The inspiration for this post was reading John Jost”s Précis for A Theory of System Justification. According to Jost, system justification is a general tendency to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of the societal status quo, leading some people to deny or excuse societal problems that need to be fixed.
The inspiration for this post was reading:
“Supporters of Donald Trump may well have been deeply frustrated by the economic consequences of the capitalist system in the United States, but—at this point at least—we see no evidence that they placed any blame upon the system that was the source of those frustrations.” - Azevedo, Jost, & Rothmund (2017)
Which got me thinking: the idea that Trump supporters were largely frustrated victims of capitalism had already been discredited by 2017. As a group, Trump supporters were (and remain) mostly middle-class and above (see, for instance, (Pew Research, 2018).
Between the funds accrued while incarcerated and the possibility of more money after release, former offenders would be better prepared to meet the challenges of their new lives post-incarceration: more likely to qualify for well-paying jobs and with enough money to meet living expenses while they looked for work or arranged some other stable (but legal!) source of income.
As noted, the ASBI would not be means-tested, so recipients could work part- or full-time. Although the ASBI would partly replace federal student aid programs, state and institutional aid programs would not be affected. Unlike Pell Grants, the ASBI would not drive up school fees because the amount of payment is not adjusted for the cost of attendance. Instead, the ASBI would turn students into cost-conscious consumers. It’s their money, so the less they pay for school, the more available for other expenses. The ASBI would also make students think twice before choosing an expensive private school when a cheaper but perfectly adequate public option is available.
The Biden administration has proposed some cuts in Medicare spending…But these savings amount to just $24 billion a year over the next decade: clearly inadequate, considering that Medicare spending is projected to increase an average of nearly $100 billion a year over the same period. What else can be done to rein in those costs?
Per the Kaiser Family Foundation: In 2021, Medicare spending comprised 13% of the federal budget and 21% of national health care spending. Medicare spending per person has also grown, increasing from $5,800 to $15,700 between 2000 and 2022 – or 4.6% average annual growth over the 22-year period. Looking to the future, net Medicare outlays are projected to increase from $744 billion in 2022 to nearly $1.7 trillion in 2033, due to growth in the Medicare population and increases in health care costs. Where is all that money going?
“Choices about how to generate income are central to the link between wages and crime. Education and training increase skill levels and wage rates. It is expected that these increases will reduce criminal participation. Education leads to employment. Employment provides offenders with responsibility, personal value, independence, dignity, a stake in society, offers income, structure, and routine, an opportunity to increase social networks, and enhance self-esteem and psychological health. Not only does the offender benefit from employment, but the community also profits from the decrease in costs associated with recidivism.” - Gregory Magee
Comparative studies have shown that in most countries an increase of around 40 points in the PIAAC numeracy score leads to a wage increase of between 12% and 15% of the reference wage. (Hanushek et al, 2013). But the wage increase is as high as 28% in the United States. So if the reference wage was $20 an hour, a wage increase of 28% would bring that up to $25.60 an hour, or an additional $224 a week for full-time workers.
And one study found that an increase of around 40 points in the PIAAC literacy score was associated with a 6% increase in hourly wages, on average, across several developed countries, including the United States (Kankaraš et al, 2016).
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: sounds good to me. These rights pretty much cover the purview of government, not counting the obligation to protect the biosphere - but that’s a subject for another day. For now we’re dealing with what governments owe their humans.
“It took longer for police to respond in 2022, even as the number of calls to police dropped by 38% since 2019. Calls to 911 also sank by 22% in the same period… SFPD chief financial officer Patrick Leung blamed lengthening response times to what he and other city leaders say is an agency-wide staffing crisis... The Police Commission report showed that the number of full duty staffers dropped to 1,537 by the end of 2022, down from 1,872 in 2017. SFPD estimates they need roughly 2,182 staffers to operate efficiently.” - As San Franciscans Make Fewer 911 Calls, SFPD Takes Longer To Respond, by Liz Lindqwister/The San Francisco Standard. March 1, 2023
In previous posts, I focused on the violent crime rates of 20 large cities, ten with Republican mayors and ten with Democratic mayors (here and here). I also looked at clearance rates for violent crimes in 19 of these cities (here), meaning the rate of violent crimes “solved for reporting purposes”, usually by arrest. The pattern I found was clear: the large cities with Republican mayors had lower violent crime rates and higher clearance rates than those with Democrat mayors. Interesting, but a pattern doesn’t establish causality.
“Crime is concentrated in small places, or ‘hot spots,’ that generate half of all criminal events. Hot spots policing focuses police resources and attention on these high crime places…Overall, it is more likely that hot spots policing generates crime control benefits that diffuse into the areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations than displacing crime into nearby locations.” - Hot spots policing of small geographic areas effects on crime
“The ‘No Excuses’ charter school model focuses heavily on high academic expectations, rigid and consistent discipline, extended instructional time, intensive teacher training, and increased parental involvement…No Excuses charter schools, on average, produced larger math and literacy achievement gains for their students than their public school peers—with higher gains for math.” - ‘No Excuses’ charter schools for increasing math and literacy achievement in primary and secondary education
The Campbell Collaboration is a nonprofit organization that promotes evidence-based policymaking through the production of systematic reviews, summaries and syntheses of policy-relevant evidence. Each post in this series includes excerpts from the Campbell Collaboration’s “Plain Language Summaries” in the subject areas of crime & justice, education, and social welfare.
My process is to start with an outcome that varies by the variable of interest and then explore possible causal pathways from the variable to outcome. In these posts, crime rates are the outcome, mayor’s political party is the variable of interest, and the possible causal pathways are policies and their cascading effects. For example, if Republican-led cities were more likely to meet police staffing goals than Democrat-led cities and they also had higher crime clearance rates and higher clearance rates were associated with lower crime rates, then we have a possible causal pathway. This is a gross simplification of course: whatever happens is likely the result of multiple interacting causal pathways. And even that is a gross simplification. I won’t elaborate further. Let’s just say it’s complicated. But complexity never stopped medical progress. Why should it stop progress in governance? Knowledge advances one baby step at a time.
“There was a time, in these United States, when a candidate for public office could qualify with the electorate only by fixing his birthplace in or near the "log cabin". He may have acquired a competence, or even a fortune, since then, but it was in the tradition that he must have been born of poor parents and made his way up the ladder by sheer ability, self-reliance, and perseverance in the face of hardship. In short, he had to be "self made". The so-called Protestant Ethic then prevalent held that man was a sturdy and responsible individual, responsible to himself, his society, and his God. Anybody who could not measure up to that standard could not qualify for public office or even popular respect.” - Frank Chodorov
Large American cities are usually run by Democrats, but a few have Republican mayors. I’m assuming a Republican presence within a city’s political leadership will have some effect on local policies and policy-related outcomes. Someday I’ll tackle the causal pathways from city politics to policies to outcomes. In this post, I’ll focus on one particular outcome: the violent crime rates of cities with Republican and Democratic mayors.
Republicans often assert that cities run by Democrats are more crime-ridden than those run by Republicans. Democrats often counter there’s no evidence of that. Neither side presents evidence one way or another, other than the anecdotal sort. So I decided to look into the matter, using cities with Republican mayors as a proxy for cities that are not completely dominated by Democrats or progressives. My sample included all the cities with Republican mayors on Wikipedia’s list of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the US, of which there were ten with Republican mayors. I also chose ten cities with Democratic mayors from Wikipedia’s list and then looked up the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) 2019-2020 figures for homicide and aggravated assault crime rates, et voila!. Here is what I found….
My take on why the 26 phrases are considered dog whistles (main objection only):
Racist or Xenophobic: Community Violence, Urban Violence, Urban Crime, Black-on-White Crime, Tough on Crime, Law & Order, Food Stamps, Anti-China, Islamic Terrorism, Illegal Immigrants Promotes interests of corporations and the rich: Job Creators, Tax Cuts, Big Government (as a criticism), Increase Military Spending….
1. A coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others. Merriam-Webster.com … 10. An ”intriguing tool of hermeneutics in which you can accuse anyone of saying anything even if they didn't say it because you can always hear the dogwhistle if you yourself are a canine with hypersonic hearing.” Steven Pinker, quoted in “Steven Pinker Beats Cancel Culture Attack”