I’ll start this exploration with my long-standing definition of ideology as “an army of convictions about how the world is and how it ought to be.” This definition is remarkably similar to one provided by Cory Clark and Bo Winegard in their paper, Tribalism in War and Peace: The Nature and Evolution of Ideological Epistemology and Its Significance for Modern Social Science:
By ideology, we mean, roughly, a mental model of the world and the social order that is both descriptive (how the world is) and normative (how it should be); and by sacred value, we mean, roughly, a value that is held particularly fervidly and that one is incredibly reluctant to relinquish.
So what are ideological tendencies? Ways of thinking and reasoning that distort reality and which are motivated by ideological beliefs. Some examples: …
The first step in fixing a problem is understanding it. That includes having a solid grasp of how big the problem is, relevant context, and whether the problem is getting better or worse. So I’ve been doing some research on the problem of police brutality against blacks. Here is a bit of what I’ve found:
We often talk of the middle-class or the one percent as if they were the same group of people from year to year. But most Americans move up and down the income ladder across the lifespan: mostly up during the peak earning years of 25-54 and then slowly down as they ease into retirement. Many experience a few years of poverty when young but then eventually reach the middle-class and beyond as they get older. This chart tell the story:
This chart is based on research by Thomas A Hirshcl and Mark R. Rank, who crunched decades of tax data to gauge the fortunes of thousands of US households over time.
“David Abrams of the University of Pennsylvania pulls together data from some two dozen major cities on citycrimestats.com. His figures show that so far this year crime is actually down by around 10% compared with the same period in 2015-19.” - Fears that America is experiencing a serious crime wave are overblown. The Economist August 1, 2020
One response to “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” was “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, signed by 163 individuals in The Objective on July 10, 2020. This second letter (aka “the Response”) is described by the signatories as “a group effort, started by journalists of color with contributions from the larger journalism, academic, and publishing community.” The Response includes the following 12 points …
Fascism is a popular slur largely because it’s versatile: a word with no agreed-upon meaning, so accusers can use whatever definition works to hit their intended target. Often, these definitions read like symptom checklists. For example:
What caught my eye when first reading the San Francisco Chronicle piece was its reference to Pew Research polling data that “just 22% of African-Americans want police funding ‘decreased a lot’.” Say what!…Here’s a nice chart of the Pew respondent breakdown on police funding:
What if….
…the progressive left completes its take-over of the Democratic Party. In the next election Democrats win the presidency and achieve majorities in both chambers of Congress. The new Congress passes a bunch of legislation to address “structural inequality and systemic racism”, including a law requiring large corporations to root out sexism and racism in the workplace. Specifically, the “Social Justice at Work Act” mandates that all corporations with at least 100 employees establish Social Justice Committees to deal with racist and sexist employees.
The following basic facts and figures are from reports recently released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. Please check out the original reports (here and here) as well - they’re a treasure trove of interesting info, plus easy to read with lots of charts for the visually-inclined.
Just a few years ago talk of robots taking over was all the rage. Thanks to robots, humans would no longer have to work unless they wanted to. Some typical headlines:
When Robots Take All the Work, What'll Be Left for Us to Do? (Wired/2015)
Robots will take over most jobs within 30 years, experts warn (The Telegraph/2016)
Robots will eliminate 6% of all US jobs by 2021, report says (The Guardian, 2016)
“Crime is opportunistic. If there’s no opportunity, there’s no crime” Criminologist Richard Rosenfeld, quoted by Alec MacGillis in The Dollar-Store Deaths/The New Yorker, July 6 & 13, 2020.
Mmmmm…I had naively thought Americans were more criminally-inclined than Europeans, or at least more violent. We’re actually middle-of-the-road, crime-wise. And we’re not more violent, just more homicidal, at least when compared with the larger European countries like France and the United Kingdom.
I’m only doing excerpts, because the Executive Order is very long and full of legalese filler. If you want to read the whole thing, go here.
Law enforcement is about enforcing laws, which means to compel compliance with laws, typically through warnings, citations or arrests. While it’s a great idea to have social workers accompany cops on some calls, e.g., responding to mentally impaired or homeless individuals, it’s not a social worker’s job to enforce laws. That’s what the police do. Still, the “defund the police” people have a point: a lot of illegal activity is minor and does not require an armed response.
The Adult Student Basic Income (ASBI) would effectively address poverty, volatility of income, job instability, and insufficient social mobility without discouraging labor market participation and at minimal expense to most taxpayers. I had previously envisioned the ASBI would be $1000/month, but the post-pandemic federal budget is going to be under a lot of strain for several years and something’s got to give. So let’s reduce that to $900 a month.
…projects that GDP will decline by 5.6% from October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020. If that happens, this year's decline would be the largest since GDP fell by 11.6% in 1946. A deep recession will further increase the size of the federal budget deficit since lower economic activity will reduce tax revenues and increase some federal expenditures, such as unemployment benefits.
Criminal justice is not about revenge, retribution, or righting historic wrongs. It’s about enforcing laws and maintaining public safety. Incarceration is not about making someone pay for their crimes or answer for the sins of their economic class, gender or race. Rather, the purpose of incarceration is to:
Let’s take these one at a time.
So what should be the point of comparison for questions of race, ethnicity and arrest-related deaths? The answer matters, because it sheds light on the nature of the problem…which in turn leads to better ideas on how to fix it.
Ok, let’s get this straight: US debt has skyrocketed and interest payments on the debt will crowd out other federal expenditures, all the while the US tax base becomes increasingly shaky and federal outlays on medical services will continue growing for the foreseeable future. It’s all too much, but I’m going to try to fix the situation, starting with the US healthcare system. The challenge: cut healthcare expenses while expanding coverage and maintaining quality. This actually is doable. Consider that at least 20% of US healthcare spending is unnecessary due to…