Half Sigma

Marriage and Class in the NY Times

Today’s class article in the NY Times is about marriage. Like the previous articles in the series, it’s long on anecdotes and short on real analysis. We get a very long article about the marriage of upper class Cate Woolner with working class Dan Croteau.

Today’s story is a bad way to demonstrate class differences because, the way I see it, the bigger problem in the marriage described is that the woman has money and the man doesn’t. This would be a big problem for their marriage even if both were born to the same class but the woman earned more money.

At least the article describes liberal guilt:

She was always uncomfortable with her money; when she came into a modest inheritance at 21, she ignored the monthly bank statements for several years, until she learned to channel her unease into philanthropy benefiting social causes.

The article also reveals that she wouldn’t date anyone who was a Republican, and that she worked at an “anti-poverty” agency. What a waste of an Ivy League education. People on the right want to believe that rich people contribute more to society, but it’s obvious that she contributes very little.

I guess this is as close as we’ll get to an article in the NY Times that explains how the core of the liberal movement is rich kids who feel guilty about inheriting money from mom and dad.

More about Newsweek and Islam

Bruce Thornton writes today (in an article I highly recommend reading in full) about what was on Palestinian TV last week:

[I]n last Friday's sermon televised on Palestinian Authority television the paid employee of the PA described the Jews as an AIDS-like virus responsible for all the world's evils, blamed their economic sabotage of Germany for the Holocaust, and predicted the future triumph of Islam over America, a time when "everything will be relieved of the Jews, even the stones and trees."

I certainly wish that U.S. publications like Newsweek would report what the Islamic world is really about instead of ignoring it and only finding fault with America.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that what Newsweek reported two weeks ago wasn’t true, or that Newsweek didn’t have a right to publish it.

Now let’s look at the actual paragraph that supposedly caused all of the riots and killing:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee's hair and sat on the detainee's lap. (New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee's face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

The paragraph is misleading because it implies that U.S. investigators “confirmed” that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. But it does say this information came from “sources,” which is newspeak for “there’s no way to truly know if this is true or not.” I wish that the MSM would use more exact language in the way they report this stuff instead of presenting it so that the average reader, or even the sophisticated one, gets the impression that it’s 100% true.

Everyone is now in CYA mode, so we may never know if someone at Guantanamo “flushed a Qur’an down a toilet.” And don’t give me “but a book won’t go down a toilet,” because the obvious meaning of the statement is that the book was either dumped into the toilet, or that pages were torn out and flushed down the toilet.

Just because the Pentagon says “oh no, nothing like this would have ever happened,” doesn’t mean I believe those denials. For reasons explained in a previous post, I am sure that military authorities are lying to us about who was really responsible at Abu Ghraib and are making scapegoats out of unfortunate low level soldiers.

Is it possible to successfully fight a war against shadowy guerilla organizations without using interrogation methods that seem uncivilized to the typical liberal Westerner living a comfy life in spoiled luxury? Probably not.

I could care the less if some soldier flushed a few pages of some book down a toilet, but it does bother me that, if it did happen, our government would probably try to cover it up.

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I also agree with the sentiments of this NY Sun editorial (found via this parody article).

More Islamic double standards

Today the Washington Post informs us:

The Koran has such exalted status among Muslims that is it never allowed to touch the ground. It is placed on a high shelf and kissed each time it is opened. Desecrating the Koran is punishable by death in Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other Islamic countries.

Religious Jews treat their Torahs with the same respect, but that hasn’t prevented Muslims from desecrating them. Michael Anbar, PhD, writes: “During the 1948-1967 Jordanian occupation, all Jewish synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem were desecrated to symbolize the supremacy of Islam over Judaism.”

I am tired of the MSM giving the Islamic religion this exalted status that it doesn’t deserve. I am tired of the MSM making a Big Deal over the slightest insult to Islam while ignoring far worse behavior on the part of Islam to all other world religions.

Pakistan is supposedly our “ally” in the “war on terrorism.” We shouldn’t be allied with any country that executes people for what in the U.S. and other civilized countries would be considered protected free speech.

Do too many people own homes?

There’s some home ownership data posted at EconLog by Bryan Caplan. From 1991 to 2004, home ownership rose from 64% to 69%, a pretty big increase considering that home ownership was “stable” between 1980 and 1991.

There is no doubt that this increased demand for home ownership has contributed to the rising prices.

Does everyone in America really need to live in their own home? Many would be better off living in an apartment. Homes incur significant transactions costs when one moves. Homes also require more time commitment from the owner. In our increasingly mobile society in which white collar employees are putting in more hours not less, one would think that home ownership would be falling, not rising.

Of course people who owned homes during the last few years are a lot better off financially because of it; but that’s a lucky historical anomaly that may end in tears for the last owners to jump on the bandwagon.

Bryan seems to imply that the government shouldn’t be subsidizing home ownership via the tax code. If that’s what he means, then I agree with him.

Class vs. income vs. wealth

Wealth is how much money you have, income is how much you earn, and class is how much other people think you have based on how you behave.

People often don’t realize class exists because most people only associate with people of their own class. They don’t comprehend that people from other classes behave and think in ways totally alien to them.

If people are aware of class, it’s only of the class directly below them whom they feel superior to. Yes, class has a lot to do with looking down at people, which is why it’s a topic that’s seldom talked about. It’s not politically correct to admit that you look down at people.

People don’t pay as much attention to the class above them. Perhaps because people fear sinking in class so they make sure not to behave like the class below them. Fear is a powerful motivator. Or perhaps it’s because people are unable to admit to themselves that they are inferior to people above them, so they avoid observing how the class above them is different. It’s much more psychologically comfortable to focus on how you are superior to people below you.

With the publication in the NY Times of a series of articles about class, I had hoped that bloggers might be talking about class, but instead both the NY Times series (so far) and the blogosphere are mostly focusing on income and wealth mobility. This is what the blog posts at Washington Monthly, The Stone City, The Fly Bottle, Pandagon, and Meat Eating Leftist mostly focus on.

Now, unlike some people on the right, I think that income mobility and the unfair distribution of wealth is a topic worth talking about. But the topic of class I find even more interesting because it’s so seldom discussed and because it’s so hidden and mysterious.

I suspect that liberals hate genuine discussions of class because they envision that the government can “fix” the uneven distribution of wealth by redistributing it, but the government can’t redistribute class. When a construction worker wins the lottery, he may be rich but he still has no class, and other people in his new wealth bracket aren’t going to want to hang out with him or be his friend.

Robert Steinbuch sues Jessica Cutler for blog

Robert Steinbuch, a staff attorney for Senator Mike DeWine as well as a part time ethics instructor, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Jessica Cutler for revealing personal (and pretty darn embarrassing) details about their relationship on her blog. The Smoking Gun has a copy of the complaint available online.

If you’re not familiar with the Jessica Cutler story, you can visit my Jessica Cutler page which explains the whole thing.

You have to love item 11 of the complaint:

Cutler’s public blog described in graphic detail her ongoing sexual relationships with six men, including Plaintiff. At the time of his relationship with Cutler, Plaintiff did not know that Cutler was simultaneously engaged in sexual relationships with another man, let alone five other men, and let alone that she was prostituting herself to some of them.

And in case you’re wondering about some of the graphic detail, it involves “spanking. (Both giving and receiving.)” Jessica also wrote:

So it turns out that RS cannot finish with a condom on. He can barely stay hard. So he ends up taking it off and humping away at me. Maybe I forgot to tell him that I'm on the Pill. Note to self...

I also learned that he was a cop, so he has scary police shit like handcuffs in his closet. He implied that we would be using them next time, which is intriguing, but I know I'm going to get scared and panicky. (Which would probably turn him on.)

It should be noted that Mr. Steinbuch wasn’t a real cop, but rather an auxiliary police officer.

I think this lawsuit, besides being quite humorous, raises some interesting questions about blogging. Jessica Cutler certainly isn’t the only person to reveal personal and embarrassing details about others in her blog. To what extent can you be held liable for spilling the dirt about someone you know?

Gay genes in the NY Times

For too long it has been taboo to suggest that our behavior is influenced by what genes we inherited. So I am glad to see a NY Times op-ed article by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker discussing the link between genes and homosexuality (which is a type of behavior). Pinker writes:

Homosexuality is a puzzle for biology … because any genetic tendency to avoid heterosexual opportunities should have been selected out long ago. Perhaps "gay genes" have some other compensating advantage, like enhancing fertility, when they are carried by women.

I’m sure that the gay genes do have compensating advantages, otherwise, like Pinker reasons, they would have been selected out of the gene pool. And maybe not just in women. Gay men are stereotyped as being more creative, stylish and artistic. It’s reasonable to assume that this stereotype is not just a coincidence but is genetically influenced. The same genes that make a man more likely to be homosexual also make him more likely to be creative.

Just as puzzling is the existence of homophobia. Why didn't evolution shape straight men to react to their gay fellows by thinking: "Great! More women for me!"

“Homophobia” seems more cultural than biological to me. The ancient Greeks didn’t seem to have any problems with it. On the other hand, Islamic societies seem to be afraid of regular heterosexual sex.

Nor do I like the word “homophobia,” because it doesn’t seem to me that straight men are afraid of homosexuals so much, but rather they dislike the homosexual community’s attempts to change American society’s norms and bring homosexuality out of the closet. I might add that homosexuals have been quite successful doing this, no doubt due to their disproportional representation in influential creative industries like Hollywood and the media. No wonder why people who don’t like change are angry.

Frank McCourt for greatest American

Many pundits in the blogosphere have been chiming in on who they think ought to be added to the list of the 100 greatest Americans (reproduced at Professor Bainbridge’s blog).

Professor Bainbridge has a list of additions heavy on lawyers and people whose last name is Marshall. Pete the Elder suggests Boss Tweed and Wyatt Earp. She who will be obeyed supports cooking instructor Julia Childs (but Lawgirl and David Schraub don’t agree) . The Unabrewer thinks James Madison should be on the list. Greg Hlatky has his own list of 100, which includes Irving Berlin, the musician best known for his Broadway showtunes. The Monk nominates William Seward, who probably deserves to be there a lot more than Condoleezza Rice. Kevin Drum suggests Andy Warhol, famous for designing the Campbell’s Soup label. Kevin of Lean Left likes Eugene V. Debs who was sentenced to prison for treason against the United States (but at least not for child molestation which is likely for Michael Jackson who did mysteriously make the list). Linkmeister likes Duke Ellington (though I would pick his contemporary Glenn Miller first).

So in light of what all these other bloggers have written, my nomination is for Frank McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes.

First of all, the list is short on authors, with only Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens making the list (and most deservedly so). I can’t think of any contemporary writer more deserving of inclusion than Frank McCourt. In addition to being a huge bestseller with millions of copies sold, Angela’s Ashes also received critical acclaim and won a Pullitzer Prize. This is a pretty rare combination; usually critical acclaim and sales are inversely related.

The United States is a nation of immigrants, and Frank McCourt’s memoirs capture the spirit of the immigrant experience. He has a horrible childhood in Ireland, but then he finally saves up enough money to buy passage to America. Angela’s Ashes ends with Frank finally returning to America, the land of opportunity.

In addition to being short on writers, schoolteachers are completely absent from the list. Yet surely teaching is an important enough profession to merit one inclusion in a list of 100 great Americans? The very basis for our Democracy lies with an educated public.

Before becoming a famous author, Frank McCourt worked for thirty years as a humble public high school teacher in New York City. But he was more than just a mere high school teacher; most of his students remember him as the best teacher they ever had.

Frank McCourt truly deserves nomination to the list.

UPDATE

Lawgirl responds to what she says is a misconstruction of her Julia Child remark. I agree with her. Why is a cook promoted to the list of 100 while other accomplished American women, such as author Edith Wharton or artist Mary Cassatt, are ignored? In fact, I agree that Professor Bainbridge’s inclusion of only judges, politicians, and military people shows his lack of interest in other equally important aspects of American culture such as art, literature, and science. Who is Chester Nimitz and why is he a more important American than Ansel Adams, Albert Bierstadt, or John Singer Sargent?

Barack Obama, the greatest American?

Professor Bainbridge says that Barack Obama doesn’t belong on the list of 100 greatest Americans.

I give the professor credit for even knowing who he is. Barack who? I never heard of the guy.

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I think at least one person on the professor’s discard list deserves to remain. That would be Babe Ruth, the most famous historical player of the most quintessentially American sport of baseball.

Journalists don’t kill, Islamic nutjobs do

I don’t mean to defend Newsweek given its recent bogus cover story about the “best” high schools. But I’m tired of reading all these blog posts accusing Newsweek of killing people because they printed the allegation from an anonymous source about Korans being desecrated.

The MSM prints allegations from anonymous sources all the time. Maybe it’s bad journalism, but it’s standard practice. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Black Five are way out of line in accusing Newsweek of being responsible for these deaths. Even Glenn Reynolds is jumping on the bandwagon.

Newsweek didn’t kill people, rioting Islamic nutjobs killed people, which is hardly news at all. Islamic nutjobs are always killing people in the name of Islam.

I can’t think of any religion that is more disrespectful to other religions than Islam. Muslims routinely destroy the holy sites and artifacts of other religions, such as Joseph’s Tomb and ancient Buddhist statues. Nothing gets Muslims more excited than tearing down another religion’s temple or church and putting up a Mosque in its place.

UPDATE

LHM has done a better job than me expressing these same thoughts, so do read his post.

Michael Higgins has also posted on this topic at his blog: "For bloggers to side with the zealots who would gladly flush our U.S. Constitution down the drain because it gives them the opportunity to stick it to the MSM is contemptible."

Class and healthcare in the NY Times

The second article about class is in today’s New York Times, and once again we are treated to lousy reporting.

Using healthcare as the platform, the goal is more to tell us how much it sucks to be poor rather than inform us about anything we don’t already know.

Many risk factors for chronic diseases are now more common among the less educated than the better educated. Smoking has dropped sharply among the better educated, but not among the less.

Someone is confusing “education” with “intelligence” and “wisdom.” It’s not like the Ivy League has courses in not smoking. If people can’t figure out that smoking is bad for them, then they are just plain stupid. Of course there’s a connection between intelligence and class, which is why I recommend The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray.

The story in the article about the Polish immigrant with a low prole job (low prole being a term from Paul Fussell’s book) adequately demonstrates how stupid she is.

But lot of what educated people think they “know” about health isn’t even true. I previously wrote about the study that showed it’s actually healthier to be a little overweight. There is also evidence that what we’ve been told about cholesterol is a big lie too. Visit Dr. Ravnskov’s website.

The article completely gets wrong the issue of hours worked:

People have less time, if they're poor, to devote to health maintenance behaviors when they are juggling two jobs.

It’s the middle class and upper middle class who are working longer hours. People with prole jobs who get paid by the hour still enjoy the forty hour workweek.

Desecrated Korans and double standards

Joe Gandalman writes about the Koran which may or may not have been desecrated at Guantanamo Bay:

It almost defies description, if it's true. What would many Americans conclude if they heard that Americans captured in a Muslim country had to watch a crucifix set on fire — or if Jews capture had to watch the destruction of their holy Torah?

Arabs desecrated Joseph’s Tomb, destroying an irreplaceable archeological and religious site. This is a thousand times worse of a crime than destroying a book that someone bought at Borders. Yet from the reaction in America, not very many people cared at all.

UPDATE

Marc at USS Neverdock expresses similar thoughts when complains that the media ignored a story about Palestinians using Bibles for toilet paper:

Where's the outrage? Where's the indignation? Why is the world media so hell bent on portraying Islam as some kind of sacrosanct religion, better and above the rest? Is their book somehow holier than everybody else's? Not bloody likely!

NY Times article about class and cool web widget

Returning to the topic of the article about class in today’s NY Times, looking at it more closely makes me more aware of how incredibly crappy it is.

MONEY VS. CLASS

Blogger Ed Cone writes:

This first article focuses mainly on economic status as the arbiter of class, which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't tell the whole story. Social class and economic class overlap significantly, but not completely, and while economic class certainly helps define social status, it also works the other way around.

I couldn’t agree more. Everyone knows that a college professor has more “class” then a UPS driver, even though the UPS driver might earn more money. Making an even finer disctinction, a college professor whose father is a UPS driver has less class than a college professor whose father is a deca-millionaire.

THE WEB WIDGET

The online article includes a cool web widget. Cool, but full of some really bad data.

But first let’s talk about the good part. It lets you see how your individual income and wealth compares to the rest of America. This should be really depressing to the fools who think they’ve made it because they have a house worth a few hundred thousand. In order to be in the top 1% you need to have more than $5 million of wealth. Meanwhile, the widget seems to be saying that half the people have less than $50,000 of wealth with one quarter have less than $5,000. What a huge amount of wealth disparity.

The horrible part of the web widget purports to tell you how you are doing based on your education and occupation.

For education, the only thing the widget considers is your highest level completed. This means absolutely nothing if you don’t consider the prestige of the school and the type of degree. An Ivy League degree is an upper middle class indicator, while a degree from the local state school is merely a middle class indicator.

Futhermore, graduate degrees don’t mean that much and in most cases shouldn’t be considered. A master’s degree in education means the degree holder is a schoolteacher, strictly a middle class job. And a PhD, which the widget thinks is the most prestigious of all, usually means the degree holder is a college professor which generally pays a middle class salary. The genuinely upper class would never get a PhD.

I thank CapitalImperialistPig for pointing out how bad the occupation rankings are. The job of CEO, which is usually an upper class job (that’s upper class, not upper middle class), is ranked as having lower prestige than a high school teacher which, as pointed out above, is only a middle class job. Blue collar jobs like “electrician” and “sheet metal worker” are ranked higher than white collar jobs such as “financial analyst” and “insurance underwriter.”

The occupations were ranked based on a Census survey. These rankings tell us very little about the real statuses of the included jobs, but a lot about the stupidity of the average American responding to the survey.

DAVID BROOKS AND BOBOS

The blog Just One Minute mentions this article and a related op-ed by David Brooks. Brooks begins by writing:

Last week the Pew Research Center came out with a study [read my post about the study] of the American electorate that crystallized something I've been sensing for a long time: rich people are boring, but poor people are interesting.

This is Brooks’ weirdest statement ever considering that he wrote an entire book, Bobos in Paradise, about the upper middle class. (Read David Tufte’s review.)

Freakonomics: Cheating

This is the second of a series of blog posts reviewing Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Today we look at Chapter 1, “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?”

What they have in common is that they both cheat.

Class in the New York Times

Matthew Yglesias writes, “I'm glad someone decided to write about class in America,” and links to a NY Times article about class.

First of all, I’ve been writing about class in my blogs for a long time. It comes up all the time in my posts, such as my reviews of I am Charlotte Simmons (part I and part II), my comments about Jessica Cutler and values, and my recent post about ugly children.

My opinion of the NY Time article is pretty low. It says very little about class. If you really want to understand class, read the book Class: a Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell (which in addition to being educational is also very funny). And if you want to know about social mobility, read The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. If you read these two books, then you’ll understand what’s really going on in American society.

Why are liberals unmarried and without children?

Liberals are less likely to be married or have children. This is, without a doubt, a real phenomenon. The 2005 Pew study (blogged about previously) shows that only 27% of Liberals are in the category “parent, child living at home,” while the rate for all respondents was 37%. Similarly, 44% of Liberals are married while 54% of the entire sample is married.

Furthermore, Steve Sailer has done some great analysis showing that a state’s white fertility rate is highly correlated with Bush’s share of the vote in that state in the 2004 election.

But no one has a good explanation for why this phenomenon is happening. I have five suggestions, and I don’t know which might be correct:

(1) Because liberals are so disagreeable and/or ugly, people don’t want to have sex with them or marry them.

(2) Because liberals have no qualms about pre-marital sex, they have their sexual urges fully satisfied without getting married. If a liberal woman accidentally gets pregnant, she has no problem with getting an abortion. But square conservative Christian types feel guilty about pre-marital sex so they get married. (This is sort of the opposite of the previous explanation. I don’t like this explanation because it vastly oversimplifies the connection between Christianity and people’s political views.)

(3) Something about being liberal is correlated with not wanting to be married or have children. (I think this has some merit and bears further investigation.)

(4) Liberals do want to have children, but because they live in blue states where the cost of living is so high, they can’t afford to have any. (I find this reasoning to be an example of incorrect analysis of cause and effect. Liberal policies cause the cost of living to be high [I previously explained why], not the other way around. However this explanation seems to be part of the basis for Steve Sailer’s most recent column.)

(5) Liberals do get married and have children with the same frequency as everyone else, but what happens is that after they have children their politics change. Perhaps this is because they are responding to a strong biological urge to give their own children more resources and advantages. So they become greedy and self-interested and stop being concerned about the plight of the less fortunate, and they change their voting behavior and political attitudes accordingly.

Why do people think stocks will beat Social Security?

Bryan Caplan writes:

Is the typical American brainy enough to beat Social Security? The answer is clearly yes. Buy bonds, stocks, managed funds, index funds, dart-throwing funds - whatever. They all beat Social Security in the medium- and long-run.

I don’t buy it. The ability of the government to make Social Security payments is based on the taxing power of the United States. Why should shares of corporations grow faster than the government’s taxing power? After all, a large part of the taxing power is based on taxing corporate income!

Merely looking at past performance of stocks is not a sufficient basis for saying that stocks will outperform Social Security. One of the basic mantras of investing is that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

The past performance was based on an elite few voluntarily buying stocks in a free market. We don't know what performance will be like if the government forces every citizen to invest in mutual funds and also decides what mutual funds they will be allowed to invest in.

Trade deficit: good or bad?

David Altig says the trade deficit is bad. “[F]oreigners do not provide us with more goods than we provide to them out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so because they expect to be paid back sometime in the future….”

But libertarian Don Boudreaux says don’t worry be happy. “It’s the free market, stupid.” Well, that’s not exactly what he says, but I think that’s what he means.

I like to think of dollars as a product we produce, much like Saudi Arabia produces oil or South Africa produces gold. When you look at it this way, the trade deficit is a really great deal because it costs us nothing to “manufacture” dollars, but we’re getting a lot of really good stuff in return for them.

No federalism from either party

David Boaz asks “If conservatives don't want federalism any more, will liberals pick up the banner?”

No, liberals won’t pick up the banner. The goal of liberals is the equalization of society through government action. Their mission requires a powerful central government.

Today’s Paul Krugman: low wages and safety nets

Today’s Paul Krugman column makes some valid points that shouldn’t be dismissed because he’s a crazed leftist political hack.

Paul Krugman describes the phenomenon of the shrinking middle class, which I think is a real phenomenon. Globalization is reducing the value of labor because people in third world countries are willing to work for a fraction of what Americans get paid.

Paul Krugman also writes about the inflation of CEO salaries. I don’t think there’s any justification for high CEO salaries. “It’s the free market,” say defenders of CEOs. But I own stock in many corporations and no one ever asked me for my opinion on what the CEO should be paid. It seems to me like high CEO salaries rip off the shareholders.

However, instead of proposing any real solutions to these problems, Krugman uses this as an excuse for why we need to increase our commitment to Social Security. I don’t see how it benefits the young worker who is in the shrinking segment of the middle class if old people get fatter Social Security checks.

Paul Krugman cites a Business Week article which tells us that “67% of Americans think it's a good idea to guarantee health care for all U.S. citizens.”

Although one suspects that the poll which produced that figure may be somewhat biased, I have no doubt that a large percentage of Americans like the idea of government transfer payment programs, if for no reason other than society (including the liberal media and liberal educational institutions) telling us over and over how good these programs are.

Joe public isn’t always the brightest person, so while his response to polls helps guide politicians seeking to win elections, it doesn’t tell us what policies are best for the nation.

Apprentice blogging: the penultimate week

Kendra and Tana squared off, with each receiving the three worst candidates from their team as their employees.

I think this week once again demonstrates that the primary difference between the college graduates and the high school graduates is class. The high school graduates bickered and fought as usual, and Brian and Chris showed a basic lack of respect for their assignment.

The college graduates, even though they were the worst of their cohort, behaved in a civilized manner befitting of college graduates, and in doing so helped Kendra look good.

I just don’t see Trump picking a cosmetics salesperson to run one of his businesses. Trump may pretend that he’s a street smart guy who has greater respect for those who made it without college, but the reality is that he graduated from the same Ivy League school that I did.

More on the Pew 2005 Political Typology

Yesterday I wrote about the Pew 2005 Political Typology. Let’s look at what some other bloggers have said.

Mick Stockinger writes:

Most importantly, while Republican types tend to form a continuum in their values systems, conservative Democrats have virtually nothing in common with Liberals. While their voting patterns are definitely Democrat, they are philosophically Republican and trending that way in their voting patterns as well.

Mick sees the same thing I wrote about yesterday. That there is a core ideology of the left which comprise what the Pew study calls Liberals, but there is no such core ideology on of right.

Mick, however, has an unwarranted optimism that non-Liberal Democrats will shift Republican. Because most Democratic politicians are opportunists and not married to hardcore leftist ideology, they will change their platforms with the political winds. Since the time of Abraham Lincoln, the two parties have maintained an approximately even balance in the electorate. I don’t see how that’s going to change anytime soon.

The Unabrewer has a thoughtful comment about libertarians:

I don’t even think the test is designed to catch the small percentage of libertarians, since most Americans still want/expect the government (read: other people) to take care of their needs.

I have to agree with the Unabrewer. The goal of the survey was to identify eight typology groups making up approximately even segments of the electorate. Libertarians are probably only 2% of the electorate and therefore not numerous enough to have their own group.

I also agree that Americans have been trained not to believe in libertarianism, which explains why they are so rare.

Pattrick Ruffini has a lot of analysis at his blog, and promises to write more in the future. Let me comment on one point he makes:

The Pew study highlights a few areas where one key group stands athwart history, yelling stop! The Liberals are weird for their distinctively anti-war position and a fanatical insistence on purging all religion from the public square.

I don’t think it’s weird at all; the two concepts are strongly related. Liberals don’t like it when people associate in groups that think their group is better than other groups. Liberals dislike war because it causes nationalism which is the idea that one’s nation is better than other nations. And of course nearly all religions promote the idea that the religion is superior to other religions and its members will receive some Divine reward for their belief.

Both religion and nationalism are in opposition to the core liberal belief of equality of outcomes.

Elected official violates her own law

An elected official by the name of Ann V. Null violated her own law:

As it turns out, she rented a room to an immigrant family for about a year in violation of town ordinances against overcrowding of homes -- laws that she campaigned for and voted to approve last year, according to town documents and officials.

If you follow my blog, you know that I strongly oppose unnecessary government regulations, especially zoning laws, because it’s onerous zoning laws that keep the price of housing high and make it impossible for middle and lower income workers to have a decent standard of living.

So I am especially outraged when an elected official violates the very law she voted for. This little story demonstrates a big part of what’s wrong with our government and our politicians.

Laws that are too difficult for even the lawmakers themselves to obey shouldn’t be on the books.

The Pew Research 2005 Political Typology

It’s not just a big research study on American voters, but there’s also a cool online survery you can take to determine your Typology Group.

The survey says I’m a Disaffected. Huh? Me not an Enterpriser? “Disaffecteds have little interest in keeping up with news about politics and government....” Me not interested in news? What’s this blog about then?

* * *

If you have a lot of free time on your hands, the full report is interesting reading. But I wouldn’t say that it defines the whole Truth of political science. It’s just interesting.

For example, one tidbit I found interesting is that although 41% of both Liberals and Enterprisers have family incomes of $75,000+ (the two most affluent typologies), 53% of Enterprisers “trade stocks or bonds in the market,” while this is true for only 38% of liberals. Liberals hate free enterprise so much that many won’t trade stocks.

Another interesting tidbit is that Liberals are the least likely to have children living with them of any Typology Group. And Liberals are the most likely, of any other group, to be in the category of “never married.” What does having children and being married have to do with being against the war in Iraq? On the surface nothing, yet there’s a connection. (I recommend Steve Sailer’s baby gap articles.)

* * *

The results of the survey support a belief of mine that there is a basic linear left/right distribution of political thinking. I don’t agree with those who try to place people into quadrants or into even more complicated geometric shapes.

But while the left is defined by a core philosophy (called Liberals in the Typology), there is no core philosophy of the right. The right is just everyone who’s not left. Strongly religious people and libertarians both have beliefs which strongly conflict with the core leftist philosophy, yet otherwise these two groups don’t have much in common. This conflict between non-leftist philosophies has become a major problem for the Republican party.

Isn’t the Democratic party divided also? Yes, the Democratic party is divided, but not over its basic leftist philosophy. The hardcore leftists (or Liberals) by themselves aren’t numerous enough to win elections, so they have made alliances with special interests. The special interests may fight with each other, but there’s never any doubt over what the core leftist philosophy is.

Also, not all of the politicians in either party subscribe to any core beliefs. Many (most?) are just opportunists who seek power. In fact, few hardcore leftists actually win any elections because they turn off too many voters with their extremism.

* * *

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for spotting this survey. There is some more analysis at Daly Thoughts.

World's most bogus list of top high schools

Newsweek once again publishes the world’s most bogus list of top high schools.

Why is this list bogus? Because the sole criterion for ranking schools is the average number of Advanced Placement (AP) tests taken per student. The grades on the AP tests don’t even matter! Nor do any other measures of academic achievement obtained by the school’s students. If people ever start taking this list seriously, this will create the obvious incentive for high schools to game the system in ways that do nothing to improve the quality of their education.

Even worse, schools that have competitive admissions are excluded, so genuine top public high schools like Stuyvesant High School (“noted for its many accomplished alumni, its rigorous academics, and for sending the most students to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton of any public school in the United States”) are completely ignored.

One has to wonder if the inventor of this list, Jay Mathews, is receiving kickbacks from The College Board, the organization that makes money administering the AP tests. (Jay Mathews has a very long but pathetically bad article defending his list in today’s Washington Post.)

Newsweek should be ashamed of itself for perpetuating such crappy journalism.

UPDATE

Thanks to Kimberly Swaggart (who has an excellent education blog) and Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy for pointing out a newspaper article from Florida which reveals that the high school which is supposedly 10th “best” in the whole nation actually got a grade of D from the state of Florida.

Orin Kerr writes, “It doesn't take a genius to realize the silliness of the methodology used to determine Newsweek's rankings....”

Runtime

Runtime is an interesting blog I discovered, authored by David Rea who works at a private equity investment firm. His blog is a technology blog (nerd alert!) but with more diverse topics than your typical technology blog.

For example, he writes about humans and computers playing chess together as a team, whether Russia has the best programmers, and the benefits of nuclear power.

Apartments are substitute goods for houses

One of the arguments for a permanent increase in housing prices inside the Beltway is the lack of available space. “There’s no place to build any more houses, so prices can’t possibly go down,” is what people say. I’m sure the same reasoning has also been applied to many other metropolitan areas.

It’s nice that people at least understand the economic principle that, if supply is fixed but demand increases, then there is an inevitable increase in prices. (But if they understand this principle, why aren’t they asking politicians to allow more residential construction? Probably the 70% who own homes don’t want prices to go down. But whenever Democrats whine about how the middle class worker can’t afford the cost of housing, but then don’t follow up with the only logical solution to the problem which is to build more houses, they just demonstrate their failure to understand basic economics.)

However, supply of houses isn’t truly fixed, even in an area like inside the Beltway northern Virginia. Michael Higgins writes in his blog today about how old run down homes are being torn down and replaced with new luxury homes, thus increasing the supply of luxury homes.

The second way that demand is satisfied is through the creation of substitute goods. “In economics, one kind of good (or service) is said to be a substitute good for another kind insofar as the two kinds of goods can be consumed or used in place of one another in at least some of their possible uses. Classic examples of substitute goods include margarine and butter…”

The obvious example of a substitue for a house is an apartment or condo. A high rise building occupying the land of just a few houses can contain hundreds of apartments. In the long run, the potential supply of condos and apartments is nearly infinite, even in a “fully developed” area like inside the Beltway northern Virginia. In fact, when I look out my window in Arlington, I see the skyline littered with construction cranes. High rise residential buildings are going up all over Arlington.

Of course people will always pay a premium to have their own parcel of land in a desirable neighborhood. And the bigger the parcel the higher the premium. But there is a definite limit to the premium people are willing to pay. An increasing supply of high rise residential buildings puts downward pressure on the price of houses.

So we see, it’s a fallacy that housing prices can never go down in a “fully developed” area.

Robots in space

Yesterday I mentioned that manned space flight is a big waste, and the billions being spent to develop launch vehicles for humans would be better used developing robots to send into space.

Today I discovered that I’m not out in left field at all. The Japanese already have a program to put robots in space, and even NASA is developing the Robonaut.

Freakonomics: Introduction

Unfortunately I’m late to the game of reviewing Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt’s new book. Other bloggers received free advance copies, while I had to buy mine from Amazon.com. Not fair.

But I am going to outdo the other reviews by reviewing the book one chapter at a time, which is pretty easy because there are only six chapters plus the introduction.

FICA taxes screw the middle class

I previously wrote about about the marginal tax rate graph which showed that those on the borderline of middle class and upper middle class had higher marginal tax rates than the wealthy.

It turns out that I was incorrect in thinking that this had something to do with FICA taxes. There’s a followup post at Marginal Revolution with a link to the assumptions used. It seems that the bump in the marginal tax rate has to do with deductions for things like IRAs (as if anyone with a 401k plan would contribute that) and student loan interest being phased out.

It is a big mistake to ignore FICA taxes when considering tax reform. For people earning less than $90,000/year, the employee must pay a 7.65% FICA tax which he sees deducted from his paycheck, plus there’s a hidden 7.65% tax which the employer pays and the employee never even sees. Of course it’s merely a fiction that the employer pays this tax, because it represents money which otherwise would have been paid to the employee. FICA taxes are really like a 15.3% tax.

After $90,000, the FICA tax drops to 1.45% for both employer and employee (so it’s like a 2.9% tax).

So we see, once you reach $90,000 in income your marginal tax rate plummets by 12.4%.

A flat tax that ignores FICA taxes would screw the middle class because they would be burdened with higher tax rates than the rich. Unfortunately, almost all the flat tax proposals I hear about do ignore FICA taxes.

On the other hand, if FICA taxes and regular income taxes are merged into a single rate flat tax which kicks in once someone earns a threshold amount of income, the final result would be a tax system that’s fairer (assuming all the unfair deductions are removed) and more progressive than what we have now because lower income people would be paying no taxes at all. Under the current system, even the poorest workers still have to pay FICA taxes.

UPDATE 5/11/2005

TaxProf has the exact opposite take of this post. I'm complaining about how ignoring FICA taxes makes our tax system seem more progressive than it really is. But TaxProf complains that the NY Times modified the chart to make it seem more regressive.