Please Look Back in Anger

So, most of the time, theories about micro-level voting behavior are not particularly gripping or important. This year, they will be.

So, here's a little guided tour through voting theory and research:

1. Almost everyone votes according to their party.

2. Insofar as people vote based on "policy" issues, that small group can be subvidided into:
a) People who vote out of their own personal economic interests.
b) People who vote from a "sociotropic" perspective. I.e., they vote according to how the country as a whole has fared.
C) Both of these groups can be further subdivided into people who judge retrospectively (based on past performance) and people who judge prospectively (based on campaign promises, etc).

3. People vote based on their assessment of the personal qualities of candidates.

So, there you go: thousands of pages of academic research and theory summarized in 9 lines.

What I want to highlight for the 2010 midterms is this issue of retrospective v. prospective voting. The sluggish economy is still the dominant issue of the day, with very real consequences for people in their local communities, particularly viz a viz state and local government cuts. Unemployment is still quite high, and the economy is still unstable. But, an argument can be made that the stock market has recovered and that, without the bailouts and stimulus spending, we'd be even worse off than we are.

My question is who will voters blame for this. George Bush presided over the emergence and collapse of the housing bubble, but is that now too long ago for voters to care? Has this officially become Obama and the Democrats' fault? I really don't know. I predict that Democrats will lose seats (not surprising in a midterm, and not surprising given the tight partisan balance of the country), but I don't think it's gonna be a 1994 style takeover.

One thing I'll say...I've come to believe in the astronomical shortness of American memory. As a consequence, I think much of the hullabaloo surrounding health care will have faded by November.

I can't think of a good title

I'm really curious to see how the politics of this financial sector reform play out. On the surface, you would think the Republicans would be insane to risk being seen as friendly to Wall Street. They seemed to have some political momentum going after health care, which contrary to my expectations, does not appear to be getting any more popular. But then to turn around and side with the people who jolly rogered the economy into its worst shape in 70 years? After 30 years of sustained de-regulation? On the surface, that would appear to be the political equivalent of recovering a fumble and then immediately doing a hail mary flea flicker.

On the other hand, republicans are good politicians, and they're particularly good at issue framing. Maybe they think they can paint democrats as being tyrannical socialists or something. Who knows...I would say this would be impossible, but this country elected George Bush twice, so who fuckin knows.

Show Tune Fish Monster

Mommies and Daddies

So, going back to my gender role topic from the other day (been thinking about this stuff more lately, as I've been hanging a lot with my friend who studies stuff in this general ballpark).

Here's one facet of social expectation that I find particularly annoying: babies.

There's this expectation out there that somehow moms have more responsibilities (and rights) viz a viz babies than dads do.

This is just stupid, stupid bullshit.

If you have a kid, you're on the hook for 20+ years, mom or dad, male or female, and if you want to be a good parent, you pretty much have to make your kids your top priority. Policy wise, there are some important issues to consider here. Paid family leave: should moms and dads be equally eligible? And, of course, who is more likely to get custody if a marriage dissolves?

And within the home, moms and dads should share equally in the work of child rearing (changing diapers, picking up toys, etc), as well as in general housework. And, if a couple chooses to have one parent stay home instead of both working, moms and dads should feel equally comfortable or uncomfortable following that path.

This stuff would seem to me to be patently obvious, and yet inequities in all of these areas persist, based on some antiquated notion about the sexes' innate fitness for certain activities.

I want to see more stay-at-home dads! I want to see men wiping asses and playing doll babies! I want to see women going to work all day and then coming home and watching a ball game so they can ignore their kids!

That is, IF you want to have kids at all. They're just little shit-covered narcissistic pains in the ass, if you ask me.

Flying Sperm Doing Tricks

BRAAAAALLLOIULKJLKJLKJLKJ!

Eeegad...very behind. Yikes!

Writing paper...kids...summer school...state level political ideology: is youth development politicized? regressions.

data data data in stata stata stata.

And I will see you lata

White sauce and tomata

Uh Oh Pictures

Crushing Defeat

Just a quick post to keep you jackals at bay!

What is a jackal, anyway? I don't think I really even know what that is.

So, the Supreme Court apparently thinks it's unconstitutional to prohibit the making and selling of videos that depict dogfighting and the crushing of small animals as a source of sexual pleasure.

Uh...huh?

What the fuck is going on over there? Those guys have lost their goddamn minds. Obama should just pack the fuckin court. Ok, maybe that's a bit extreme. But they're nutjobs!

Why do gay guys like Madonna?

I'm feeling chatty today, so I'm gonna do another post.

There are a lot of experts on gender and sexuality out there in the world, and I must confess I am not all that familiar with those bodies of work. But has that ever stopped me from bloviating and ejaculating my opinion all over the world's face? Hell no!

So here goes:

I don't understand the connection between being gay and masculinity/femininity. I just don't quite get it.

It's really hard to talk about these things, because you have to use these categories (masculine/feminine) that are sort of bullshit in themselves. Nevertheless, I'm going to go ahead and use them, recognizing that they're kinda bullshit, because I have to use them to discuss this puzzle.

So, when I say a man is effeminate, I think most people have some sense of what I'm talking about. Maybe he's clean, wears nice clothes, is in good shape, likes musical theater and dancing, has good posture and combed hair, doesn't like sports, speaks with certain vocal tones and inflections...you know, the stereotypical gay guy.

And when I say a man is gay, what I mean is that he is physically and/or emotionally attracted to other men.

Now, why the fuck do these things tend to go together? I realize that they often don't, but there does seem to be a noticeable pattern. (Am I wrong about that? If so, tell me). There's no rational reason whatsoever why these things should have anything to do with each other! What am I missing here?

This is why I find gay dudes who are non-effeminate (anywhere from neutral to hyper-masculine) to be really interesting. Dudes who are just like "yeah, I suck dick! What of it? Let's go shoot some shit!"

I admire people who can just be themselves, I guess. And sometimes I feel like these neutral-to-masculine types of gay guys are just being a bit more authentic or something. Like, the media feeds them (and us) this gay male stereotype of hyper-sexed male femininity, and I think I might regard people who fit that stereotype with some suspicion...like maybe they're just trying to fit a mold that society has made for them, rather than being themselves. That would explain this general pattern of male gayness being combined with effeminate characteristics...maybe the stereotype developed from some small grain of truth, but continues to perpetuate itself over time by providing confused young gay men with some kind of pre-made role. Well, I want to fuck men, not women...so something is different about me...and I can't fit into this straight male social world, but I need some kind of identity, and, HEY, instead of fighting a losing battle to be accepted by straight men, I'll just adopt this persona of a stereotypical gay guy and be accepted THAT way! Cause at least then, people will know what I am and what to do with me.

I don't know...I'm just bullshitting.

I realize that my little theory probably isn't true. But I just have a hard time explaining the connection between wanting to love and have sex with a man on the one hand, and wanting to listen to Madonna and dance at the club on the other hand. Like, take Ancient Greece...man on man (well...man on adolescent boy) action was a major part of that culture. But, so was killing the fuck out of people! There wasn't (as far as I know) as much of a connection between one's sexual desire and one's gendered persona.


Anyway...I'm way out of my depth here. And all of this applies to gay women, and to straight men, and to straight women, and to bi women and bi men...it's just so weird to me that who we want to fuck does or is at least expected to have any correlation with any other way that we behave. It's all bullshit!

P.S. Here's a pretty good article on this topic.

Subject: Let's Get Divorced!

I think people are too harsh about engaging in personal social interaction via email.

I don't know why email has gotten such a bad rap as a vehicle for communicating sensitive things, but I feel like it has been unfairly maligned. Seriously, what's the big deal?

In an email, you can carefully craft exactly what you want to say. Why is that a bad thing? It's hard to think when you're feeling emotional. It's hard to be articulate when your heart's in your throat. Is that supposed to make real-time interactions more authentic? Bologne! Hogwash! Poppycock!

And if you're asking somebody something (to go on a date with you, to be your girlfriend, to marry you, whatever), and they want to say no, then email is much less awkward for BOTH of you. They have time to consider things, and they can say no without feeling quite so much pressure.

Email does have its drawbacks. Things like tone and sarcasm and body language cannot be conveyed easily, which can lead to misunderstanding. And sometimes, the fact that writing an email involves less social pressure means that you say things that you really shouldn't have said. So, I agree, it's not without its flaws. But still...let's lay off poor email, shall we? He/she/it is feeling sad. He/she/it told me so.

The Tangled Web We Weave

No moments of crushing, beautiful, overwhelming existential awareness last night. Just plain old sleep.

Before I went to bed, I watched a Frontline episode about how the internet has taken over our lives. I watched it on Netflix instant view, while I regularly checked my facebook, blog, and gmail, and while chatting on facebook, gmail, and AIM.

I love the internet. It's so easy to take for granted. Imagine it's 1988. You're sitting at home, wondering exactly how many soldiers died at the battle of Gettysburgh. If you're real lucky, maybe you have an Encyclopedia Britannica at home. That MIGHT have the information. Or maybe you have an old history book sitting around somewhere. Otherwise, you're fucked, until you can get to a library.

Now, let's fast forward to today. Let's see how long it takes to find out this information. It is now 9:30 am exactly. Ready? Go. OK, it's about 50,000 casulties. It's now 9:31. That took me one minute.

So, I admit, the internet is really, really fucking amazing. It enriches my life, and my job, in all kinds of ways every day. Professionally, Google scholar, online classroom management programs, and even regular old wikipedia are incredibly useful (want to know about Poisson probability distributions? Wikipedia ain't a bad start!).

And, in my personal life, it's great for finding dates (yay okcupid!) and for maintaining friendships. I LOOOOVe chatting. I love it as a medium of communication. It allows you to craft what you want to say while at the same time giving you some sense of real connection and spontaneity. And those chat programs kinda have a sense that we're all hanging out in some room or building somewhere, and if I want to walk over and say hi, I can! I just...I just straight up love it. I have at least two..maybe 3.. good friendships that have primarily developed through chatting. I mean, I had met each of these folks in real life first, but the friendships have continued to grow and deepen because of online chats. And you get to do all this while still, you know, doing your taxes! That's what makes it really nice compared to the phone. It's hard to do anything else while you're on the phone, cause if somebody on the other side is quiet for 10 minutes cause they're doing the dishes or whatever, it would be really weird. Not so with chat! It's perfectly fine for a 10 line conversation to take place over a 2 hour period!

And, of course, let's not forget this groundbreaking blog, which is blowing the fuck out of your mind as we speak...every last one of you three people.

All that being said...I agree with one of the commentators on the show...something about this modern plugged-in life just feels.. a little..bit...off. Here are a few scenarios that kinda give me pause.

1. With the universe of accumulated human knowledge at their fingertips, somebody instead plays World of Warcraft or Second Life for 20 hours straight.

2. It's a beautiful spring day in Indiana, and here's Joe, staring at his gmail homepage, waiting for somebody to reply to a chat. (sidenote: while writing that sentence, my friend just sent me a gchat that said "I love the way coffee makes me poop.")

3. Here's Joe, who instead of writing a song, or reading Dostoevsky, or learning to paint, is watching a BBC crime show on netflix.

I don't know...it just takes over. Like, imagine I'm an alcoholic janitor, but I'm forced to use bourbon to clean the bathroom. That's what the internet is like. You're using the same machine for productivity that you use for leisure, and what's more, this machine can do both simultaneously! The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!

Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to him by whom they come. It would be better for him had he never been born. (Some Bible book, some bible chapter, some bible verse). Actually, let me google that! Luke 17:1. That took about 20 seconds.

***Another casualty of the internet and computers: my spelling. I think I made about 200 mistakes in this post.*****

PPS

And for shits and giggles, here's another picture.

Night Mares

You ever have one of those nights where you wake up in bed and suddenly realize that you and everyone you know is gonna die someday, and that you and they and everything is incomprehensibly mysterious and weird, and that your life is literally an infinitesimally small blip on the heart monitor of existence, and that every second you spend doing stupid shit is time wasted, and that whatever you do, you can't do everything, so whatever you do do is terribly consequential, and that when you do things, you're imposing your will on a disorderly and chaotic world, and are therefore sort of being a god, and aren't relationships so weird, when you can enjoy other people so much, when in fact, you both realize on some level that you're both going to die?

You ever have, you know, a night like that?

Me neither...I was just askin.

Post Script:

Had another weird dream. Some big black cop was riding a big black horse, and he was talking to me and a group of people about something. We were out in the canyon lands in some dessert (New Mexico-ish). This kid and I walked up this ridge, but he was carrying the big black horse. We got to the top, and we both started riding the horse...he was controlling it, I wasn't. The horse then jumped off this ledge, and I couldn't see the ground, so I was scared. And, it turns out, rightfully so, because we kept falling and falling....I looked down, and were falling to a river. But it was ok...i just put my feet together and went in, no problem. Then I found a rock to climb up on.

That's all I remember.

Highlights

My morning shit is often the highlight of my day.

Tops and Bottoms

I've been commenting lately on the small subset of truisms, aphorisms, platitudes, what-have-you that actually contain a good bit of truth. One of these days, I'll write a book about them or something.

Here's one I like: if something were easy to do, somebody would have already done it.

I bring that up as a preamble to addressing the young idealists out there who recognize that the world is a fucked up place in a lot of ways, with a lot of injustice and needless suffering. I guess I'm one of them, though I'm not as young as I once was (talk about a platitude!).

Chances are, if you see a large, systemic social problem that enrages and saddens you, other people have seen the same thing. You are not the first to care about inequality, poverty, disease, or corruption. Whatever is filling your gas tank with high octane righteous indignation has been felt by armies of idealists who preceded your birth.

So, what does that tell you? It should tell you that these problems are really hard to solve. And there are a variety of reasons why that might be the case.

Now, these idealists tend to split into two camps. The camp I joined (and have since become somewhat disillusioned with) believes that the key to changing things is for the good guys to acquire power, which means controlling government. This is the "top down" approach to solving social problems. This camp believes that social problems are so huge and entrenched and/or diffused that only governments truly have the power to fix them. Therefore, the best approach to solving social problems is to for people who agree with me to win elections.

What this camp tends to miss is that, in a democracy, government agendas are constrained by the public will. So, let's say we want to drastically increase funding for teacher pay and for after-school programs in inner-cities as a way to tackle racial disparities in educational outcomes (both policies I would tend to support); well, that's just not gonna fuckin happen unless the American public wants it to!

Which brings me to the other camp of idealists. These are the grass-roots, non-profit loving, community organizing types. While I still believe that this camp can be naive about the global impact of small-scale efforts and overly pessimistic about the value of government, I have come to see that they are invaluable for one crucial component of political change: agenda setting.

Take, for instance, the organic and local food movement. Is it even conceivable to think of this movement being imposed via a top-down model? Absolutely not. Without having at least some base of support in the public, there's no way government could even consider doing something like providing subsidies for organic foods or blocking efforts by big agri-business to suppress organic food labeling.

So, I guess I've sort of reached a point of synthesis, where I see both of these camps as crucial for achieving meaningful social change. Grass-roots organizations provide advocacy and programming that can very slowly change public attitudes and raise public awareness about important problems and feasible policy solutions to them. However, without people who are willing to engage in the dirty business of electoral politics, these cultural changes will take much, much longer to translate into concrete public policy.

So, in closing...yay for the tie-dye...yay for the ties! Yay for the tops, and yay for the bottoms (if ya know what I mean!).

In that sleep of death, what dreams may come...

I slept like the dead.

Two dreams I can recall:

1) I drove by a cop who had pulled somebody over. I got a little too close to him before switching lanes. He got out of his car and tried to get his partner's attention to pull me over. I had pulled off the interstate and was in one of those faceless suburban areas that spring up around interstate exits, and, knowing the cops were after me, I quickly found a place to park my car and hide out. It turned out to be a White Castle. At some point in the midst of all this, I was (and this is gonna sound weird) watching myself run down the street. And I was behind myself, controlling the running me...with a joystick. That's right. I was running behind myself, controlling myself with a joystick, as if I were a robot or video game character. Weird.

2)

I was driving a woman home. I think she was, like, an exchange student or something. She was staying in this somewhat ritzy rural area...like someplace Martha Stewart might live. Weird, yuppified, old money houses on a lake. When we got to her driveway, it was really, really narrow...like barely big enough to fit my car on it. Her house was kindof like only half a house...a small place sanwiched between two other places. The driveway went beside her house, so as I was pulling up, I was stuck between the edge of her house and the beginning of the neighbor house. Then, I accidentally pressed a button or something with my car, and the walls starting closing in...fortunately, I backed out before there was any damage.

We got out of the car, and there were a few dogs running around. One was this extremely fuzzy, blonde, friendly guy. We went inside, and it turned out the dog belonged to this older lady, and we sat and talked for a minute. The dog had a really weird name...like Potomac or something like that.

I didn't realize it in the dream, but the woman was Barbara Meyerhoff, an anthropologist who did video ethnographies. We watched one of her videos in class the other day, during the making of which she got cancer and shortly thereafter died. Apparently she has nice dogs.

Call the Art Institute

She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me....

I spend a lot of time bashing academia, as an institution, as a force in society, and as a force in my life. And I think my critiques of it are well earned. From the perverse incentives that prioritize pointless research over good teaching, to its role in perpetuating class divisions through ridiculous tuition rates and arbitrary reputations, to the increasing paucity of its ability to prepare students for real world work, to its complicity in churning out mountains of highly indebted new workers, to the delusionary idea that the only or easiest way to encounter knowledge and culture is from a person with ph.d. after their name,...through all of these problems and more, it has earned my wrath well.

However, there are definitely days when it seems less stupid. So, in the interest of balance, let me describe what I think it's good for and what it has done for me.

What academia does well as an institution:

1. Creates new knowledge. The pressure cooker system, wherein promotions to tenure are based on publishing new research, really does do a good job of forcing people to produce new knowledge.

2. Gives young people a broader view of reality and allows them to orient their own lives in relation to a bigger picture of humanity, history, and existence.

3. Can cultivate a love of learning that will continue to enrich students throughout their lives.

4. Can be a safe place where young people can figure out what they want to do and who they want to be.

What academia does well in my life:

1. It's not boring. Even when it's boring, it's not boring. Cause it's something new, and it's usually complicated, so even if the ultimate upshot of the research is kind of pointless in terms of the real world, it's still intellectually challenging.

2. I don't have to have a boss. I can sleep late...wear tattered clothes...whatever. In my classes, i can drop F bombs, teach whatever I want to teach, and try whatever pedagogical techniques I want.

3. I get a lot of vacation time.

4. Once I finish, people will just assume that I'm an expert. And hopefully I will be, but even if I'm not, they'll assume that I am. That'll be cool.

5. Studying my field makes my natural interest in politics and policy even more engaging. It gives me the illusion that I'm not completely irrelevant to the real world...which is a nice illusion for me.

6. I feel like I have pretty much maximized my intellectual potential. This ph.d. has pushed my brain to do things I didn't know it could do. If you think about education like a house...your brain is the house...and everytime you learn a new field, you're adding on wings to the house. At this point, I feel like I have a pretty big house. It may not be the highest quality all the time...but it's pretty roomy. That's pretty cool for a kid who grew up in a cabin in the woods in Indiana. Pretty fuckin cool.

Barriers to Entry

Proposal: greatly increase the number and dispersion of apprenticeship and internship opportunities for high school and college students. And greatly increase the prominence of career planning and guidance counseling in high schools and colleges.

Why: young people are not receiving enough help in exploring and choosing a career path. And, they need more job-specific skills, work experience, and social capital to be able to break into careers that they desire.

Who benefits: Young poor people who grew up in depressed urban or rural labor markets who are simply not exposed to a wide variety of career choices. I would put myself in this camp; growing up in a poor rural area, I just didn't really understand what kind of jobs a person could do. Teacher...doctor...nurse...cop...shop owner...construction worker...that's about it. Because those were the grown ups I saw everyday. Oh, and lawyers, cause I watched Matlock and Law & Order.

The other camp that benefits are kids pursuing a liberal arts education. Despite all my misgivings, I still believe that a liberal arts education is a good thing for a person to do. It helps make them a well-rounded person and gives them some moral and aesthetic foundation on which to build a life. And, you know...reading and writing...those are sometimes somewhat useful.

But that shouldn't be an excuse for ignoring the fact that, when you graduate, you're gonna have to get a real, grown up job. Because a lot of us spent 4 years learning about, you know...philosophy and religion (my two majors)...or whatever, you get out and go, "shit...what do I do now?"

At that point, I wasn't really qualified for any "good" jobs. It felt to me like the only paths available to me at that point were low-skilled, entry-level clerical jobs (sit-at-a-desk types of jobs), or graduate school. And that's because I didn't really have any useful, marketable skills to speak of, nor did I have any real connections in other types of industries. The funny thing was how shocked I was by this...i don't know what I was thinking. Did I really think the world was desperate for B.A.'s in philosophy? Eh, I was young...and dumb...and full of cum.

It would have been nice if there were some sort of formal apprenticeships available in, like, carpentry or engine repair or farming or, you know...something involving not-sitting-at-a-desk-all-fucking-day. I probably wouldn't have actually DONE that, mind you...I kind of like sitting...but it would have been nice to have the option. I'm guessing there are a good number of us humanities/social science kids who, after college, would probably find more fulfillment in some sort of trade than in other traditional paths to "success." That is, until our knees and hands succumbed to arthritis...at that point, we'd probably wish we were behind a desk.

So, for the benefit of the poor kid who doesn't understand what an accountant is, and for the benefit of the rich kid who wants to make cabinets or fix cars but doesn't know how to go about learning that, and for the benefit of any average fuck who just doesn't understand, like, what a doctor or lawyer actually does on a day-to-day basis...we need more internships and apprenticeships.

What a good little boy!!

You are not special.

After the self-esteem clap-splosion of the 90's and 2000's, I get the feeling that the U.S. is beginning the long descent into the reality of non-specialness. Hey kid...you know that picture you farted out in art class, with the macaroni and the stick figures? Well, honestly kid...it wasn't very good. And you know that three-pointer you air-balled at the game yesterday? That really sucked.

And you know you? Well...that's not all that impressive either, kid. Maybe it's time you start realizing that the world isn't going to hand you a living on a silver platter due solely to your intrinsic specialness and brilliance.

Oh, and you over there! Yeah, you! Super overachieving hippie kid! Come here...we need to have a chat.

Ok, you want to "save the world", huh? Why is that? Oh! Because you've been fed a steady diet of stories where small bands of plucky do-gooders overcome overwhelming odds to defeat unalloyed evil? Great! I admire the mix of narcicissum and genuine compassion feeding your delusions of messianic grandeur.

Let me give you same bad news, though...you're not going to save the world. Why? Because the world and its evils are way, way, way stronger than you. But!!!! Let me also give you the good news. Here's what you CAN do.

If you're really, really lucky, you can join (or even create) an organization, whose work might, slowly and incrementally over the course of decades of grueling and thankless work, achieve some modicum of improvement.

Oh, and some other bad news...this will probably involve you having to sit at a desk all day long staring at a computer. It will probably not involve any fight scenes, magic, romance, or mural painting.

This steady stream of platitudinous bullshit that we've force fed to our nations's kids over the past 20 years has, in my humble opinion, made it harder for young people to function in the real world. Life in the real world is, well...kinda boring. Changing the world is, well...kinda boring. And it seems to me that some people have been so artificially inflated by this self-esteem mumbo jumbo that they have a hard time doing stuff like following directions...doing boring jobs...taking entry level jobs...etc.

I think, instead of telling kids how special they are all the time, we might try stressing that 1. you're gonna have to learn to take orders and get along with people and 2. aiming for the middle is not such a terrible thing to do.

*This post has been brought to you by Joe's Pop Psychology Nuggets: The blogosphere's leading source of non-empirical, anecdotally based sweeping generalizations.

Why I'm a Liberal

One of the ethical principles underlying conservative political philosophy in the United States is that unequal distribution of power and wealth across individuals and groups is justified, because the market and the democratic system reward those who are the most skilled and hardworking. The cream rises to the top. There is an implied belief that, having eliminated De Jure discrimination against women, blacks, and (legally residing) hispanics, the playing field is now level, and inequality in the distribution of outcomes merely reflects some sort of inherent genetic justice.

In short, conservatives believe both that we should and also that, generally speaking, we do live in a meritocracy.

(There is a sister philosophy within conservatism that says that allowing the cream to rise to the top, regardless of why that happens, ends up being better for all groups...it's more of a utilitarian argument about free markets and whatnot...but we'll put that aside for another day).

One of the main reasons I'm a liberal is that I don't think we live in a meritocracy. Regardless of whether or not a meritocracy would really be the end all and be all of a good society, it's a moot point, because we're not even close to being there yet.

Imagine a regression equation explaining general life success (happiness, wealth...however you want to define it, this will still work). I think conservatives and liberals would agree that it would look something like this:

Success= B (natural skill) + B (hardwork) + B (individual Circumstances) + B
(macroeconomic conditions) + error

Life outcomes are generally a function of a person's natural skill (intelligence, artistic talent, hotness, etc), their ability to dedicate themselves to improving upon their natural abilities and to stay dedicated to work, and the circumstances into which they were born (are your parents rich or poor, in a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood, crazy or uncrazy, etc), some role for the state of the macroeconomy, and finally some error term that captures random, unpredictable things, like maybe you won the lottery or got on a gameshow or something.

Conservatives tend to believe that the slopes on the first two variables are much larger than the slopes on the last two. Sure, people are born into vastly different situations, but if they're smart and hardworking, they still have an "equal opportunity" for success.

I think that this belief is, in the common parlance of our time, a gigantic steaming load of horseshit. I believe that the third and fourth variables above (one's life circumstances and the conditions of the macro-economy) have slopes* that are just as large and probably larger than the other variables.

Everybody knows a handful of successful people who overcame difficult circumstances to achieve success. I certainly do. I know a guy who worked extremely hard his whole life, who is now getting his ph.d., who was the first in his family to go to college, and whose brothers and sisters have been in and out of jail most of their lives. So, yes, these things do happen. But you know why they make for such inspiring movie plotlines?

Because they don't happen very fucking much. And because they don't happen very fucking much, I believe that the largest determinants of a person's life chances are entirely beyond their control. I don't like that. I don't think that's just. And it certainly isn't meritocratic.

In general, I'm sympathetic to the view that we SHOULD have a meritocracy (with some social safety nets for people who do not succeed, in recognition that they are people and have some basic claim to deserving to be alive). But we're not even close to being there yet. We still have a long way to go as a society before the slopes on the hard work and ability variables vastly outweigh the slopes on the circumstances and macroeconomy variables.

Here are a few things that have huge impacts on people's lives that they largely cannot control:

*Are you born into an area with a strong labor market?

*Are you born into a stable, loving family?

*Are you born with disabilities of any sort?

*Are you born with a penis or a vagina?

*Are you born into an area with good public schools?

*If not, can your parents afford to send you to private school?

*Are you born into a neighborhood that is safe and supportive?

*Does your neighborhood offer safe, fun, nurturing extra-curricular activities?

*Do your parents read to you? Are you and they part of a culture that values education?

*Do your parents have "connections"? Or are you forced to make your way without depending on their accumulated social capital?

*Was there a giant marcoeconomic meltdown that wiped out demand for labor in your chosen field?

*Was your profession made obsolete by advances in technology?

*Are you born with intrinsic intelligence and natural talent? (NOTE: this is ALSO something that is beyond a person's control...which is a good critique of meritocracy as a normative view).

*Are you born with dark skin?

*Were you born in the United States?

*Do your parents speak English? Do you speak English?

*Did you contract a debilitating disease or suffer a terrible injury?


Ok, you get the picture. I submit, for your consideration, that if your average stock broker, lawyer, or even teacher had grown up in East St. Louis, or even rural southern Indiana...about half of them would be a lot closer to food stamps than to a six figure salary.

Anyway...in large part, this is why I'm a liberal. If we ever reach the point where we achieve meritocracy, I'll reevaluate.


*Larger slopes means that changes in them have larger impacts on changes in success

What's the Matter with Kansas? Not all that much, it turns out.

So, a number of years ago, political scientist Thomas Frank did something that very few political scientists ever do: he wrote a book that normal people actually read.

His What's the Matter with Kansas? made the argument that low-income people in red states like Kansas had drifted away from the traditional New Deal partisan alignment where they had supported Democrats for economic reasons and had instead begun supporting Republicans for cultural reasons.

And it is true that red states tend to have lower median incomes, and blue states tend to have higher median incomes. And it is true that, in contrast to earlier parts of this century, red states almost never turn blue, and blue states almost never turn red. So, is Frank right? Is this pattern driven by low-income, culturally conservative voters defecting away from their own economic interests because of cultural issues?

Since Frank's book came out, a variety of scholars, most notably Andrew Gellman, have put out empirical work that shows that Frank's argument is fairly off-base. While it is true that low-income people tend to be culturally conservative, it isn't true that they have moved en masse to support Republicans. In fact, the partisan distribution of folks in lower income brackets hasn't really changed that much. A majority are still Democrats, and they still care about economic issues, insofar as they really have any clear policy preferences at all (the coherency of ideological and policy preferences tends to increase with education and income).

The really interesting thing that comes out of Gellman's work is that the state-level party polarization that characterizes modern American politics (i.e., the fact that there is almost no variation from election to election on which party wins in a given state) is driven by the rich, not the poor. The real difference between the rich, blue states and the poor, red states is that, in the rich IN the red states are both culturally and economically conservative, and the rich in the rich states are socially and economically liberal.

So, in blue states, the rich defect from their own economic interests (lower taxes, etc) to support Democrats, largely for cultural reasons. In red states, the rich are more culturally conservative (despite the fact that wealth tends to be correlated with social liberalism), and tend to support Republicans.

So, what's the matter with Kansas? Nothing, really. It just has a lot of upper-middle class, very conservative people, and there aren't enough liberal poor people to win elections for liberals.

Interestingly, one upshot of these findings is that there is more policy consensus across income groups in blue states. In red states, it resembles more of the class-conflict model that has so dominated thinking about politics for the last 200 years.