The rate of Black entrepreneurship has always been lower than for other communities due to systemic and overt racism over past generations. This CNBC piece does a good job explaining the ongoing obstacles faced by Black-owned enterprises.
Nov 18, 2021
Sep 16, 2021
Jul 19, 2021
New Voting Laws and Critical Race Theory
New voting laws around the country are not a response to voter fraud. How do we know? Because there is no credible evidence of consequential voter fraud anywhere in the country.
The new voting laws respond to voter turnout, especially turnout of the "wrong kind" of voters. The laws do not mention ethnicities in their explicit language, but the voting barriers are made more significant for minorities. This brings us to Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory looks at how racism has, directly and indirectly, influenced the legal system to perpetuate racial disparity – like maybe rigging the voting system in favor of white people without saying so. And now you know why one political party, which I used to call home loosely, is so animated in its opposition to Critical Race Theory.
Jun 20, 2020
Confederate Monuments Are A Rewrite of History, Not A Remembrance
Confederate monuments were the product of a campaign to rewrite history, not to preserve it.
There were few Confederate monuments thirty years after the Civil War ended in 1865. The placement of monuments came in two waves, the first much larger than the second. One wave began at the turn of the last century, and the other began about 1956 (See chart).
Source: There are certain moments in US history when Confederate monuments go up
First Wave
The first sustained wave of monument placement began in the late 1890s, peaking in 1911 and then tapering off to a lower placement rate in the 1920s and early 1930s. Why this spike?
By the 1890s, Confederate veterans were dying off, and Southern elites feared younger generations would lose the “right” perspective on the history of the Civil War. The “Lost Cause” movement began to take root in the South as a response. The mission was to recast the Confederacy as a heroic and just attempt to preserve the Southern way of life while minimizing the experience and impact of slavery.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy was born in 1894. Organized by daughters and granddaughters of the Southern elite, they set out to promote the Lost Cause narrative through textbook writing, children’s programs, and the erection of monuments promoting the Lost Cause. Their financial and political clout gave them considerable influence, especially in the formerly Confederate states.
In 1896, the Supreme Court handed down its Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling, institutionalizing the Separate but Equal doctrine. By 1914, Less than twenty years later, all Southern states and most Northern cities had enacted laws segregating people.
1925 Klan march in Washington DC
From 1902 to 1907, Tom Dixon wrote a popular trilogy of novels 1902-1907, targeting the “unfair” treatment of the South in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fifty years earlier. The middle novel, “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” inspired D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” in 1915, glorifying the Klan and employing deeply racist troupes. It was the first true blockbuster movie. Not coincidentally, 1915 was the birth of the Second Ku Klux Klan. By 1922, the Klan had a million members, possibly as many as five million by 1925, and millions more in sympathy. Lynching was prevalent throughout this period, as were race massacres like the Red Summer of 1919 and the Tulsa massacre of 1921.
Second Wave
The United Daughters of the Confederacy began to lose steam in the 1920s, and from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, monument erection mostly subsided. But another smaller spike developed from about 1956-1965. What happened here?
In 1954, in Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Supreme Court overruled Plessy vs. Ferguson, effectively delegitimizing segregation. The Civil Rights Movement came into its own at the time. Up went more monuments to persevere the ethos of the Lost Cause and white supremacy, dropping off after 1965 and the passage of civil rights legislation. The financial and political clout to promote these efforts was not as powerful by this date.
Conclusion
The great majority of Confederate monuments were never a product of some high-minded project to help us holistically remember the past. They were the product of a concerted effort to rewrite the past with the Lost Cause narrative. They were integral to waves of white supremacy that swept America, attempting to whitewash the past and intimidate people of color. They have no business standing in places of honor in our public spaces. Their removal aids in the remembrance of history, not its neglect.
View this video for a short history of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their role in promoting the Lost Cause and Confederate monument placement.
Dec 11, 2015
Minimum Wage, Nativism, and the Illiberal Roots of Progressivism
Virginia Postrel has an interesting article at Bloomberg, "Progressive and Racist. Woodrow Wilson Wasn't Alone," a book review of Thomas Lenoard's Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Here are a few key quotes:
The progressives believed, first and foremost, in the importance of science and scientific experts in guiding the economy, government, and society. Against the selfishness, disorder, corruption, ignorance, conflict and wastefulness of free markets or mass democracy, they advanced the ideal of disinterested, public-spirited social control by well-educated elites. The progressives were technocrats who, Leonard observes, "agreed that expert public administrators do not merely serve the common good, they also identify the common good." Schools of public administration, including the one that since 1948 has borne Woodrow Wilson's name, still enshrine that conviction.
Later, she writes:
Advocates similarly didn't deny that imposing a minimum wage might throw some people out of work. That wasn't a bug; it was a feature -- a way to deter undesirable workers and keep them out of the marketplace and ideally out of the country. Progressives feared that, faced with competition from blacks, Jews, Chinese, or other immigrants, native-stock workingmen would try to keep up living standards by having fewer kids and sending their wives to work. Voilà: “race suicide.” Better to let a minimum wage identify inferior workers, who might be shunted into institutions and sterilized, thereby improving the breed in future generations. ...
... Clark's theory is now a foundation of mainstream labor economics. In his day, however, it was highly unpopular. "A key element of resistance," writes Leonard, "was that many progressives were reluctant to treat wages as a price," rather than a right of citizenship and social standing. Informed by their beliefs in scientific racism, most progressives preferred wages to favor some groups over others: men over women, whites over blacks, and most prominently, native stock over immigrants.
Although they generally assumed black inferiority, progressives outside the South didn't worry much about the "Negro question." They were instead obsessed with the racial, economic, and social threats posed by immigrants. MIT president Francis Amasa Walker called for "protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe," whom he described in Darwinian language as "representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence."
So restricting immigration was as central to the progressive agenda as regulating railroads. Indeed, in his five-volume History of the American People, Wilson lumped together in one long paragraph the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act as "the first fruits of radical economic changes and the rapid developments of trade, industry, and transportation" -- equal harbingers of the modern administrative state. With a literacy test and ban on most other Asian immigrants enacted in 1917 and national quotas established in 1924, the progressives bequeathed to America the concept of illegal immigration.
The first paragraph is the preface for what follows. It relates to why I eschew the label "progressive" despite sympathizing with some aspects of what today's progressives espouse. In my estimation, "progressivism," then and now, contains substantial hubris - believing that we are justified in moving heaven and earth to bring about a brave new world through dispassionate logic, science, and a superior moral locus. Institutions and practices that have emerged through time as practical ways of making the world work be damned! I believe most change should be modest reform, not revolution. It is in this sense that I would claim the term conservative. We want to conserve the good as we seek improvement. We aren't that smart, and we aren't that noble when it comes to redesigning the world.
The minimum wage piece is particularly interesting. While the impact of minimum wage increases is notoriously complex and difficult to summarize with precision, most economists agree that substantial increases in the minimum wage dampen job growth over time. Some studies show, just as the early progressives logically surmised, that increased minimum wages negatively impact the employment of minorities, particularly young black men.
I am going to read this book!
Sep 10, 2015
Aug 03, 2015
White People Aren't Driving Growth in the Suburbs
Atlantic Cities: White People Aren't Driving Growth in the Suburbs
"The decline of white suburbia has already begun. ...
... For the Brookings Institution, Frey explains that white populations accounted for just 9 percent of the population growth of the suburbs (in the 100 largest metro areas) between 2000 and 2010. The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings just launched a fascinating map that shows where white cities and suburbs gained and lost populations. It shows that some metro areas are already breaking from the population pattern that has fueled the last half-century of growth: white losses in cities, white gains in suburbs."
Dec 23, 2014
Apr 01, 2014
Demography Links
1. Washington Post: Robert Samuelson: America’s demographic denial
... For proof, see Paul Taylor’s new book, “The Next America.” Taylor oversees many of the Pew Research Center’s opinion surveys. His masterful synthesis of polls shows that three familiar mega-trends lie at the core of America’s political and social stalemate. First, immigration. By 2050, immigrants and their U.S.-born children are projected to represent 37 percent of the population, slightly higher than in 1900, when the country last experienced mass immigration. ...
... Second, family breakdown. In 2011, unmarried women accounted for 41 percent of U.S. births, up from 5 percent in 1960. The trend affects all major groups. The rate is 29 percent for whites, 53 percent among Hispanics and 72 percent among African Americans. Although 60 percent of single mothers have live-in boyfriends, half of these relationships end within five years. Single parenthood’s stigma is gone. ...
... Finally, aging. Every day 10,000 baby boomers turn 65. The retiree flood is swamping the federal budget. ...
2. Economist: How divorce and marriage compare internationally
3. NPR: Walking Down The Widening Aisle Of Interracial Marriages
... More than 5.3 million marriages in the U.S. are between husbands and wives of different races or ethnicities. According to the 2010 Census, they make up between opposite-sex couples, marking a 28-percent increase since 2000. ...
4. Pew: Record share of wives are more educated than their husbands
5. NPR: Older Americans' Breakups Are Causing A 'Graying' Divorce Trend
For baby boomers, divorce has almost become, like marriage, another rite of passage. The post-World War II generation is setting : Americans over 50 are twice as likely to get divorced as people of that age were 20 years ago. ...
6. Atlantic Cities: The Developing World's Urban Population Could Triple by 2210
... A new working paper (PDF) by my colleagues Brandon Fuller and Paul Romer of NYU’s Marron Institute projects that the world’s urban population will reach 9.8 billion people by 2210, with nearly 87 percent of the 11.3 billion people on Earth living in cities. That urban population will be split unevenly, with just 1.2 billion people living in the cities of what we now think of as developed countries, and a whopping 8.6 billion making their homes in the cities of the developing world. These projections, based on UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Data, are some of the largest that I’ve seen to date. ...
7. Conversable Economist: U.S. Teen Birthrate Plummets
8. The Diplomat: Japan's Demographic Crisis: Any Way Out?
... However positive the macroeconomic outlook for the Japanese economy and however successful Abe might be at normalizing Japan’s military stance, Japan isn’t back — its falling birthrate and shrinking population will significantly damage its international competitiveness. Japan’s population fell by a record 244,000 last year, further evidencing that this trend is accelerating. Is it all doom and gloom for Japan from here on out or is there a possible way out? ...
... The immigration solution to demographic problems presents a novel scenario for Japan, which has traditionally been ethnically homogenous despite its high level of integration with the global economy. According to the Japanese government, the number of foreign residents in Japan is slowly but surely rising. Should the government’s plan to add an additional 200,000 immigrants per year succeed, Japanese society will begin to look very different within a decade, raising possible national identity issues. Currently, less than 2 percent of Japan’s population is non-ethnically Japanese. Should immigrants comprise a greater percentage of the whole, the idea of Japan will have to change, incorporating its new residents into the fold. That change won’t be easy, but it might be necessary to avert the alternative scenario: a country that shrinks its way into ruin.
9. USA Today: 'Do it for Denmark' ad encourages Danes to have more sex
... Denmark has the lowest birth rate in 27 years, according to the "Do it for Denmark" campaign the travel company launched Wednesday. "The Danish government has not found a solution," the ad says. "But there has to be one."
That solution, according to the company, is to travel, see your partner in the light of a different city and get romantic.
The ad claims that Danes have 46% more sex on vacation and that 10% of all Danish children are conceived on getaways. It's unclear where these stats came from, so take them with a grain of salt. ...
10. Atlantic: There's Something About Cities and Suicide
As more people move to a city, you’d expect about a one-to-one increase in shirts being worn, for instance, or the number of house keys issued. If something doubles as population doubles, that’s not surprising. What is unusual, though, is when something grows faster or slower than a population. That means people seem to be doing more or less of it, on average, and that could signal an interesting societal quirk. ...
... The authors found that if they doubled the size of a Brazilian city, car-crash deaths would also double, as predicted. But the rate of murder would grow by 135 percent—that is, homicides would more than double.
The rate of suicides, meanwhile, increased slower than population growth, rising just 78 percent when population went up by 100. A similar trend was true among the U.S. counties. There seems to be something about big cities that makes murder more likely but suicide less so. ...
11. New York Times: Why Black Women Die of Cancer
SINCE the early 1970s, studies have shown that black Americans have a higher death rate from cancer than any other racial or ethnic group. This is especially true when it comes to breast cancer. A study published last week in the journal Cancer Epidemiology found that, in a survey of 41 of America’s largest cities, black women with breast cancer are on average 40 percent more likely to die than their white counterparts.
The principal reason for this disparity is the disconnect between the nation’s discovery and delivery enterprises — between what we know and what we do about sick Americans. ...
12. Christian Science Monitor: Why African-Americans are moving back to the South
... The Coxes' decision is one unfolding in African-American households across the nation. After decades of mass exodus, blacks are returning to the South in one of the most notable migrations of the new century.
It's a subtle but significant shift that experts say provides not only a snapshot of the changing economics and sociology of the nation but of an emerging new South and, in some cases, of a growing disillusionment with the urban North. ...
13. New York Times: Population Growth in New York City Is Reversing Decades-Old Trend, Estimates Show
New York City may be an expensive place to live. Jobs are not easy to find, even as the city rebounds from the recession. And the public transit system is not always reliable or comfortable.
But despite the challenges of city living, the city’s population is growing in ways not seen in decades.
For the third consecutive year, New York City last year gained more people than it lost through migration, reversing a trend that stretched to the mid-20th century. ...
14. Business Insider: How The American Population Changed In One Year
15. Carpe Diem: Today’s new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, and the living space per person has doubled over last 40 years
16. Watch as 1000 years of European borders change
17. Business Insider: Here's What The World Would Look Like If It Were Divided Into Regions Of 100 Million People
18. Business Insider: 6 Land Transformations That Are Changing The World (GIFs)
As the global population grows past seven billion, our cities continue to expand, increasing the need for natural resources while simultaneously decreasing the supply.
Google's Earth Engine team created these time-lapse maps to illustrate a few of the trends reshaping the world right now. ...
19. Aljezzera America: How the north ended up on top of the map
Why do maps always show the north as up? For those who don’t just take it for granted, the common answer is that Europeans made the maps and they wanted to be on top. But there’s really no good reason for the north to claim top-notch cartographic real estate over any other bearing, as an examination of old maps from different places and periods can confirm. ...
... The McArthur map also makes us wonder why we are so quick to assume that Northern Europeans were the ones who invented the modern map — and decided which way to hold it — in the first place. As is so often the case, our eagerness to invoke Eurocentrism displays a certain bias of its own, since in fact, the north’s elite cartographic status owes more to Byzantine monks and Majorcan Jews than it does to any Englishman.
There is nothing inevitable or intrinsically correct — not in geographic, cartographic or even philosophical terms — about the north being represented as up, because up on a map is a human construction, not a natural one. Some of the very earliest Egyptian maps show the south as up, presumably equating the Nile’s northward flow with the force of gravity. And there was a long stretch in the medieval era when most European maps were drawn with the east on the top. If there was any doubt about this move’s religious significance, they eliminated it with their maps’ pious illustrations, whether of Adam and Eve or Christ enthroned. In the same period, Arab map makers often drew maps with the south facing up, possibly because this was how the Chinese did it. ...
Mar 31, 2014
Social Science and Culture Links
1. Atlantic Cities: How Different Generations of Americans Budget Their Time
Example
2. Business Insider: How Women Spend Their Time Vs. How Men Spend Their Time
3. USA Today: Millennial doesn't mean liberal: Column
Bad news for Democrats: It seems Millennials are special little snowflakes after all.
A new report by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way highlights the political complexity of a generation raised to believe they were utterly unique. When it comes to politics, they do it their way. Which could make the cohort that turned out en masse for President Obama unpredictable as voters.
Third Way focused on how Millennials' experience as the first generation raised in an information-on-demand culture has shaped them. They are not "adaptors." They have only known a world full of endless choices, not a life where you make do with what is available. ...
4. Forbes: Why Millennials Annoy Their Elders
... Anyone who frets over the idea that millennials aren’t drinking the kool-aid should stop and ask “What good has the kool-aid done me?” We raised our kids to be smart and to pay attention to the world around them. Are we going to castigate them now for doing that so well that they end up rejecting the deal-with-the-devil “Just put your career in our hands, focus on pleasing your employer, and everything will be fine!”?
I hope we trust our kids to make good choices, since they’ll be running the world in another few years.
I think we can put our trust in millennials. They have a better sense of priorities than many of their status-and-income-drunk elders do.
5. Atlantic: Study: Millennials Deeply Confused About Their Politics, Finances, and Culture
Or at least deeply contradictory: They're always connected but distrustful. They're selfish yet accepting of minorities. They're "independents" who mostly vote Democratic and love Obama while hating Obamacare....
6. PBS: How should the U.S. improve opportunity for young men of color?
7. Slate: “Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material”
... But what if such a cautionary sermon is exactly what some teenagers need? What if encouraging students to take a shot at the college track—despite very long odds of crossing its finish line—does them more harm than good? What if our own hyper-credentialed life experiences and ideologies are blinding us to alternative pathways to the middle class? Including some that might be a lot more viable for a great many young people? What if we should be following the lead of countries like Germany, where “tracking” isn’t a dirty word but a common-sense way to prepare teenagers for respected, well-paid work? ...
8. Atlantic: The Geography of Small Talk
How you start a conversation with a stranger depends on where you live. We survey the diverse geography of American greetings—from Honolulu to Hays, Kansas, from Anchorage to Appleton, Wisconsin, from New Orleans to New York. ...
9. Forbes: 'Where Are You From?' And Other Big Networking Racial Faux Pas
... So what’s the best way to approach ethnicity? If you’re dying to figure out if someone is of Korean, Vietnamese or Chinese heritage, is it ok to ask the first time you meet them? This topic is incredibly nuanced. There’s no right way to ask, though there are plenty of wrong ways. ...
10. Conversable Economist: How Academics Learn to Write Badly
Most of my days are spent editing articles by academic economists. So when I saw a book called Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences, the author Michael Billig had me at the title. The book is a careful dissection of the rhetorical habits of social scientists, and in particular their tendency to banish actual people from their writing, and instead to turn everything into a string of nouns (often ending in -icity or -ization) linked with passive verbs to other strings of nouns. (If that sentence sounded ugly to you, welcome to my work life!)
I found especially thought-provoking Billig's argument early in the book about how the necessity for continual publications is relatively recent innovation in academic life, and how it has altered the incentives for quantity and quality of academic writing. ...
11. Gallup: Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated
12. Gallup: Americans 'Level of Worrry About National Problems
13. Atlantic Cities: The Reason Songs Have Choruses
The secret lies in how your brain processes sound: People love repetition.
It is not hard to estrange the idea of the chorus. Why should songs have some parts that are repeated and others that are not? Imagine other works of art in which a quarter or half of the work is repeated: a movie that shows the same 10-minute sequence every 20 minutes, or a book that repeats every other chapter.
Yet, in popular music, the chorus seems necessary. It is, in many cases, the point of the song.
And now, in a wonderful essay on Aeon, Elizabeth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, argues that repetition is the point of music. The chorus is merely our culture's embodiment of a deeper human desire to play it again. ...
14. Atlantic Cities: Watch Your Name Grow and Shrink in Popularity Across the U.S.
Loved this one. The Matrix effect.
15. PBS: Note-takers volunteer to help the elderly during doctor visits
... Wolozin is a volunteer for the Northwest Neighbors Village in Washington, D.C., one of the more than 200 “villages” across the United States. These neighborhood membership organizations provide volunteers and other resources to help with everything from transportation and snow shoveling to hanging curtains and solving computer glitches. ...
16. Carpe Diem: Today’s new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, and the living space per person has doubled over last 40 years
17. NPR: With Sobering Science, Doctor Debunks 12-Step Recovery
Since its founding in the 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous has become part of the fabric of American society. AA and the many 12-step groups it inspired have become the country's go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These recovery programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors and widely praised by reformed addicts.
Dr. Lance Dodes sees a big problem with that. The psychiatrist has spent more than 20 years studying and treating addiction. His latest book on the subject is The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry.
Dodes tells NPR's Arun Rath that 12-step recovery simply doesn't work, despite anecdotes about success. ...
18. Atlantic: Americans: Republicans in General, Democrats in Particular
When Americans think about government in the big picture, they can seem like a nation of Ayn Rands. People want to lay waste to the Leviathan. But when Americans consider specific aspects of government, a curious thing happens. People rediscover their love of Washington. On issue after issue, Republicans are winning the argument in general, whereas Democrats are winning the argument in particular. ...
19. Huffington Post: Native Americans' Ancestors Got Stuck On Land Bridge On Way To Americas, New Research Suggests
Native Americans along the Pacific Coast and aboriginal Siberians may have both originated from populations living on the land bridge now submerged under the Bering Strait, a new language analysis suggests.
The language analysis, detailed today (March 12) in the journal PLOS ONE, is consistent with the notion that ancestors to modern-day Native Americans were stuck in the region of the Bering Strait before making their way into North America.
Feb 24, 2014
Social Science and Culture Links
1. Two informative articles in Forbes: A Tale Of Two Incomes: How To Handle Having More Money Than Your Friends and A Tale Of Two Incomes: How To Handle Having Less Money Than Your Friends
2. New Yorker: Why Your Name Matters
... The effects of name-signalling—what names say about ethnicity, religion, social sphere, and socioeconomic background—may begin long before someone enters the workforce. In a study of children in a Florida school district, conducted between 1994 and 2001, the economist David Figlio demonstrated that a child’s name influenced how he or she was treated by the teacher, and that differential treatment, in turn, translated to test scores. Figlio isolated the effects of the students’ names by comparing siblings—same background, different names. Children with names that were linked to low socioeconomic status or being black, as measured by the approach used by Bertrand and Mullainathan, were met with lower teacher expectations. Unsurprisingly, they then performed more poorly than their counterparts with non-black, higher-status names. Figlio found, for instance, that “a boy named ‘Damarcus’ is estimated to have 1.1 national percentile points lower math and reading scores than would his brother named ‘Dwayne,’ all else equal, and ‘Damarcus’ would in turn have three-quarters of a percentile ranking higher test scores than his brother named Da’Quan.’ ” Conversely, children with Asian-sounding names (also measured by birth-record frequency) were met with higher expectations, and were more frequently placed in gifted programs.
The economists Steven Levitt and Roland Fryer looked at trends in names given to black children in the United States from the nineteen-seventies to the early aughts. They discovered that names which sounded more distinctively “black” became, over time, ever more reliable signals of socioeconomic status. That status, in turn, affected a child’s subsequent life outcome, which meant that it was possible to see a correlation between names and outcomes, suggesting a name effect similar to what was observed in the 1948 Harvard study. But when Levitt and Fryer controlled for the child’s background, the name effect disappeared, strongly indicating that outcomes weren’t influenced by intrinsic qualities of the name itself. As Simonsohn notes, “Names tell us a lot about who you are.” ...
3. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Living with Discrimination Can Take a Toll on Health
"... The researchers wrote, "the anticipatory nature of vigilance sets it apart from traditional notions of perceived racial discrimination. For decades, a large body of scientific and lay literature has provided evidence of the pervasive consequences of interpersonal and societal discrimination. In qualitative studies, social scientists often report on the way Blacks continually think about the potential for discrimination."
"Overall, the work shows that in cases where racism-related vigilance is low or absent, Blacks and Whites have similar levels of hypertension. But when people report chronic vigilance, the rates in Blacks rise significantly. They rise a little in Hispanics, but not at all in Whites," Hicken explains." ...
4. Carpe Diem: Women earned a majority of 2012 doctoral degrees in 33 STEM fields, can we stop calling it a ‘national crisis’?
5. Gruntled Center: Men and Women Work the Same Total Hours (There is no 'Second Shift')
This is a finding reported in the excellent new book, The XX Factor, by leading British economic researcher Alison Wolf.
She says of all that she reports in this book, this fact is the one she expects readers to have the hardest time believing. The belief that men and women now work equally outside the home, and then women come home to an unbalanced 'second shift' is very widespread, especially in the U.S. ...
6. The Atlantic: Why Don't More Women Want to Work With Other Women?
... Pew asked 2,002 people if they would prefer to work with men or women. Most—78 percent of men and 76 percent of women—said they didn't care. But for the 22 percent who did have a preference, "it’s men who get the nod from both sexes by about a 2-1 margin," Pew's Rich Morin writes. In fact, more women said they'd rather work with men than men did. ...
7. The Mercury: As Cohabitation Gains Favor, Shotgun Weddings Fade
... The share of unmarried couples who opt to move in together after a pregnancy surpassed what demographers call “shotgun marriages” for the first time over the last decade. That’s according to a forthcoming paper from the National Center for Health Statistics. ...
8. New York Times: The Childless Plan for Their Fading Days
... Ms. Tint’s situation is one that more and more elderly people will face over the next few decades as fewer women choose to have children. According to an August 2013 report from AARP, 11.6 percent of women ages 80 to 84 were childless in 2010. By 2030, the number will reach 16 percent. What’s more, in 2010, the caregiver support ratio was more than seven potential caregivers for every person over 80 years old. By 2030, that ratio is projected to decline to four to one. By 2050, it’s expected to fall to three to one. ...
... “Many people are extending the notion of family itself, to nieces and nephews, cousins and so on,” he continued. “But it’s also expanding to ‘pseudo kin’ of friends and neighbors. We see this in the L.G.B.T. community, many of whom have been alienated from their families.”
“While it’s great to have kids who are available to help, there are a lot of complications with having kids around,” said Audrey K. Chun, a doctor who is also a medical director at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York. “A lot of the dynamics, decisions that have to be made around the end of life, disagreements that arise between siblings, what mom or dad may have wanted, can be very emotional. Many of my patients without kids are interested in not wasting resources at the end of life — when it’s their time, they don’t want unnecessary suffering, or to be a burden on society. They want to die naturally. Because they don’t have children to advocate for them, they’re much more open and direct about that.” ...
9. The Guardian: This column will change your life: gut feelings
... But how many of us would embark on a serious relationship based on a shared passion for The Shining? When it comes to judging character, we prefer to believe gut instinct beats box-ticking. "We have a deep-seated need to feel that we can judge character," Jason Dana, of Yale University, told the Boston Globe recently. But many studies suggest we can't – and a new paper co-authored by Dana is especially damning. ...
... Technically, the problem with unstructured interviews (or dates) isn't that they're insufficiently informative. It's that they're too informative. Bombarded by data, we seek refuge in "sensemaking", clinging to stories that seem to render things clear. But those stories might include racist or sexist stereotypes about who's good at what. Or they might be the seductive stories of candidates skilled at interviews, yet rubbish at the job itself. "Because of sensemaking," the researchers write, "interviewers are likely to feel they are getting useful information from unstructured interviews, even when they are useless." Settling on a coherent story feels good, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.
This gap – between what our guts say and what the data says – will only grow wider. As Big Data quantifies more of our lives, we'll increasingly face dilemmas: if your instincts tell you to date or hire Person A, but the metrics point to Person B, whom will you choose? ...
10. Associated Press: Accident rates improving for older drivers
... Today's drivers aged 70 and older are less likely to be involved in crashes than previous generations, and less likely to be killed or seriously injured if they do crash, according to a study released Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
That's because vehicles are getting safer and seniors are generally getting healthier, the institute said. ...
11. Conversable Economist: How Pedestrian Countdown Signals Cause Auto Accidents
Pedestrian countdown signals at crosswalks show how much time is left before the light turns yellow, thus letting pedestrians know if they should rush to cross the street--or perhaps wait for the next light. But when these signals were introduced in Toronto, the rate of rear-end auto accidents was higher at the intersections with pedestrian signals compared to neighboring intersections. ...
... In short, the pedestrian countdown signals were good for pedestrians. But some of the drivers were watching the signals, trying to squeeze through before the light changed, and rear-ending other cars.
There's are some narrow lessons here about pedestrian countdown signals and a broader lesson about how information works. Here are two narrow lessons, which come out of a more detailed analysis of the data: "The first is cities might benefit from installing countdowns at historically highly dangerous intersections and from not installing them at historically safe intersections. The second conclusion is that while countdowns can improve safety in historically dangerous cities, they may be detrimental to safety in historically safe ones." Also, instead of having a pedestrian countdown signal that is visible to cars, it might make more sense to have a verbal countdown that could only be heard by pedestrians. ...
According to new research, people living in poor countries have a greater sense of meaning in their lives than those living in wealthy countries.
These new findings, published in the Association for Psychological Science’s academic journal “Psychology Science,” suggest that this greater sense of life meaning stems from residents’ strong family ties and solid connections to religious tradition. “Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness, or life satisfaction,” Shigehiro Oishi, a professor at the University of Virginia and original publisher of this study, said. “Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates, and predictors for meaning in life.” ...
13. Huffington Post: 13 Predictions About The Future That Were Spectacularly Wrong
While humankind has made great leaps in science and technology, we have yet to master the art of prophecy. It turns out that predicting the future is tricky business, but time and again, we insist on doing so.
In the spirit of learning from our foolishness, we've partnered with Hendrick's Gin to take a peek into the lofty predictions that turned out to be terribly, spectacularly wrong. ...
14. Washington Post: 40 more maps that explain the world
Maps seemed to be everywhere in 2013, a trend I like to think we encouraged along with August's 40 maps that explain the world. Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. You might consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. I've searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a careful eye for sourcing and detail. I've included a link for more information on just about every one. Enjoy.
This one is one interesting example:
15. Huffington Post: Ancient Town Discovered In Israel Is 2,300 Years Old, Archaeologists Say
On the outskirts of Jerusalem, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2,300-year-old rural village that dates back to the Second Temple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced. ...
16. Scientific American: 4,600-Year-Old Step Pyramid Uncovered in Egypt
The pyramid, which predates the Great Pyramid of Giza, is one of seven for which its function remains a mystery. ...
17. Discovery: 11,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Under Baltic Sea
Evidence of a Stone-Age settlement that may have been swallowed whole by the Baltic Sea has resurfaced near Sweden, revealing a collection of well preserved artifacts left by nomads some 11,000 years ago. ...
18. Listverse: 10 Lesser-Known Ancient Roman Traditions
Depending on your personal view, ancient Rome was responsible for giving the modern world a number of traditions, including various legal ideas, democracy, and some of our religious celebrations. However, there are still many ancient Roman traditions that are slightly obscure, mostly relegated to the dustbin of history. Here are some lesser known ones. ...
19. Huff Post: CNN Morality Poll Reveals Surprising Trends In America
A recent CNN poll demonstrates the rapidly increasing support for the legalization of marijuana in America, but the survey also revealed American attitudes about the morality of various other actions.
Opinions on behaviors like drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, cheating on taxes, and adultery have shifted since a similar poll was conducted by Time Magazine in 1987. ...
Feb 21, 2014
Feb 13, 2014
Demography Links
1. Business Insider: These Maps Show The Geography Of Interracial Marriage
This map shows white and African American marriages. Go to the article to see maps for other ethnicities.
2. PBS: Study finds that divorce rate rises as economy improves
... The divorce rate dipped from 2.09 percent to 1.95 percent between 2008 and 2009, the Times says, before rising to 1.98 percent in 2010 and 2011. ...
3. CDC: U.S. fertility rate hit historic low in 2012
The 2012 general fertility rate declined to 63.0 births per 1,000 women aged 15–44, another historic low for the United States. The total fertility rate declined 1 %, to 1,880.5 births per 1,000 women in 2012. ...
4. CNN: Why abortions are way down
The U.S. abortion rate is at its lowest point since 1973. In 2011, there were fewer than 17 terminations for every 1,000 women; a fall of 13% since 2008 and only a little higher than when the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. ...
... According to researchers from the Guttmacher Institute, which released the new study, the latest decline is largely the result of improved birth control. In tough economic times, they argue, people tend to pay greater attention to contraception because they are more aware of the potential material costs of becoming pregnant. Also, the arrival of new kinds of contraceptives on the market, such as long-term intrauterine devices, means people aren't relying on pills and condoms that can fail. ...
5. Atlantic: Map: What Country Does Your State's Life Expectancy Resemble?
As a side note, notice how close the rates of many developing nations are to the USA rate 79.7.
6. Forbes: Study: Cancer Rates Rising Across The Globe
... Despite all the advances in cancer medicine over the last few decades, cancer rates are rising. Globally, one in five men and one in six women will develop cancer before the age of 75. One in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease. But there’s some encouraging news, too. Many of these cases, say the WHO, could be averted with tools that are easily within our reach: Lifestyle and behavior changes.
In 2012, the WHO estimates that the worldwide cancer burden had increased to 14 million new cases per year, and included 8.2 million deaths. The number of new cases of cancer, they say, will likely rise to 22 million cases annually within the next 20 years. ...
7. BBC: Measles global deaths decline by 78%, WHO estimates
New figures from the WHO suggest that around 13.8 million deaths were prevented during this time and reported cases declined by 77%. ...
... Reported cases of measles worldwide declined from 853,480 to 226,722 over the same time.
Currently, 84% of the world's infants receive the first dose of measles vaccine before their first birthday, according to the WHO. ...
8. Business Insider: America's Obesity Crisis Is Ending — As Long As You're Not Poor
... Obesity is decreasing among adolescents who come from well-educated families, but it has continued to increase in poor teens. Looking at the obesity rate overall, this reads as a plateau. ...
9. Atlantic Cities: Why Big Cities Matter in the Developing World
Half the world's population lives in cities today, a figure that will increase to 70 percent by 2050. In that same time period, McKinsey Global Institute projects that the economic output of the 600 largest cities and metro areas is projected to grow $30 trillion, accounting for two-thirds of all global growth.
Economists and urbanists have long noted the connection between urbanization and economic development. ...
... But it has been difficult to get at the precise ways that global cities relate to productivity and economic development, mainly because of the lack of comprehensive, systematic, and comparable data. Aside from estimates of their populations, none of the major statistical agencies — the United Nations, the World Bank, or others — collect comparable economic data for the world's urban areas.
Fortunately, the Brookings Institution's Global MetroMonitor has compiled data on GDP per capita for the world’s 300 largest metropolitan economies, most recently through 2012. These metros account for nearly one-half (48 percent) of global output, while being home to less than one in five (19 percent) of its people. Undertaken in collaboration with researchers from the London School of Economics, these data are based on assessments from Moody's Analytics and Oxford Economics. ...
10. Business Insider: This Fascinating GIF Shows America's Foreign-Born Population Since 1850
11. New Geography: Moving South and West? Metropolitan America in 2042
The United States could have three more megacities (metropolitan areas over 10 million) by 2042, according to population projections released by the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM). Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston are projected to join megacities New York and Los Angeles as their metropolitan area populations rise above 10 million. At the projected growth rates, Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, and Riverside-San Bernardino could pass the threshold by 2060. The population projections were prepared for USCM by Global Insight IHS. ...
12. Business Insider: This Map Shows How The Center Of America Keeps Moving
13. Business Insider: Americans Are Still Moving To The Suburbs
According to the Census Bureau's most recent release on inter-county migration shows that in some of the nation's largest cities, the trend is to move out to far-flung suburbs. The Census keeps track of population flows between different counties by using data from the 2007-2011 American Community Survey.
14. Atlantic Cities: The Geography of the American Dream
15. New Geography: Rich, Poor, and Unequal Zip Codes
16. Business Insider: This Map Suggests Gentrification In San Francisco Is Caused By Childless Tech Workers And Their Company Buses
We recently showed you a set of maps showing how the tech sector in Silicon Valley is distorting the real estate market around it, all the way into San Francisco. The richest people live around Palo Alto, near the big tech company headquarter campuses, but the highest per-square-foot prices for real estate are in San Francisco.
What appears to be happening is that tech workers whose corporate campuses are in Silicon Valley are choosing to live in the city and commute to work, often by private company shuttle bus. Their demand for housing in San Francisco is pushing up prices there. ...
Feb 03, 2014
Economics Links
1. Brookings: Prospects for Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030
2. Carpe Diem: World trade and output both reached new all-time record highs in November and are nearly 10% above previous peaks
3. PBS Newshour: More than 200 million people were unemployed in the world in 2013
Worldwide, the number of unemployed people rose by 5 million in 2013 to 202 million, according to the International Labor Organization’s Global Employment Trends report. The global unemployment ratio of youth to adults has reached a new high. The jobless rate for 15- to 24-year-olds hit 13.1 percent in 2013 (or 74.5 million), nearly three times the adult rate.
The organization predicts unemployment will worsen, with 215 million jobless by 2018. Roughly 40 million net jobs will be added each year, the ILO estimates, but that won’t be enough to absorb the 42.6 million people expected to enter the labor force each year. ...
4. Conversable Economist: Limited U.S. Power in a Globalizing Economy
Just to be clear, the U.S. economy is not becoming a economic minnow like Belize or Burundi. But 65 years ago, as the high-income countries climbed out of the wreckage left by World War II and today's emerging economies had not yet engaged in the global economy, the U.S. economy had an extraordinary time of dominance. For a time in the 1960s, it was common to hear that the planned economy of the USSR would outstrip the U.S. economy. In the 1970s and into the 1980, Japan was going to rule the world economy. Around 2000 and the launch of the euro, there was talk about the economic rise of the European Union. But now, we are seeing the rise of a multipolar and distributed world economy, with faster growth happening in the emerging economies, but with stronger linkages of trade and global supply chains reaching across the world economy. The U.S. can certainly be an active and leading participant in shaping the world's economic future. But neither the U.S., nor some combination of high-income countries around the world, has the power to dictate what configurations will emerge.
5. Business Insider: Here's A Chart Of Interest Rates Going Back To 3000 BC
6. PBS: Is the famous ‘paradox of choice’ a myth? Barry Schwartz
"Paradox of choice" is tha notion that too many choices become overwhelming and make life decisions less satisying.
... Often people choose on the basis of essentially irrelevant features of plans, just because the relevant features are too complex to evaluate. Has anyone ever suggested that the sensible alternative to too many options is a single option? Absolutely and unequivocally not. Psychology has known about “single option aversion” for a half century. With too few options, there is the risk that none will be satisfactory, whereas with too many, there is the risk of paralysis, confusion and dissatisfaction.
The trick is to find the middle ground — the “sweet spot” — that enables people to benefit from variety and not be paralyzed by it. Choice is good, but there can be too much of a good thing. Adam Grant and I recently published a paper suggesting that this “too much of a good thing” phenomenon is pervasive in psychology. ...
7. TED: Paul Piff - Does money make you mean?
"It's amazing what a rigged game of Monopoly can reveal. In this entertaining but sobering talk, social psychologist Paul Piff shares his research into how people behave when they feel wealthy. (Hint: badly.) But while the problem of inequality is a complex and daunting challenge, there's good news too. (Filmed at TEDxMarin.)"
8. Forbes: Downton Abbey Makes A Powerful Case For Economic Freedom
... One of the great things about Downton Abbey is that it allows fans to escape their worries and fantasize about life on a luxurious estate in early 20th century England. But the truth is, few of us could tolerate what we’d be forced to live with, and live without, in that world. ...
9. Carpe Diem: The middle class is shrinking ... because they are moving into the upper class! Census data on income distribution reveal evidence of rising income levels for a rising share of American households
10. AEI: This chart shows how tough it is for the poor to recover from a bad start in life
11. Business Insider: Millennials Are The Most Financially Conservative Generation Since The Great Depression
... According to a new report from investment banking company UBS, Millennials are the most financially conservative generation to come around since the Great Depression. The report, which focused on investors between the ages of 21 and 36, found that Millennials are risk averse when it comes to investing — dedicating 52% of their investment portfolios to cash, compared to 23% cash for other investors. They are also more likely to believe that working hard (69%) and living frugally (45%) puts you on the path to success rather than long-term investing (28%). ...
12. NPR: The Middle Class Took Off 100 Years Ago ... Thanks To Henry Ford?
January 1914 was a frigid month in Detroit — much like January 2014 has been, but nonetheless thousands lined up in the bitter cold outside to take Henry Ford up : $5 a day, for eight hours of work in a bustling factory.
That was more than double the average factory wage at that time, and for U.S. workers it was one of the defining moments of the 20th century. Five dollars in 1914 translates to roughly $120 in today's money. While many economists say today's employers could take some pointers from Ford, they also say 2014 is a totally different world for U.S. businesses and workers. ...
... "It was mainly to stabilize the workforce. And it sure did," Kreipke says. "And raised the bar all over the world."
He says to understand why Ford thought this was a smart move in January 1914, you have to go back to another huge shift that happened a few months earlier: By 1913, Model T production totaled 200,000 — a feat made possible by the creation of the first moving assembly line. Conveyor belts transported small parts to workers, each of whom performed a specific task.
This tremendously sped up production, but Ford still had a problem: While he had standardized production, he hadn't standardized his workforce. Now, he didn't need particularly skilled workers; he just needed ones who would do the same repetitive, specialized tasks hour after hour, day after day.
Kreipke says there was chronic absenteeism and lots of worker turnover. So Ford gambled that higher wages would attract better, more reliable workers. ...
... "Today, overwhelmingly employers view the lowest wage as the most competitive wage," Shaiken says.
These days, global supply chains feed a hypercompetitive auto industry where no one wants to give up even an inch of ground, and keeping up with technology takes precedent over stabilizing the workforce. This just isn't Henry Ford's economy anymore, Shaiken says.
"There are very real economic pressures out there that push down on wages," he says. "So it's not a simple story, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a core truth into what Ford found." ...
13. Business Insider: An Economist Explains Why Wage Growth Is Poised To Take Off
14. Conversable Economist: U.S. Household Finances Rebound
15. Greg Mankiw: Does income inequality increase mortality?
Angus [Deaton] writes the following (emphasis added):
Darren Lubotsky and I 7 have investigated the relationship between income inequality, race, and mortality at both the state and metropolitan statistical area level. In both the state and the city data, mortality is positively and significantly correlated with almost any measure of income inequality. Because whites have higher incomes and lower mortality rates than blacks, places where the population has a large fraction of blacks are also places where both mortality and income inequality are relatively high. However, the relationship is robust to controlling for average income (or poverty rates) and also holds, albeit less strongly, for black and white mortality separately. Nevertheless, it turns out that race is indeed the crucial omitted variable. In states, cities, and counties with a higher fraction of African-Americans, white incomes are higher and black incomes are lower, so that income inequality (through its interracial component) is higher in places with a high fraction black. It is also true that both white and black mortality rates are higher in places with a higher fraction black and that, once we control for the fraction black, income inequality has no effect on mortality rates, a result that has been replicated by Victor Fuchs, Mark McClellan, and Jonathan Skinner9 using the Medicare records data. This result is consistent with the lack of any relationship between income inequality and mortality across Canadian or Australian provinces, where race does not have the same salience. Our finding is robust; it holds for a wide range of inequality measures; it holds for men and women separately; it holds when we control for average education; and it holds once we abandon age-adjusted mortality and look at mortality at specific ages. None of this tells us why the correlation exists, and what it is about cities with substantial black populations that causes both whites and blacks to die sooner.
In a review of the literature on inequality and health, I note that Wilkinson's original evidence, which was (and in many quarters is still) widely accepted showed a negative cross-country relationship between life expectancy and income inequality, not only in levels but also, and more impressively, in changes. But subsequent work has shown that these findings were the result of the use of unreliable and outdated information on income inequality, and that they do not appear if recent, high quality data are used. There are now also a large number of individual level studies exploring the health consequences of ambient income inequality and none of these provide any convincing evidence that inequality is a health hazard. Indeed, the only robust correlations appear to be those among U.S. cities and states (discussed above) which, as we have seen, vanish once we control for racial composition. I suggest that inequality may indeed be important for health, but that income inequality is less important than other dimensions, such as political or gender inequality.10
16. Pew Research: There's More to the Story of the Shrinking (Gender) Pay Gap
17. The Daily Beast: No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
... In its fact-checking column on the State of the Union, the Washington Post included the president’s mention of the wage gap in its list of dubious claims. “There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women… make it difficult to make simple comparisons.” ...
... Much of the wage gap can be explained away by simply taking account of college majors. Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively. By contrast, petroleum engineering and metallurgy degrees promise median earnings of $120,000 and $80,000. Not many aspiring early childhood educators would change course once they learn they can earn more in metallurgy or mining. The sexes, taken as a group, are somewhat different. Women, far more than men, appear to be drawn to jobs in the caring professions; and men are more likely to turn up in people-free zones. In the pursuit of happiness, men and women appear to take different paths.
But here is the mystery. These and other differences in employment preferences and work-family choices have been widely studied in recent years and are now documented in a mountain of solid empirical research. By now the President and his staff must be aware that the wage gap statistic has been demolished. This is not the first time the Washington Post has alerted the White House to the error. Why continue to use it? ...
18. Atlantic: How When Harry Met Sally Explains Inequality
A new study says that educated people marrying each other has increased inequality by 25 percent.
19. Reuters: The real future of U.S. manufacturing
... The assertion that the United States, or any nation, requires continued investment in the technologies that will drive future production is indisputable. On that score, at least, the Obama White House is fighting the proverbial good fight.
The contention, however, that these technologies and the factories that harness them for production will be sources of well-paid, solidly middle-class jobs, is flawed. In our political debates, we maintain the comforting fiction that a manufacturing revival can and will go hand-in-hand with a jobs revival. Yet, as Obama’s initiative shows, the two can be — and increasingly are — uncoupled.
The issue is not the hollowing-out of manufacturing as defined by less production. Yes, many less expensive, simpler products are now made more cheaply elsewhere and are unlikely to be made in the United States anytime soon — even with the “on-shoring” of manufacturing. Though China ceases to be the place of low-cost production, Vietnam, the Philippines and who knows where else (even Mexico) will be more attractive for apparel, furniture, electronics and anything plastic for a long time to come.
The high-end production that these new U.S. innovation hubs seek to promote is indeed in demand around the world. It is something where, as yet, China and other low-cost manufacturing centers have not excelled. This is why China actually imports considerable billions of higher-end equipment – particularly from Japan and Germany. So it is true that the United States could have a competitive advantage, especially given the plethora of research universities and the wealth of highly-educated talent that can be used for just this type of production.
But all this is not the same as a job creator for a workforce of at least 120 million and counting in nation of more than 320 million people. These high-tech factories might employ hundreds of people in conjunction with industrial robots, using sophisticated software systems for design and production. These factory workers bear little resemblance to the 1950s line workers doing rote tasks. They are more like Silicon Valley engineers or lab technicians. These are high-skill jobs — and not nearly as plentiful as the factory jobs of the past. ...
Related: Bloomberg - Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It
... In 1953 manufacturing accounted for 28 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 1980 that had dropped to 20 percent, and it reached 12 percent in 2012. Over that time, U.S. GDP increased from $2.6 trillion to $15.5 trillion, which means that absolute manufacturing output more than tripled in 60 years. Those goods were produced by fewer people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees in manufacturing was 16 million in 1953 (about a third of total nonfarm employment), 19 million in 1980 (about a fifth of nonfarm employment), and 12 million in 2012 (about a tenth of nonfarm employment).
Service industries—hotels, hospitals, media, and accounting—have taken up the slack. Even much of the value generated by U.S. manufacturing involves service work—about a third of the total. More than half of all people still employed in the U.S. manufacturing sector work in such services as management, technical support, and sales. ...
20. PBS: Paul Soloman on Man vs the Machine: Will Human Workers Become Obsolete?
21. Huff Post: The End of Capitalism
Interesting thoughts. I don't know if he has it just right, but I do think he is correct that we may be on the verge of something as transformative to capitalism as industrialization was to agricultural societies:
... The location of creation has switched. Under industrial capitalism, machines operating centrally created riches. James Watt perfected his steam engine, but then the machines took on a life of their own - the machines themselves, and machine-like corporations built around them, churned out money. People danced around the edges, enlarging and improving the machines, putting them together in large mills or mines to turbo-charge productivity, adapting their pace of work to that of the machines. The machines and the capitalists were in charge.
Now it is not machines or their owners, but creative individuals who are center-stage. People not only invent new technology - they are the new technology. As sociologist Manuel Castells says, "For the first time in history, the human mind is a direct productive force ... Computers, communication systems, and genetic decoding and programming are all amplifiers and extensions of the human mind."
In the West, knowledge has become personalized. Open innovation requires it. The effect of open innovation is to transfer initiative and wealth from established corporations to new ones, and from shareholders to individuals. From thought to action, individuals are at the heart of creation, including wealth creation. Every element of the unique human personality takes part in creation - intellect, imagination, emotion, calculation, empathy, and the ability to evoke enthusiasm from other seriously talented people. Each person does it their way. Steve Jobs may not have been the nicest person in Silicon Valley, but he got amazingly talented people to distort reality and create previously unimaginable products. The individual is everything.
In all kinds of ways, therefore, we are moving away from capitalism, from an economy centered on capital and large, established, hierarchical corporations. But we are not moving from private hierarchy to public hierarchy, from capitalism to socialism or communism. Free enterprise is alive and well - arguably too alive and well. The new system is even more market-oriented than capitalism, and much more decentralized. It is as decentralized as any system can possibly be, because it is decentralized to individuals, and above all to a tiny minority of new superstar individuals. Welcome to the personalized economy. ...
22. Carpe Diem: Cash for kidneys will solve the organ shortage, save money spent on dialysis, and then we’ll wonder why it took so long
(Not necessarily agreeing here. Just reporting.)
Economists Gary Becker and Julio Elias make the case in today’s WSJ that a market for organs and donor compensation of about $15,000 would eliminate the growing kidney shortage. As the chart above shows, the kidney waiting list has nearly doubled from 50,000 in 2001 to almost 99,000 today, while the number of annual kidney transplant operations has increased only slightly from 14,279 in 2001 to fewer than 17,000 in 2013. Over the last eight years, kidney transplants have remained stuck at slightly below 17,000 per year, while the kidney waiting list has swelled by almost 30,000. Therefore, there an additional 30,000 patients today (99,000) than in 2006 (69,600) competing for the same number of transplants. And that’s why, as Becker and Elias point out, the average waiting time for a kidney has increased to 4.5 years from 2.9 years a decade ago. The authors argue that “Paying donors for their organs would finally eliminate the supply-demand gap.”
Isn’t donor compensation immoral? No, according to Becker and Elias (emphasis added: ...
Jan 11, 2014
Demography Links
1. New York Times: Why Are Americans Staying Put?
... “This decline in migration has been going on for a long time now, through all sorts of ups and downs in the housing market,” said Greg Kaplan of Princeton University, who, along with Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has studied the issue in depth. But even with the pressure of high housing costs in many areas, Americans are moving less, Kaplan said. “That might explain why people are moving from San Francisco to, I don’t know, Houston,” he said. “But you’ve seen a decline in migration from Texas to California as well as California to Texas.”
This is not a short-term supply-and-demand issue or a side effect of a slow-growth economy or a shift in demographics. The change is deeper. Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl have won applause from other economists for developing a novel theory to explain this creeping inertia: labor markets in the United States have simply become more homogeneous. Earnings have become more similar across the country, meaning there is less incentive to move from one place to another in search of a raise. The country has also become less diverse, work-wise. Pick any two cities, and chances are they offer a more similar mix of jobs than they did 20 or 50 years ago. We have become less a nation of Pittsburghs and more a nation of Provos. ...
... Even so, many economists believe that if Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl’s narrative is right, there is reason to suspect that a less-mobile populace might not mean a less-dynamic economy. Workers haven’t stopped moving because housing prices or other financial or social concerns are holding them back. They’ve stopped moving because they just don’t see the need to. “Whether it’s a good thing depends on why,” Kolko said. “If your job prospects don’t depend on having to move someplace else, the decline in mobility might be a good thing.”
2. The Atlantic: Stuck: Why Americans Stopped Moving to the Richest States
... "Americans are moving far less often than in the past, and when they do migrate it is typically no longer from places with low wages to places with higher wages," Tim Noah wrote in Washington Monthly. "Rather, it’s the reverse." Why America lost her wanderlust is not entirely clear—perhaps dual-earner households make long moves less likely; perhaps the Great Recession pinned underwater homeowners on their plots—but those still wandering a ren't going to the right cities. ...
... Americans aren't simply moving to the states with the lowest unemployment (Oregon, Tennessee, and North Carolina all have jobless rates above the national average). More importantly, we aren't moving to states with the best records for low-income families getting ahead. In fact, we're often fleeing the best places for a upwardly mobile middle class. ...
... This doesn't make much sense if you envision American families rushing to the most promising metros. It does make sense if you see American families rushing to the most affordable homes. ...
3. Huffington Post: U.S. Population Grows At Slowest Rate Since The Great Depression
... The U.S. population grew by just 0.72 percent in the year ended July 1, 2013, the Census Bureau reported Monday. That’s the slowest growth rate since 1937. Population growth has hovered at super-low levels for the past few years, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research organization. The trend is "troubling," Frey said, and is due largely to the weak economy. ...
4. New Geography: The Geography Of Aging: Why Millennials Are Headed To The Suburbs
One supposed trend, much celebrated in the media, is that younger people are moving back to the city, and plan to stay there for the rest of their lives. Retirees are reportedly following suit. ...
... But a close look at migration data reveals that the reality is much more complex. The millennial “flight” from suburbia has not only been vastly overexaggerated, it fails to deal with what may best be seen as differences in preferences correlated with life stages.
We can tell this because we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs. ...
5. Business Insider: Female Mortality Rates Are One Of The Strangest And Most Disturbing Trends In The United States
Change in female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in US counties
6. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century.
7. Forbes: What Would The U.S. Be Like If We Had 124 States?
8. NPR: Overweight People In Developing World Outnumber Those In Rich Countries
... "Over the last 30 years, the number of people who are overweight and obese in the developing world has tripled," says , of the Overseas Development Institute in London.
One-third of adults globally are now overweight compared with fewer than 23 percent in 1980, the report . And the number of overweight and obese people in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich countries. ...
9. Economist: The high rate of suicide in Asia
10. PBS Newshour: Japanese population declined by record number in 2013
The Japanese population, which has been shrinking for the last couple of years, declined by a record 244,000 people in 2013, according to health ministry estimates.
If the current trend persists, the BBC reports the country will lose a third of its population in the next 50 years. ...
11. Real Clear World: Easing China's One-Child Policy Won't Stop Demographic Decline
In an attempt to mitigate a near-certain demographic future of rapid aging, shrinking labor force and critical gender imbalance, the Chinese government has adjusted its one-child policy. The decision demonstrates that, irrespective of a nation's politico-economic system, governments cannot avoid demography's juggernaut consequences. This mid-course correction in population policy will have marginal effect as China is aging at a much faster pace than occurred in other countries. This, along with a shrinking workforce and critical gender imbalance, will increasingly tax the government. ...
(Related: New Geography: China Failing its Families)
12. Business Insider: These Facebook Maps Reveal Migration Trends Around The World
... The maps use two simple data points offered up by its 1 billion users — where you live and your hometown — to draw a map of how groups of people migrate from place to place. The Facebook Science team was looking specifically for “coordinated migration,” when a significant proportion of a population from one city moves collectively to another city. This could be the result of economics, wars, natural disasters or even state policies. ...
13. Atlantic Cities: Our Favorite Maps of 2013
Dustin Cable's stunning Racial Dot Map actually put every person in America (308,745,538 of us) on a map as individual dots of different colors.
14. Business Insider: Where Drivers Drive On The Left And Where They Drive On The Right
15. Top Public Health Risks
Dec 27, 2013
Economics Links
1. Carpe Diem: 5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human History
- Fewer people are dying young, and more are living longer. ...
- Global economic growth in the past five decades has dramatically reduced poverty and made people around the world happier. ...
- War is becoming rarer and less deadly. ...
- Rates of murder and other violent crimes are in free-fall. ...
- There’s less racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the world. ...
2. Everyone is putting out their most important economic charts list for 2013: Atlantic: The Most Important Economic Stories of 2013—in 44 Graphs. Economist: 2013 in charts. Huffington Post: The 13 Most Important Charts Of 2013.
3. Economist: The world has become better fed over the past 50 years
MANY people will groan after stuffing themselves on a Christmas feast. A traditional three-course turkey dinner can be as much as 3,500 calories. Such indulgences are a luxury in many parts of the world—but thankfully less so. Over the past half-century, the amount of food that people consume has increased (measured in calories), according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. Our interactive map and chart tracks countries across five decades, letting users select places, years on the timeline or any chart-line. (It performs poorly on smartphones; our apologies.) ...
In a related story at NPR: More People Have More To Eat, But It's Not All Good News
... The good news is: The percentage of the world's population getting what the researchers say is a sufficient diet has grown from 30 percent to 61 percent.
In 1965, a majority of the world survived on less than 2,000 calories a day per person. This was especially true in parts of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, China and Southeast Asia. Now, 61 percent of the world has access to 2,500 or more calories a day.
But one thing the scientists discovered is that the countries that have a history of food insufficiency didn't just up and start growing lots more food. Instead, for the most part they're increasing supply by importing food from abroad. ...
I'm unclear why the author thinks importing food is a problem but other challenges he mentions in the article are an issue.
4. Carpe Diem: When it comes to home appliances, the ‘good old days’ are now: they’re cheaper, better, more energy efficient than ever
... In 1981, the 24-inch built-in dishwasher pictured above from a 1981 Wards Christmas catalog sold for $359.88. The average hourly manufacturing wage then was $7.42, meaning that it would have taken 48.5 hours of work at the average hourly wage for a typical factory worker to earn enough income 32 years ago to purchase the dishwasher above. ...
... The new Kenmore 24-inch built-in dishwasher pictured above is currently listed on the Sears website for sale at $539.99. At the current average hourly wage of $20.26 for production workers, the average factory worker today would only have to work 26.7 hours to earn enough pre-tax income to buy today’s energy-efficient dishwasher, which is only a little more than one-half of the 48.5 hour time-cost for the 1981 model.
Bottom Line: Today’s modern household appliances are not only cheaper than ever before, they are the most energy-efficient appliances in history, resulting in additional savings for consumers through lower operating costs. The average dishwasher today is not only more than twice as energy-efficient as a comparable 1981 model, but its real cost today is only about 50% of the price of the 1981 dishwasher, measured in hours worked at the average hourly wage. Put those two factors together, and the average American’s dishwasher today is about six times superior to the dishwasher of thirty years ago. ...
5. Carpe Diem: How much did real US median income increase from 1979 to 2007? A lot depends on the measure of income used
"The median income data [often cited] are on tax units rather than households, they do not include many government transfer payments, they are pre-tax rather than post-tax, they do not adjust for changes in household size, and they do not include nontaxable compensation such as employer-provided health insurance.
Does this matter? Yes!"
6. American Interest: Economic Mobility is a Male Problem
The biggest victim of family breakdown might be lower-class men. In City Journal Kay Hymowitz has a fascinating yet alarming piece on how family breakdown hurts men’s prospects more than women’s. One of the most interesting facts she highlights is that if you separate out men from women, women in America are roughly as upwardly mobile as women anywhere else in the world. It’s only when you add men back in and compare the US whole population to populations abroad that things look bleak:
Numerous studies have confirmed that the U.S. has less upward mobility than just about any developed nation, including England, the homeland of the peerage. Yet, if you look at boys separately from girls, as the Finnish economist Markus Jäntti and his colleagues at the Bonn-based Institute for the Study of Labor did, the story changes markedly. In every country studied, girls are more likely than boys to climb up the income ladder, but in the United States, the disadvantage for sons is substantially greater than in other countries. Almost 75 percent of American daughters escape the lowest quintile—not unlike girls in the comparison countries of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Fewer than 60 percent of American sons experience similar success. ...
7. AEI Ideas: 3 charts that show what’s really going on with economic mobility in the US
8. Washington Post: Full employment, not inequality, should be the top economic priority - Ezra Klein
... While there are ways to reduce inequality without doing much about employment (say, by taxing the rich and using the proceeds on defense spending), it's hard to imagine full employment not doing much to reduce inequality. ...
... All that said, income inequality and social mobility really are startling trends that people should be very worried about and that the political system should be working aggressively to solve, or at least ameliorate. I don't have many policy disagreements with the folks focusing on inequality. But politics is about prioritization, and what politicians end up doing is in part driven by what problems their political coalitions are most worried about. ...
9. Conversable Economist: Falling Unemployment and Falling Labor Force Participation
10. Business Insider: This Map Shows Which Parts Of The Country Have A Huge Gender Gap In The Workforce
11. PBS: The rise of the 'new rich': 1 in 5 Americans will reach affluence in their lives
It's not just the wealthiest 1 percent.
Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality.
The growing numbers of the U.S. poor have been well documented, but survey data provided to The Associated Press detail the flip side of the record income gap -- the rise of the "new rich." ...
12. Atlantic Cities: America's Wealth Is Staggeringly Concentrated in the Northeast Corridor
13. New York Times: Demand Soaring, Poor Are Feeling Squeezed
... Today, millions of poor Americans are caught in a similar trap, with the collapse of the housing boom helping stoke a severe shortage of affordable apartments. Demand for rental units has surged, with credit standards tight and many families unable to scrape together enough for a down payment for buying a home. At the same time, supply has declined, with homebuilders and landlords often targeting the upper end of the market. ...
14. Bloomberg: North America to Drown in Oil as Mexico Ends Monopoly
The flood of North American crude oil is set to become a deluge as Mexico dismantles a 75-year-old barrier to foreign investment in its oil fields.
Plagued by almost a decade of slumping output that has degraded Mexico’s take from a $100-a-barrel oil market, President Enrique Pena Nieto is seeking an end to the state monopoly over one of the biggest crude resources in the Western Hemisphere. The doubling in Mexican oil output that Citigroup Inc. said may result from inviting international explorers to drill would be equivalent to adding another Nigeria to world supply, or about 2.5 million barrels a day....
15. Oil Price: Cheap Fossil Fuels: Good or Bad for the World’s Poor?
... Let’s try reconciling all of the themes raised in Lomborg’s article and in my comments by reframing them in this way:
• Yes, fossil fuels are going to be with us for a while. For that reason, a smart energy policy needs to focus on shifting the mix of fossil fuels, so far as is possible, to relatively clean natural gas and away from relatively dirty coal, while also keeping the pressure on for energy conservation across the board.
• Price signals are one way to keep the pressure on. A carbon tax is a somewhat crude way to penalize relatively dirty fuels, in that climate change is not the only issue. We should be concerned, too, about sulfur and mercury from burning coal, urban air pollution from gasoline and diesel fuels, and local environmental risks of fracking for natural gas. Still, a carbon tax serves at least roughly to penalize the dirtiest fuels the most.
• And yes, no environmental policy is going to be successful politically if it is seen as a matter of saving the earth versus helping the poor. Fuel subsidies have to go, since, realistically, they are a burden, not a boon, to the poor, but at the same time, some of the budgetary economies from the elimination of subsidies and some of the revenues from carbon taxes should go toward smarter policies to help the world’s least advantaged.
Those ideas might help point us toward policies that are good for both the poor and the planet.
16. askblog: The Market is a Process, not a Decision Mechanism
... I think that many commentators contrast the market and government as mechanisms for making decisions. In this contrast, the market sometimes has an efficiency advantage, but government is presumed to have a moral-authority advantage.
Instead, think of the market as a process for testing hypotheses. The process is brutally empirical, winnowing out losing strategies and poor execution. In contrast, elections are a much weaker testing mechanism. Elections are unable to winnow out sugar subsidies, improvident loan guarantees, schools that produce bad outcomes, etc. ...
17. Quartz: Why the left-leaning Nelson Mandela was such a champion of free markets
One often overlooked aspect of Nelson Mandela’s legacy is South Africa’s economy. Parallel to everything amazing the man is connected to—freeing the country from the shackles of apartheid, subordinating retribution in favor of peace and reconciliation, and unifying a volatile nation at risk of civil war—he laid the groundwork for South Africa as the continent’s economic powerhouse. ...
18. Atlantic: Why Economics Is Really Called 'the Dismal Science'
... But this origin myth is, well, mythical. Carlyle did coin the phrase "the dismal science." And Malthus was, without question, dismal.
But Carlyle labeled the science "dismal" when writing about slavery in the West Indies. White plantation owners, he said, ought to force black plantation workers to be their servants. Economics, somewhat inconveniently for Carlyle, didn't offer a hearty defense of slavery. Instead, the rules of supply and demand argued for "letting men alone" rather than thrashing them with whips for not being servile. Carlyle bashed political economy as "a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing [science]; what we might call ... the dismal science.” ...
Dec 02, 2013
Demography Links
1. American ethnicity map shows melting pot of ethnicities that make up the USA today.
2. Test your geography knowledge of European countries. I got a perfect score with some lucky guesses about the Balkan countries: Europe: countries quiz
3. This Map Shows How Americans Speak 24 Different English Dialects
4. The 25 Most Segregated Cities In America
5. Two Maps That Show How American Migration Patterns Have Dramatically Changed
5. Mapping redheads: which country has the most?
6. Changes in America's Family Structure
As as starting point, here's a graph showing changes in households by type. Married households with children were 40.3% of all US households in 1970; in 2012, that share had fallen by more than half to 19.6%. Interestingly, the share of households that were married without children has stayed at about 30%. Other Family Households, usually meaning single-parent families with children, has risen. Overall, the share of U.S. households that involve a family (either married or with children) was 81% back in 1970, but down to 66% in 2012. The share of households which are men or women living alone has risen. The figures are not the same across gender in part because of differences in older age brackets: "Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of men aged 65 and over lived with their spouse compared with less than half (45 percent) of women."
7. The Rise Of Income Segregated Neighborhoods In The US
8. The 33 Whitest Jobs in America
Every occupation that's more than 90 percent white, according to the BLS, including vets, CEOs, and private detectives.
9. The Workforce Is Even More Divided by Race Than You Think
10. 5 Reasons Why People Are Getting Married Later And Later In Life
- Far more people are living together.
- People also live alone more and for longer periods.
- There are fewer "shotgun" marriages.
- More people go to college.
- People have smaller families.
11. The U.S. Lags in Life Expectancy Gains
12. U.S. preterm birth rate falls again but remains high
The percentage of babies born prematurely in the United States fell for the sixth straight year, but the problem remains more common than in most other industrialized nations, says an annual report card out Friday.
The nation's preterm birth rate in 2012 was 11.5%, which is a 15-year low, according to the report from the March of Dimes. But the non-profit organization says it could be as low as 9.6% if known prevention efforts were fully embraced. ...
13. Teen pregnancy rate in developing world high despite decline
Teen pregnancies in the developing world are declining, however 7 million girls under the age of 18 still give birth each year, 2 million young moms are under the age of 14, according to a UN report.
Oct 28, 2013
Demography Links
1. A look at global population trends in the Christian Science Monitor.
"Too many people is a big problem, but too few is a concern as well." "The story of the 21st century has been one of falling birthrates, rising standards of living, and a revolution in food production. But the global picture is uneven: As populations decline in wealthier nations, in other countries – particularly in Africa, says a new report – they are rising at rates that may mire their people in poverty."
2. The end of global population growth may be almost here — and a lot sooner than the UN thinks
3. 232 Million People Left Their Countries for New Ones—Where Did They Go?
4. World Immigration Called 'Win-Win' For Rich Nations, And Poor
The number of people who leave their countries to work abroad is soaring, according to the United Nations. More than 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, up from 150 million a decade ago.
5. Two interesting articles about Japan and fertility: Want To See A 'Demographic Death Spiral?' Look At Japan, Not Russia and Almost Half Of Young Japanese Women Are Not Interested In Sex. From the second story:
"... Even though casual sex is becoming more common in Japan, a 2011 survey found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of relationship — a rise of 10% from five years earlier, according to Haworth.
One of the reasons for the decline in dating and sex among young Japanese adults seems to stem from the fact that men and women have different long-term values — while men have become less career-driven, women are valuing their careers more than romantic relationships, and don't want to give up their fulfilling (and time-intensive) jobs. ..."
6. Mapping 22 Different Latino Populations Across the U.S.A.
Where do America's Latino and Hispanic populations live? Let's start with where they're not living: in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and a whopping chunk of the Midwest that probably hears a sí as often as the cry of an Amazonian toucan. ...
7. U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why
... In March, a study published by the University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that in nearly half of U.S. counties, female mortality rates actually increased between 1992 and 2006, compared to just 3 percent of counties that saw male mortality increase over the same period. ...
8. Several articles about the most popular baby names in recent days. For example, Here's The Most Popular Baby Name In Each State. I especially liked these two gifs: America's Most Popular Boys' Names Since 1960, in 1 Spectacular GIF and A Wondrous GIF Shows the Most Popular Baby Names for Girls Since 1960.
9. Census: Americans are moving again
Those on the move are once again setting their sights on their favorite Sun Belt places, like Florida, Arizona and Nevada, a demographer says.
10. U.S. obesity rate levels off, but still an epidemic
"More than a third of adults are obese, which is roughly 35 pounds over a healthy weight."
11. Where Are The Boomers Headed? Not Back To The City
... Indeed, our number-crunching shows that rather than flocking into cities, there were roughly a million fewer boomers in 2010 within a five-mile radius of the centers of the nation’s 51 largest metro areas compared to a decade earlier. If boomers change residences, they tend to move further from the core, and particularly to less dense places outside metropolitan areas. Looking at the 51 metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, areas within five miles of the center lost 17% of their boomers over the past decade, while the balance of the metropolitan areas, predominately suburbs, only lost 2%. In contrast places outside the 51 metro areas actually gained boomers. ...
12. The Myers Briggs States of America
Sunbelt, Rustbelt, Energy Belt – geographers, economists and urbanists have long endeavored to map the economic, political and cultural structures of America's regions. But to what extent do these places have their own distinctive personalities?
We all have our handy stereotypes for regional personalities, of course. Stolid Midwesterners, indolent but mercurial Southerners, and nervous, fast-talking New Yorkers make repeat appearances in pop culture. But can we identify the actual psychology, the deep personality traits that define regional distinctiveness?
Those questions are at the center of a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. ...
13. The Difference Between Democratic Congressional Districts And Republican Ones In 1 Chart. In short, as population density increases, so does a preference for Democrats.
Sep 04, 2013
Aug 24, 2013
Aug 10, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Phillip Swagel with a good piece on Inequality and Opportunity
... I am not convinced, however, that the president's proposals are well matched to the problem he describes. Indeed, Mr. Obama is better at describing the outcomes he seeks than at putting forward a coherent set of policies to reach those outcomes. But I think I see what he has in mind.
Mr. Obama is looking at two horizons. The main determinant of inequality is what the Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz call a "race between technological change and educational attainment." Technology has increased the demand for skilled workers but educational attainment has not kept up, leading to rising payoffs for those at the top. Widening inequality reflects the fact that too many Americans do not have the skills needed for today's economy. But changing this takes time. So while he proposes universal preschool to benefit the future work force and new training programs delivered through community colleges for existing workers, Mr. Obama seeks to foster a stronger economy here and now, to drive higher earnings for people at all income levels rather than just those at the top. ...
2. Shared Justice: Beyond Purely Economic Solutions to Poverty
Christians must agree on a holistic definition of poverty that includes relational and spiritual elements. ...
... But is the problem of poverty really that simple, a lack of opportunity given to those in the lowest economic class? It depends on how you define the terms "poverty" and "opportunity," as well as the terms "justice" and "charity"—all of which require multi-dimensional definitions if we hope to build a constructive conversation around the problem of poverty. Throughout the next two months at Shared Justice, we'll be fostering that conversation; to do so, though, we first must return to the basics and refine the questions. In other words, the question is: What are the right definitions?
But is the problem of poverty really that simple, a lack of opportunity given to those in the lowest economic class? It depends on how you define the terms "poverty" and "opportunity," as well as the terms "justice" and "charity"—all of which require multi-dimensional definitions if we hope to build a constructive conversation around the problem of poverty. Throughout the next two months at Shared Justice, we'll be fostering that conversation; to do so, though, we first must return to the basics and refine the questions. In other words, the question is: What are the right definitions? ...
... Broken relationships lie at the root of all of these things, so solving poverty demands that we meet more than just material needs—and that isn't easy. Generally Christians today have engaged in one-way giving and service amounting to little more than charity in the end, which is only part of our calling. And the result? Christians and the church have been relatively ineffective at providing lasting opportunities for the poor to overcome their situations. ...
3. Charitable Giving: Baby Boomers Donate More, Study Shows
4. Economist: Rewriting history - "A new measure for GDP adds billions to America's economy"
5. Why the Church and Charity Aren't Enough - Derek Penwell
...My friend argues that taking care of the poor is the church's responsibility -- that people who work hard shouldn't have to give so much of what they earn back to the government in taxes. Government is notoriously inefficient and sloppy.
So, I tell him that all of that might be true, but to people on the outside looking in, to folks who don't share his strong faith in the church's ability to get it right either, such a theology of social organization looks suspiciously like a dodge -- a flimsy attempt to baptize selfishness. To them it sounds like "I got mine … through a paradoxical admixture of my hard work and God's blessing, which means God wants me to have all this stuff; and conversely, it means God doesn't want poor people to have any stuff, let alone my stuff."...
6. Why China's 'Dominance' of Manufacturing Is Misleading
Gaudy statistics aside, the country has struggled to do what it needs to do -- move up the value chain.
On Monday, The Atlantic wrote a story based on an International Business Times infographic that portrayed China's enduring prominence in manufacturing. Remember, though; prominence is not the same as success. (Just consider this sentence: "Alex Rodriguez continues to be a very prominent baseball player.") China will play a major role in global manufacturing for years -- and probably decades -- to come. But the country's role is not a healthy one, and the weaknesses in Chinese manufacturing outshine the huge numbers displayed in the graph. ...
"The average age of the 247 million light vehicles on American roads today is 11.4 years, an all-time high, according to a new study from Polk. ..."
Elites shouldn't be forced to share ill-gotten gains -- they should be prevented from ever getting them.
Food shipped from America has saved the lives of millions of people since the Food for Peace programme was set up in 1954, but the strict rules demanding almost all of the food has to be sourced in the US and sent on American ships are coming under increasing attack.
10. Many Americans have no friends of another race: poll
About 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Aug 03, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness
People who are happy but have little-to-no sense of meaning in their lives have the same gene expression patterns as people who are enduring chronic adversity.
2. Blacks, Hispanics more optimistic than whites
... After years of economic attitudes among whites, blacks and Hispanics following similar patterns, whites' confidence in their economic future has plummeted in the last decade, according to the analysis. Blacks and Hispanics, meanwhile, have sustained high levels of optimism despite being hit hard in the recent recession. ...
... The AP-NORC analysis of data from the General Social Survey, a long-running biannual survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, found just 46 percent of whites say their family has a good chance of improving their living standard given the way things are in America, the lowest level in surveys conducted since 1987. In contrast, 71 percent of blacks and 73 percent of Hispanics express optimism of an improved life - the biggest gap with whites since the survey began asking. ...
3. The Book of Mormon: Why the world’s most capitalist religion breeds so many entrepreneurs
... The Mormon religion, however, stresses more than just self-reliance. Its emphasis on hard work, staying focused, and giving back to the Church also stirs entrepreneurial inclinations. The almost-mandatory missions carried out by its young men and women before they start their careers forge an ability to withstand rejection and disappointment while also fostering communication skills that help not only with sales jobs but also in starting companies. All the while, an unrelenting focus on the family means that Mormons are incentivized to “follow the rules” and earn money to feed many mouths, while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
And so the US is riven with examples of what appears to be a disproportionately high number of business and entrepreneurial success stories to emerge from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members account for just 1.7 percent of the US population. ...
4. A Record Number Of Young Adults Are Still Hunkered Down With Mom And Dad
... In 2012, 21.6 million young adults aged 18-31 lived at home with their parents, up from 18.5 million just before the recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
"This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009," the report says. ...
5. U.S. Marriage Rates Keep Declining
Marriage rates in America are at an all-time low. And the median age at which women say "I do" is the highest it's been in a century.
Charles Blow had these observations about Marriage and Minorities.
6. The Long-Term Effects Of Poverty Linger Even After People Become Wealthy
"Scientists find [people who grew up poor] are more prone to illness than those who were never poor. Becoming more affluent may lower the risk of disease by lessening the sense of helplessness and allowing greater access to healthful resources like exercise, more nutritious foods and greater social support; people are not absolutely condemned by their upbringing. But the effects of early-life stress also seem to linger, unfavorably molding our nervous systems and possibly even accelerating the rate at which we age."
7. The other killer. Hepatitis kills more people than HIV in most countries.
8. India’s Garment Industry Gets Respun
As cost increases in China and concerns over labor conditions in Bangladesh push manufacturing firms away, India is gearing up its own garment industry to try to capitalize on the opportunity and boost its faltering economy. India has so far failed to fully take advantage of its huge potential labor force living out in the countryside. This may soon change, with companies like Aravind Mills planning to open dormitories for workers. Additionally, the Indian government, taking a page from China’s development model, has plans to create textile parks, with space designated for worker housing. ...
9. The Missouri Table: A Response to Ethical Foodies From a ‘Factory Farmer’
... One caller to a radio show I appeared on recently desribed the people who patronize fast food restaurants as "sheeple." That kind of derision leads me to believe that the caller will only feel good about himself if he believes I eat hamburgers several times a month at a place with cheesy uniforms and kid’s meals. I’m happy to oblige, but it is hard for me to take him seriously. He’s not as interested in making the world better as he is in feeling superior to people who can’t afford to eat the diet he believes necessary to living an ethical and sustainable life. He’s not nearly as concerned about the future of the planet as he is at being noticed, approvingly, by the kind of people who worry about the proper way to boil lentils, raise a few heritage pigs in their backyard, and are always available to be interviewed by NPR and the New York Review of Books. ...
A little harsh but a lot true.
10. The Slower Rise in Health Care Costs
The rate at which health care costs are rising had slowed down in recent years, and perhaps not unexpectedly, Obama's economic advisers have sought to draw the link that "As ACA Implementation Continues, Consumer Health Care Cost Growth Has Slowed." But an array of evidence suggests that something beyond that legislation--which after all, is mostly not yet implemented--is the cause.
1) The slowdown in the rise of health care spending was already being noted in newspaper articles back in early 2012. ...
2) The slowdown in rising health care costs since the recession is international, as a press release with the OECD Health Report 2013 explains. ...
3) There's some reason to be dubious as to whether the slower rate of growth in health care spending will persist. ...
11. ‘Saudi America’ was the world’s No. 1 petroleum producer in April for the 6th straight month
12. Efficiency Drove U.S. Emissions Decline, Not Natural Gas, Study Says
Aggressive energy efficiency efforts by households, companies and motorists led to the decline in carbon dioxide emissions from energy use in the United States, according to a recent report. The controversial finding contradicts recent studies that say the power sector's shift away from coal to cheap natural gas caused the bulk of reductions.
U.S. emissions last year fell by 205 million metric tons, or 4 percent, from 2011 levels. CO2 Scorecard Group, a small environmental research organization, says that nearly half the decline came from energy-saving measures such as retrofits and smarter appliances in homes and offices, as well as from Americans driving fewer miles, and using more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Natural gas is responsible for only about one-quarter of last year's emissions drop, CO2 Scorecard Group asserts....
As the article notes, other reputable research disagrees, attributing most of the drop to shale.
13. Millennials and Leaving Church: Really?
... Before you either quote the reports or the responses to the reports, read Brad Wright’s book: Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media.
Here are some highlights from Wright’s 3d chp, one asking if we (think we) are losing our youth.
Josh McDowell: “It is clear that we have all but lost our young people to a godless culture.” Josh’s statement is typical.
It’s also not in tune with good social-scientific data. For instance, there was a widely circulating rumor (I heard it) that said 4% of our evangelical youth will be evangelicals when they get older. Wright chased the number into bad stats. Here are some better ones:
1. Young adults are less religious, but what does this mean?
2. 12% in the 70s and 80s were unaffiliated; now 25% are. But this is the same number as with other age groups.
3. Currently, 22% of young adults are evangelicals; that’s up from 21% in the 70s but down from 25% in the 90s.
4. Negatively, unaffiliated has increased for young adults.
5. Positively, the number who are affiliated with churches has remained the same.
6. Those affiliated with Evangelicals, Black Prots, and RCC are the same as in the 70s. (Mainliners are down.)
7. No sign of cataclysmic or big changes....
Jul 27, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Mark Buchanan asks Is Economics a Science or a Religion?
2. Poverty has moved to the suburbs
I don't think this should be seen as necessarily a bad thing. A few decades ago, the idea was to "warehouse" the poor in large urban complexes. There has been an intentional effort at dispersal through various means including creating mixed-income neighborhoods.
3. Crime has plummeted in the rich world, even amid the recession.
4. 5 Charts That Perfectly Capture The Incredible Rise Of China
5. How (and why) Africa should solve its own problems
Africa cannot rely on outside people to come and feed our poor or treat our sick, says African businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim. The key is good governance, in both the public and private sectors.
6. World Bank: Africa held back by land ownership confusion
Africa's economic growth is being held back by confusion over who owns vast swathes of agricultural land, according to a World Bank report.
7. Deforestation in Africa's Congo Basin rainforest slows
Tree loss in one of the world's largest rainforests has slowed, a study suggests.
Satellite images of Africa's Congo Basin reveal that deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000.
Researchers believe this is partly because of a focus on mining and oil rather than commercial agriculture, where swathes of forest are cleared. ...
8. Brazil's Evangelicals A Growing Force In Prayer, Politics
... Recent polls show that evangelical Christianity is the fastest-growing sect in Brazil. According to the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of the Brazilian population identifies as evangelical Christian — up from 5 percent in 1970. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, most of them switched from Roman Catholicism.
These days, only about 62 percent of people in Brazil say they are Catholic. In absolute numbers, however, this still makes Brazil the country with the most Catholics in the world. ...
9. For Developing World, a Streamlined Facebook
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple "feature phones" that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.
Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly one out of eight of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.
Many of those users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. ...
10. The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring (I don't agree with a couple of points but I think his thesis is spot on.)
11. Big Racial Divide over Zimmerman Verdict
12. The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War
Family-run Publix is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, and they might be the formula for fending off Bentonville's retail behemoth. ...
... When a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. Instead, an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do. At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most large supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot. Even Publix's president, Todd Jones, who started out as a bagger 33 years ago, stoops down to pick up specks of trash on the store floor.
"We believe that there are three ways to differentiate: service, quality and price," Jones says. "You've got to be good at two of them, and the best at one. We make service our number one, then quality and then price."...
... Publix, the seventh-largest private company in the U.S. ($27.5 billion in sales) and one of the least understood thanks to decades of media reticence, is also the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company's largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation; it's pegged at $26.90 now, up nearly 20% already this year.) How rich can employees get? According to Publix, a store manager who has worked at the company for 20 years and earns between $100,000 and $130,000 likely has $300,000 in stock and has received another $30,000 in dividends. ...
13. Grocery shopping online: Can it replace trips to the store?
The website mySupermarket.com compares the prices of groceries online and works to reduce shipping costs. But a limited selection means grocery store runs aren't a things of the past just yet.
14. 25 Everyday Things Made Obsolete This Century. What would you add to the list?
Jul 20, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Public Religion Research Institute: Survey | Do Americans Believe Capitalism and Government are Working?: Religious Left, Religious Right and the Future of the Economic Debate
2. Gallup reports Sub-Saharan Africa Is Wildly Optimistic About Its Future
3. U.S. could lead world oil production by 2017, study says
Domestic shale oil production could shoot up to 5 million barrels per day by 2017, making the United States the top oil producing country in the world, according to a researcher at Harvard Kennedy School.
4. Will Europe Hit a Demographic Tipping Point?
... In 1968 Paul Ehrlich’s doomsday tome The Population Bomb predicted mass starvation and civilizational collapse in much of the world due to overpopulation. But the more serious problem – particularly in traditionally higher-income countries – today is actually too few, not too many new people. The pivot to seeing this as the problem has come through something very basic: pension math. Across the developed world, public pension systems built on the assumption of continued population growth are now facing an actuarial day of reckoning as the bills come due while birth rates have plummeted.
A society needs a total fertility rate – that is, the average number of children born to each woman – of 2.1 just to maintain its population without immigration. Some European countries like France (2.03) and the UK (1.98) are in reasonably good shape, but they are the exception. The total fertility rate in Greece is 1.43, in Germany 1.36, in Spain 1.36, in Portugal 1.30, and in Poland 1.30. Much of southern and central Europe hovers near the so-called “lowest-low” rate of 1.3 in which the population is naturally being cut in half every 45 years.
Simple birth rates alone have caused some to posit a societal going out of business sale in Europe. However, just as extrapolation of high population growth rates in the past led to wildly alarmist claims that proved false, so today we must be careful about not proclaiming Europe is doomed. But with the population on tap to be halved every generation, the runway to turn things around is difficult to conjure. And while we’ve seen many countries make the shift from high to low birth rates, there isn’t a huge track record of success in the other direction. ...
5. Hunger Makes People Work Harder, and Other Stupid Things We Used to Believe About Poverty
The article includes this interesting graph:
6. Forget Microlending. India Needs Basic, Competent Credit Reporting - Businessweek
Development economists talk a lot about credit. Figure out a way to get it to people in a developing economy, rather than just large companies or the state itself, and you can encourage small-scale risk-taking. Microlending offers very small loans to individuals, often $100 or less. The idea won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Prize in 2006. More recently, microfinance and mobile banking have offered ways to save and insure on a small scale, allowing people take risks with their own money. Speaking in Mumbai earlier this month, K. C. Chakrabarty, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, offered an additional way to expand credit: better credit reporting. No shepherds with phones, no happy mothers of four with new sewing machines. Just credit reporting, plain old attention to detail, and administrative competence.
7. Why We Need to Treat America's Poorest Neighborhoods Like Developing Countries
The article includes maps showing life expectancy across several metropolitan areas. Here is the one for my hometown, Kansas City.
8. Racial Disparities in Life Spans Narrow, but Persist
The gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans is at its narrowest since the federal government started systematically tracking it in the 1930s, but a difference of nearly four years remains, and federal researchers have detailed why in a new report.
9. The Unsettling Link Between Sprawl and Suicide
A new scientific working paper (spotted by Tim De Chant of Per Square Mile) contends that as population density decreases, the suicide rate among young people increases. This effect becomes particularly pronounced below 300 inhabitants per square kilometer — roughly the density of San Diego County.
10. Big Data, for Better or Worse: 90% of World's Data Generated Over Last Two Years
11. The one event that destroyed the PC industry
12. Tweets that got people arrested
13. Religion & Wikipedia: The 'Edit Wars' Rage On
Scientists have analyzed page edits in 10 editions of Wikipedia to determine the topics most often fought over by editors of the open encyclopedia. The most debated topics included many religious subjects, like Jesus and God, according to research done by Taha Yasseri, Anselm Spoerri, Mark Graham, and János Kertész.
Rather than merely citing pages that changed a lot, they identified pages involved in "edit wars," that involved editors making changes that were almost instantly undone by another contributor. This proved the best method of finding controversial pages, as pages often updated could simply belong to a rapidly changing field or topic. However, pages with words and phrases constantly removed and reinserted indicated a passionate disagreement surrounding the issue at hand.
The most controversial pages across all ten editions of Wikipedia were:
- Israel
- Adolf Hitler
- The Holocaust
- God
Other controversial subjects were Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, and Christianity.
14. The curious case of the fall in crime
... Cherished social theories have been discarded. Conservatives who insisted that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and growing ethnic diversity would unleash an unstoppable crime wave have been proved wrong. Young people are increasingly likely to have been brought up by one parent and to have played a lot of computer games. Yet they are far better behaved than previous generations. Left-wingers who argued that crime could never be curbed unless inequality was reduced look just as silly.
There is no single cause of the decline; rather, several have coincided. Western societies are growing older, and most crimes are committed by young men. Policing has improved greatly in recent decades, especially in big cities such as New York and London, with forces using computers to analyse the incidence of crime; in some parts of Manhattan this helped to reduce the robbery rate by over 95%. The epidemics of crack cocaine and heroin appear to have burnt out.
The biggest factor may be simply that security measures have improved. Car immobilisers have killed joyriding; bulletproof screens, security guards and marked money have all but done for bank robbery. Alarms and DNA databases have increased the chance a burglar will be caught. At the same time, the rewards for burglary have fallen because electronic gizmos are so cheap. Even small shops now invest in CCTV cameras and security tags. Some crimes now look very risky—and that matters because, as every survey of criminals shows, the main deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught. ...
15. By 2030, Half of All Colleges Will Collapse
Jun 15, 2013
Saturday Links
1. More deaths than births among whites
Last year, more people who are white and not Hispanic died than were born, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. That group is still the USA’s largest but its share of the total has been shrinking for years.
2. Human Population Growth Creeps Back Up
Earth's human population is expected to coast upward to 9.6 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100, up from 7.2 billion people alive today, a United Nations agency has projected.
The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs yesterday released revised numbers for the coming century, raising median estimates for population growth in 2050 and 2100. The agency's prior best guess had humanity at 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion in 2100. ...
3. New homes still getting bigger
At 2,306 square feet, the typical new home is about 50% larger than its 1973 counterpart while the typical family is 10% smaller and the typical household 15% smaller. The Census Bureau defines a family as two or more people living in the same home who are related by birth, marriage or adoption. A household consists of anyone living in a home regardless of their relationship.
4. American Suburbia Is Shrinking For The First Time Ever
The population of rural and small-town America contracted over the past two years for the first time on record as young people left to search out work in the cities and birth rates fell, according to official data.
An analysis of US Census Bureau data by the Department of Agriculture found that although population growth in America’s rural heartland has risen and fallen for decades with changes in the US economy, the pace of decline accelerated in the years 2010-2012. And for the first time, the so-called “natural increase” in population – total births minus deaths – was insufficient to offset the loss from those migrating away.
5. Business Insider says Online Courses Have Reached A Turning Point That Should Scare Colleges but Mashable says Millennials Prefer Traditional Classrooms Over Online Ones.
6. NYT: Data Reveal a Rise in College Degrees Among Americans
7. Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrollment
A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%. Though homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide, the number of children whose parents choose to educate them at home rather than a traditional academic setting is growing seven times faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12 every year.
8. The Wedding Industry’s Pricey Little Secret
In 2012, when the average wedding cost was $27,427, the median was $18,086. In 2011, when the average was $27,021, the median was $16,886. In Manhattan, where the widely reported average is $76,687, the median is $55,104. And in Alaska, where the average is $15,504, the median is a mere $8,440.
And speaking of weddings, here is an excellent piece on the economics of wedding dresses.
9. Why Men Still Are Still Scared To Take Paternity Leave
But even when offered paternity leave, studies show most men won’t take it. A 2012 study of tenured track college professors found that only 12% of fathers took paid parental leave when it was offered compared with 69% of mothers. When new dads in the study did take paternity leave, many were still involved in projects at the office.
10. Dads, Feel Your Babies Kicking With Huggies Pregnancy Belt
11. Online Petitions Combat Corruption Abroad
According to Change.org, 44% of international petitions among the 100 largest petitions on the site target government corruption. In stark contrast, none of the petitions among the 100 largest campaigns that originated in the U.S. focus on corruption.
12. Wanting Expensive Things Makes Us Happier Than Actually Buying Them
The evidence is unequivocal: Money makes you happy. You just have to know what to do with it.
So what should you do with it?
Stop buying so much stuff, renowned psychologist Daniel Gilbert told me in an interview a few years ago, and try to spend more money on experiences.
13. Nuclear power seemed to be back in the news this week. New Yorker says Time to Go Nuclear, New Geography says No Solar Way Around It: Why Nuclear Is Essential to Combating Climate Change, and The Energy Collective had a great piece The Bigger Picture: Nuclear Energy vs. Fossil Fuels.
14. Nicaragua Congress approves ocean-to-ocean canal plan
15. China's Plan To Build The World's Tallest Skyscraper In 90 Days Is 'Revolutionary'
16. Singapore's Vegetable Towers
With more than 5 million people crammed into 274 square miles, commercial land values in Singapore are among the highest in the world. Therefore, the island nation needs to get creative when it comes to growing food in a limited space.
17. US breweries have exploded, from 89 in the late 1970s to more than 2,400 today, a 2,600% increase
18. The 'Star Trek' Medical Scanner Is About To Become A Reality
The small device is similar to the medical tricorder scanners featured in Star Trek, and is used by simply placing it against your forehead.
A few seconds later you can see your blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, respiratory rate, and body temperature.
The Scout then records and stores the information on your smartphone, allowing you to track your vitals or share them with a doctor.
19. The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'
While not strong, the pace has not been any weaker than the pace for wages in the fixed-weighted employment cost index—the ECI. That pattern disproves the widespread impression that mainly “bad” below-average-wage jobs are being created. Average hourly earnings would be declining relative to wages in the ECI if job growth were disproportionately weighted toward below-average-wage jobs.
20. A Christian Walmart for the poor? Willow Creek's new care center
Consider the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church, one of the bigger "brands" in the non-denom world, which just built a new "care center" where those in need can come and "shop" for food, children's clothing, even eyeglasses. It's 60,000 square feet are laid out, according to the Chicago Tribune, "less like a thrift shop or food pantry, and more like an upscale mall, complete with cheery colors, welcoming seating areas and designer lighting," according to the Chicago Tribune. Clients pay something if they are able--$5 to visit the children's "boutique," for example, or a $20 copay for an eye exam.
Consider the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church, one of the bigger "brands" in the non-denom world, which just built a new "care center" where those in need can come and "shop" for food, children's clothing, even eyeglasses. It's 60,000 square feet are laid out, according to the Chicago Tribune, "less like a thrift shop or food pantry, and more like an upscale mall, complete with cheery colors, welcoming seating areas and designer lighting," according to the Chicago Tribune. Clients pay something if they are able--$5 to visit the children's "boutique," for example, or a $20 copay for an eye exam. - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/christian-walmart-poor-willow-creeks-new-care-center-27430#sthash.OhuyPOdG.dpuf
A Christian Walmart for the poor? Willow Creek's new care center - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/christian-walmart-poor-willow-creeks-new-care-center-27430#sthash.OhuyPOdG.dpuf
The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'
The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'
May 18, 2013
Saturday Links
1. I loved this map: Dialect Map Of U.S. Shows How Americans Speak By Region
2. What's Driving the Rise in Suicide Among Middle-Aged Men?
... The suicide stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that middle-aged men (35 to 64) living in the American West are more likely to commit suicide than men living elsewhere in the United States, and that suicide has risen fastest over the last decade in a Western state, Wyoming, as Richard Florida pointed out here last week. ...
... And over the last two decades, it's men without college degrees who have ended up most disconnected from the core institutions of work, marriage, and civil society. Guess who is most likely to kill themselves? Men without college degrees. In fact, according to recent research by sociologist Julie Phillips and her colleagues, suicide has surged in recent years (this research covers the period up to 2005) among precisely this group of less-educated middle-aged men, even as suicide remained essentially stable among middle-aged men with college degrees over this period. ...
3. America's New Manufacturing Boomtowns
Conventional wisdom for a generation has been that manufacturing in America is dying. Yet over the past five years, the country has experienced something of an industrial renaissance. We may be far from replacing the 3 million industrial jobs lost in the recession, but the economy has added over 330,000 industrial jobs since 2010, with output growing at the fastest pace since the 1990s. ...
4. I had some personal identification with this article: Michael's Still the Top Name for New York Babies, and There Are Reasons
... But about this Michael thing. Were it not for 1964, when John briefly ascended in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Michael would have been the New York chart-topper every year since 1956, when it upended Robert.
You might think that with that kind of stranglehold on the local name rankings, Michael would dominate the top spot nationwide. During the last half of the 20th century, you would have been right. But in 1999, Jacob wrestled the title from Michael and has held it ever since. Michael has now fallen to eighth in the national baby-name rankings.
That statistic, though, does not get at how deeply disparate the results are. In a large handful of states, Michael barely cracked the top 40. In Nebraska it was No. 37, right behind Bentley. The name was 36th in Iowa, 35th in Vermont and 31st in North Dakota, well behind the very New Yorkish pairing of Henry (No. 23) and Hudson (No. 24). In Utah, where Samuel and Jackson placed 6th and 7th, Michael was 28th.
Aside from New York, only New Jersey and Delaware have maintained their enthusiasm for Michael. ...
5. A fascinating map of the world's most and least racially tolerant countries
6. WHO data shows narrowing health gap
...The number of under-fives dying fell from 12 million in 1990 to less than seven million in 2011, the data shows.
But that will not be enough to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal. ...
7. NPR on Stay-At-Home Dads, Breadwinner Moms And Making It All Work
... The Census Bureau finds that about , though that's doubled in a decade. But Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families calls the figure vastly underreported. It doesn't include who do some work yet are their children's primary caregivers, a trend that cuts across class and income. ...
8. AT&T Predicted The Future In These 1993 Ads
In 1993, AT&T released a series of commercials grouped by the theme "you will."
They were all about things people would be doing in the future.
Unlike most futuristic concepts, these turned out to be surprisingly accurate. True, there are no far-out ideas like flying cars, but there is plenty of great stuff that was mind-blowing in 1993.
Today, most of this stuff is commonplace.
Revisiting these predictions is a good reminder of how far we've come in a very short period of time. ...
... "Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?"
"Cross the country without stopping for directions,"
"Sent someone a fax from the beach?"...
9. Sign me up! This Flying Car Concept Takes Off And Lands Like A Helicopter
10. Is Organic Food All It's Cracked Up To Be?
Bottom line: From a scientific perspective, there doesn't seem to be a clear answer on whether organic or traditionally-grown foods are "better."
Healthwise, the studies don't support the idea that in general organics contain fewer pesticides, are healthier or taste better, but this varies from crop to crop.
There are certain nasty environmental effects of factory farming — like dead zones — that could be less likely with organic and smaller-scale farming, but those farming techniques mean less productivity — and less food to feed the world.
If you have a large food budget and worry about the environmental impacts of factory farms, organic may be the way to go. But, if you have a limited budget and were just trying to ingest fewer pesticides, it might not be worth the money to go organic.
It largely comes down to an individual's values, budget, and taste buds.
11. Forbes says It's About Time Walmart Waged An Ad Campaign Like This One. I think they are right.
12. From a Forbes commentary, Sorry Global Warmists, But Extreme Weather Events Are Becoming Less Extreme
- New Records for Lack of Tornadoes
- New Records for Lack of Hurricanes
13. Scientific American reports that Minoan Civilization Originated in Europe, Not Egypt
When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed.
Modern archaeologists have questioned that version of events, and now ancient DNA recovered from Cretan caves suggests that the Minoan civilization emerged from the early farmers who settled the island thousands of years earlier. ...
14. Why do I hear Indiana Jones theme music? A Fabled Lost City Might Be Hiding Under This Remote Honduras Jungle
New pictures claim to show the possible architectural remains of Ciudad Blanca, a mythical "White City" rumored to be buried somewhere deep in the forests of eastern Honduras.
May 11, 2013
Saturday Links
1. The High Calling published an article I wrote. I linked it earlier, but here it is again in an act of shameless self-promotion. It goes to some core issues I'm trying to put into a book. Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship
2. Should Pastors Know How Much Church Members Give?
A recent study found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the 3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors knew this information.
What experts said (starting with "yes" and moving to "no" ): ...
3. Model for megacities? Mexico City cleans up its air.
... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.
Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...
4. Unmanned Drones May Have Their Greatest Impact on Agriculture
Talk about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a peaceful endeavor: farming. ...
... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology's ability to provide farmers with a bird's-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there's strong demand for cheaper alternatives. ...
... "Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture," said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. "You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater."
"It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot," said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. "If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings."...
5. Fascinating piece about the The Historical Horror of Childbirth
... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky in some places. ...
6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment
7. 'Late-life crisis' hits the over-60s
"Of the 33% who went through a crisis, bereavement was the most common trigger, followed by personal illness or injury."
8. Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment
9. Atlantic Cities asks the question that has interested me for years: Why Do So Many People Think Gun Violence Is Getting Worse?
"Twenty years into this safer era, we still don't know quite how we got here. Perhaps in absence of a logical narrative, many Americans simply find it hard to believe this is true."
10. People Don't Wear A Shocking Amount Of Their Clothes.
"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."
11. This week was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Day Distance Disappeared
12. Great piece! The Tech Trends to Fear the Most: It's Not All Good
13. The market 'bubble' you've never heard of: "Some economists are worried that farmland prices are nearing bubble territory. How bad can it be if no one's heard of it?"
14. Michael Barone says College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance
15. Whatever happened to these Fortune 500 companies? "Here are seven companies from the first Fortune 500 that have since been merged, split up, or put out to pasture."
16. Dwight Lee has a thought-provoking piece about The Two Moralities of Ebenezer Scrooge.
17. The global economy: Welcome to the post-BRIC world
18. Development finance in Africa
19. Toxic Waste Sites Take Toll on Millions in Poor Nations
New studies attempt to quantify just how harmful the rampant exposure to lead and other chemicals is in the developing world.
20. James Pethokoukis with a provocative article about income inequality: Why A Decline In Income Inequality Would Be Bad News
Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it's not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the "pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium)."...
May 09, 2013
May 04, 2013
Saturday Links
Some weeks the pickin's are thin. Not this week.
1. Asians are now the largest immigrant group in Southern California: New Suburban Dream Born of Asia and Southern California
2. Surge in unwed mothers: Deep in the stats, it's not what you think
According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 42 percent of children will have lived with cohabitating parents by the time they are 12 years old, almost twice as many who will have divorced parents. And this particular sort of family structure is on the rise, a number of studies show.
3. In a sharp trend reversal, highway fatalities rise
"The news, while disheartening, is not surprising," said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "With the improving economy and historically low levels of motor vehicle deaths in recent years, we expected deaths to increase. Highway deaths have been declining significantly in recent years."
4. We live in a house that is 105 years old. IMO, most houses built after 1940 are boring. How Americans' Taste in Houses Has Evolved Over the Last Century
5. Are we purging the poorest?
In a new book, MIT urbanist Lawrence Vale examines the downsizing of public housing.
6. Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have been popping up everywhere promoting their new book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. Here is a PBS interview:
Watch Google's Schmidt, Cohen Describe a 'New Digital Age' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
7. Love this story: Alleviating Poverty with a Washing Machine Powered by Your Feet
The GiraDora uses the principles of a salad spinner to make cleaning clothes less back-breaking and time-consuming work for millions of people in poverty.
8. Amen to this article. Good charities spend more on admin but it is not money wasted
The popular idea that charities fritter money on unnecessary admin has been proven wrong. You must spend to be effective.
9. Why US firms are turning to Mexico, leaving China behind
... Mexico has more international trade deals than any other country, and exports as many goods as the rest of Latin America combined.
There has always been an electronics manufacturing hub in Tijuana, but Chinese competition damaged its business a decade ago.
Now rising wage costs in Asia and a higher exchange rate are prompting many companies targeting the US market to take another look at Mexico. ...
...The new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wants to put a new spin on the country with the image of a booming economy and as a good place to do business.
Security and the drugs problem still dominate talks between the US and Mexico, but its southern neighbour's increasing importance in the global economy is changing the relationship. ...
10. The Manufacturing Cost Components For A Bunch Of Different Things
11. Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World
12. No-Wash Shirt Doesn't Stink After 100 Days
13. Craig Stanford, 'Planet Without Apes' Author, Says Eco-Tourism Could Save The Primates
A slice of the money that tourists pay can run $500 an hour at some of the sites in East Africa and goes to build hospitals and hire teachers." Although it's not philosophically or altruistically driven, the bottom line is the animals are more valuable alive than dead, since there's an incentive to protect them.
14. Approaching Nutrition From An Investor's Mindset
How does one succeed in nutrition when nobody seems to agree on anything? How can one get the benefits that arrive in the early stages of a diet without staying too long and compromising their health? What has worked well for me is thinking about nutrition like an investor thinks about investment opportunities.
15. The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard.
The QWERTY configuration for typewriters can be traced, actually, to the telegraph.
16. Money Buys Happiness and You Can Never Have Too Much, New Research Says
Here again we have to revisit the differences between happiness, joy, meaning, and satisfaction.
Watch Baseball and Religion on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
18. Why Older Minds Make Better Decisions
Recent research has already challenged what we thought we knew about the capability of the brain. What has become clear, says Dr. Gregory Samanez-Larkin of Vanderbilt University, one of the network's co-directors, is that despite a decline in some types of cognitive function, "older people often make better decisions than younger people."
19. Moon Landing Faked!!!—Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories
New psychological research helps explain why some see intricate government conspiracies behind events like 9/11 or the Boston bombing.
20. Scot McKnight answers the question So What's an Anabaptist?
21. Beneath the stereotypes, a stressful life for preachers' kids
22. When and Where Is It Okay to Cry?
23. 10 Reasons Why Humor Is A Key To Success At Work
24. Scientists May Be On Brink Of Major Discovery In Hunt For HIV Cure
Danish scientists are expecting results that will show that "finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible."
They are conducting clinical trials to test a "novel strategy" in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system.
Apr 27, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Research Digest reports that Students motivated by wealth are just as likely as others to help in an emergency
"... Seventy-eight per cent of the business students offered some kind of help to the stranger. Sixty-six per cent went so far as refusing to leave the stranger or giving him/her their mobile phone. The degree to which the students reported being wealth-driven was not associated with their levels of helping. Neither was their self-reported willingness to accept an illegal stock trading tip off. Being in a hurry also made no difference, neither did the content of the speech they were about to give. A factor that was linked with helping behaviour was "intrinsic religiosity" - that is, pursuing religion as an end in itself, not for the sake of status or other gain. ..."
2. American progressives are fond of pointing to the Scandinavian economic model as a model for the United States. As I've noted in other posts, Sweden has been moving steadily away from the model progressives champion for years. (for example, see Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America and Are free markets the secret to Sweden's success? Now the New York Times reports that Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault.
... Already the government has reduced various early-retirement plans. The unemployed used to be able to collect benefits for up to four years. Now it is two.
Students are next up for cutbacks, most intended to get them in the work force faster. Currently, students are entitled to six years of stipends, about $990 a month, to complete a five-year degree which, of course, is free. Many of them take even longer to finish, taking breaks to travel and for internships before and during their studies....
... It is proposing cuts to welfare grants for those under 30 and stricter reviews to make sure that such recipients are steered into jobs or educational programs before they get comfortable on government benefits.
Officials have also begun to question the large number of people who are receiving lifetime disability checks. About 240,000 people — roughly 9 percent of the potential work force — have lifetime disability status; about 33,500 of them are under 40. The government has proposed ending that status for those under 40, unless they have a mental or physical condition that is so severe that it keeps them from working. ...
3. Business Insider has a slide presentation of graphs highlighting 12 Popular Myths About The US Economy. Here is one about the degree of the U.S. offshoring work to low wage countries.
4. Yuval Levin makes an excellent point about how conservatives frequently respond poorly with arguments against dependency when progressives talk about "community."
... We [conservatives] reach for the idea of dependency because of the kind of arguments we often respond to from the left—arguments that seem like calls for common action instead of individual action. But we should look more carefully at those arguments. The problem with the "you didn't build that" mindset, as becomes particularly clear if you read what the president said before and after that line, is not just that it denies the significance of individual initiative (though that's an important part of the problem, and our culture of individual initiative, which is far from radical individualism, is a huge social achievement in America) but also that it denies the significance of any common efforts that are not political. The president took the pose of a critic of individualism, but in fact the position he described involves perhaps the most radical individualism of all, in which nothing but individuals and the state exists in society. ...
... The utopian goal of the most radical forms of liberalism has always been the complete liberation of the individual from all unchosen "relational" obligations—obligations to the people around you that are a function of the family and community in which you live. Resentment against such obligations was a central and powerful motive in the radical late-18th century thought that gave us some (though not all) forms of modern libertarianism and the modern Left, and the defense of such obligations was central to the counter-arguments that yielded modern conservatism. ...
5. Pew Research has a report on the Public's Knowledge of Science and Technology. You can take the test here. (I got a gold star, though I confess I had two lucky guesses.) And on a related note, 4th-Grade Science Test' Goes Viral: Creationism Quiz Claims Dinosaurs Lived With People. Oye!
6. Tyler Cowen looks at two reports on Why did Cuba become healthier during the economic meltdown of the 1990s? From one report:
This "abrupt downward trend" in illness does not appear to be because of Cuba's barefoot doctors and vaunted public health system, which is rated amongst the best in Latin America. The researchers say that it has more to do with simple weight loss. Cubans, who were walking and bicycling more after their public transportation system collapsed, and eating less (energy intake plunged from about 3,000 calories per day to anywhere between 1,400 and 2,400, and protein consumption dropped by 40 percent). They lost an average of 12 pounds.
It wasn't only the amount of food that Cubans ate that changed, but also what they ate. They became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace.
And this report:
During the special period, expensive habits like smoking and most likely also alcohol consumption were reduced, albeit briefly. This enforced fitness regime lasted only until the Cuban economy began to recover in the second half of the 1990s. At that point, physical activity levels began to fall off, and calorie intake surged. Eventually people in Cuba were eating even more than they had before the crash. The researchers report that "by 2011, the Cuban population has regained enough weight to almost triple the obesity rates of 1995."
7. The Coming Demographic Crisis: What to Expect When No One Is Expecting
... A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One's Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, "Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things." Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource. ...
8. 21 Maps Of Highly Segregated Cities In America. I remember doing a less sophisticated version of dissimilarity analysis for Kansas City back in 1988 without the benefit of a computer. Here is the map for Detroit, the most segregated city in America:
9. Christianity Today asks Who Volunteers the Most? Answer? "Graduates of Protestant high schools, apparently."
10. In 2012, America had the most energy efficient economy in US history
11. Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi. "Cli-fi, or 'climate fiction,' describes a dystopian present instead of a dystopian future. And don't call it 'science fiction.' Cli-fi is literary fiction."
12. Organic Prices: Food Label Just An Excuse To Charge More, Majority Of Consumers Say In New Poll
13. Business Insider with Ten Technologies That Will Shape the Future
14. Atlantic Cities has a great piece on the future of the payphone: The Payphone of the Future Is Calling
15. Business Insider also had a couple of very interesting retro articles: The First Email, The First Tweet, And 13 Other Famous Internet Firsts and These Huge Brands' Early Websites From The 1990s Looked Terrible.
16. Stonehenge archaeologists reveal new theory of why monument was built. "Stonehenge may have been built on a site occupied by hunters for roughly 5,000 before its construction."
17. Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 06, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Atlantic: Could Earth's Population Peak in 2050?
"For the past two decades, demographers have generally agreed that global population growth will continue to inch steadily higher in the coming century, raising concerns about everything from pollution to housing to the world's water supply.
But a new study out of Spain suggests those estimates may be way off—we're talking several billion people off—and that the earth's population could instead peak as soon as 2050. Applying a mathematical model to global population trends, these researchers believe that there will be fewer people living on earth in 2100 than there are today. ..."
Since I started studying demography thirty years ago, low fertility estimates seem the closest to actual outcomes. People seem to be moving to lower fertility rates faster than most expected.
2. Speaking of world population, Chatham House writes about The End of Youth
"Advances in medicine and health care mean that people all over the globe are living longer, much longer. At the same time mothers in most countries are having fewer babies. The combination is a demographic timebomb. Sarah Harper looks at the challenges that lie ahead and the changes needed to cope with a grey new world."
3. Pew has published an interesting report on Demographics of Asian Americans
4. Forbes on Why China Is Finally Abandoning Its One Child Policy
"The policy was originally justified as necessary because of excess population and to promote economic development. Much has been written and can be found on the Internet about this policy and the current and long-term effects it is having and will have on China. The reluctance by China's central government to abandon the one child policy is not out of a failure to recognize its shortcomings. Rather, it is because the policy has been highly successful in achieving a principal objective, a unification of the public in support of an unelected, autocratic central government."
5. World Bank Aims To Eliminate Extreme Poverty By 2030
To reach that goal, Kim said the world need to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of $1.25 per day to 3 percent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 percent of every developing country.
The 3 percent level is a new target for the World Bank, which estimated in 2010 that 21 percent of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, lived extreme poverty.
Some World Bank estimates have put the 3 percent target at about 600 million people living below the poverty line by 2030.
6. Susan Brown writes about A 'gray divorce' boom
Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.
7. Science reports on the prospects of One Drug to Shrink All Tumors.
8. The Genetic Literacy Project on Monsanto Protection Act? Separating the facts from the fury
9. Dean Kalahar says Economics Is Easy, And Can Be Learned In 5 Minutes
10. Rebecca Schuman on why you shouldn't pursue that Ph.D.: Thesis Hatement
11. Facebook 'Dislike' Button Not A Good Idea, Says Product Engineer Bob Baldwin In Reddit AMA
12. Finally, we have an answer to one of the most important questions of our generation: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate.
13. ABP News with some interesting data on the future of Mega Churches: Small is big for Millennials
14. Goal Control 4D. How referees will be automatically informed of goals in World Cup 2014.
15. For those of you who have deficiencies in your cultural education about all things Whovian, here is a primer for you: 'Doctor Who' Explained in 25 GIFs
Mar 04, 2013
Mar 02, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek. This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example, computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note. Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans, like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
3. Speaking of technology and its impact on industries Technology Upends Another Industry: Homebuilding
4. Businessweek has a piece about Indie Capitalism
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value. Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism. These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth. Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth, growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and growth.
5. Business Insider reports on Why Manufacturing Jobs Are Returning To America For The First Time In Decades
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
6. 3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
7. And more about 3-D Printing. 3D Printing On The Frontlines — Army Deploying $2.8M Mobile Fabrication Labs.
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand, whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and in very little time? ...
8. And how about 4-D printing? 4D Printing Is The Future Of 3D Printing And It’s Already Here
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure, mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
7. The New York Times reports that Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement.
The Economist also posted this chart this week:
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
9. Europe's Youth Unemployment Nightmare Started Long Before The Euro Crisis
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
10. Benjamin Wright - Book Review: God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life by Gene Edward Vieth, Jr.
11. Rough Type: Students to e-textbooks: no thanks
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research, it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format: fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
12. How Many Ph.D.'s Actually Get to Become College Professors?
13. Top 10 Causes of Death in the U.S.
14. ABC reports that Young Hispanics Leaving Catholic Church for Protestant Faith
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29 identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older than 50.
15. Robert Jones says Don't write off mainline Protestants
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16. Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion, while liberals, and particularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
17. Bruce Fieler has an interesting piece in the Atlantic. Want to Give Your Family Value and Purpose? Write a Mission Statement
Mar 01, 2013
Feb 23, 2013
Saturday Links
1. Christian History magazine has an entire issue devoted to Christians in the New Industrial Economy: The World Changed, the Church Responded. It is a priceless collection of essays on how various religious traditions responded to (or failed to) the challenges of the Industrial Revolution.
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
2. Orange County Register says Don't count out mainline Protestants yet.
As flocks shrink, denominations that once defined America fight to stay relevant with new ways of reaching out.
3. The Washington Post reports that Megachurches thriving in tough economic times.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years. Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
4. Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
6. The rise of post-industrial China? (Economist)
7. New Geography thinks U.S. LATE TO THE PARTY ON LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA.
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
9. A Portrait of U.S. Immigrants
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey.
10. Marketing Daily says More Latinos See Themselves As Bicultural
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups, there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
12. Being a Republican or a Democrat may all be in your head: Republican Brains Differ From Democrats' In New FMRI Study
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs, however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents' political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the researchers wrote. ...
13. Health Care Without the Doctors Coming to a Walmart Near You
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
14. Is this a case of marketing going too far? Young Japanese Women Rent Out Their Bare Legs as Advertising Space
15. Nanotechnology Rebuilds the Periodic Table
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
16. ExtremeTech says NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane.
17. Atlantic Cities has some great maps showing the impact of railroads on travel time in the early 19th Century, thus shrinking the nation. A Mapped History of Train Travel in the United States
18. A soccer goalie's worst nightmare.
19. You might want to think twice before a game of horse with this cheerleader.
Feb 08, 2013
Feb 02, 2013
Saturday Links
Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!
1. Strategic Planning and the "Vision Thing" -- Fire, Not Fluff.
"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic plan."
2. Some good thoughts on strategies we should all consider in trying to address controversial issues. Five simple lessons from Shane Windmeyer's friendship with Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy
3. Anticipating a move? Here's Everything You Should Consider Before Moving To A New City
4. Jordan Ballor has some thoughts on subsidiarity at Political Theology. Subsidiarity 'From Below'
"In this way a conception of subsidiarity "from below" is focused on the location of sovereignty from the "bottom up" rather than on the delegation of authority from the "top down." We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity "from above" and "from below" that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of "sphere sovereignty" in the late nineteenth century and beyond."
5. Business Insider offers 21 Surprising Facts About Illegal Immigration.
6. Sarah Posner has an interesting piece. 'New Evangelical’-Progressive Alliance? Not So Fast
"Pally's essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have "left the right." But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it's more accurate to say they've left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."
7. What has the iPad meant to Apple? A picture says a thousand words. A decade of Apple' computer' sales
8. Extinction of millions of species' greatly exaggerated'
"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.
But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."
9. It Turns out once the culprit in species extinction may be curled up in your lap. Cats Are Ruthless Killers. Should They Be Killed?
10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)
11. The evolutionary plot thickens. Who Was the First Human Ancestor?
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.
Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.
12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before
"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."
13. More interesting findings of early civilization in the Americas. Research Confirms Massive Louisiana Mound Was Built By Archaic Native Americans In Less Than 90 Days.
14. Melissa and I love history and have always loved old cemeteries. This story makes me sad. Black history dies in neglected Southern cemeteries
15. Okay, purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers can no longer fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?
Jan 21, 2013
Jan 14, 2013
Dec 21, 2012
Dec 12, 2012
What America Will Look Like In 2060
Business Insider: What America Will Look Like In 2060
Dec 10, 2012
Wealth Inequality and The Top 1%
Business Insider: Myth Busting: The Wealth Gap Isn't at a Record High
The article says:
A National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Edward N. Wolff, a New York University professor and one of the leading U.S. experts on wealth shares, shows that in 1998, the richest one percent of Americans owned 38.1 percent of the nation's wealth. It has fallen fairly steadily since then to the current level of 35.4 percent.
And then shows this graph:
The preceding sentence doesn't match the data. The percentage dropped nearly five points between 1998 and 2001 and then began to slowly rise again, though it is true that it has not risen to all-time highs.
The Edward Wolff article, The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class, has the following abstract.
I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007 to 2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.
I'm having trouble with my SSRN account, so I haven't yet been able to look at the article—lots of interesting facts that need to be reconciled.
Nov 14, 2012
Oct 19, 2012
PCUSAers and Political Ideology
Over at Gray, White, and Black, Jerry Park has posted an interesting piece based on Pew Research called Racial Religious Patterns in Political Ideology – Expanded Version. There are several interesting points in the post. Be sure to read it. But there is one chart I wanted to lift up, and I want your feedback on an interesting question. This is a chart showing the political party identification of non-Catholic Christians:
Being a PCUSA guy, you can guess where my eyes went first. The White Mainline group is the second most balanced group after the Asian American Mainline group (and it often surprises many that Mainliners do tilt toward Republicans.) But let's disaggregate the White Mainline group a little. Here is data from the 2011, Presbyterian Panel. of the Presbyterian Church, USA. The Panel is an ongoing survey done by the denomination. Here is a breakdown of political identification within the denomination:
For members and ruling elders identifying with a party, the ratio is 3:2, Republicans over Democrats. The ratio for pastors is 5:2 in favor of Democrats. The ratio is more than 5:1 for Democrats among specialized clergy. Part of what this says to me is that many pastors find a substantial disconnect between themselves and their congregations and vice versa.
I just completed eight years of service on the board of PCUSA's Presbyterian Mission Agency, which oversees the domestic and international work of the denomination between General Assemblies. I have been closely involved with staff and the countless boards and organizations that comprise the denomination. (A rewarding experience, I might add.) I can affirm that the people in the PCUSA hierarchy are overwhelmingly on a continuum from moderate Democrats to flaming liberals. ;-)
As we look at the groups in the first chart, I perceive that the White Mainline group is unique in this dichotomy between members and leaders. There may be some differences between members and leaders in other groups, but I wonder if they are anywhere the ratios are flipped.
So here is my question: Do you perceive this difference between members and leaders is unique to White Mainline denominations? If so, why do you suppose the difference exists? (And just a caution. As we are dealing with politics AND religion, everyone play nice. ;-) )
Oct 05, 2012
Racial-Religious Patterns in the 2012 Elections
Black, White, and Gray: Racial-Religious Patterns in the 2012 Elections
I received a news alert from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life where they ran a slide show of religious affiliations and political party, and given that they ran one of the few Asian American surveys ever, I thought surely they would add in the Asian Americans this time. Alas no. So I found the numbers from both the July report and from the recent slideshow to put together a few figures that help us put race and religion in a more comprehensive picture of where a lot of religiously-identified voters stand:
There is a lot of interesting info in this post. I'll just highlight one chart:
I'm looking at the White Mainline numbers. Our routine denominational surveys would show that significantly more Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. folks identify as politically conservative, but pastors are substantially more liberal.
Oct 04, 2012
Oct 01, 2012
Sep 28, 2012
Mixed-Race America
New York Times: Mixed-Race America
That map is from a new Census Bureau report about the population of mixed-race Americans, which grew 32 percent from 2000 to 2010. The population of single-race Americans, by contrast, grew 9.2 percent.
As a share of the total population, mixed-race Americans are still a tiny minority, just 2.9 percent, or about nine million people. ...
Sep 21, 2012
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