A July episode of the Econtalk podcast is worth your time. University of Chicago Economist James Heckman (a Nobel Laureate) and host Russ Roberts discuss the former’s research on social mobility in Denmark, a country with frighteningly detailed data on all of its citizens. Here’s a key point worth teasing out, from Heckman (emphasis added):
… Denmark started expanding programs in the rural areas and targeting towards disadvantaged children that didn’t have education.
And so, for a while, those targeted programs operated in a way that actually promoted educational attainment. So, there was a big rise in the early part of the 20th century for Danish children to have much more education than that of their parents.
Well, suddenly then–and this is an interesting part of it–around the middle of the 20th century–… the educational policies became universal.
So, instead of going after the disadvantaged, they became across the board.
And, what happened was, the social mobility that had been witnessed in the first half of that century, started to vanish. And, the reason why it vanished is very interesting, and that is: Universal policies give a tableau. They give you a check. You can go out and cash this check; you can go to this school.
But, what educated parents, more affluent parents are better able to draw on that chip, to advise their children, to reinforce what is being learned in those schools.
And so, those universally-provided program actually turned out to be a vehicle for promoting social immobility–relative immobility that actually decide this idea of educate–so who was advantaged by the universal program? The most advantaged.
People who are already advantaged are better able to capitalize on resources that the government gives them. But that isn’t all. One of the ways they do that is entirely unintentional. When it comes to educational programs, they model behavior and priorities, thus making it more likely their children will make the most of what they’re given.
This has important implications when it comes not just to education, but to wealth redistribution and the idea of a baseline income. One thing Denmark does, as Heckman explains, is to ensure that outcomes are less divergent. Individuals can work harder to improve their situation, but in the spirit of “eventually you have enough,” the government shifts a big portion of their earnings to those who have less, such that everybody does okay.
Consider how that interplays with the idea of familial expectations. Parents who’ve being doing okay will be less likely to instill in their children the drive to do more than okay. The end result can be a society with a more-or-less permanent underclass that has less ability to capitalize on opportunities and less drive to do so even were it easy.
This situation may be tenable in a homogeneous population that’s doing fine economically, but as families have less in common with each other and as the economy softens, the overclass can shut doors and serve its own. So, Denmark still manages social mobility on the same level as the United States, but the U.S. approach is probably more durable.
A separate point that I’ll tack on at the end, here, because I found it so interest, is that advantage and profit will find a way. All teachers in Denmark are paid identically, so the best teachers use their talent premium to get the more-desirable jobs… which inevitably means those teaching more-affluent children.
The overarching points are that you can’t erase the value of things, you can’t eliminate human nature, and you can’t manage top-down without unintended consequences.
Featured image by Rolands Varsbergs on Unsplash.
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Between vulgar anti-Biden chants at athletic events and these billboards in Pennsylvania, a movement seems to be building.
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Somehow, this seems at odds with the strong hand Big Tech has brought to bear against people it claims are trying to undermine elections in the United States:
Following Russia’s demand that Apple and Google remove the tactical voting app, and then threats of fines, Apple and Google have dropped the “Smart Voting” app in the country.
The app, devised by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was intended to boost candidates with the best chance of succeeding against incumbents. Apple and Google’s removal came just hours before election voting was due to begin.
The unifying principle seems to be that the tech oligarchs give preference to powerful people who prioritize the exertion of power. Not really that surprising, actually.
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Folks are debating the justification and impetus for the Biden administration to grant access to monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19 not strictly according to need. Ryan Saavedra reports for The Daily Wire:
[Biden spokeswoman Jen] Psaki then said that the treatments are used after a person becomes infected and said that the way to save more lives was to get more people vaccinated, even though vaccinated people can still sometimes become infected with the coronavirus.
Psaki then said that the administration does not have an unlimited supply of the antibody treatments and that the administration is focused on making the distribution of the treatments “equitable.”
The argument is whether Biden is doing this for entirely political purposes (to undermine his opposition) or to ensure that states that don’t press vaccination don’t monopolize treatments, making them unavailable in other states when need arises despite vaccination. The fact that this is up for debate is what I find important.
This is a warning. Putting management of healthcare in the hands of our political establishment inevitably means that politics will be a factor in the management. The only question is what politics. It’s a system for balancing interests, so what types of interest will prove dominant?
The likeliest answer is that the fairness of the decisions will be inversely related to the challenge of the management. When there are plenty of doses of something, the distribution will be entirely fair. When doses are scarce, crass politics will play a greater role. When resources are drained (as socialism tends to accomplish), winning elections (or otherwise gaining power) becomes a matter of life or death for each faction.
That approach may look attractive to people who think their faction will always be the strongest and will, therefore, offer them protection, but history suggests otherwise. Eventually, only the top of the top remain protected, and the harder they hold on to power, the worse things get.
The safest approach all around is to leave politics out of it.
Featured image by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash.
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While I’m touching on Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’s insights on the vaccine and marketing thereof, this point is interesting:
A lot of people are afraid of needles — some say it’s over 25% of the population. Does every story featuring the “jab” (maybe also bad marketing — “jab” doesn’t sound very gentle) have to feature a needle? If your goal is to encourage people to be vaccinated, does it make sense to accentuate the part of the process that lots of people fear, and that nobody really enjoys?
True enough, but the question in response is: What’s the alternative, at least for the people pushing the virus? Think of every commercial for a medicine. What’s the presentation? It’s always freedom… freedom from the suffering and anxiety of the illness. But the people pushing the vaccine don’t want to sell freedom. That’s arguably the opposite of their motivation.
So they fall back on a message that, given their personalities, they find persuasive: everybody else is doing it.
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Musing about the Nicki Minaj/COVID vaccine kerfuffle, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes:
So for the record, I’m not particularly concerned with the safety of the vaccines. The Insta-Daughter even took part in one of the clinical trials. But I am particularly concerned with the government-fostered bullying and intimidation aimed at anyone who doesn’t follow the party line. If Nicki Minaj can give them some heartburn over that, it’s well-deserved heartburn. And really — if you want people to believe you, don’t send Jen Psaki.
The real failure — and I’ve warned about it since the beginning — is that our “public health” establishment has been so obviously corrupt and politicized that people who would have trusted it a decade or two ago now don’t. And the reason they don’t is that it’s been so obviously corrupt and politicized as to be untrustworthy.
That sense of untrustworthiness is the sort of impression that won’t go away once you’ve acquired it. Last night, for instance, Twitter was host to much rending of garments over Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s very, very mild softening of his mandate that healthcare workers receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be fired. When I asked the tweeters — reporters, left-wing politicians, ostensibly regular folks concerned about their own safety — what they thought (or whether they asked) about natural immunity, not a single one responded. It’s as if they’ve decided that’s kook talk.
That attitude is simply bizarre. Whether reading published reports or doing the math yourself, the conclusion is that natural immunity is preferable to vaccine immunity, yet the people making decisions in Rhode Island (including decisions about what counts as news) are acting as if it doesn’t exist.
If they touched on the topic and concluded natural immunity isn’t relevant, I’d disagree, but at least there would be argument. The complete silence is downright disturbing. It’s difficult to resist the feeling of being gaslit. Or maybe in their deep need to feel they have the proper opinions (you know, “I believe in science”), the insiders are the ones who’ve been gaslit.
Wherever the natural-immunity piece disappears from the puzzle, though, it’s beginning to feel a lot like the fight over same-sex marriage, which continues to prove to have been a test case that opened the floodgates. The trick was simply to ignore opposing arguments and characterize those who resisted the radical change as unthinking bigots. Same thing here.
In both cases, the issue isn’t the issue. Power is the issue. The Left wants to fully establish the principle that government can force people to do things with even the flimsiest of justifications, so everybody must be vaccinated against a virus that is not very deadly for most people even if the science says that they are already immune. Period. Other options simply don’t exist.
Featured image by Muhd Asyraaf on Unsplash.
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The story of Canadian plumber Noah Fladager, as related by Louise Bevan in The Epoch Times, illustrates exactly the ideal around which public policy should be formed:
A young plumber, and father, who quit a secure job to go solo is celebrating the fruits of his labor. Not only does he now employ others, but he’s also just landed the biggest plumbing contract of his career so far.
Finding that the typical entry-level job wasn’t going to suffice for the family that he and his wife wanted, Fladager chose to apprentice in plumbing rather than go to college. After a few years, his family encouraged him to stick with the security of payroll employment, but he struck out on his own. It was a lot of work, but his company continues to grow. This is the sort of story for which progressive policies don’t account, as they put everybody in categories of “employer” and “employee,” as if they’re different species.
Years ago, I showed how long it takes for a person who spots an opportunity in plumbing to get a real start. With just a mildly less severe regulatory regime, I found that Massachusetts could produce twice as many master, journeyman, and apprentice plumbers over 12 years.
A few years later, I compared Rhode Island with Massachusetts when it came to the creation and survival of new businesses. My conclusion was that Rhode Islanders start a lot of businesses (probably because it’s difficult to find work, otherwise), but flounder when they try to expand and the regulations kick in.
All of this is the opposite of what we should want. It ought to be easy for employees to go out and compete with their employers. This will not only keep down prices, but it will put pressure on employers to make employees happy and also allow our state to adjust to changing market forces as people can seize opportunities and adjust to challenges quickly as they emerge.
Naturally, this doesn’t create as many opportunities for insiders to cash in on others’ activities or for progressives to try their hands at social engineering, which is what creates the mutually beneficial dynamic whereby insiders abuse the people and progressives make gains by promising to save and protect them. Adding valves to the economy gives them more ways to control the flow of resources.
On the plus side, though, in a freer society, everybody else would benefit and live more-prosperous and more-rewarding lives.
Featured image by Sigmund on Unsplash.
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From Peter Malbin on Newsmax:
A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that 39% of young adults reported feeling uncertain about having children, given the state of the environment and the added carbon footprint brought by having children.
The Lancet polled about 10,000 older teenagers and young adults to ascertain how climate change is affecting mental health, and found that the majority were “very” or “extremely” worried about the effects of rising global temperatures.
Putting the legitimacy of climate alarmism, specifically, aside, this finding indicates that 39% of young adults don’t have a framework for understanding the value of children and, for that matter, the meaning of life… at least the meaning of human life.
That’s not a healthy trait in a species.
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It’s weird how American progressives can tolerate no conservative policies in other American states to accommodate a different level of respect for human life, greater acknowledgment of natural and traditional qualities of genders, and more reverence for religious freedom, but news like this is apparently not an issue:
The Taliban terrorist group has ordered the majority of women employed in Kabul’s city government to exit the workforce and remain at home, the interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital announced on Sept 19.
During his first press briefing since being appointed by the Taliban, interim Kabul Mayor Hamdullah Namony said that women must remain at home regardless of their employment status, pending a further decision.
It’s almost as if their stated principles and self-professed enhanced empathy for distant people is a bunch of politically motivated baloney.
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During our weekly political segment, yesterday, John DePetro raised questions about the fact that the Rhode Island Republican Party does not yet have a candidate to announce for the upcoming gubernatorial race. Chairwoman Sue Cienki has said an announcement is expected soon, but John raises a good point. There are no obvious candidates, which means a lot more work building name recognition and personal support, and that’s the sort of thing that a truly motivated candidate would already have begun.
The off-season election to replace progressive Democrat state senator from Providence Gayle Goldin is instructive. Steph Machado of WPRI reports that it took a last-minute email for Providence Republicans to find somebody willing to jump in. One suspects something similar has been the case for the state GOP.
As a traditionalist conservative, I incline toward the belief that there are expectations that people should just fulfill unless they can explain why the expectation exists and why not fulfilling it in a particular case is the better call, but we have to be honest about resources and tradeoffs. If a major political party doesn’t have a candidate in a race, it can’t capitalize on unexpected developments in public opinion or opposition self-immolation. More significantly, the absence sends a signal, and it’s one our local news media will rush to amplify.
On the other hand, putting up one sacrificial lamb after another sends a signal, too, and exhausts your resources. It also sows an expectation for loss, which will require even more work to reverse in the future.
Republicans in the Ocean State have to conduct a deep discussion about these things. They need an honest understanding of “here’s where we are, here are our goals, and here’s what we can realistically accomplish.” The preliminary answers I’d offer are: you occupy a structure with a crumbling foundation as people give up and leave, repairing that problem has to be your top priority by a huge margin, and your resources (both material and human) are not such that you can do much more than address that single problem.
One structural challenge for Republicans is that progressives like politics and activism, whereas conservatives do other things for fun and fulfillment. It is more difficult, therefore, for the GOP to build its internal community through activism. Rather, the activism must flow from a community formed for other reasons. It has to be fun to be an active Republican, and the Republican base doesn’t find regular protests and political activity as inherently fun as the Democrat base does. (Add to this, of course, that the Democrats in Rhode Island have much more to offer by way of career paths and other opportunities for those who get involved.) The Rhode Island Right therefore needs something more than regular angry protests or fundraisers that are mere excuses to donate money to a campaign.
Social gatherings are where people start thinking about being candidates, and the community feel draws people to become involved.
Unfortunately, building communities is hard work, which means looking for helpful opportunities. We’re seeing a burst of home schooling, for example, which is creating a natural community with a high need for places to socialize its children and a huge amount of motivation to target local races. It may be that filling that sort of need is a better use of limited time and money than organizing behind a state-office candidate who didn’t really want to run in the first place.
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