Category Archives: American Society

Character Test.

Posted on by
Reply

Eduardo Porter has argued that Americans have been guided by a shared disdain for collective solutions and a belief individual responsibility. The conservative argument offered by Charles Murray and others is that the welfare state has undermined the character of its beneficiaries. The liberal argument offered by Eduardo Porter and others is that America has relied on continuing prosperity instead of a real welfare state. When long-term economic troubles hit, many Americans plunged through the cob-web of a “safety net.”[1]

On the right, in line with the moral corruption argument made by Murray, Republicans propose to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut a bevy of other programs for the poor. This will end the culture of dependency that many conservatives blame for creeping social pathologies that came to light after the recent Baltimore riots that followed the arresting-to-death of Freddy Grey. The Republican budget plans seem like a dead-end. For one thing, they target relatively low-cost programs aimed at the poorest Americans. In reality, defense, Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security are the big drivers of government spending. As Willy Sutton explained when asked why he robbed banks, “That’s where the money is.”

For another thing, these categories of spending are widely popular with the American middle class. Once again, as with opposition to gay marriage and to immigration reform, Republicans are picking the losing side of an argument. Takes Social Security as an example. As the Baby Boom retires, it places a mounting pressure on the system. When current revenue through withholding is inadequate to meet obligations, the System draws on the Social Security trust-fund (built up from revenue surpluses in the past). At the moment, the trust-fund is expected to be exhausted by 2033. After that happens, retiree benefits will be reduced to perhaps 75 percent of expected benefits.[2] Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders favor raising or removing the cap on Social Security withholding to greatly increase revenue for the supplemental retirement income system. However, they favor going beyond stabilizing the finances of the present system to create an expanded national pension system.[3]

This seems likely to emerge as a powerful issue in future elections. In 2005, 26 percent of still-working Americans expected “to rely on Social Security as a major source of income” in retirement. In 2015, 36 percent of still-working Americans “expect to rely on Social Security as a major source of income” in retirement. Among currently retired people, 73 percent are receiving reduced benefits because they retired early.

There are several possible explanations for the growing place of Social Security in the retirement income of Americans. One explanation could be that the Great Recession devastated both the savings and the income of ordinary Americans. Another explanation could be that a decade of aging forced many Baby Boomers to confront their own lack of thrift over the course of a lifetime. Similarly, the huge number of people who took early retirement could be explained by either the moral corruption argument or by the ravages of globalization over the last 25 years.

If conservatives want to sustain the moral corruption argument, they will have to openly apply it to middle class entitlements. Of course, cannibalizing the Affordable Care Act could provide some of the revenues to shore up middle class entitlements. However, this would require the middle class to turn its back on the poor. So, a test of character.

[1] Eduardo Porter, “Income Inequality Is Costing The Nation on Social Issues,” NYT, 29 April 2015.

[2] “Social Security worries mount,” The Week, 22 May 2015, p. 32.

[3] This strikes me as equivalent to the sort of defined-benefit system that American companies found to be unsustainable and abandoned in favor of the defined-contribution systems. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Inequality 5.

Posted on by
Reply

The community in which a person grows up exerts a big influence on his/her life-course. D’uh. Only now we have a big social science study to validate this common belief.[1] Growing up in a low-income black area reduces one’s chances of rising into the middle class, even if the person is white.

Some areas are dead-ends for low-income people. The old cotton South, Southern California, and much of the Rust Belt are bad places to be stuck.

Where are the places with the biggest positive impact on the earnings of low-income people? Places with lots of Scandinavians or Mormons: southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, Utah, adjacent parts of Wyoming, and southeastern Idaho. What distinguishes areas favorable to social mobility from places unfavorable to social mobility? The quality of the public schools, the share of two-parent families, the degree of social engagement by the community (functioning civic and religious groups), and the integration of different income groups in a single community.

Of course, the study may actually reveal the character of the people who go, as much as the character of the places to which those people go. Again, d’uh.         Children who moved from a low-income area to a higher-income area were later in life, less likely to become single parents, more likely to go to college, and earned more money. Moreover, the places where poor people cluster are full of poor people. The schools are poor, there is a lot of pathological behavior, and it isn’t very safe. Parents who move from a lower-income place to a better-income place do their children an immense service. Still, they have to pay a cost.

However, the study revealed several disparities. One is between older and younger siblings in the same families. The sooner a kid gets out, the better for their life prospects; the later a kid gets out, the worse for their life prospects. Getting a kid out before age 9 or 10 offers the best hope. Chances decline rapidly after that age. A second disparity is between the sexes. Low-income women who grow up in higher income areas earn about 25 percent more than low-income women who grow up in low-income areas. Low-income men who grow up in a higher-income area earn about 30 percent more than men who grow up in a low-income area. What was not reported was the comparative chances of being employed or unemployed.

The same study found that “commuting time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty.”[2] The longer is the commute, the lower is the chance of improving one’s life. Basically, there aren’t any jobs in the places where poor people live. To get a job, someone has to travel. One of the big problems is that public transportation is not equally distributed across communities. In a lot of middle-class places, everyone has a car so no one cares about public transportation. If someone who is poor wants to live in one of these communities, they need to get a car. Aye, there’s the rub.

Still, what causes higher-income areas to be better than low-income areas? Sure, “they have more money.” Why do they have more money? Because they’ve always had more money, so they have better schools, two-parent families, and kids who go to college? Or because there is a culture that values marriage, family, education, and civic engagement? Which of these factors can be addressed by public policy? Which are matters of “personal responsibility”?

[1] David Leonhardt, Amanda Cox, and Claire Cain Miler, “Change of Address Offers A Pathway Out of Poverty,” NYT, 4 May 2015.

[2] Mikayla Bouchard, “Transportation Emerges As Key to Escaping Poverty,” NYT, 7 May 2015.

Days of Rage.

Posted on by
Reply

The Civil Rights movement in the South encountered a lot of violent resistance. (Birmingham, Alabama became known in some quarters as “Bombingham.”) The United States began to escalate its military commitment to South Vietnam. JFK, RFK, and MLK all were assassinated. Nothing in conventional politics seemed able to stop the momentum. In response, in Summer 1969, things began to boil over on the American Left. Outside the South, the Black Panthers were formed. Some people began to contemplate the “propaganda of the deed,” as the pre-revolutionary Russian dissidents had called bombings and assassinations. Perhaps a 100,000 young people had signed-up with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) by 1968. A radical fringe broke away from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) over SDS’s rejection of violence. They called themselves The Weathermen. When the Weathermen, called for supporters to stage so-called “Days of Rage” in Chicago in October 1969, only about 200 people showed up. The disappointed Weathermen promptly went underground and launched a terror campaign. Independently of the Weathermen, Sam Melville planted dynamite at a disused United Fruit warehouse in New York. Soon afterward, the Weathermen went underground themselves.

There was a great deal of savagery as well as a great deal of foolishness in the campaign that followed.[1] “Protests and marches don’t do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way,” said Bernardine Dohrn. “We could do [non-fatal fire-bombings] until we were blue in the face, and the government wouldn’t really care,” recalled one Weatherperson years later.[2] So, they opted for something more dramatic. Bombings followed in Berkeley, Detroit, Cleveland, and New York City. In February 1969, a secretary at Pomona College was wounded by bomb. In August 1969, one of Sam Melville’s bombs wounded twenty people in New York. In March 1970 one plan went wrong when a Weather Underground bomb factory in Greenwich Village blew up, killing three dissidents. The Weather Underground announced that it would shift back to non-lethal bombings. Apparently it was safer (for them) that way. In August 1970 a bomb at the University of Wisconsin killed a researcher named Robert Fassnacht. Between May 1971 and January 1972, a “Black Liberation Army” (BLA) killed five policemen around the country and badly wounded two others. In February 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst. In May 1974, the Los Angeles police caught up with most of the group. The SLA got shot to bits on live television. In January 1975 the FALN, a terrorist group advocating Puerto Rican independence, launched a campaign that would run for eight years and set off 130 bombs. Finally, in October 1981, the BLA tried to rob a Brink’s armored car outside New York City. In the robbery and in a confrontation with the police afterward, three police officers were killed.

Brian Burroughs charitably describes the Weathermen, Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and a group of Puerto Rican nationalists as “young people who fatally misjudged America’s political winds and found themselves trapped in an unwinnable struggle they were too proud or too stubborn to give up.” That could be. In “The Searchers” (1956, dir. John Ford), the character played by John Wayne explained why he could not take an oath as a Texas Ranger: “I figure a man’s only good for one oath at a time and I took mine to the Confederate States of America.”

[1] Bryan Burroughs, Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (Penguin, 2014).

[2] It strikes me as odd to complain that a government one accuses of putting property rights ahead of human rights doesn’t really care about property, but does care about harm to humans. I’m probably missing something.

Toward the cliff.

Posted on by
Reply

In brief compass, the “supply side” theories of the Reagan administration de-stabilized the traditional budget by cutting taxes without cutting expenditures.[1] Deficits expanded. However, observers were more concerned about the budget deficits that would be driven by the cost of entitlements—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—for Baby Boomers. If one takes as a given that government can only account for some fixed share of GDP, then the growth of entitlements will crowd out spending on other areas: defense and the wide range of government functions labeled as “discretionary spending.”[2] These entitlements are so popular and the mythology surrounding them so powerful that the elected representatives in a democratic polity were unwilling to address them. The problem festered.

Then came the Great Recession. In 2009, the government’s deficit peaked at over 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2013 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the deficit would fall to 2.1 percent of GDP. Moreover in September 2013 the CBO projected that short-term government deficits would shrink, thanks to the economy’s recovery from the Great Recession and the cuts enforced by “zee zequester.” So, the deficit has been mastered. We’re good, right?

Well, no. The deficit arising from the Great Recession has been mastered. However, that was a matter of course. Counter-cyclical deficit spending has been the normal response to recessions for half a century. Economic activity revises, spending falls, and tax revenues increase, so the deficit goes away.[3]

However, the deficit arising from entitlement programs has not been mastered. Or addressed. Or even acknowledged. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are about to rise sharply in total cost as the fabled Baby Boomers begin to retire in droves. From 1973 to 2013, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security averaged 7 percent of GDP per year; the CBO projects that they will rise to 14 percent of GDP by 2038. By 2023, government spending will rise to 3.5 percent of GDP; by 2038 it would reach 6.5 percent. The trouble is that the economy will not grow as much as does government spending. Moreover, federal revenues are projected to rise by only 2 percent of GDP over the same period. Hence, this will drive up the deficit from the 38 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that formed the average from 1968 to 2008 to 100 percent of GDP in 2038.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have shown any willingness during the Obama Administration to address this important long-term problem. The administration has concentrated tis efforts on raising taxes on the higher income groups, rather than on trying to contain or reduce costs. The Republicans have concentrated on trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, rather than on trying to address the ballooning costs of entitlement programs.

Nor is it likely to emerge as a major issue in the 2016 presidential election. Older people vote in larger percentages than do younger people. No one has yet formulated a way to deliver the same quality of medical care or retirement income at a much lower cost. No one yet has formulated a way to raise substantially larger tax revenues from all Americans.

[1] Jackie Calmes, “Budget Office Warns That Deficits Will Rise Again Because Cuts Are Misdirected,” NYT, 18 September 2013.

[2] Obviously, one does not have to agree that some fixed share of the economy should be devoted to government spending. Certainly Senator Sanders does not.

[3] See Paul Krugman’s terse, withering evaluation of President Obama’s performance in this regard in NYT, 8 May 2015.

Rise of the Machine Minders.

Posted on by
Reply

Back in August 2014, Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, got the idea that students returning to college for Fall Term needed to hear his advice on the keys to success.[1] He wrote a column for the New York Times. Here, in a nut-shell, is what he said.[2]

He took as his point of departure the proliferation of “thinking” machines in the economy. Industrial robots threaten factory workers; self-driving vehicles threaten truck drivers, if not other motorists; drones threaten airline pilots, did they but know it; e-discovery research software threatens lawyers and college professors. What are we non-mechanicals supposed to do for jobs in this dawning era? What are the keys to success?

Being conscientious is one key. The opportunity to do something and actually doing it are two different things.[3] If students or workers need something more corporeal than a gnawing anxiety to keep them relentlessly on task, they’re in for a bad time.

Listening to the machines is a second key. GPS-based driving instructions delivered by an Oxbridge-educated woman of a certain age are just the beginning.[4] Pretty soon our smart phones will be tuning-up our decision-making in many areas. Deciding, like Doc Boone in ”Stagecoach,” to wave off the warning and have another drink will have a cost.

Remembering that Price reflects the ratio between Supply and Demand is a third key. Stuff that is rare will command a higher price than stuff that is common. In human terms, people need to work on how they present themselves and how they interact with other people.

The Return of Calvinism is a fourth key. Either people are internally motivated or they are externally motivated. If an employer wants to keep down labor costs, then an effective “Atta boy” or “You slime” can replace a bonus as a motivator. People who know which to choose incentive will thrive in the new economy.

Developing a Thick Hide is a fifth key. Computer programs will be able to measure productivity and some other aspects of employee performance.[5] (Not all aspects, just some other aspects.) Workers at every level will get turned into a mathematical formula.[6] You need to be able to learn from a harsh performance review, get up, and move on.

Remembering Harold Lamb is a sixth key. One of his characters was a 17th Century Cossack who bought a pair of expensive leather boots to demonstrate that he had money and then spilled tar on them to demonstrate that at he didn’t care about money. Lots of young workers are libertarian-subversive in this way.

Recognizing that machines under-cut the price advantage of cheap (Asian) human labor is a seventh key. A higher class of Nineteenth Century “machine minders” is on the horizon. That will be good for the right American workers.

Your quick conceiving discontent will have noticed that none of this has anything to do with which major a student chooses. It is all about what kind of person chooses that major.

[1] My guess would be that he was fed up with the stuff that his teaching assistants had been telling him and with the results of the Generals Examinations of the graduate students.

[2] Tyler Cowen, “Who Will Prosper in the New World,” NYT, 1 September 2014.

[3] See: Dorothy Parker.

[4] You ever wonder if people into BDSM choose some German dominatrix’s voice? Just asking.

[5] The SEC wants to track executive compensation against company performance. The first rule for plumbers is that shit runs downhill. The second is to not bite your fingernails.

[6] This will lead to its own disasters. Both life experience and literature indicate that there are non-performers who are vital to the functioning of an organization. So, judgment and experience will be vital.

The Secret History of Mother’s Day.

Posted on by
Reply

Ann Reeves (1832-1905) was one hell of a mother. She was born in western Virginia, married a merchant named Granville Reeves, bore 11-13 children[1] and lost all but four of them to childhood diseases. These deaths got her interested in maternal health and public sanitation. In the nature of reform movements of the time, most of her efforts concentrated on “voluntaristic” education directed at local mothers. She proved to be tireless. During the Civil War and afterward, Ann Reeves clung to a strictly non-partisan stance that offended partisans, but eventually won wide respect. In 1868 she sponsored a “Mothers Friendship Day” in Taylor County, West Virginia to bring together the veterans and their families of the two sides in the “recent unpleasantness.”

Other people shared the general notion of celebrating mothers, even if they did not follow the same exact course. In 1870, the suffragette Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) published a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” that called on the women of the world to unite for peace. Subsequently, she campaigned for 2 June to be celebrated as Mother’s Day.” Her efforts bore no fruit.[2]

Anna Reeves’ surviving children migrated to Philadelphia, where they prospered. Her daughter, Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) spent two years at what would later become Mary Baldwin College, then went to Philadelphia to join her brothers. An intelligent, determined woman like her mother, Anna became the advertising editor for an insurance company. Despite the physical distance between mother and daughter, they remained in close contact through the now-lost skill of written correspondence. When her husband died in 1902 Ann Jarvis moved to Philadelphia herself. She spent her last days in the City of Brotherly Love. She died there on 8 May 1905.[3]

In 1908, on the third anniversary of her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis began a campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday. She chose the second Sunday in May as the date because it was the day on which her mother had died. She chose the white carnation as the day’s symbol because ti had been her mother’s favorite flower. She lobbied church groups, businesses, and all levels of government to this end. Her first convert was John Wanamaker, the master of the great Philadelphia department store. Wanamaker held a service in his store’s auditorium to coincide with a service held by Jarvis in her home town of Grafton, West Virginia. Fifteen thousand people attended. Soon the West Virginia legislature got on board. Other states followed. In May 1913 Congress passed a resolution calling on all government officials to wear a white carnation to celebrate Mother’s Day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national holiday.

Florists, candy-makers, and greeting-card publishers loved the new holiday.[4] (Later on, jewelers, restaurant owners, and spa-operators came to love it as well.) This appalled Anna Jarvis. She regarded greeting cards as a convenience for people too lazy to write a letter. She spent the rest of her life shoveling sand against the commercial tide. In 1948, just before her death, she was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace for publically protesting against the commercialization of Mother’s Day. Worn out and aging, she died in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on the day before Thanksgiving, 1948. She had never married, so Mother’s Day was her only child.

[1] Nineteenth Century Southern record-keeping being what it was.

[2] Even less than did her song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

[3] I am, by pure coincidence, writing this near Philadelphia on 8 May 2015.

[4] Later came Father’s Day and National Grandparent’s Day.

The Islamic Brigades II.

Posted on by
1

In 2007, more than twenty men—most from the large Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis–went to join Al Shabab, the Somali Islamist militia. Federal authorities launched an investigation. They ended up prosecuting eight men as facilitators and recruiters.

In recent years, eight young men from the Norwegian town of Frederikstad have gone to Syria. Norwegian authorities have investigated the role of an Islamist group called Prophet’s Umma for its role in recruiting jihadis and facilitating their movement toward the battlefront.

Investigating the recruiters and facilitators is important to the fight against radical Islamism. So, too, is trying to understand why some people are open to recruitment. There aren’t any good answers here so far. Mostly, there are just some anecdotes about human beings. Can we learn anything from looking at them?

Two friends from the same neighborhood in Minneapolis; high-school drops outs; in minor trouble with the law; converts to Islam; and soldiers of jihad.[1]

Troy Kastigar (1981-2009) went from being a funny, energetic, boundary-testing kid to smoking weed, drinking, and failing his high-school classes.[2] He dropped out of high school, later got a G.E.D., and worked fitfully between bouts of unemployment. He went back to school to become an X-Ray tech, but he was told that it would be difficult for him to get a job in the field because of his criminal record. His friend, Doug McCain, also dropped out of high school, then had some run-ins with the law over drugs, moving violations, and theft.

In about 2004, both men converted to Islam. There is a large Somali community in Minneapolis, so Islam presented itself more prominently there than in many other American cities. After a while, they moved beyond Islam to Islamism. In November 2008, Kastigar went to Kenya. He said he was going to study the Koran. In fact, he soon crossed the border to join Al Shabab. He was killed fighting with the group in September 2009. In 2009, Doug McCain moved to San Diego. He had family out there, he worked in restaurants, and he took some classes at a community college. In 2014 he went to Syria. In August 2014 he was killed fighting with ISIS.

At least one other man from the same social circle also traveled to Syria. Abdirahmaan Muhumed, worked at the airport from November 2001 to May 2011. At different times he worked at refueling planes and on cleaning crews. Acquaintances had seen him as a more secular than a religious man. He worked out a lot and played basketball. Then he started to become exercised over the fighting in Gaza and in Libya. Muslim people suffering under assault from Western powers. Muslim or not, Muhumed drank—and to excess—on some occasions. Drinking just enflamed him all the more on the issues. He went to Syria and died in the same fight as did Doug McCain.

The little town of Frederickstad, Norway, is south of Oslo. It is a more diverse place than one might expect of a small town. The Muslim community is largely made up of Somali refugees, but there also are immigrants from Algeria, Pakistan, Kurdistan, and Chechnya.[3]

The Chaib family came from Algeria to Frederickstad. Their son Abdullah (1989-2012) grew into a popular figure in his school and neighborhood. His ability at soccer enhanced a general “cool guy” demeanor.   At some point and by some means, Abdullah Chaib became committed to jihad. A then-radical Norwegian Muslim who visited Frederikstad recalled Chaib as “a real fanatic…[who] talked about jihad all the time.” In November 2012 Abdullah Chaib went to Syria. In December 2012 he died fighting there.

Chaib’s death in battle set an example for some other boys in the town. Among them was Adu Edelbijev. His parents came to Norway from Chechnya in 2002. He attended the same school as Chaib and, like Chaib, was a good athlete. He didn’t feel estranged from Norway, but his hopes to join the army were foiled by bad eyesight. He began to take religion seriously. By 2013 he had begun to prepare to go to Syria. He left in August 2013. In November 2014, he died while fighting with ISIS near Kobani.

Rebecca Sanchez Hammer was a Filipina who came to Norway and married a Norwegian who later died. They had a son, Torlief Sanchez Hammer. A group of goofy dopers used Torlief Hammer’s basement as a place to bake their heads. For several years, the police regularly broke up their parties and confiscated their drugs and pipes.

When, before he left for Syria, Adu Edelbijev lectured Torlief Hammer about his bad habits, the boy listened. Hammer converted to Islam, took the new first name Abdul, and suddenly stopped using drugs. His run-ins with the police ended, but his satisfaction with life did not improve. “”I have no friends, no job, nothing,” he told his mother. This did not cause him to reject Islam however. It only deepened his commitment. In December 2013, the young man took the road to Syria.

The parents of Samiullah Khan (1991- ) came from Pakistan to Norway, but did not prosper. His father murdered someone, did a stretch in prison, then accidentally killed someone else while driving drunk. This background left Khan feeling marked and excluded by native Norwegians and Pakistani immigrants. He went to fight in Syria, was wounded, returned to Norway, and was arrested for belonging to a terrorist organization.

It is easy to write off these people as failures who made foolish—and fatal–decisions. But is it possible that there foolish and fatal decision reflected an aspiration for a more satisfying life than what the larger societies in which they lived could offer?

A friend of Kastigar and McLean argued that “They just wanted to be a part of something. They were just trying to find something that just accepted them for who they were.” A friend of Abdirahman said that “He always wanted to be a freedom fighter, he always wanted to be a hero,” recalled a friend.

“None of them ever even mentioned religion when we knew them,” recalled one policeman speaking about the group around Torlief Hammer. “The only thing they had in common is that they did not function in society. But they wanted to be able to do something, to be good at something.” Torlief Hammer told his mother that “he wanted to fix himself after too much disco, too many girlfriends and too much smoking.”

In March 1940, George Orwell published a review of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In it, Orwell argued that Hitler “has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”[4]

As the United States lugubriously embarks on the election campaign of 2016, will any of the candidates offer voters “struggle and self-sacrifice”? Or will they promise “ease, security and avoidance of pain”? That is an easy question to answer. But what if there are a lot of people who would never consider radical Islam, yet still feel some longing for something more ennobling than the next entitlement or the next tax cut?

[1] Jack Healy, “For Jihad Recruits, a Pipeline From Minnesota to Militancy,” NYT, 7 September 2014.

[2] I wondered if these were signs of Depression. His mother describes him as having had a “sadness and a darkness” move into his life.

[3] Andrew Higgins, “A Norway Town And Its Pipeline to Jihad in Syria,” NYT, 5 April 2015.

[4] http://genius.com/George-orwell-review-of-mein-kampf-annotated

Some American Public Opinion in Spring 2015.

Posted on by
Reply

Standardized testing has been all the rage among educational reformers for more than a decade.[1] Only 20 percent of Americans think that it has done more good than harm to the students or the schools; 49 percent think that it has done more harm than good; and 31 percent “don’t know.” However, “don’t know” isn’t one of the options on a standardized test. Would it count as a correct answer if it was an option?

Americans frequently “don’t know” where they stand on public issues, but that isn’t the case with gay marriage. Today 61 percent favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry.[2] Opposition to gay marriage rallies 35 percent. That leaves just 4 percent who don’t know.

Reading the statistics above can obscure, rather than clarify, where Americans stand on the issue. Liberal media and public figures heaped abuse on Indiana’s “religious freedom” law on the grounds that it permitted discrimination against gays. Polls revealed that 49 percent of Americans agreed with the law’s critics. However, 47 percent believed that wedding-related businesses should be able to refuse their services to gay couples. Naturally, the vast majority of the dissenters were Republicans (68 percent), but a third of Democrats (33 percent) also supported business’ “right to choose.”[3]

Support for capital punishment has been slipping in America in recent decades. In 1988, 78 percent favored the death penalty for murder. In 2015, 56 percent support the death penalty for murder. Slightly more of the nation, 60 percent, supports imposing the death penalty on Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber.[4] However, opposition to the death penalty is stronger among some groups than among other groups. Thus California juries are more willing to assign someone the death penalty than are California judges to allow the penalty to be carried out. Currently, there are 751 people on death row in California, but there have been no executions in almost ten years.[5] In a remarkable demonstration of core values, in early April 2015, 62 percent of Boston voters favored sentencing Dzhokar Tsarnaev to life in prison, rather than to death, if/when he was convicted for his part in the Boston Marathon bombing.[6]

The following is no new thing, but it has come to the attention of white America as a reasonable possibility. While 61 percent of all Americans express “great” or “fair” confidence in their local police, the number plummets to 36 percent among African-Americans.[7] That means that 39 percent don’t feel “great” or “fair” confidence in their local police. Who are these people? They can’t all be members of the ACLU. Since African-Americans make up about 11 percent of the population, that would suggest that 7-8 percent of the American population (the two-thirds of the 11 percent who are African-American) lack “great” or “fair” confidence in their local police. If 39 percent of Americans over-all lack “great” or “fair” confidence in their local police, then 31-32 percent of Caucasian, Asian, and Hispanic Americans also lack “great” or “fair” confidence in their local police. The crisis of confidence in local police reaches far beyond high school students rioting in Baltimore when they should be in study hall.

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 3 April 2015, p. 15.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 8 May 2015, p. 17. Of course the phrasing of the statement allows for the comic possibility that many Americans think that gay men want to marry lesbians. “Marriage means one man and one woman.”   So that would be—you know—OK.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 17 April 2015, p. 17.

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 1 May 2015, p. 17.

[5] The Week, 10 April 2015, p. 14.

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 3 April 2015, p. 15.

[7] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 8 May 2015, p. 17.

Incarceration and decarceration.

Posted on by
Reply

In the 1970s crime sharply increased in the United States. In the 1980s there came an epidemic of “crack” cocaine use. Americans legislatures and courts responded by “getting tough on crime.” Sentences for all sorts of crimes were increased and about half the states adopted “three strikes and you’re out” laws that could put people in prison for a very long time for a series of comparatively minor crimes.[1]

In 1980, there were 320,000 people in local, county, state, and federal lock-ups. Today there are about 2.4 million in prisons. (About 40 percent of them are African-American.) As a result, while Americans represent only five percent of the world’s population, Americans represent twenty-five percent of the world’s imprisoned population. (See: “The Senator from San Quentin,” October 2014.)

In theory, the “War on Drugs” isn’t responsible for most of the prisoners. Only 17 percent of the prisoners are there for purely drug crimes.[2] However, the “War on Drugs” led to a “War for the Corners” in many American cities. The “War for the Corners” then had other violent effects. One came in the up-arming of many neighborhoods where the drug trade is carried out. A second came in multiplying personal feuds and quarrels. If you put those latter two together, violence and danger increased. If you step-to a man today, you’re likely to get more than a broken nose. Try explaining to a hospital that you walked into a door in the dark when they’re digging 9-mm rounds out of you.

At the same time, all sorts of violence increased to alarming levels from the 1970s to the 1990s. Drug-related violence hardly accounted for all of this. I don’t yet have an explanation for this spike in violence. However, half of the prison population is made up of burglars, armed robbers, rapists, and other violent or career criminals. Moreover, the majority (60 percent) of people released from prison are back inside within three years for parole violation or new crimes. This suggests that there are a lot of habitually violent people among the rest of us in America. (See: “Legacies of the Violent Decades,” January 2015.)

Prisoners cost a lot of money. The monthly average in California prisons is $2,600 per prisoner. The total cost for American taxpayers is $80 billion a year. Inevitably, the public has begun to demand a cut in the cost of government in this area as in other areas. States and the Federal government are beginning to respond.

People—me, for example–like to heap ridicule on Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and a one-time clown in the Republican presidential primary. However, Perry also got the state legislature to devote $241 million to paying for drug treatment alternatives to prison and expanded probation programs. The Texas prison population has decreased by three percent since 2010, while the crime rate has dropped by 18 percent. This suggests that it matters who you release or spare from prison. This is but one of a number of experiments in trying to reduce the size of the prison population. A bipartisan Smart Sentencing Act is making its way through Congress to cut the mandatory minimum sentences imposed by federal courts.

If someone wants to look for the dark cloud around this silver lining, they could consider a previous reform movement. Once upon a time, lots of mentally ill people were warehoused in awful state mental hospitals. Liberals pushed for out-patient care. Conservatives saw a way to cut spending. We got de-institutionalization and street-people living over heating grates.

[1] “Opening the prison door,” The Week, 24 April 2015, p. 11.

[2] Thus, a recent decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to release non-violent drug offenders in federal custody will reduce the prison population by 46,000 people or about 2 percent.

Annals of the Great Recession VIII.

Posted on by
Reply

When we say “investors” we naturally think of Thurston Howell III from “Gilligan’s Island.” Nothing could be further from the truth in contemporary America. Now “investors” means banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, and pension funds. Many of these investors are, in turn, owned by mutual funds. These investors had a lot of money to throw around and they wanted safe investments.[1] The banks addressed this dual problem by creating Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO). Essentially, a CDO is a super-bond that groups together many smaller loans. So, a CDO is a big financial instrument appropriate for a big investor. At the same time, the CDO addressed the safety problem by bundling the few loans anticipated to default with the many that were expected to not default. These CDOs proved to be wildly popular with investors: $550 billion worth of CDOs were issued in 2006 alone.

For a combination of reasons, the risky, or “sub-prime,” share of mortgages greatly expanded. Rather than trying to rein-in the “sub-prime” risk, lenders relied on safety features of the CDO (many presumably sound mortgages bundled together with a handful of presumably bad mortgages). Furthermore, other companies sold insurance for the derivatives, so they seemed very safe. The market in these “financial derivatives” just exploded. Less noticed, many of the loans were also adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) which allowed the lender to increase the interest rate charged the borrower if interest rates in general began to rise.

Then, in the second half of the 2000s the whole process went into reverse.[2] The Federal Reserve Bank raised the Federal Funds Rate from 1 percent in Summer 2004 to 5.25 percent in 2006, then left it there until Summer 2007.[3] Interest rates began to rise and housing prices began to drop. The adjustable rate mortgages followed the track of interest rates in general, squeezing many marginal home owners to the point where they could not service the mortgage at all. Defaults suddenly began to mount, leading to foreclosures, leading to a glut of homes on an already falling market, leading to a further decline in the value of all homes.

The trouble here finally appeared in the opacity of the CDOs. Once the defaults started to mount, it proved impossible to tell with any certainty how solid any one CDO was. It might be made up of mostly good loans with a few dogs mixed in. It might be a veritable animal rescue society with a few good loans mixed in. As Peter Peterson put it, “you’ve got ten bottles of water and one of them is poisoned; which one do you drink?” There was no way to tell, so people did the safe thing by distrusting all of them.

As the number of worthless mortgages inside the “bundles” of mortgages bought by investors rose sharply, the value of the securities plunged. Banks that had bought these securities as part of their capital, suddenly found their balance sheets showing huge losses. Worse still, the companies which had sold insurance on the derivatives found that they had misunderstood the degree of risk of default and did not have the resources necessary to cover their own losses. Banks started refusing to lend to other banks out of a fear that the loans would not be repaid. Suddenly, the whole financial system seemed to be on the verge of collapse.

The United States had been through this once before, in the early stages of the Great Depression of the Thirties. Inadequate government action then had led to more than a decade of hardship, misery, and political upheaval. This time would be different. Sort of.

[1] “The ‘toxic debt’ tsunami,” The Week, 20 March 2009, p. 13.

[2] “Wall Street’s hidden time bombs,” The Week, 10 October 2008, p. 11.

[3] http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/112465.pdf