeth. None of that is true for the shooters and the shot in Chicago. They don’t accept the court system. They don’t delegate “justice.” They don’t walk away. Probably, that would undermine what little personal dignity they possess.

[1] “Chicago in crisis,” The Week, 13 May 2016, p. 11.

[2] They’re mostly terrible shots. If you take 14.1 percent lethality as a measurement, the ROI is low. Still, what if the thrill of the experience is what people are after, rather than actually killing somebody? Also, it’s not like there are lots of places to practice one’s aim and receive expert instruction. I suppose the cops could subpoena the records of gun ranges. Find out who is buying time on the range, renting muffs and safety glasses, buying 9-mm ammo.

[3] See Andrew Papachristos, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/18/can-predictive-policing-be-ethical-and-effective/use-of-data-can-stop-crime-by-helping-potential-victms

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_%28film%29

[5] The variables include things like “trend lines” of previous arrests, arrest for possession or use of a weapon, and having been shot. They exclude race, gender, age, and geography. Why include things that can be taken as a given, but which will end up in a lawsuit over profiling?

[6] Monica Davey, “Chicago Police Try to Predict Who May Shoot or Be Shot,” NYT, 24 May 2016.

[7] That aid includes drug treatment, housing assistance, and job-training. To put the worst possible spin on it, become a minimum-wage food-service worker, so you can go to bed early and can get up before dawn to take public transit, and be a complete pussy in the eyes of everyone except your grandmother.

[8] That is, most weren’t at home because they were “at work” or laying up with a girl or just told them to go away.

[9] They visited 1,300 people. So, 9 percent would be 117 people. Out of 470 killed and perhaps 3,300 shot. Murky.

The Pornography Industrial Complex 1.

Posted on May 27, 2016 by jsh54

Intellectuals “theorize” what ordinary people need no theory to explain or justify.[1]

Both Christianity and bourgeois capitalism deprecated sex.[2] They built a great civilization on impulse-repression. Arguably, though, that civilization left people psychologically maimed. Sexual repression produced “moodiness” in men. The solution? Widespread resort to brothels. Sexual repression produced “hysteria” in women. The solution? Manual manipulation of the afflicted area by gynecologists. Later, the electric-powered vibrator became a favored household appliance.[3]

Not everyone cared to play along. If enough specialist history books are consulted, it soon becomes apparent that lots of men and women liked sex. They also didn’t care what “high” culture said on the subject.[4] The written evidence for this is patchy. One has to imagine the milk-maids and swineherds in Meissen going for a roll in the porcelain hay. Surely some of them did. In the 18^th Century, the English “Hell Fire Club” engaged in all sorts of depravity. Late in the 18^th Century, a “quack sexologist” named James Graham[5] created an electrified “celestial bed” that was supposed to facilitate conception. In the 19^th Century, sexual dissidence went hand in hand with political radicalism. “Owenites,” “Fourierists,” and the myths of Brook Farm all spread stories of “free love” early in the 19^th Century, while Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter provided a scientific rationale at the end of the century.

One of the dissidents was Wilhelm Reich. Soon after the end of the First World War, Reich got the idea that what we are most ashamed of—sex in all its variety–might actually be the thing that could heal our psychic wounds.[6] Later Reich used the term “sexual revolution” to express a causational link between sexual emancipation and political change. (Subsequently, the German Communist Party expelled Reich for his sexual militancy and the International Psychoanalytical Association expelled Reich for his political militancy.)

The slow percolation into a broader society of Reich’s ideas helped set off the “sexual revolution” of the post-war period.[7] Blindly, Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex (1972) ratified a belief that sexual liberation began in the Sixties.

In fact, “sexual revolution” did not bring political revolution. Probably this is an example of “sensualism” (the satisfaction of short-term physical desire) diverting people from revolutionary activity, just as Bolsheviks feared that “economism” (the satisfaction of short-term material wants through union bargaining) would divert the working class from revolution.[8]

Again and again, change-agents are appalled by what they have wrought. Reich ended his days as a Republican.

[1] Ariel Levy, “Novelty Acts,” The New Yorker, 19 September 2011.

[2] For an illustration of this, see Brian Moore, Black Robe (1985). The Stone Age hunting and gathering Indians are sexually promiscuous, while the Iron Age French colonists are materially secure and frustrated.

[3] See Rachel Maines, The Technology of Orgasm (2010).

[4] Inevitably, historians have fastened on the more talky and twisted among them. People like Richard Burton (the explorer). Algernon Swinburne, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti tend to hog the limelight.

[5] Graham was a one-time resident of Philadelphia, but I find no statues to his memory.

[6] You got a bad back? That’s a different story. And for God’s sake, never try to do it in the driver’s seat of a Camaro.

[7] Yes, yes, everyone wants to believe that the sexual revolution began in the Sixties (or—for Catholics—in the Seventies and Eighties). However, it actually began much earlier and is related to post-war housing construction and the urban job market as much as to “the Pill.” All of these things empowered women to define their own lives. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m67JbGjWnc

[8] For an example of this with contemporary applications, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_mXLYh_PA

Nostalgia.

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jsh54

“Compared with 50 years ago [i.e. 1966], life for people like you in America is worse.” Agree or Disagree.[1]

Almost half (46 percent) of voters agreed with this statement. The distribution was pretty much balanced between men (45 percent) and women (46 percent). Fifty years into Women’s Lib and almost half of women think that life for people like them is worse? Maybe the half of guys who think that life is not worse are married to the women who think life is worse, while the half of women who think life is not worse are married to the guys who think that life is worse. Or perhaps gender isn’t the salient identity for men and women. Maybe race or social class is more important.

Thereafter, the distribution breaks down in interesting ways.

While a majority of whites (54 percent) think that life is worse, only 17 percent of blacks think that life is worse. Despite all our failings and short-comings, the Civil Rights movement and the government policies which it compelled is a huge success. Do whites feel worse off because blacks don’t feel worse off? Not likely: too few people lost anything from the formal end of white supremacy. America remains largely segregated; and black people remain at a lower income than do whites.

Better than half of people who actually were alive 50 years ago think that their condition is worse: 55 percent of people aged 65 or older and 53 percent of people aged 50 to 64. Presumably they know what they’re talking about. The first group was born before 1952; the second group between 1952 and 1966. Then the sense that things are worse is higher for those with only some college (49 percent) and high school or less (51 percent) than for those with a BA (39 percent) or post-graduate education (37 percent).[2]

The sense of decline is much stronger among Republicans than among Democrats. Some 70 percent of self-identified Conservative Republicans and 58 percent of Liberal/Moderate Republicans think that life is worse. In contrast, only 20 percent of self-identified Liberal Democrats and 35 percent of Conservative/Moderate Democrats think that life is worse.

American real incomes, life span, and medical care are much better than 50 years ago, so it is likely to be something else that gives them the sense of decline. It is more than likely that the discontent among older people/white people/Republicans springs from factors like the impact of economic globalization and the advance of information technology, but also from the long string of domestic and international reverses.[3] Perhaps this is an artifact of the Republican Party having progressively captured the heart of the old New Deal coalition (Southerners, the Northern working class) over the last 50 years.

Is it possible that the next election(s) will be a struggle between those who have lost from the big changes that have overtaken America and those who have at least survived them unscathed? Will it be a struggle between Nostalgia for a by-gone age and Complacency about the new age? That seems a poor basis for deciding the fate of young people in the face of what looks to be several decades of grave challenges at home and abroad.

[1] Charles M. Blow, “A Trump-Sanders Coalition? Nah,” NYT, 2 May 2016. OK, it’s Charles Blow. Still…

[2] Still, better than a third of people with a post-graduate degree think that life is worse? They can’t all be college professors.

[3] I just finished Gregg Herken, The Georgetown Set, and now I’m listening to Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us. So, those books probably are shaping my interpretation.

The Social Trampoline.

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jsh54

In 2012, 46 percent of the US Government’s non-interest spending went to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; by 2030 it was projected to rise to 61 percent. That is, these safety-net programs either will crowd out spending on other things or force a substantial increase in in government spending over-all.[1]

One driver here is the retirement of the “Baby Boom.” In 2012 there were 49 million people on Medicare (and presumably s slightly smaller number receiving Social Security). By 2030, that number is projected to grow to 80 million.

Another driver is high medical costs. In 2011, Medicare spent $560 billion. By 2022, Medicare spending is projected to rise to $1.1 trillion.

“Reforming” entitlements really means cutting someone’s income. Whose ox is going to get gored?

Hoping to avoid this ugly reality, people grasp at straws. Medicare is already “means-tested” (that is, individuals/couples making more than $85,000/$170,000 a year pay higher premiums). Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 would cut costs by about 5 percent over the long run because those people are basically still healthy. Raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 would cut spending by 13 percent by 2060.

Cutting medical costs would involve reducing the incomes of medical personnel, hospitals, and drug manufacturers.[2] Democrats want to do this through government regulation by bureaucracies subject to pressure from elected representatives. Yea, right. Republicans want to do it “through the market:” by giving everyone some miserly sum and making individuals bargain with big corporations. Yea, right.

Avoiding these fights by just raising taxes on the wealthy could have a certain broad appeal.[3] However, rich people are adept at defending themselves. Even if they had to put up with higher taxes for a while, they would eventually get them over-turned. Democrats are always going on about how high taxes on the rich were commonly accepted for a long time after the Second World War. Where do they think that the Reagan and Bush II tax cuts came from if not from simmering resentment of high income earners?

The simplest fix for Social Security would be to raise or remove the cap on payroll taxes on incomes over $110,000 a year. That would solve the problem for 75 years at least. Additionally, reducing inflation-indexing of Social Security could save a lot of money. Depending on how far it was pushed, this could save $100 billion over ten years. Probably one would have to do both to limit the political reaction by high-income earners.

One argument against raising the retirement age is that it would disproportionately penalize lower class and middle class people. They generally don’t live quite so long as do rich people. So, it would cut into their retirement “golden years.” Doctors and nurses aren’t going to want to give up a big chunk of their income. Rich people aren’t going to want to pay an even more disproportionate share of taxes. “Baby Boomers” have a notion that they have a bargain with America and that America needs to honor its “promises” to them. However, the truth is that they promised themselves these benefits and that they promised that a younger generation—which had no voice in the bargain—would pay the costs. The simple human truth here is that people are selfish. Not much sign of civic solidarity.

[1] “Fixing the safety net,” The Week, 21 December 2012, p. 9.

[2] See: “Single Payer.” https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/05/17/single-payer/

[3] “A poor man with a ballot box can rob you as easily as a rich man with a pen.”—Woody Guthrie.

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