Zack Wehrwein at Current Affairs reviews Grit:
"Social scientists typically refer to this bias as “sampling on the dependent variable.” That is to say, her dependent variable of interest, the thing she wishes to explain, is achievement, and she only selects cases with high achieving individuals. One might be impressed to learn that 98% of “gritty” West Point cadets made it through Beast Barracks, but there’s an additional statistic you need to know: 95% of all West point cadets make it through. ... Thus grit may explain something, but it doesn’t explain much. It might tell us why certain West Point cadets do slightly better than certain other West Point cadets. But it leaves aside an important question: how do people become West Point cadets to begin with? In fact, we don’t even know that “grit” at West Point tells us anything about success at all. That’s because Duckworth doesn’t study the people who leave West Point, just the people who stay. But for all we know, the people who drop out are not failures. Perhaps they just didn’t enjoy military service that much. Is it really that unthinkable that a few of the more independent-minded 18 year olds could arrive at West Point, only to make a swift exit after having a drill instructor scream in their face because a quarter didn’t bounce off the bed? It could be that plenty of (eventually highly successful) people come in with a naïve, romantic notion of military service, but quickly figure out it’s not for them. Duckworth hasn’t produced a study showing that grit predicts success, but one showing that grit predicts conformity and the ability to endure institutions. ... Duckworth has given the misleading impression that grit is what’s needed to overcome structural obstacles, even though she has only studied the people who have made it past those structural obstacles already."
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Alex Harrowell, on Schmitt and populism:
"Carl Schmitt argued that the fundamental political act was to define friends and enemies. He is an example of a long-running counter-tradition in Western political thought that fears this depoliticisation and wishes for a partisan state. Populists demand that the government takes sides among its citizens, that it acts in an explicitly partisan manner. They want to feel that the state is on their side, not because it serves the public good, but because they personally get took care of. … the response to a problem or an injustice is not necessarily to solve it, but rather to make an exception. Schmitt, again, held that this was precisely the attribute that defined sovereignty, and perhaps that is why populists are so attached to the idea of sovereignty. Populism is a system of exceptions. If you do not believe it is possible to get anything right systematically, and you do not believe in the institutions, you can still hope you might be able to get special treatment for yourself. As such, it is something of an indicator-species for a low trust society." Scott Alexander has a good throw-away comment: "Despite inflation-adjusted federal government spending quintupling in the last 50 years, there’s been minimal increase in government employees, mostly because government is now doing more of its work through private partnerships, nonprofits, and local administrations. It looks like the electorate wants both more stuff and smaller government, and politicians have “satisfied” both preferences by making government activities less visible and more proxy-administered. But proxy-administered government activities might be less efficient than just doing government activities openly with real federal employees, so arguably this hurts everybody." From the FT, an overview of the French economy after Hollande:
"The reforms have so far failed to break France’s two-tier labour market. Last year, 86.4 per cent of total hiring was into temporary jobs — and of those, 80 per cent were for contracts shorter than one month. Meanwhile, long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high: more than 45 per cent of the unemployed in France have been without a job for more than a year, the highest proportion since records began in 2003. Among the most vulnerable are young people, immigrants and the low-skilled. France’s youth unemployment rate is roughly double that of the UK and continues to rise — in contrast with a decline in most advanced economies. The story is similar for foreigners and those with lower levels of education." This two-tier labor market that excludes young people (and immigrants) is probably a key to understanding Le Pen's surprising popularity among the young. Recall that in the US and Britain, the populist xenophobes are more appealing to the old. The evolution towards a single centrist party headed by Macron, with opposition coming predominantly from the left and right extremes, seems dangerous. A grand coalition can work temporarily, but it increases the voice of the extremist parties, and makes it more likely that they’ll reach power. Scott Alexander's post on cost disease:
"Imagine if tomorrow, the price of water dectupled. Suddenly people have to choose between drinking and washing dishes. Activists argue that taking a shower is a basic human right, and grumpy talk show hosts point out that in their day, parents taught their children not to waste water. A coalition promotes laws ensuring government-subsidized free water for poor families; a Fox News investigative report shows that some people receiving water on the government dime are taking long luxurious showers. Everyone gets really angry and there’s lots of talk about basic compassion and personal responsibility and whatever but all of this is secondary to why does water costs ten times what it used to?" A summary of the many responses to the post are here. Interview with Robert Caro: "You have to write not only about the man who wields the sword, but also about the people on whom it is wielded.”
There's much talk about the "cost disease" lately - why are so many things, construction, health care, education - so much more expensive than they used to be? Following Caro's account of Moses' building projects in New York, one reason for earlier cost savings might be the disregard for people "on whom the sword is wielded." This seems to be the case in China too: lots of construction, regardless of the displacement it creates among poor people. Once you have a full review process in place that takes account of all parties' interests, things get costlier very quickly. Many other points of interest in the interview, including how LBJ's prowess as a vote counter made him a uniquely successful in passing legislation, and how spending lots of time in rural Texas was crucial for understanding him. Chris Blattman cites World Bank economist Berk Ozler:
"the global poverty gap — meaning how much it would take to get everyone above the poverty line — was just $66 billion. That is roughly what Americans spend on lottery tickets every year, and it is about half of what the world spends on foreign aid.” Well, I don’t know about you, but that paragraph makes me think that if we just were able to divert 50% of the current foreign aid budget towards cash transfers, we would eliminate extreme poverty. But, is that really true? The answer is: “not even close.” His [Berk's] reasons are here. The short answer is “it is very hard to know who the poor are, find them, and know how much to give them”. Annie Lowrey's piece in the NY Times that generated the debate is here. Vox also looks at the GiveDirectly experiment in Kenya. Gabriel Rossman reviews Dreamland by Sam Quinones:
"As more and more dealer-migrants return to Xalisco flush with cash this creates a new standard of living in the village and transforms being an impoverished sugar cane farmer from just how life goes to a status that can be rejected. But relative deprivation is too weak to explain Xalisco life, which is better characterized as competitive feasting straight out of Mauss’s The Gift. … while dealers often planned to save enough wages to capitalize a small business, they tended to dissipate their wealth in gifts to family and “the rest on beer, strip clubs, and cocaine, and walked the streets of Xalisco for a week or two the object of other men’s envy” (261). This envy is something Quinones emphasizes repeatedly and the way it is formed by public feasting and is sublimated into a need to reciprocate so as to restore honor, which in turn creates the labor supply for black tar heroin retailing ... people cited this tiny publication because they wanted to believe it as it created a permission structure for prescribing effective but dangerous drugs and pharmaceutical detailing exploited this …
Claude Fischer writes:
"a pair of studies in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science (here and here) make the case that seeming conflicts between Democratic and Republican survey respondents on facts–say, on the unemployment rate, or on crime trends–are best understood not as expressions of different realities, but rather as expressions of identities. Many partisans take factual questions posed by pollsters as opportunities to declare who they are and whose side they are on. For instance, partisan respondents describe the economy as booming when their party holds the White House and as miserable when their party doesn’t. However, if pollsters offer respondents money for a correct answer (or to admit that they do not know the answer), the big gaps between Democrats’ and Republicans’ replies narrow greatly. Identity and emotion lie behind the answers at least as much as understandings of the facts." Timothy Taylor on parental leave:
"Juhn and McCue write: The experience of Scandinavian countries produces an interesting perspective. While the expansion of family policies may have increased female labor force participation, much of the increase was in part-time work, and women in these countries were less likely to be in management and professional occupations than women in the United States. Indeed, the gender gap in Sweden is larger at the upper end of the earnings distribution, consistent with the notion of underlying factors leading to a “glass ceiling” that limits women from advancing. ... The persistence of children-related wage gaps in these countries with very generous family policies casts doubt on the notion that these policies constitute a panacea that will reduce the gender gap. It is plausible that adopting family policies and other programs that support working families as they go about the business of bringing up children ... may improve family and children’s well-being. But it is not clear that such policies narrow the gender gap in earnings. ... I [Taylor] was struck by this figure showing the labor force participation rates of US women before and after a birth, depending on whether they took paid leave, unpaid leave, or quit their job. The gap between paid and unpaid leave is not very large, while the gap between unpaid leave and quits is much larger. My interpretation would be that distinction between whether a mother has a job to which she wishes to return--and thus whether she takes unpaid leave or quits--is more important than the gap between paid and unpaid leave." |
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January 2018
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