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.
As it is, most US employees do not find their jobs engaging - just 36% according to a recent Gallup poll. But that turns out to be over twice as high as the global average. And US employee engagement has been rising steadily over the past decade, in contrast to what’s happening in the rest of the world, including Europe. Even in Germany employee engagement has been flat since 2001 and is now a dismal 17%, according to Gallup's 2020 survey.
Wellbeing is often described as a combination of happiness and life satisfaction, although some criticize the focus on feeling good as rather shallow , favoring instead a concept of wellbeing that recognizes the value of living a meaningful life. However, it may be too much to expect people to live both feel-good and meaningful lives. Sure, a good number do manage that trick (at least if you read their posts and obituaries) but many don’t - largely because what makes people happy or satisfied tends not to be what makes their lives meaningful. Here’s a summary of some relevant research…
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.
President Biden's national “clean energy standard” aims to zero out greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the power sector by 2035. This would be mostly achieved through through a mix of renewable energy, carbon capture, and nuclear power. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the technological know-how to make this happen.
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?
Spin misleads readers to impress or persuade them, often with the aid of buzz-words like “innovative”, “promising”, “unique”, “robust”, and “novel”. But spin is not just a matter of self-promoting hype – it’s a form of dishonest scholarship that undermines the scientific enterprise. Here are some examples…
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…
Other than climate change, at least four factors contribute to the growing cost of weather-related events in the US: increasing density of coastal populations, exceptionally high inflation in the construction industry, rising value of assets, and changes in crop insurance.
So, what does one do with this assertion of fact? Some options: 1) investigate the claim and remain noncommittal about its truth-value until questions are answered to your satisfaction (if they ever are); 2) register the claim as a possible fact but remain noncommittal about its truth-value. Reject further investigation as too time consuming: 3) accept the claim as true or true-enough, and leave it at that: and, 4) accept the claim as plausible, which is good enough to present it as established fact in the service of some higher purpose… Reject further investigation as quibbling about details and overlooking the bigger picture.
Are the costs of weather-related damage going up because the weather in the US has gotten worse? For example:
Are hurricanes more powerful or frequent?
Are heatwaves longer or more intense?
Are droughts getting longer or more frequent?
Are high precipitation events wetter or more frequent?
The Our World in Data website has tons of data pertinent to these questions, summarized in a series of charts. First, trends in hurricane activity…
Both articles seemed to suggest that, thanks to climate change, weather-related damage is on the rise in the US and the increased cost of this damage is due mostly to changes in the weather and not to factors unrelated to the weather, such as trends in population density or the value of assets in climate-vulnerable areas. Is this actually the case?
As part of its discussion of possible climate futures, the 2021 report assesses the climate response to five illustrative scenarios called shared socio-economic pathways, or SSPs. The SSPs differ in their estimated trajectories of emissions and consequent global warming…
Trust is science is a good thing, right? Maybe, maybe not. Consider…
…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.