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Politics and Economics
10. Theme: Sweeping generalizations about how clueless people are.
Illustration: “Most people struggle to define the system that dominates our lives. But if you press them, they’re likely to mumble something about hard work and enterprise, buying and selling. This is how the beneficiaries of the system want it to be understood.”
Alternative: People who don’t believe as I do may still have valid points, or not.
I’m going to assume that reducing the Black-white homeownership gap is a worthy goal mainly because homeownership provides a way to build wealth and increase residential stability. For many, homeownership is also a great source of pride, pleasure, and purpose. That said, homeownership is not for everyone, especially those just a few paychecks away from being broke. Helping such individuals buy a home is doing them no favor if they later lose the home to foreclosure or are forced to sell at a loss.
The gap in Black-white homeownership rates recently reached 30.1% in the U,S., its highest level in 50 years and larger than when race-based discrimination against homebuyers was legal. Jung Hyun Choi of The Urban Institute has identified three factors that explain most of this gap. They are…
Do these two studies confirm that body cameras have “done nothing” to stop police violence? If so, are these two studies representative of most research on the effect of body cameras on police use of force? How would one know? My Google Scholar search for “body cameras police ‘use of force’ ” got me 21,000 hits. I didn’t check them all, but the first ten looked legit. Hmmm...perhaps the two studies are so convincing, one can simply ignore the other 20,998 (give or take)?
It’s not exactly surprising that unarmed police are less likely to kill than armed police. But that’s not what the authors are saying. They’re saying that police killings inevitably happen more in countries with armed police, simply because the police are armed. They do not acknowledge that police killings are also rare in several countries that do arm their police. For instance…
The authors of the above study define police violence as “police-related altercations leading to death or bodily harm”. Of the three non-governmental databases they use to estimate the true extent of police violence in the USA, Fatal Encounters (FE) is by far the biggest. Here is more on the FE data, provided by the authors in their Supplementary Material…
Create incentives and remove disincentives for affordable housing alternatives in the private rental and owner-occupied sectors. People will resist moving out of social housing without having a decent place to move to…Overcome the potential employment disincentives created by hard income limits for tenancy. Instead, allow tenants to remain in social housing as they climb the socioeconomic ladder, setting rents proportional to the household’s income at all levels while ensuring rent increases are always much less than any increase in income. As tenants’ rents increase, they will eventually approach market-rate levels, creating an incentive for the better-off tenants to transition out of social housing.
Social housing is rental housing provided at sub-market rates and allocated according to specific rules of eligibility for prospective tenants. Most social housing developments target vulnerable communities, such as refugees, the elderly, disabled persons, and low-income households (OECD, 2020). Social housing used to be called “public housing” in the US, but that term became associated with all sorts of bad things so it’s gotten a name change. No matter what you call it, new social housing is back on the policy to-do list in many countries, especially those with a dearth of affordable housing.
Not all low-income households having rent trouble are good candidates for social housing. Some are just going through a rough patch or are young adults living on the wild side. Some are students with excellent job prospects once they finish school. Others simply wouldn’t be interested or have decent options if things really get bleak, like move back in with the folks for a year or two. The individuals most likely to benefit from social housing are those with few options, who have serious barriers to decent-paying work, such as disability, or are single parents with limited earning capacity. But social housing isn’t the only solution for these individuals. There are plenty of other safety net programs that might be a better fit for them, from food stamps to tax credits to housing vouchers. (And if I had my way, an Adult Student Basic Income. But that's another story). Social housing is an expensive and risky investment that should only be considered as a last resort for the chronically cost-burdened.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is carried out by the US Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). This annual survey collects data on violent, property, and hate crime victimizations, both reported and not reported to the police…According to the just released BJS report Hate Crime Victimization, 2005-2019, violent hate crime victimizations accounted for 1.0% of all nonfatal crime victimizations in 2019.
I live in Alameda County California, across the Bay from San Francisco. Alameda County has the fifth largest homeless population in the US and the fourth highest percentage of homeless individuals who are unsheltered. …Clearly, Alameda County is doing something wrong – but what?
In a search for answers, I Googled “US cities where homelessness is declining” and came up with Houston, where the homeless population has more than halved since 2011.
In 2016, the American Dialect Society (ADS) recognized the word "gaslight" as the "Most Useful" new word of the year. Sure, the word had become near-ubiquitous by then, but that just made it widespread. Why did so many people find it so useful?
Don’t make promises on the assumption it will all work out…Don’t make promises based on speculative theories that haven’t been tested…Don’t make promises on the assumption you can retract the promise later without serious repercussions…
…But these figures are averages across all respondents and they obscure large partisan differences. For instance, 76% of Republicans/Republican Leaners indicated they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, compared to just 31% of their Democratic counterparts. Here’s more:
So what is it about good governance that leads to greater happiness and life satisfaction? For starters, good governance creates conditions conducive to economic growth and higher living standards, which enables increases in well being, especially in less developed countries. More directly, good governance enhances social trust…
In this post, I’m proposing that offenders be allowed to accrue $300 a month of their ASBI benefit when participating in education and training programs while incarcerated, with the correction facility receiving the balance of $700/month for program expenses. The offender would then receive their accrued ASBI after they’ve been released and have met with a probation or parole officer. The ASBI payout could be substantial, as follows…
Equally important, the formerly incarcerated often lack the financial resources to support themselves while they look for work or upgrade their job skills through further education and training. And when you don’t have enough money for reliable transportation, stable housing, or even something decent to wear at a job interview, the barriers to success can seem insurmountable. At least crime pays, if only for a while.
Too many Americans are plagued by chronic poverty, income volatility, job instability, and lack of social mobility. In previous posts (here, here, here, and here), I proposed an Adult Student Basic Income (ASBI) that would effectively address these societal ills without diminishing labor market participation or labor productivity. …The beauty of an ASBI is that it’s affordable: it would be funded partly by the elimination of some government programs, but mostly by declining demand for other programs. Here’s a possible funding breakdown…
How many Adult Student Basic Income (ASBI) recipients would not have pursued further education or training without getting paid for it? I’m guessing millions of US adults who are struggling financially but have limited job prospects. These include many of the over 40 million adults in the US with low literacy, as well as a good number of low-income individuals with okay literacy but limited education and skills, such as the 48 million adults with no formal education past high school. Then there are the 19 million immigrant workers who lack proficiency in English. Yes, some of these groups overlap, but it still adds up to a lot of people.
Those who dismiss the concept of scarcity often embrace an attitude of “if there’s a will, there’s a way”. Americans are steeped in this way of thinking: You can do it! Don’t let the doubters hold you back!