Mmmm…82% of the probationers in 2019 had prior arrests and 59% had been placed on probation before. Around a third were previously incarcerated felons. Of probationers with prior arrests, over half had been arrested three or more times. In other words, a lot of repeat offenders are being put on probation in North Carolina - somewhat ironic given the 1994 sentencing reform was supposed to divert more repeat offenders to prison. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not against probation for all repeat offenders…
Throughout this series of posts, I’ll be using North Carolina as a case study, partly because the state implemented major sentencing reforms in 1994 and 2011, so enough time has passed to detect possible effects. Just a important, North Carolina has great data.
Mmmm. Why do Iowa and Kansas have such low poverty levels?
Intuitions about right and wrong clash in moral dilemmas. These dilemmas activate a moral trade-off system designed for resolving conflicts among moral values. Examples of moral values include fairness, reciprocity, responsibility, care, entitlement, merit, loyalty, and honesty. When asked to resolve moral dilemmas, many people made compromise judgments, which strike a balance between conflicting moral values by partially satisfying at least some of them. The moral tradeoff system delivers that solution as an intuitive moral judgment. (paraphrasing Guzman et al, 2022)
Why do some people seem more deserving of government assistance than others?
Social scientists have been exploring this question for decades. Much of the research has focused on the criteria people use to judge the “deservingness” of the vulnerable and poor.
“One year ago, a damning investigation uncovered that 888 units of S.F’s permanent supportive housing were sitting empty. Those numbers have gotten worse…A year ago, when the average time between being approved for housing and handed keys was 85 days, the city said it was aiming to cut the time to 30 to 45 days. But last week, when asked what progress they’d made, officials disclosed that wait times had actually gone up. In fact, they’ve more than doubled. It now takes an average of five months, or around 150 days, to move someone experiencing homelessness into a home. That’s a shameful length of time for a program allotted $356 million each year.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 5, 2023
Many individuals have ideological tendencies – that is, they tend to righteous fervor and conviction, especially when it comes to politics. How about groups? Specifically, are some political groups more ideological than others? That is, do members of these groups hold their opinions and values with greater fervor and conviction than members of other groups? And how would you know?
Unfortunately, finding a cheap place to live in San Francisco is a near-impossibility. For example, I found no rental listings under $800/month during a recent Zillow search and just six listing under $1000/month (5 of which were teeny studios)…On the same day as my San Francisco Zillow search, I checked out the rental market in Houston and this is what I found: 504 results for rentals up to $1000/month and 136 results for up to $800/month.
I belong to a local debate club. Members exchange views on various political and cultural topics, mostly online since Covid although we’ll be resuming in-person meetups this year. Below is a recent email exchange among a few of our members…
The Houston Homeless Count found 3,223 persons experiencing homelessness on the day of its 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, or approximately one out of 1,916 residents… San Francisco’s Homeless Count of 2022 found 7,754 individuals experiencing homelessness. With a population of 815,201 (2021), that would be a homelessness rate of approximately one out of 105 residents.
It appears that most of this wealth is wrapped up in bonds, stocks and businesses, where it helps fund the country’s public and private investment and operations. If the federal government were to implement a wealth tax, rich folks would likely have to take money out of their holdings and businesses to pay the tax. Ideally, the holdings and businesses would not lose value as a result.
Wealth is your overall financial picture, including all your assets. Assets can be considered anything of value that can be converted into cash, including things like cash itself, real estate holdings, investments, and personal property. According to the Federal Reserve, as of September 30, 2022, the combined assets of US households and nonprofit organizations were worth about $162.5 trillion - $54.8 trillion in non-financial assets (e.g., housing, land, machinery, vehicles) and $107.7 trillion in financial assets. Here’s the Fed’s breakdown of financial assets…
And I got to thinking…tax rates are a poor indicator of what US households actually pay in taxes. Economists know this…
President Clinton eventually signed the the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but he never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. That’s because the Senate had already made it crystal clear that the vote would not go well: just two years before the Senate has passed a resolution 95-0 telling Mr. Clinton not to sign any treaty that committed the US to cut emissions without also requiring undeveloped countries to do so.
To quote the New York Times: “Since then, similar comprehensive research has been blocked, in part by tenants’ advocates who believe the findings would be “politicized” and become a referendum on rent control…”
Perceived control also influences how people feel when exposed to others who are "higher" than them on some metric. Studies on social comparison have found that "upward comparison" (comparing oneself to "higher" others) was "debilitating only when accompanied by low perceived control".
“When inequality loses its association with hope and instead becomes interpreted as a signal of a rigged society, higher inequality relates to lower well-being.” - Buttrick, N. R., S. J. Heintzelman, et al. (2017). Inequality and well-being.
The California legislature recently passed Assembly Bill (AB) 2098, which would “designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19’ as unprofessional conduct”. AB2098 has been signed by the governor and is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2023. Here are some excerpts from the new law…
Then again, false equivalence is much more than a matter of flawed reasoning or cognitive bias. Comparisons reflect an understanding of how the world works, what leads to what and over what time frame. A problematic comparison may stem from empirical error, logical error, or both. But people rarely hold themselves to some scientific standard of accuracy. Sometimes a comparison is made to serve a larger point and it’s not really advancing the conversation by nitpicking minor errors.
“If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have 4 million open jobs” - Stephanie Ferguson/US Chamber of Commerce, October 31, 2022