Archive for the 'General' Category

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The Effort To Keep Ethnic Studies Professors Employed

Published on 3/3/2010 in DayToDay, General and Personal. 5 Comments

As someone who both grew up in Compton and attends UCSD, I feel compelled to comment on the recent race relation issues UCSD is having.  As most of you have probably already heard, the whole thing started when UCSD students, outside the campus, had a “Compton Cookout”, where participants were to wear “chains, rapper-style urban clothing by makers such as FUBU and speak very loudly.” Female participants were encouraged to be “ghetto chicks” with gold teeth, cheap clothes and “short, nappy hair.” Also, “The invitation said the party would serve watermelon, chicken, malt liquor, cheap beer and a purple sugar-water concoction called “dat Purple Drank.” It’s goal, apparently, was to mock Black History Month.

That was followed up a couple of days later by a Noose hung from the UCSD library.  With just this information at hand, it paints a very dim picture of UCSD and the racial climate on campus. Especially when you see pictures of students crying and claiming to be ‘afraid to walk to their car’.

Since I have taken many undergraduate and graduate courses at UCSD,  and my experience with the campus is the exact opposite – it is a welcoming campus and not in any way racist -  I was suspicious about the news allegations and decided to dig in deeper.

The first thing I found that contradicted the image the media tried to portray was that the main organizers of the Compton Cookout were Black.  This is how the main organizer defended his decision:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bd7VmDkCTo]

Right or wrong, he claims that the real reason of the Compton Cookout was “to bring the races together”, because “for one night everybody is on the same playing field”. Listen to the full interview. He even debates an ethnic studies UCSD professor on the appropriateness of the event.

Then comes the news story of the Noose.  The student who hung the noose was a female minority. She explains how it happened here:

The student claims in her letter that she and her friends were playing with a rope when one of them tied it into a noose.

“I innocently marveled at his ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD. I left soon after with one of my friends for Geisel to study, still carrying the rope,” she writes. “After a bit of studying I picked up the rope to play with, and ended up hanging it by my desk. It was a mindless act and stupid mistake. When I got up to leave, a couple hours later, I simply forgot about it.”

Yet with all of these details left out, UCSD is still forced to cave to the wishes of the race police:

On Monday , the university outlined the actions it has taken to improve the school’s climate and cultural diversity. They include creating a task force to focus on recruiting minority faculty, forming a commission to address the campus climate, continuing to fund Faculty-Student Mentor Programs, ensuring ongoing funding for the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, identifying space for an African-American Resource Center on Campus and meeting with member of the Black Student Union at least once every academic quarter. (emphasis added)

So you see, it was all one big conspiracy to keep ethnic studies professors employed.

20 Years Is Not A Century

Published on 2/1/2010 in General, Judicial Nominees and ModernPolitics. 0 Comments

Obama, during the State Of The Union address, said:

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

Randy Barnett, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law Center, writes in the WSJ about Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court:

Then there is the substance of the remark itself. It was factually wrong. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United concerned the right of labor unions and domestic corporations, including nonprofits, to express their views about candidates in media such as books, films and TV within 60 days of an election. In short, it concerned freedom of speech; in particular, an independent film critical of Hillary Clinton funded by a nonprofit corporation.

While the Court reversed a 1990 decision allowing such a ban, it left standing current restrictions on foreign nationals and “entities.” Also untouched was a 100-year-old ban on domestic corporate contributions to political campaigns to which the president was presumably referring erroneously.

That is a whole lot to get wrong in 72 sanctimonious words. Clearly, this statement had not been vetted by the president’s legal counsel. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, for example, would never have signed off on such a claim. Never.

Then there is the lack of any reference to the Constitution or First Amendment upon which the Court rested its decision. The president made a nakedly result-oriented criticism: Because interest groups and foreigners (gasp!) will allegedly get to influence our elections, the Supreme Court made a legal mistake. As though this is the way the Supreme Court should decide constitutional cases.

Oh, and how exactly is Congress supposed to override a constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court by enacting a statute? Or was the president merely urging Congress to evade it?

If the president, himself a Harvard Law School graduate, is going to criticize a judicial opinion, it is incumbent upon him to be legally accurate and responsible in his commentary. If that is too much to expect of a politician giving a nationally televised speech to the general public, then this again illustrates the inappropriateness of making this remark in this venue.

The full article can be found here.

Obama The Debater

Published on 1/29/2010 in General and ModernPolitics. 7 Comments

Obama gave a speech and responded to questions at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore. See the full video on C-Span here. The transcript can be found here.

I disagree with Obama on many things. Alot of which he discussed in this video. But it is clear from the dialogue that Obama has a far better command of the issues than present day Republicans. He clearly cleaned their clocks in this discussion.

More On Majors And Why Chicano Studies Is Garbage

Published on 1/7/2010 in Chicanoism, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Personal. 16 Comments

A frequent topic of discussion in my family is what university, what major and the return to investment my sister should pursue after finishing high school. My dad is a man of modest means and is the only bread winner in a family of five – 3 children of which, have yet to pursue a college degree. Aside from the financial help I provide, he has nobody else to rely on. My families situation is not that different from other minorities, at some point – regardless of grants and financial aid – you have to weigh the trade-offs and cost/benefit of sending your child off to college.

Long time readers of this blog know my position, which is fundamentally that the two most important variables are: what major you choose and the grades you get. Everything else is secondary at best and more likely irrelevant. I’m so extreme in my beliefs that I advised my dad that unless my sister chooses something in the hard sciences, he refuse to pay for her education (she would still be able to get her own grants, financial aid and his blessing – just not his money).  Also, despite the fact that my sister went to a good public school (my parents fake their address),  took advanced classes – AP and honors Math, Physics, English, History etc – and finished near the top of her class, I still advised her to go to a Cal State. Even the relatively cheap cost of the UC’s, had she applied (to avoid the temptation, she didn’t even apply) and been accepted, would not have been worth the costs, IMHO. The hiring premium between say a Berkeley student and a Cal Poly student is not that much (trust me, I’ve done interviews for my company) and it certainly doesn’t cover the long term debt difference the two schools would leave the student with (debt that comes not just from the tuition but also the living costs of living in the area). Factor in years of experience and, I strongly believe,  in the long run there is no difference between the two schools that cannot be attributed to personal characteristics (IQ, work ethic, connections, etc).

This is one of the main disagreements I have with Chicano Studies and the culture it creates for minorities entering college. A year or so ago I wrote:

One of the many things I dislike about Chicano Studies as a major is its over emphasis on “nonprofit activism” vs “personal interest”. In the status circles of Chicano Studies students, you are admired more for your desire to ‘build a community outreach center for disadvantaged children’ than for say, getting an engineering degree and ‘making the big bucks’….a kid from the ghetto is taking an enormous risk by accepting a low salary. They are, in effect, “putting all their eggs in one basket”. And unless they are the lucky ones, they are doomed to rear their next generation of children in the very same environment they were raised in.

I called it a luxury of the rich to pursue a college degree based solely on personal interest and void of personal gain. Some of my friends disagreed then. Some of my friends disagree now. They think I am too harsh in my advice on my sister. They think instead she should be able to ‘pursue her dreams and interests’ as if all family situations were the same (remember, my dad has finite dollars – every dollar spent on my sister is one less he can spend on the rest of the family…a high return is a necessity, not a luxury).

Well, for those who still disagree I point you to this well written advice column in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s not completely related but it still hints at the same conclusions and remarks I mentioned before – only better written and communicated. The full article really should be read in full but for those of you short on time, I quote below his concluding remarks:

As things stand, I can only identify a few circumstances under which one might reasonably consider going to graduate school in the humanities:

  • You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else.
  • You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.
  • You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household.
  • You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it.

Those are the only people who can safely undertake doctoral education in the humanities. Everyone else who does so is taking an enormous personal risk, the full consequences of which they cannot assess because they do not understand how the academic-labor system works and will not listen to people who try to tell them.

It’s hard to tell young people that universities recognize that their idealism and energy — and lack of information — are an exploitable resource. For universities, the impact of graduate programs on the lives of those students is an acceptable externality, like dumping toxins into a river. If you cannot find a tenure-track position, your university will no longer court you; it will pretend you do not exist and will act as if your unemployability is entirely your fault. It will make you feel ashamed, and you will probably just disappear, convinced it’s right rather than that the game was rigged from the beginning.

But please do read the article in full. It can be found here.

Is Racism Still Important?

Published on 10/30/2009 in (modern day) Liberalism, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and ModernPolitics. 2 Comments

A continued theme on Matthew Yglesias blog is that conservatives in general are more concerned with anti-racism than racism, this is how he explains it:

“…most conservatives, think that the preeminent racial problem in the United States is that white people are too put upon by political correctness. Conservatives are very very very concerned about this alleged problem of anti-racism run amok. And they’re very concerned about the alleged problem of reverse discrimination. But they don’t seem concerned at all about racism or discrimination and certainly not nearly as concerned as they about helping out the poor, put-upon white man.

This is actually true and though Yglesias views it as a flaw, I see it as a virtue. In fact, its one of the reasons why I find the conservative side more appealing than the progressive side. Just to be clear though, Yglesias is not saying that conservatives view racism as historically unimportant, or that racism is completely unimportant, cuz then I would agree with Yglesias that that is a flaw; no, Yglesias is chiding conservatives for not seeing todays racism as a bigger problem than todays “anti-racism”.

Of course racism is important, very important,  to those who are suffering under racism. If I was denied a job solely because of my race, I would be really pissed off and want some justice. However, as a policy issue I think racism is very low on the totem poll of problems (though not zero).

I like the way economist Walter Williams explained it:

Like the March of Dimes’ victory against polio in the U.S., civil rights organizations can claim victory as well. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees as other Americans. Now we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won doesn’t mean that all problems have vanished within the black community. A 70 percent illegitimacy rate, 65 percent of black children raised in female-headed households, high crime rates and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they’re not civil rights problems. Furthermore, their solutions do not lie in civil rights strategies.

Civil rights organizations’ expenditure of resources and continued focus on racial discrimination is just as intelligent as it would be for the March of Dimes to continue to expend resources fighting polio in the U.S. Like the March of Dimes, civil rights organizations should revise their agenda and take on the big, non-civil rights problems that make socioeconomic progress impossible for a large segment of the black community.

In other words, racism as a source of minority failure is not all that important anymore.  Most real impediments to minority success – issues like illegitimacy rates, crime, failing public schools – are only loosely, very loosely I would argue, tied to race. But because race is such a hot button issue, these issues are difficult to talk about openly – ultimately harming the search for the cure. Bring up your concerns with crime in the ghetto, illegitimacy rates, the widening educational gap, or affirmative action and unless you walk a very tight line, you can be easily accused of racism. This censorship, namely, this “anti-racism”, hampers progress on such important issues (even some progressives agree, see here).

This is much more a problem on the left than it is on the right. The left tends to see the world through the prism of “racism” (and”class warfare”), making honest dialog on race issues extremely difficult – trust me, I’ve tried. The right, on the other hand, has a more balanced view on these issues and because of it you are able to go further in finding a cure.

Not only does overemphasis on racism result in unintended censorship on important topics,  but it also leads to a blinding force when searching for solutions. When dealing with the issues of illegitimacy rates, crime and failing public schools, for example,  the progressive tries hard to find its racist connection – however strained that connection may be. This is a serious stumbling block and is one of the main reasons why real educational reforms, whether it’s charter schools, vouchers, or even NCLB have all come from the right.

So I would argue that as far as real effective policy goes, emphasis on racism has now ran into significant diminishing returns, whereas the overemphasis on racism is a real roadblock to discussing important minority problems.

And it seems like Matthew Yglesias, ultimately, is not too far off. For example, in a separate post, he lists what he considers the real problems of racism today:

At any rate, I’ve made this point a million times, but it’s fascinating to me the kind of double standard conservatives apply to these issues. You never hear Rush Limbaugh decrying everyday racism against non-whites in the United States. You never hear him recounting an anecdote about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab or being followed by a shopkeeper. He doesn’t do stories about how people with stereotypically “black” names suffer job discrimination. He doesn’t bemoan the fact that the United States has an aircraft carrier named after a fanatical segregationist.

What is interesting about this list is what type of “racism” it is: specifically, statistical racism (more here and here), or what economists call statistical discrimination. This type of “racism” is very different than the invidious racism that comes to mind when we think of racism: issues like being forced to sit in the back of the bus, forced segregation, laws against interracial marriages, poll taxes and so forth. Statistical discrimination, while still offensive, is based on statistics, not bigotry.

That is not to say that it is any less offensive to the person being statistically discriminated against but it makes a huge difference when looked at from a policy perspective. Take the claim “about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab”, as an example. The reason that Blacks have trouble hailing a cab, specifically in New York City, is because Blacks have a higher crime rate than many other groups. A cab driver, being in an especially vulnerable position, has a strong incentive to ensure his safety but at the same time he also wants to make the most money he can. So every approaching customer gets put through some sort of subconscious statistical analysis: is this person more likely to rob me? Given that the cab driver has a limited amount of information to go on, race plays an important factor. This is not unique to white cab drivers either, cab drivers of every race, including Black cab drivers, show the same tendency of picking up Black passengers less than non-Black ones. While this may be offensive, from a policy perspective there is no practical way to prevent it – as long as the cab driver has an incentive to reduce the likelihood of robbery, and as long as being Black signals a higher probability for robbery, there is always going to be the desire to resist providing a cab when the cab driver deduces the risk is too high. The same general principle applies about stereotypically “black” names, see here.

The real gains in reducing statistical discrimination come not from government fiat but from the inside, as economist Bryan Caplan states,”If you really want to improve your group’s image, telling other groups to stop stereotyping won’t work. The stereotype is based on the underlying distribution of fact. It is far more realistic to turn your complaining inward, and pressure the bad apples in your group to stop pulling down the average.” Which is, btw, more likely when you don’t see racism behind every corner.

Besides, hasn’t Yglesias noticed that we have a Black President? How much of an impediment can racism really be in a country that elected its first Black president? John McWhorter has more here.

In Support Of Barney Frank

Published on 8/19/2009 in General and ModernPolitics. 3 Comments

For repudiating stupid people like this:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8]

People like this make me sick.

Limited Governments Best Friend: The CBO

Published on 7/27/2009 in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, Fiscal Stimulus, General, HealthCare, ModernPolitics and Personal. 2 Comments

Remember the Democrats claim that by empowering a new panel (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) to recommend future spending reductions we could save several billions of dollars in healthcare costs? If this was before the creation of the CBO (1974, according to Wiki), such claims would be nearly impossible to disprove. Democrats could get away with making the claim and fiscally conservative politicians would have little to say in opposition. The whole debate would break down into a he-said she-said debate, with Republicans pointing to some economist at some University showing the proposal would barely save a few billion dollars and Democrats responding with their own economist and study arguing that it would save multiple billions. How would the average citizen distinguish who is right?

Of course, years after the policy changes had been put into effect, the truth would have come out – which is why in every single healthcare change, including the recent Massachusetts healthcare reforms, the healthcare policies have turned out to cost far more than people assumed – but by then the changes would have already been in affect for atleast a couple of years. New special interest groups would have already been created, and the government program, like any other government program, would become nearly impossible to stop.

But that was before the CBO had so much influence. Today, Democrats have to get their claims past the CBO and are having a very difficult time doing it. The latest is their claim that an Independent Medicare Advisory Council would save several billions of dollars. The CBO argues that that simply is not true, Donald Marron reports:

CBO estimates that the proposed legislation would save a paltry $2 billion over the next ten years, less than 1/500 of the 10-year cost of health reform.

This is on top of the earlier headaches the CBO has given Democrats.

Long gone are the days when Democrats could simply propose some theoretical cost saving legislation and ask the public to take it on good faith. Imagine if the CBO had existed when FDR was around? LBJ?

Although that doesn’t mean the CBO itself doesn’t have serious shortcomings, on the contrary, it too tends to underestimate the costs of policies, as it recently did in predicting the fiscal stimulus recovery (see here and here) but atleast now the Democrats proposals have to pass a higher standard than simply their word.

Keith Hennessey has more here.

Update: The Economist has more.

Vargas Testimony In The Sotomayor Hearings

Published on 7/16/2009 in affirmative action, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and ModernPolitics. 2 Comments

I haven’t seen this discussed much in the blogosphere so I thought I would provide it here:

ACTING CHAIRMAN: Mr. Ricci, thank you very much for your testimony. We’ll now hear from Lieutenant Ben Vargas. Ben — Benjamin Vargas is a lieutenant in the New Haven Fire Department and was a plaintiff in the case of Ricci vs. DeStefano. He also worked part-time as a consultant for a company that sells equipment to firefighters. Mr. Vargas?

VARGAS: Thank you. Members of this committee, it is truly an honor to be invited here today. Notably, since our case was summarily dismissed by both the District Court and the Court of Appeals panel, this is the first time I am being given the opportunity to sit and testify before a body and tell my story. I thank for this — thank you to this committee for the opportunity.

Senators of both parties have noted the importance of this proceeding, because decisions of the United States Supreme Court greatly impact the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. I suppose that I and my fellow plaintiffs have shown how true that is. I never envisioned being a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case, much less one that generated so much media and public interest.

I am Hispanic and proud of their heritage and background that Judge Sotomayor and I share. And I congratulate Judge Sotomayor on her nomination.

But the focus should not have been on me being Hispanic. The focus should have been on what I did to earn a promotion to captain and how my own government and some courts responded to that. In short, they didn’t care. I think it important for you to know what I did, that I played by the rules and then endured a long process of asking the courts to enforce those rules.

I am the proud father of three young sons. For them I sought to better my life, and so I spent three months in daily study, preparing for an exam that was unquestionably job-related. My wife, a special education teacher, took time off from work to see me and our children through this process.

I knew we would see little of my sons during these months, when I studied every day at a desk in our basement, so I placed photographs of my boys in front of me. When I would get tired and wanted to stop — wanted to stop, I would look at the pictures, realize that their own future depended on mine, and I would keep going. At one point I packed up and went to a hotel for a day to avoid any distractions, and those pictures came with me.

I was shocked when I was not rewarded for this hard work and sacrifice, but I actually was penalized for it. I became not Ben Vargas, the fire lieutenant who proved themselves qualified to be captain, but a racist statistic. I had to make decisions whether to join those who wanted promotions to be based on race and ethnicity or join those who would insist on being judged solely on their qualifications and the content of their character.

The Clinton Years vs The Bush Years – A Pet Peeve I have

Published on 6/5/2009 in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, ModernPolitics, Myths and Personal. 5 Comments

Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, made a comment that he should know is disingenuous, he wrote:

the “big spending Democrat” stereotype is incorrect — government spending / GDP fell under Clinton and increased under Bush.

This comparison, used to argue that when it comes to spending there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats,  is made often, both in the blogosphere and by academics who should know better. The main problem I have with it is that it is not comparing apples to apples.  Milton Friedman argued that the best form of government, from a small government and low spending perspective, is a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, where Republicans control the spending (congress), and Democrats control foreign policy – precisely what we had under Bill Clinton. The worst form of government is when the same party controls the presidency and congress – precisely what we had under George W Bush.

In other words, you are comparing arguably the best scenario under a Democratic president with the worst scenario under a Republican president – of course they are going to be alot closer than what they really are. Don’t get me wrong: I am not arguing that Republicans are true fiscal conservatives, no, I am arguing that the gulf between the two is larger than what these “Clinton years vs Bush years” argument would lead you to believe.

The difference between the two is even larger when you compare the kind of spending each does: Republicans tend to overspend on wars while Democrats tend to overspend on entitlements. Wars are temporary, they are one time events that come to an end, whereas entitlements are forever and worst of all, they get more inefficient and expensive with time. Take FDR and LBJ – both were involved in wars and both created entitlements, FDR with World War II and social-security and LBJ with the Vietnam war and medicare. Yet today we worry about the growing costs of social-security and medicare while the financial costs of World War II and Vietnam, though expensive at the time, are now but forgotten.

And Bill Clinton would not have been any different, had he had more control of congress, Matthew Yglesias explains:

If the health care bill that the Clinton administration authored, pushed for, and staked its presidency on had passed you would say that FDR, LBJ, and Bill Clinton were the three main architects of the modern welfare state. Because the bill didn’t pass, the institutional legacy of the Clinton years is considerably more moderate than that and the Clinton administration is instead remembered for its responsible stewardship of national affairs. But that’s because congress blocked the bill not because of Clinton’s moderation.

That was the Republican controlled (for the first time in ~50 years) congress that blocked the bill.

A better comparison is between the Bush years and the Obama years – but given the fact that in Obama’s first 100 days in office, he’s already proposed spending more than Bush spent in his entire 8 years, including both wars, its a strong argument that there really is a difference between the two parties. Especially considering that most of Obama’s spending comes in the form of very expensive entitlements – entitlements that Obama is hoping will last forever.

You can argue that entitlements are worth the costs, that is an argument for another day, but you can’t make the argument that the spending is the same between the two parties.

The Cultural Argument Against Gay Marriage

Published on 5/26/2009 in Gay Marriage, General and Personal. 13 Comments

Of all the arguments against gay marriage, the religious liberties argument, the reductio absurdum argument, the better safe than sorry argument, and others, the one people have the most difficulty understanding, atleast from my experience in discussing it, is the cultural argument against gay marriage, yet it is one of the ones I find most persuasive. So here I try to give a better explanation of what I see as the cultural argument against gay marriage.

It starts with the assumption that laws shape peoples cultural mores and beliefs. It does not have to be consciously, many times it is subconsciously. Abortion is more acceptable, for example, because it is legal. Making it legal, to alot of people, gives it a stamp of approval, a cultural acceptance. The cultural argument states that if gay marriage is legalized, because gay unions are inherently unable to produce children, it will send a cultural signal that marriage and children are not tied together.

This is how Maggie Gallagher explains it:

The argument is that extending marriage to include same-sex couples would not just give rights to a small subset of the population, but would radically transform what marriage is. So long as only opposite-sex couples can marry, the thinking goes, marriage is linked to procreation; if same-sex couples can marry, too, then marriage is transformed into something else entirely. Adding same-sex marriage would ruin the old institution and create a new one, and the new institution would not longer retain a focus on having and raising children. Viewed in that light, same sex marriage is a threat to society: by redefining the institution, it will kill off its most important feature…

Sex makes babies. Society needs babies. Babies need fathers as well as mothers. That’s the heart of marriage as a universal human institution.

Please note: Procreation is not the definition of marriage. It is the reason for marriage’s existence as a public (and yes legal) institution. People who don’t have children can still really be married (just as people who aren’t married can and do have babies).

But if sex between men and women did not make babies, then marriage would not be a universal human institution, or a legal status in America.

In other words, people raised in a society where gay marriage is legal will view marriage differently than people raised in a society where gay marriage is banned. The former will see the link between marriage and procreation weak at best, whereas the latter will see a stronger connection between procreation and marriage (Btw, preliminary data suggests this is already happening, see here).

This is especially troubling when you consider what this cultural change would do to areas where marriage is already in a precarious position.  Poor inner city neighborhoods, for example, will see a weakening of their already weak cultural mores regarding marriage and if there is one thing they need less of, it is that.

This is what Heather Mac Donald writing at the SecularRight blog referred to, though few understood her connection,  when she blogged this:

The biggest social problem in the U.S. today is the crime and academic achievement gap between blacks and whites…One overpowering cause of black social failure is the breakdown of marriage in the black community. Nationally, the black illegitimacy rate is 71%; in some inner city areas, it is closer to 90%. When boys grow up without any expectation that they will have to marry the mother of their children, they fail to learn the most basic lesson of personal responsibility. A community without the marriage norm is teetering on the edge of civilizational collapse, if it has not already fallen into the abyss. Fatherless black boys, who themselves experience no pressure to become marriageable mates as they grow up, end up joining gangs, dropping out of school, and embracing a “street” lifestyle in the absence of any male authority in the home.

If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee.

In other words, gay marriage is a social experiment with an institution that has been around in every culture at almost every time period for as long as recorded history can go back, where the costs of the social experiment are borne mostly by those at the bottom of the economic ladder. This helps explain why so many of the black community, especially the inner city black community(and minority community in general), is adamantly opposed to gay marriage – gay marriage primarily hurts them!

I grant that this argument is not powerful enough to ban gay marriage – it’s ultimately a cost/benefit analysis. There may very well be scenarios where gay marriage, seen as a right issue, may outweigh the costs of further marriage breakdown in the inner cities of the United States. My point here is not to give the complete argument against gay marriage, only to show that there are trade-offs involved. Very real and important ones.

Obama’s Economic Bubble

Published on 5/6/2009 in General, ModernPolitics and Personal. 2 Comments

Newsweek makes much of the fact that President Obama invited two vocal critics of his administration over to dinner, Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz. Newsweek writes:

Mindful of his predecessor, Barack Obama seems to be trying harder to make sure he hears all sides. On the night of April 27, for instance, the president invited to the White House some of his administration’s sharpest critics on the economy, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz. Over a roast-beef dinner, Obama listened and questioned while Krugman and Stiglitz, both Nobel Prize winners, pushed for more aggressive government intervention in the banking system.

But is Obama really all that more open to dissenting views than Bush? After all, Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz are both considered to be on the extreme left of the economic spectrum. In addition, every economist on Obama’s economic team is atleast left-of-center, with many considered to be far left. The dinner would have just lead to Obama hearing yet another argument from the left.

It would be tantamount to Bush inviting William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer over for dinner to discuss the Iraq war. Would you describe such a meeting as Bush ‘demanding fresh thinking and avoiding the sycophancy that comes with the Oval Office.’? I certainly would not.

If Obama really wants to break his economic bubble, he should invite economists from the right-of-center over for dinner. There certainly is a plethora of economists who disagree with him and his economic team, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here – just to give a few.

Is Government Spending As Good As Anybody Else’s?

Published on 4/28/2009 in Economics, Fiscal Stimulus and General. 0 Comments

Specifically, at creating employment? Many liberal economists, including UC Berkeley’s Brad DeLong, say yes. For the counter argument, see this post by Mario Rizzo, professor of economics at NYU.

He writes:

So when DeLong, among others, says that government spending is as good as private in restoring employment, he is speaking against the whole thrust of the principle of efficient resource allocation. The essence of our recessionary problem is not the fall in aggregate demand and the lack of business confidence that accompanies it. First, it is the misallocation of resources produced by excessive risk-taking and by excessive expansion of interest-sensitive sectors. (These were generated by excessively low interest rates over the past several years.) Second, it is the uncertainty that is natural to the discovery of more appropriate combinations of resources. Third, it is the endogenous uncertainty created by the fits and starts of stimulus, bailout and unclear monetary policies.

When government adds to investment as a result of fiscal stimulus or directed monetary expansion (like buying mortgage-backed securities, student loans, etc) it does not act as a super-entrepreneur who is trying to determine the efficient and sustainable direction of resources, including the allocation of capital goods. It spends according to economically irrelevant criteria of job creation, propping up over-expanded sectors, and preventing politically painful adjustments.

Such spending is counterproductive in the medium to long term. It is also unsustainable (once the stimulus stops) since it is not consistent with the preferences of consumers-savers-investors.

These considerations tell us that government spending isn’t equally as good as private. To argue otherwise, I suggest, is a mark of basic economic error.

I recommend you read the full article, along with the comments, which include an exchange between Brad DeLong and Mario Rizzo. Full post here.

Why I Read Steve Sailer

Published on 4/24/2009 in General and ModernPolitics. 1 Comment

…even though I disagree with some of what he writes.

Read this post, where Steve Sailer, in a Talking Points Memo discussion of Andrew Gelman’s political book, “Red State, Blue State”, explains why the once Republican California has become a solid Democratic voting state while the once moderate Texas has become a solid Republican voting state. See the full post here.

Agree or disagree, Sailer always brings a unique perspective that is unlike any other author. Which is why I continue to read what he writes and recommend you do the same.

Celebrating Work — All Kinds Of Work

Published on 4/10/2009 in General. 1 Comment

This Ted talk video by Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs,” is both educational and entertaining. It gives a side of work that is often ignored in todays society.

A must watch video.

A Must Watch Video

Published on 3/20/2009 in General. 0 Comments

Politics 101: Click here.