Walker

Walker joined Difficult Run as an editor in August 2013. He graduated from the University of North Texas with an MBA in Strategic Management and a BBA in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. He's currently a grad student in Government at Johns Hopkins University. He has been published in SquareTwo, BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue, Graziadio Business Review, and Economic Affairs. He also contributed to Julie Smith's (ed.) 'As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture'. His other online writing can be found at Worlds Without End and Times & Seasons. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife.

Recent Hate Crimes: What to Expect

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News and social media outlets have been reporting numerous incidents of racism, hate crimes, and racially-charged harassment since the Tuesday election outcome.[ref]There have even been reports of politically-motivated violence against Trump supporters as well as violent protests. But so far these reports are rare.[/ref] According to USA Today, “There indeed has been a spike in the number of reports of such incidents, say representatives for two organizations that track such occurrences. A representative for one group, in fact, said the rise appears to be even worse that what was took place immediately after the terror attacks in 2001.” One of these organizations–the Southern Poverty Law Center–“says it has logged more than 200 complaints since the election, and while it could not provide a figure for the average number of complaints it takes in each day, Cohen assured that the number is much larger than what is typical.” Confidently declaring that the number is above average while being unable to provide an average to compare it to is rather unhelpful and possibly just a case of availability bias (they may have a more detailed analysis in the next couple weeks). Furthermore, there is the need to distinguish between legitimate and fabricated complaints.[ref]Or sincere complaints based on misinterpretations or lack of information.[/ref]

Nonetheless, what can we realistically assume? Some of us here at Difficult Run have compared the current American situation to the political climate that produced Brexit. Looking at the aftermath of the EU referendum may give us an idea of what to expect in the next couple months following Trump’s victory. According to the statistics released by the Home Office in October, racist or religious abuse incidents increased by 41% in England and Wales in the months following the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Racially or religiously aggravated offences record by the police (graphic)

A more detailed description within the report

shows the monthly number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police in the last four years. There is an increase in these offences recorded in June 2016, followed by an even sharper increase in July 2016. The number of aggravated offences recorded then declined in August, but remained at a higher level than prior to the EU Referendum. These increases fit the widely reported pattern of an increase in hate crime following the EU referendum. Whilst January to May 2016 follows a similar level of hate crime to 2015, the number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police in July 2016 was 41% higher than in July 2015. The sharp increase in offences is not replicated in the non-racially or religiously aggravated equivalent offences (pgs. 18-19, Figures 1A & 2A).

Without more evidence, it is impossible to determine if the hate crimes have continued to drop to average levels. It’s worth pointing out that when one looks at the trends from 2013-2016, it appears that the offenses go up during the summer and tend to decline as winter approaches. Some evidence suggests a correlation between hotter weather and crime, though this would not fully explain the significant jump we see in 2016. If anything, hotter weather added fuel to the fire (or vice versa). This could mean that with winter approaching, the American backlash will be comparatively smaller and shorter.

All this, of course, is conjecture. Americans will have to wait on the FBI’s 2016 hate crime stats to know for sure. Still, the spike in the UK following Brexit could possibly serve as a realistic model of what to expect in the next couple months: a short-lived, but abrupt increase in racially or religiously aggravated offenses followed by a steep decline.

Let’s hope it dies out even sooner.

The Benefits of Healthy Marriages

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A recent post at the IFS’s Family Studies blog has a nice summary of the individual and social benefits of healthy marriages. For those who have kept up with me over the years, this is a subject I spend quite a bit of time researching. Nonetheless, it’s nice to have it all in one spot. Here’s the list:

  • “[T]he presence or absence of marriage impacts economic well-being, particularly for women and children. Children raised by married parents are significantly less likely to experience poverty, whereas single-mother families are over five times as likely to be poor. Additionally, the majority of homeless families are headed by unmarried mothers.”
  • “A study by IFS Senior Fellow W. Bradford Wilcox, Robert Lerman, and Joseph Price found that larger shares of married-parent families at the state level are linked to greater economic mobility, higher family incomes, and less child poverty.”
  • “[M]arried-parent families boost the academic prospects of students, especially boys. Research has consistently confirmed that a child’s home environment (family structure, parental education, and family income) is more closely associated with student success than school resources and spending. And a new study by Wilcox and Nicholas Zill found that “the share of families headed by married couples is a more powerful predictor of high school graduation and school suspension rates than are income, race, and ethnicity in Florida.””
  • “Married-parent families also improve the safety of women and children and communities. In general, unmarried women, including those in cohabiting relationships, are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than married women. And hands down, the safest place for a child to grow up is with his or her own married mother and father, while a child living with an unmarried mother and live-in boyfriend is the most vulnerable to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. In addition to safer families, violent crime is significantly less common in communities and states with larger shares of married-parent families.”
  • “We know…that girls who grow up in single-mother families are more likely to engage in early sexual activity and to experience a teen pregnancy. Conversely, children who grow up in a married-parent family are more likely to form lasting marriages as adults and to raise their own children within a married union.”
  • “We also know that family fragmentation, including divorce, is especially harmful to children. Although the suffering sometimes manifests itself in less visible ways, it deserves to be acknowledged. Importantly, the harms of divorce are not just seen in lower income families; research shows that even privileged kids suffer when families break down.”
  • “Finally, the growing marriage divide between the college-educated and the poor and working class is at least part of what’s driving economic and social inequality in our nation. Because the college-educated are more likely to get married and less likely to divorce than less-educated Americans, they are more likely to reap the benefits of marriage, including better education, higher incomes, and family stability for their kids. Meanwhile, marriage is in retreat among the less educated and working class, who are more likely to be raising children outside of marriage, and to suffer the negative effects of family instability, including poverty. Bridging the marriage divide is an important part of efforts to boost economic mobility for all Americans.”

This is why marriage is still the gold standard. Check out the rest to see their pro-family policy proposals.

The Day the Revolution Began: Pepperdine Lectures by N.T. Wright

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for the day the revolution beganI’ve been a fan of New Testament scholar N.T. Wright’s work for the last several years. His Surprised by Hope even earned a much-coveted spot among my Honorable Mentions on my Most Influential Books list a couple years ago. His popular works have a way of reaching all audiences with insightful, erudite scholarship. His newest book–The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion–is no different. Mormons have had an uneasy relationship with the symbol of the cross, which is odd when one considers how frequently it is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (e.g., 1 Ne. 11:33, Jacob 1:8, 2 Ne. 9:18, 3 Ne. 27:14-15, Ether 4:1). Some of our atonement theories adopt a pseudo-scientific framework in order to work out the mechanics of what we call The Atonement. Unfortunately, our understanding of the Atonement is often divorced from the context of scripture. For example, we often fail to recognize that the terms atonement, redemption, and salvation have very different meanings and contexts within scripture: priestly/cultic, kinship, political/martial. Wright attempts to place Christ’s crucifixion within the broader context of Israel’s covenant and deliverance and ultimately the grand narrative of creation itself.

In Wright’s view, Jesus’ sacrifice is too often transformed into a reductive “works-contract” theory in which Jesus takes the punishment for our sins so that we can go to heaven. In short, Christians have reduced the Atonement to merely address personal morality (important, but not the whole story) and in turn have cast Israel’s God as a pagan deity that requires punishment and sacrifice in order for us to enter into a Platonized afterlife. So what is it really about? Wright explains,

First, it seems clear to me that once we replace the common vision of Christian hope (“going to heaven”) with the biblical vision of “new heavens and new earth,” there will be direct consequences for how we understand both the human problem and the divine solution. Second, in the usual model, what stops us from “going to heaven” is sin, and sin is dealt with (somehow) on the cross. In the biblical model, what stops us from being genuine humans (bearing the divine image, acting as the “royal priesthood”) is not only sin, but the idolatry that underlies it. The idols have gained power, the power humans ought to be exercising in God’s world; idolatrous humans have handed it over to them. What is required, for God’s new world and for renewed humans within it is for the power of the idols to be broken. Since sin, the consequence of idolatry, is what keeps human in thrall to the nongods of the world, dealing with sin has a more profound effect than simply releasing humans to go to heaven. It releases humans from the grip of the idols, so they can worship the living God and be renewed according to his image…In the Bible, God’s plan to deal with sin, and so to break the power of idols and bring new creation to his world, is focused on the people of Israel. In the New Testament, this focus is narrowed to Israel’s representative, the Messiah. He stands in for Israel and so fulfills the divine plan to restore creation itself. [ref]Wright, The Day the Revolution Began. Kindle ed.[/ref]

For Wright, the fall of Adam and Eve was their failure to fulfill their vocation as God’s image-bearers in the world. The covenant with Abram (Abraham) established his family (the eventual nation of Israel) as the vehicle by which creation would be set right. Yet, Israel also failed in their vocation and experienced exile just as their primal parents. However, God was faithful to his covenant with Israel despite their faithlessness. It was through Jesus–Israel’s true representative–that the covenant was fulfilled and the curse (for example, see Deut. 30:15-20) of exile, condemnation, and death was exhausted. Through the cross, idolatry, the “principalities…powers…the rulers of the darkness of this world [and] spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12), were defeated.

The book is theologically rich and thought-provoking. Check out Wright’s lectures on the subject at Pepperdine University below:

2016 NAS Report on Immigration: More of the Same

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The National Academy of Sciences released a new report in September that “provides a comprehensive assessment of economic and demographic trends of U.S. immigration over the past 20 years, its impact on the labor market and wages of native-born workers, and its fiscal impact at the national, state, and local levels.” Here are the highlights from the press release:

  • Effects on wages: “When measured over a period of 10 years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of native workers overall is very small.”
  • Effects on employment levels: “There is little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers.”
  • Effects of high-skilled immigrants: “Several studies have found a positive impact of skilled immigration on the wages and employment of both college- and non-college-educated natives. Such findings are consistent with the view that skilled immigrants are often complementary to native-born workers; that spillovers of wage-enhancing knowledge and skills occur as a result of interactions among workers; and that skilled immigrants innovate sufficiently to raise overall productivity.”
  • The role of immigrants in consumer demand: “Immigrants’ contributions to the labor force reduce the prices of some goods and services, which benefits consumers in a range of sectors, including child care, food preparation, house cleaning and repair, and construction. Moreover, new arrivals and their descendants are a source of demand in key sectors such as housing, which benefits residential real estate markets.”
  • Impacts on economic growth: “Immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging workforce and reduced consumption by older residents. In addition, the infusion of human capital by high-skilled immigrants has boosted the nation’s capacity for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change.”
  • Fiscal impact of first-generation immigrants (1994-2013): “Annual cross-sectional data reveal that, compared with the native-born, first-generation immigrants contributed less in taxes during working ages because they were, on average, less educated and earned less. However, this pattern reverses at around age 60, when the native-born (except for the children of immigrants) were consistently more expensive to government on a per-capita basis because of their greater use of social security benefits.”
  • Fiscal impact of the children of immigration (1994-2013): “Reflecting their slightly higher educational achievement, as well as their higher wages and salaries, the second generation contributed more in taxes on a per capita basis during working ages than did their parents or other native-born Americans.”

I’ve written about the economic literature of immigration before and the NAS findings are pretty consistent with the ones I shared previously. This report could’ve used more exposure, especially given the outcome of Tuesday’s election.

Unfortunately, I doubt it would’ve mattered.

How Atypical Was This Election?

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Donald J. Trump is President Elect of the United States of America.[ref]Anyone who has kept up with my posts over the last few months can probably guess that I’m not happy about it.[/ref]

The predictions were off. Way off (The polls themselves may not have been.)*****

Numerous commentators–from the professional to the everyday Facebook warrior–have put forth various explanations based on the exit polls, including change-seeking voters, gender gaps in the voting blocs, the white working class, wealthy whites, anti-Clinton voters, anti-PC voters, sexist voters, racist voters, etc.

There’s probably a grain of truth in all of these explanations (some more than others). But if we just look at the general numbers, what can we say for sure? Despite early claims of high voter turnout, that just wasn’t the case.**

2016 Election[ref]Obviously, they are still counting, so this is subject to change.[/ref]
Trump Clinton Total Turnout
59,698,506 59,926,386 119,624,892
2012 Election
Romney Obama
60,933,504 65,915,795 126,849,299
2008 Election
McCain Obama
59,948,323 69,498,516 129,446,839
2004 Election
Bush Kerry
62,040,610 59,028,444 121,069,054

Not only was voter turnout low in general, but even Republican turnout was slightly lower* than in past years. It was significantly lower for Democrats.

Given the racially-charged rhetoric and sexual misconduct this election season, how did Trump do among minorities compared to other Republican presidential candidates?

% Trump Romney McCain Bush 04 Bush 00 Average
Whites 58 59 55 58 55 57
Blacks 8 6 4 11 9 7.6
Hispanics 29 27 31 44 35 33.2
Asians 29 26 35 43 41 34.8
Other 37 38 31 40  No data 36.5
Women 42 44 43 48 44 44.2

A few things that jump out at me:[ref]I originally looked at the last 25 years or so and included the two Bill Clinton elections. But given Perot’s relatively strong showing in both those elections compared to more recent third-party runs, I decided that the addition of the two 90s elections might create a misleading impression.[/ref]

  • Trump had higher support among Hispanics than Romney, though both fell woefully short of McCain and Bush. Nonetheless, the bump in Hispanic support is surprising.
  • Trump had higher support among blacks than both Romney and McCain and ended up above average for the last 5 elections.
  • Trump had higher support among Asians than Romney, though still short of McCain and especially Bush.
  • Trump had the lowest support of women of the last five elections (can’t imagine why…). Nonetheless, it’s not drastically lower than most of the other candidates, which may astonish some.
  • Trump actually had lower support among whites than Romney and ended up only slightly above average when considering the last 5 elections. In other words, the white support for Republicans has been pretty consistent.

There is much more that could and should be considered when parsing the numbers.[ref]For example, I mentioned an excellent Gallup study last month that is worth exploring.[/ref] Groups aren’t monolithic and factors like income, education, etc. are necessary in order to paint a more accurate picture. However, pundits pointing out that, say, white people–rich/poor, urban/rural, college/no college, whatever–supported the Republican nominee is hardly a shocker. As conservative writer David French put it, “White voters responded mainly by voting in the same or lesser numbers as the last three presidential elections. That’s not a “whitelash,” it’s consistency.”**** It increasingly looks like what some outlets have been saying is correct: Democrats stayed home.*** While further analysis may tell a different story, a lot of this looks like pretty normal partisanship. One party just didn’t show up.**

*Update (11/14): Trump currently sits at 60,265,858, while Clinton is still ahead with 60,839,922. This puts Trump’s turnout slightly above McCain’s numbers, while Clinton falls woefully short of Obama. Some are projecting that overall turnout may actually surpass 2012, though others are claiming a 20-year low. We won’t know for several more weeks. Check out Monica’s post today on the popular vote.

**Update (11/15): From The Washington Post: “It’s a very odd result. Turnout up slightly in terms of raw numbers, but down as a percentage of those eligible. A likely drop in votes for the Democrat and a spike in votes for third party candidates, with the Republican holding steady. More votes for the Democrat, but the Republican becoming president.” Looks like my claims about low voter turnout were incorrect, but my main point about low turnout among Democrats seems to be holding up.

***Update (11/18): Looks like the case for low Democrat turnout is getting stronger and stronger.

****Update (12/02): Trump didn’t flip the Rust Belt. Democrats lost it.

*****Update (12/21): Vox has an excellent write-up now that the votes have been counted: “Voter turnout in 2016 was actually closer to 58.9 percent, slightly higher than 2012, according to data from the US Elections Project. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes — more than Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Richard Nixon in 1968. She lost the election by 107,000 votes in three states…Clinton, the “unpopular” candidate, was able to turn out voters — just not where it mattered. Democrats lost the presidential election in three states; Clinton lost in Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes and in Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes. Votes afforded to Green Party candidate Jill Stein in either state were more than Trump’s margin of victory. Trump won Pennsylvania by a slightly bigger margin, surpassing Clinton by a bit more than 44,000 votes…Clinton’s ability to mobilize voters was in already-blue states — states like California and New York.”

Update (1/9): The title of this new FiveThirtyEight post–“Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton the Election“–says it all.

The Welfare State & Social Capital

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Samuel Hammond, the Poverty and Welfare Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center, has an interesting post at LearnLiberty.org on the welfare state. He describes the role religion has played in social assistance, explaining that “philanthropy had to be earned through reciprocal relationships rooted in trust and goodwill. Churches relied on their member’s contributions and self-sacrifice to measure their strength of commitment to Christian ideals and bond the community together.” But then he points out how religion’s social assistance “began to unravel in the early 20th century”:

First, the social spending of the New Deal crowded out significant amounts of church-based welfare. By one estimate, New Deal spending caused church charitable spending to fall by 30 percent.

Then came President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty,” and with it the creation of Medicaid and the expansion of food stamps and other income supplements targeted at the poor. Spending on Medicaid and Social Security rose exponentially after 1990, following a landmark Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded eligibility and a misconceived federal budget that promised to match state spending on low-income hospitals dollar for dollar, essentially turning Medicaid into a money pump.

Data shows that commitment to religious community in the United States has been steadily decreasing, and in a way that seems correlated to spending on public welfare. Since 1990, America’s non-religious population has grown from about 5 percent to over 20 percent and is climbing. A comparison of U.S. state rankings reveals a striking negative relationship between the generosity of the welfare system and the size of the self-identified “very religious” population.

So does the welfare state lead to a decline in social capital? When we look at the data from Europe, the “evidence by–and–large contradicts the U.S. narrative. Indeed, empirical studies tend to talk of welfare being “trust enabling”. Consider Sweden, which has one of most comprehensive welfare states in the world but also ranks near the top in measures of social capital.” So why the difference?:

The key factor appears to be the high level of decentralization in many social programs. For example, inSweden delivering healthcare is the responsibility of County Councils, while welfare, disability, and programs for the elderly are controlled by municipalities. Swedes also have very high rates of union membership. Yet instead of being confrontational with the employer, the norm is mutual advantage. In turn, unions are entrusted to manage stuff that in the U.S. would be cynically regulated, like unemployment insurance and parental leave. 

Economists extol the virtue of this kind of decentralization, known as subsidiarity, for reasons of asymmetric information. That’s just jargon for the truism that, in tight communities, everybody knows everybody. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that 75% of Swedes report attending “study circles,” 10% on a regular basis. These are regular meetings of a dozen or so people organized by larger voluntary associations that “range from the study of foreign languages to cooking to the European Union question.”

Elsewhere, Hammond proposes three ideas for decentralizing the U.S. welfare state:

  1. Medicaid wavers: “The first is the 1915(c) Home & Community-Based Waiver, which allows states to provide long term care under Medicaid through community based settings. An example might be an individual with severe intellectual or developmental disabilities. Traditionally, under Medicaid the individual will receive long term care through an agency and may even become institutionalized. Using the HCBS waiver, the eligible individual can self-direct their care from top to bottom, appoint a friend or family member as caretaker, and take control over their living environment. In some cases, the individual may even become the de facto employer, with the aid of a fiscal intermediary to handle payroll and other tasks beyond their capacities. So not only does the waiver redirect program delivery in a way that re-engages family and community, it also greatly enhances individual autonomy and self-determination.”
  2. Prevention programs: “A second, more recent example, is the Department of Health and Human Services’ initiative to channel Medicare spending on diabetes prevention through local YMCAs. The program launched as part of an innovation grant under the Affordable Care Act and is still being independently evaluated, but initial findings are promising. It’s a perfect case study in why community matters. By bringing pre-diabetic participants under one local roof, any direct educational benefits are reinforced by the peer-effects of other participants who may begin to form a loose network, check in on how well each is holding to their new diets, and so on. The best part is that, in theory, peer networks can persist long after the initial intervention. That means if this particular program were ended its effects may continue to reproduce overtime. The “cultural channel” for social policy is thus underrated by many progressives who automatically associate the enforcement of social norms through shame and stigma with conformity or oppression. Yet such social structures also serve as robust mechanisms for enhancing an individual’s self-control.”
  3. Universal basic income: “[Charles] Murray argues that [a lump sum transfer] only works if all or most other transfer programs are eliminated. It is in essence a strategy for eliminating the “hidden information” problem of poverty. With a basic income deposited monthly, it is no longer credible for someone who gambles their stipend away to claim total desperation, since their income stream is common knowledge. The remaining alternative is to appeal to friends and family. With the incentives set just right, the economies of scale and insurance benefits of pooling resources could lead to a dramatic community revival; however, Murray’s theory has yet to be put to the test.”[ref]See my previous posts on UBI along with economist Tyler Cowen’s latest Bloomberg article.[/ref]

This is why conservatives and libertarians need to “declare peace on the safety net” and seek out innovative ways to make it more effective and efficient.

O Canada: Bastion of Western Liberty?

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Over the years, I’ve heard people of a certain political persuasion argue that the United States should be more like their northern neighbor Canada. And over the years, I’ve enthusiastically agreed, but mostly for different reasons. A recent article in The Economist captures a few of those reasons:

Donald Trump, the grievance-mongering Republican nominee, would build a wall on Mexico’s border and rip up trade agreements. Hillary Clinton, the probable winner on November 8th, would be much better on immigration, but she has renounced her former support for ambitious trade deals. Britain, worried about immigrants and globalisation, has voted to march out of the European Union. Angela Merkel flung open Germany’s doors to refugees, then suffered a series of political setbacks. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing populist, is the favourite to win the first round of France’s presidential election next year.

In this depressing company of wall-builders, door-slammers and drawbridge-raisers, Canada stands out as a heartening exception. It happily admits more than 300,000 immigrants a year, nearly 1% of its population—a higher proportion than any other big, rich country—and has done so for two decades. Its charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has been in office a year, has welcomed some 33,000 Syrian refugees, far more than America has. Bucking the protectionist mood, Canada remains an eager free-trader. It was dismayed by the EU’s struggle to overcome a veto by Walloons on signing a “comprehensive” trade agreement that took seven years to negotiate (see Charlemagne). Under Mr Trudeau, Canada is trying to make amends for its shameful treatment of indigenous peoples, and is likely to become the first Western country to legalise recreational cannabis on a national level. 

The article acknowledges that Canada’s geographic location, history, and the like are important factors for its political decisions above, but it nonetheless makes an effort to find against the populist rhetoric within its own borders:

Canada not only welcomes newcomers but works hard to integrate them. Its charter of rights and freedoms proclaims the country’s “multicultural heritage”. Not every country will fuse diversity and national identity in the same way that Canada does. Indeed, French-speaking Quebec has its own way of interpreting multiculturalism, which gives priority to the province’s distinct culture. But other countries can learn from the spirit of experimentation that Canada brings to helping immigrants find employment and housing. Its system of private sponsorship, in which groups of citizens take responsibility for supporting refugees during their first year, not only helps them adapt but encourages society at large to make them welcome. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on other countries to copy it.

Canada has been managing its public finances conservatively for the past 20 years or so. Now in charge of a sluggish economy, Mr Trudeau can afford to give growth a modest lift by spending extra money on infrastructure. His government has given a tax cut to the middle class and raised rates for the highest earners to help pay for it. These economic policies deserve to “go viral”, the head of the IMF has said. Canada has a further economic lesson to impart in how it protects people hurt by globalisation. Compared with America, its publicly financed health system lessens the terror of losing a job; it also provides more financial support and training to people who do. And its policy of “equalisation” gives provincial and local governments the means to maintain public services at a uniform level across the country.[ref]Large welfare systems have pros and cons when it comes to economic growth, innovation, and entrepreneurship.[/ref]

Perhaps most important, this mixture of policies—liberal on trade and immigration, activist in shoring up growth and protecting globalisation’s losers—is a reminder that the centrist formula still works, if politicians are willing to champion it. 

Of course, it’s important to point out that Canada “remains a poorer, less productive and less innovative economy than America’s.”[ref]However, scares over a “stagnating middle-class” in Canada are just as overblown as they are here in America.[/ref] Trade among provinces is still problematic and the “peace, order and good government” that is “enshrined in its constitution” may be “inadequate without an infusion of American individualism.” But when Canada outpaces the U.S. in economic freedom,[ref]Pg. 8.[/ref] it may be worth looking at the things they get right.

Adverse Effects of Family Instability: Possible Gender Differences

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“When marriage breaks down,” writes sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, “boys are more likely than girls to act up. From delinquency to incarceration and schooling to employment, a mounting body of research suggests boys are affected more by family breakdown than girls. As Richard Reeves, the co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families, recently put it, when it comes to thriving in difficult family environments, girls may be more like dandelions, while boys may be more like orchids.” He points to

research by economist David Autor and his colleagues [that] indicates that one major reason why boys are falling behind girls in school is that they are affected more by fatherlessness than girls when it comes to their behavior and academic progress. The figure below, taken from Autor’s new research in Florida, indicates that the gender gap in school absences is larger for boys from unmarried, father-absent homes than for boys born to married parents. Likewise, the gender gap in school suspensions and high school graduation in Florida is also smaller for boys from married homes. 

 

auterfigure

“Similarly,” he continues,

economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have found that young men (at age 30) are less likely to be employed if they come from single-parent families than from married-parent families. Moreover, as the figure below indicates, young men from lower-income families do relatively worse than their female peers if they hail from single-parent families. But young men from married, lower-income families do relatively better than their female peers. In other words, Chetty’s new research suggests that young men’s labor force participation is affected more negatively by single-parenthood than young women’s employment prospects, especially when both are raised in a lower-income family.

 

chettyfigure

However, “it’s also possible that family instability and single parenthood affect girls and young women in ways that are not directly related to antisocial behavior, which is a classic male expression of emotional turmoil. In other words, perhaps both boys and girls are orchids in the face of family instability, but their vulnerability is simply expressed in different ways.” Wilcox then draws on the 2016 American Family Survey conducted by YouGov for Deseret News/BYU. The findings?

  • “[A]dult women are much less likely to report that their current relationship is “in trouble” if they come from a stable married home, and the advantage they enjoy from stability is clearly larger than the advantage that man from a stable home enjoy in this domain.”
  • “[T]oday’s women are much less likely to find themselves in a financial crisis if they hail from an intact, married family, as the figure below indicates. If the results of this survey are replicated in other data sets, they suggest that women may be affected by family instability more than men when it comes to their relationship success and freedom from economic distress.”

 

relationshiptroubleupdated

economiccrisisupdated

Wilcox says that the “survey suggests women have greater difficulty in forging and maintaining strong relationships as adults when they have been exposed to family instability or dysfunction as children. This, in turn, may lead to more relationship “trouble” and also to a higher incidence of single parenthood as adults. A higher incidence of single parenthood, in turn, may help explain why women with unstable families are more likely to report financial distress. Finally, if the absence of a stable, married home has a bigger impact on girls’ future relationship trajectories than boys, it may also explain why the gap in relationship trouble and financial distress by family stability looks bigger for women than men in this new survey.”

Poor Economics: TED Talk by Esther Duflo

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for poor economicsIf readers couldn’t tell, economics and the condition of the global poor are topics dear to my heart. Overall, I believe that globalization–particularly free trade and liberal immigration–benefits the least well off. But this largely looks at the problem from a broad, institutional standpoint. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo looks at the nitty-gritty details of the world’s poorest, providing the on-the-ground data necessary for constructing successful anti-poverty policies. The authors find five key factors that keep the poor trapped in poverty:

  1. Information deficiency: the poor often lack information, such as the benefits of immunization or early education.
  2. Lack of access: the poor lack access to things taken for granted by the non-poor: clean water, financial institutions, etc. They therefore bear the responsibility for all of these aspects.
  3. Missing markets: the conditions for favorable markets to emerge are often lacking, thus depriving the poor of their benefits.
  4. The Three ‘I’s: it’s not conspiratorial elites, but the ignorance, ideology and inertia of policymakers that lead to failing policies.
  5. Self-fulfilling prophecies: low expectations of both politicians and the poor themselves provide no incentive to improve and thus create self-fulfilling prophecies.

The book was eye-opening to say the least. You can see a TED talk by Esther Duflo below.

Fixed-Pie Fallacies and Tax Loopholes

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Closing tax “loopholes” has been a major talking point of both presidential candidates as of late. But this kind of language distorts the conversation from the get go. As columnist David Harsanyi explains,

Basically, all of life is a giant loophole until [politicians] come up with a way to regulate or tax it. In its economic usage, “loophole”—probably more of a dysphemism—creates the false impression that people are getting away with breaking the law. It’s a way to skip the entire debate portion of the conversation and get right to the accusation.

So when Hillary Clinton promises to close the loophole of corporate inversion, what she means to say is that Democrats disapprove of this completely legal thing that corporations do to shield their money from the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Loopholes are like giveaways, monies that D.C. has yet to double and triple tax.

…But Bernie Sanders, bless him, just skips the entire perception game and just comes out with it by tweeting: “The offshore tax haven network isn’t something that we need to reform or refine. It’s a form of legalized tax fraud that must end.”

“Legalized tax fraud” is a revealing statement about the progressive belief system. For progressives, taxation is moral. So when you fail to pay an imaginary tax that doesn’t exist but Democrats think should, you are by default engaged in fraud. The law has just to catch up with sin.

Megan McArdle has lamented the “regrettable tendency” of legislators “to view their citizens, and particularly their corporate citizens, as a species of tax cattle.” She points out that the first-time-homebuyer tax credit is morally no different than tax-exempt municipal bonds or your 401(k). She points out that if we were to, say, get rid of tax-free bonds, “[i]t would be more expensive for local governments to borrow money. Rich people are paying for that tax benefit by accepting a lower interest rate on municipal bonds than they would if they had to pay taxes on that money. The net effect is a federal subsidy for local spending. If we remove the deduction, local governments will find their budgets pinched[.]” She also points to charitable deductions and corporate tax rate shopping at the local and international level. “Unless,” she writes, “you want the kind of government enjoyed by the majority of the people of the world — and to ship most of your money to those places, while getting little in return — then stop complaining that other countries exist, and that their existence makes it hard to keep the local tax cattle properly penned in.”

When groups like Americans for Tax Fairness complain about tax “loopholes” and demand that we should “end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs and profits offshore,” they are ignoring the points above as well as the following evidence. Harvard’s Mihir Desai has done extensive work on this subject. “When American firms grow abroad,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal,

Image result for fixed pie economicsthey also grow domestically, as demonstrated by research I conducted with C. Fritz Foley of Harvard and James R. Hines Jr. of the University of Michigan (published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2009).

The data do not support the crude, fixed-pie intuition that firms either invest abroad or at home. Ten percent growth in American firms’ foreign investment is associated with 3% growth in their domestic investment. And when firms grow abroad, their domestic exports and R&D activities grow especially…Vilifying or penalizing American businesses for their global operations will only lead them to consider leaving the U.S.—or consider being bought by foreign companies. Such moves would hurt America by removing valuable headquarter jobs.

The fixed-pie fallacy breeds protectionism. And protectionism manifests itself in many forms.