So if I were to walk a random 10-acre area in Houston and San Francisco, which city would city would be more dangerous for me personally, considering only violent crime rate and crime density?
Note the governments of Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden had previously supported gender-affirming care for children. But they reconsidered in light of new evidence that such care could sometimes be harmful. American activists know about this evidence as well but many have chosen to dig in, not yielding an inch. However, this post is not about the merits of gender-affirming care for children. It’s about why people and policymakers persist in old ways of thinking and doing despite evidence that the old ways are suboptimal or worse.
What seems crazy about these numbers is that violent crime in America skyrocketed between 1960 and 1990, but incarceration rates barely budged until the 1980s. Of course, there’s always a time lag between committing a crime and starting a prison sentence, so any relationship between crime rates and incarceration rates would also be subject to a time lag. But why would it take 20 years for the incarceration rate to take off?
Last week there was a lot of brouhaha about a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) poll showing that Americans were less enthused about some pretty core principles and values, such as patriotism and hard work. Problem is, America’s apparent moral decline was based on only two polls, one in 1998 and one in 2023. That’s not enough data to declare a trend.
So I did some digging. Sure enough, there was a 1976-77 poll that asked the same questions - its results were actually provided on a WSJ document that summarized responses to the 1998 poll. Considering the 1976-77 poll results along with those for 1998 and 2023, can you spot the trend in, say, patriotism? …
Those alarmed at these poll results had three main concerns. First, endorsement of key values was less whole-hearted than they had been in the 1998 poll. Specifically, there were fewer “Very Important” responses to values such as hard work and community involvement, even though most respondents still considered these values at least somewhat important (94% and 80% in the case of hard work and community involvement). Second was the overall decline in valuing religion, having children, and patriotism, with 40%, 33%, and 27% of respondents considering these values as “not that important” or “not important at all” in the 2023 poll. And third, a whopping 90% of the 2023 respondents considered money an important value. What’s up with that?
“If we want to rebuild a shared public trust in expertise, we will need a more realistic and humane language to talk about scientific expertise and its place in our political life—an account of expertise that is worthy of the public’s trust. Such an account would affirm scientific expertise as a praiseworthy human achievement, indispensable to understanding the world around us and valuable for making political decisions. But it would also recognize the role of uncertainty and judgment in science, and thus the possibility of error and disagreement, including value disagreements, when using science for public policy. Reestablishing an appropriate role for science in our politics, in other words, requires restoring the central role of politics itself in making policy decisions.” - Unmasking Scientific Expertise, by M. Anthony Mills/Issues in Science and Technology
This from a Tennessee State University document titled Defining Citizenship and Civic Engagement:
“Attempting to define civic responsibility can be a daunting task because of frequently overlapping constructs, values, and interpretations. Indeed, the very mention of the term civic responsibility evokes notions of what it means to live in a democracy, in addition to the complementary ideas of citizenship, social responsibility, civic engagement, and community involvement. [But here goes…] Civic responsibility means active participation in the public life of a community in an informed, committed, and constructive manner, with a focus on the common good.”
Many states, including North Carolina, require offenders to undergo a Risk and Need Assessment (RNA), which helps criminal justice officials target interventions to reduce recidivism. For example, prisons use RNAs to identify programs inmates should attend while incarcerated. Probation and parole agencies use them to develop an offender’s supervision plan and inform responses to violations. RNAs, supplemented by criminal records, are also used to classify an offender’s level of risk and need, from Minimal to Extreme. These classifications turn out to be rather good predictors of recidivism…
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.
Something to ponder: is achieving some of the Moral Good now better than achieving more of the Moral Good later? Given that increasingly later is increasingly uncertain, at what point of later/uncertainty should one just say “screw it” and commit to action? (The answer, as always: it depends).
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.