Monday, May 18, 2015

Sorry...More on Fishtown

Some people just won't let a thing be.

On Saturday, I was unable to attend the annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby because it conflicted with Tom Nascenzi's graduation party.

To enter this derby, you must make a sculpture and it must be able to move and that movement must be generated by human power.  After that, you're pretty much on your own.  You display your sculpture by driving through a course through the streets of Philadelphia.  For reasons not entirely clear, the course ends at a big mudpit.

Anyway, here is the course:


As you can see, the route includes Fishtown -- shown at the bottom.  In fact, Ellen tells me that, even though it's called the Kensington Kenetic Sculpture Derby, most of the route is in Fishtown and it should be re-named.

It all takes me back to Charles Murray's Coming Apart.  Check out the video below.  After seeing it, I just can't imagine missing the mark more widely than using Fishtown as a symbol of white working-class malaise.  If nothing else, where were Murray's editors?  If this is America at rock bottom, I'd say we're doing pretty well.








30 comments:

james said...

What you're seeing in Fishtown are the effects of gentrification—which largely benefits the young and well-off who work white collar jobs. The very first scene of that video is a close up of skinny jeans and fixed-gear bikes, the universal signs of hipsterdom. Thirty seconds in and you see a row of brand new luxury apartments—again aimed at the affluent. It's Williamsburg Brooklyn in miniature.

Murray's book by contrast is largely about declining conditions for working class whites in these towns.

This is a process that's been repeating itself in a lot of cities. Hollowed out, dumpy neighborhoods decimated by job loss are reclaimed by creative 20-somethings and adventurous gays.

These places are fantastic for the 24 year old graphic designer whose parents subsidize his $2300 Williamsburg studio, but not so great for the welder who used to live there.

James R said...

I realize Myk wants to stand up for Ellen's hometown, Fishtown, and, from the kinetic parade, that seems totally justified. But James' point and the point of Charles Murray's Coming Apart (I haven't read it, yet.) seems to be the gulf between rich and poor and what to do about it.

Apparently Fishtown was a mess—before Ellen and other graduates looking for cheap rent moved there. The same was true of Lawrenceville in Pittsburgh. It was arguably the worst neighborhood in Pittsburgh—a dysfunctional white neighborhood. Charles Murray believes (I still haven't read it) that more money thrown at these neighborhood won't help, but a return to family, vocation, community and religion will.

Are Ellen and friends promoting family, hard work, community and religious values? Are these values being absorbed by the natives? And, if absorbed, have those values helped?
Those are a lot of questions. We know the young graduates are bringing money. Has that helped? Specifically, have the previous residents of Fishtown turned their lives around for the better?

james said...
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james said...

Yeah, you got it Jim. He basically says that well-off liberals embrace some very traditional values: education, community, marriage, even religion. And yet they are reluctant to insist that more Americans follow in their footsteps.

The most common criticism of Coming Apart is that Charles Murray didn't offer any concrete solutions to the increasing segregation between social classes. Well, maybe mandatory poker games.

To be fair, Murray has said that at his most pessimistic, he doesn't believe the vast gulf between classes can be bridged. Not when it's so easy for the elite to sequester themselves from the rest of the country.

Big Myk said...

Well, it turns out that both Jameses are right: once a longtime working-class community, Fishtown is now undergoing significant gentrification. Even Murray acknowledges that the present Fishtown bears little resemblance to the the working-class culture he described. 'Coming Apart' and Fishtown. Fishtown has even made the New York Times travel section. A Creative Renaissance in Philadelphia’s Fishtown.

So, this reduces my complaint considerably. I just sort of wish that Murray had given his readers some kind of update. Murray's information was at least 10 years out-of-date. Coming Apart was published in 2012 when the neighborhood was well into its upswing. The data, according to Murray, was current to 2000. Couldn't he have let us know that things had changed?

And James the younger was not the first to compare Fishtown with Williamsburg: New York City's Next Williamsburg: Fishtown. Indeed, there has been a steady migration of New Yorkers out of the city in search of lower rents. Many end up in Philadelphia and Fishtown. See Leaving Town and Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough. The result is that all those relocated New York creative types build kenetic sculptures to drive into mud pits in Fishtown.

As to Jim's question about how the new neighbors are affecting Fishtown, here's one report: Gentrification in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood causes tension between original residents and newcomers.

Finally, while I recognize that I have no business commenting on Murray's book because I have not read it, I am happy to share a lengthy (five parts) and severe criticism of the book by Murray's former colleague, David "axis of evil" Frum. Coming Apart: The Review.

james said...

I think it’d be fun to have a book club where no one reads the book before discussing it—which now that I think about it, was how a lot of discussion sections in college were run.

Thanks for the Frum links. I won’t try to tackle all five parts, or even disagree with Frum on a lot of these criticisms (part four criticizes Murray for a lack of concrete policy fixes, other than the pretty lame-sounding exhortation that the elite be more vocal about the virtues that lead to their success).

Frum blames economic conditions for the deterioration of virtuous behavior among the lower classes. Murray insists he doesn’t talk about causes for one good reason:

“Asked about Frum’s suggestion that the cause must be global since, as Frum contests, what Murray is describing is a global trend, Murray said he doesn’t talk about causes in the book.

“Where in the book do I ever talk about cause of the ‘New Lower Class?’” he asked.

“I have one chapter which talks about the formation of the ‘New Upper Class’ where I do refer to causes. Nowhere in the entire discussion of the formation of the ‘New Lower Class’ do I address causes, and there is a good reason for doing that — that I want someone who is a liberal to be able to read this book without throwing it against the wall.”

I do think this book is written relatively apolitically. And I do think it’s eye-opening, even if you disagree with its conclusions.

James R said...
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James R said...

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Your first line is a classic.

Big Myk said...

You don't have to read a book to have an opinion.

--Tom Townsend, from the movie Metropolitan

james said...

Great movie. Now there's an isolated upper class...

Big Myk said...

I agree -- one of my all-time favorites. Walt Stillman never really achieved the quality of Metropolitan in his later movies. I was slightly disappointed in both Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco. There are a lot of great lines in Metropolitan, but perhaps the best were these:

Tom Townsend: [pulls out a gun after Rick punches him] Get back, Rick!
Rick Von Sloneker: Jesus, he's got a gun!
Charlie Black: I warn you! He's a Fourierist!

Mike said...

Please, no more Charles Murray. His claim that he "doesn’t talk about causes" in Coming Apart is totally disingenuous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q3zy4NRzz4

In the book, his argument seems to be a classic conservative & libertarian position, which is that our economic woes have nothing to do with the economic policies that we've pursued since the 1970s, but rather that they are the result of the breakdown of cultural norms (religion, family, neighborly generosity, honesty, industriousness, etc.). Murray stands out as someone who also adds genetics to the mix as a necessary but not sufficient element of success in the 21st century knowledge economy.

To me, this stuff has no empirical grounding and plasters over the laissez-faire economic policies that these very commentators - Murray being one of the more influential of them - have advocated for half a century, and which are the true drivers of the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of inequality.

Anything by Joe Stiglitz, Robert Reich, or Paul Krugman (or Piketty! David Harvey!) will provide some kind of alternative left perspective (and if Frum is saying it, maybe it's not so leftist anymore), which - instead of "culture" or genetics - will speak to the cutting of the marginal income tax rate, the rolling back of the social safety net, trade deals that have moved manufacturing overseas and the subsequent low-paid service industry work that took its place, a tax law that favors capital investments over wage labor, the dismantling of unions, stagnant middle class wages... etc. etc.

Essentially, this is what we get when capital has such disproportionate power over labor. Consider the last two democratic presidents. Neither one, over either of their 8 year terms, outlined an economic policy that would have substantively challenged the laissez-faire economic "consensus" we've had since Reagan. Hence widening inequality. Hence the demise of working class neighborhoods. Hence the shrinking of the middle class. Culture and genetics have nothing to do with it.

I do agree that Mick initially misreads what is happening in Fishtown (or any of the hundreds of previously working class urban neighborhoods across the US)... it isn't the rebirth of a working class neighborhood, it is the displacement of previously working class residents by white collar workers in need of housing.

james said...

Please, no more Charles Murray.

But he’s so interesting and we haven’t even started reading his books yet!

In the book, his argument seems to be a classic conservative & libertarian position, which is that our economic woes have nothing to do with the economic policies that we've pursued since the 1970s, but rather that they are the result of the breakdown of cultural norms (religion, family, neighborly generosity, honesty, industriousness, etc.).

Murray stands out as someone who also adds genetics to the mix as a necessary but not sufficient element of success in the 21st century knowledge economy.


Well, like just about every human trait, intelligence is a mixture of genetics and culture. Whatever the exact percentage breakdown is, in a globalized knowledge economy, those who are lucky enough to have a high IQ are (on average) being rewarded with income gains that the rest of society isn’t. As Murray mentions in his book, this is not exactly a secret:

“In the early 1990’s Bill Gates was asked what competitor worried him the most. Goldman Sachs, Gates answered. He explained: “Software is an IQ business. Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won’t have a future. I don’t worry about Lotus or IBM, because the smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ are investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.” Gates’s comment reflected a reality that has driven the formation of a new upper class: over the last century, brains have become much more valuable in the marketplace.”

To me, this stuff has no empirical grounding and plasters over the laissez-faire economic policies that these very commentators - Murray being one of the more influential of them - have advocated for half a century, and which are the true drivers of the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of inequality.

His observations do have empirical grounding: his stats on church-going rates, marriage, divorce, SUPER-ZIPS, income distributions, joblessness, and assortative mating all come from government tax and census data.

I think the reason Murray attempted to steer clear of politics in this book is because he wanted to explore trends in our social fabric without ascribing blame to any specific policy. To me, the biggest point of the book was just how segregated the rich are from the rest of the country (which was the point of the “how thick is your bubble” quiz). As Ross Douthat says, Frum allowed his problems with 15% of the book obscure the other 85%.

Now, to everyone on this blog, Murray’s observations about an increasingly separated society might be obvious, but I continue to read tone-deaf articles about how hard it is to get by on a $250,000+ household income. Our elites don’t even realize they’re elites, and Murray thinks that’s a problem. It’s downright unseemly.

james said...

Furthermore, the difficult questions Murray raises aren’t easily fixed by public policy. What economic policies will prevent rich people from buying the toniest real estate in the most exclusive neighborhoods? Or sending their kids to the same private schools? Or living only amongst people who think, talk, and act exactly like them? Or being employed in similar white-collar careers? Or sending their brightest sons and daughters away to just a handful of top universities? Or literally fleeing cities entirely for suburbs dotted with million dollar homes? The bubble thickens still.

Essentially, this is what we get when capital has such disproportionate power over labor. Consider the last two democratic presidents. Neither one, over either of their 8 year terms, outlined an economic policy that would have substantively challenged the laissez-faire economic "consensus" we've had since Reagan. Hence widening inequality. Hence the demise of working class neighborhoods. Hence the shrinking of the middle class. Culture and genetics have nothing to do with it.

As I’ve said above, culture and genetics absolutely plays a role in life outcomes; those two combined are literally who we are as people. And because intellectual ability plays such an outsize role in our economy now, the upper-middle class has turned college admissions into a cult-like obsession. Parents know that recruiters at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs and Google don’t care about class, but they absolutely care about intellectual abilities, and they’re willing to compete ferociously for them.

On the other side of the coin, I’m not sure how government policy can substantially prevent the economic forces responsible for hollowing out the middle and lower classes. Stronger trucking unions cannot stop the self-driving truck for instance, which is why a lot of libertarians support a guaranteed basic income. See, not all libertarians are heartless free-marketers!

Mike said...

Phew.. ok.

First off, I for one am in favor of converting the blog to a space for reading, discussing, and (inevitably) debunking Charles Murray.

I think the guaranteed basic income is one of the places where libertarians and leftists can come to some agreement - though I can think of a few issues off the top of my head... libertarians can't stomach the taxation levels that would ensure dignified existence & it doesn't sufficiently deal with the distorting effects of highly uneven levels of wealth on democracy (one dollar one vote?) and society more generally. But, I think it would be a step in the right direction.

The issue for libertarian conservatives (and Charles Murray) is that their policies have enriched the very few at the expense of the vast majority. They now need a narrative for these vast differences in wealth that doesn't call into question their own economic policies that are still on the books. Culture and genetics are perfect candidates for an alternative explanation. It allows the privileged to think of their position as natural and deserved, and so any kind of shame they may have had becomes a paternalistic noblesse oblige to help out the "culturally and genetically inferior". My history is bad, but I'd imagine this is a recurring phenomenon.

"Well, like just about every human trait, intelligence is a mixture of genetics and culture."
"culture and genetics absolutely plays a role in life outcomes; those two combined are literally who we are as people."

And what of the economics of the neighborhood or the family you're born into?

These are somewhat unfamiliar waters for me, but I think we don't know what intelligence is. We don't know what IQ measures. And twin studies - upon which much of this research rests - have been described by geneticists as next to useless in explaining intellectual acumen. Regarding "culture", that too is pretty ill defined in all of this. Where does that come from? I'd suggest it is borne out of (or at the very least highly influenced by), again, one's economic position, and is not some indigenous familial or neighborhood characteristic that one simply "has" or decides to embrace.

Here you have a reverse causation fallacy on the part of conservatives like, say, a David Brooks. One's economic circumstances don't issue forth from their culture (as Horatio Alger myths would have it), but rather one's culture issues forth from the economic circumstances of the family they're born into (or the circles they run in subsequently). So, you wind up having wealthy white (and increasingly Black... see: Cosby, Ben Carson, even Obama at points) conservatives lambasting the poor for their "culture of poverty", when in fact it is the economic policies that those conservatives put in place that produced the deep inequalities from which various cultural forms are born.

Mike said...


Also, it's worth noting that (to my knowledge) Murray has never held a university appointment and doesn't publish in the peer-reviewed literature, where these theories would face higher levels of scrutiny on empirical grounds. Instead, he works at conservative, pro-business think tanks like AEI and the Manhattan Institute, which survive off of corporate donations and wealthy benefactors. I think that too is some needed context for the discussion. It's always interesting to see who is paying the bills.

*Regarding particulars...
*Gates is fighting over graduates from particular schools, among whom IQ is correlated, but again we don't know what IQ measures and it's clear that economic circumstances play a large part.
*Regarding tax and census data, I haven't looked at any of it, but correlation vs causation?
*Regarding steering clear of politics, it's clear from that video that while he claims this, he is clearly putting forward a certain kind of politics. He's just being strategic in not identifying it as such.
*Regarding the futility of public policy,...? If the social world isn't amenable to public policies, what's the point? Of course it is. The guaranteed basic income? But again, this is the issue. It's Murray's (libertarian) public policy that created the vast wealth disparities, and then he claims that public policy can't get us out of it. He denies his own role in policy formation, even as he denies that the reality he created through libertarian policy is amenable to progressive/leftist/social democratic policy changes!

The long and short of it is marry rich, move to a rich neighborhood, and lobby for policies that will allow you to pay few taxes and to pass your untaxed wealth on to your children, who can use it to gain social capital, elite credentials, and further reproduce their wealth among your grandchildren. Genetics won't save you! But it's a convenient line to trick everyone else!

Again, Joe Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty, David Harvey. Also, Packer's Unwinding is a good start: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/the-unwinding-by-george-packer.html?_r=0

james said...

Culture and genetics are perfect candidates for an alternative explanation. It allows the privileged to think of their position as natural and deserved, and so any kind of shame they may have had becomes a paternalistic noblesse oblige to help out the "culturally and genetically inferior". My history is bad, but I'd imagine this is a recurring phenomenon.

Actually, a more conservative point of view is that we all start out with equal opportunities and the poor become poor because of bad choices and a lack of personal responsibility. I don't see how it's an avoidance technique to point out that human abilities are unequally distributed from the start. If anything it should induce humility by seeing the world as it really is: random, uncaring, and deeply unfair.

We both agree that the rich or intelligent are no more "deserving" of their wealth or abstract reasoning abilities any more than Manute Bol deserves to be over 7 feet tall--and to make a massive salary as a result. The fact that millions of people paid hundreds of millions to lease and watch Bol’s talents is not due to structural unfairness or a rigged system. The reality is that as long as human traits like height and intelligence are unequally distributed in society demand for those traits will vary, as will, ultimately, income.

And let's be clear, even if we suddenly provided universal, uniformly great education and ensured everyone had a great home life, stark differences would still exist in innate intelligence, just as they would in height even if we fed everyone creatine from birth. The g-factor is real, and it is highly heritable.

These are somewhat unfamiliar waters for me, but I think we don't know what intelligence is. We don't know what IQ measures.

For a quick primer on what IQ measures, start here.

james said...

The interesting part of this book is that though a libertarian, Murray is far from an Ayn Randian objectivist. What conservative calls our country's CEOs unseemly for their skyrocketing compensation? I honestly think people are making Murray out to be a conservative bogeyman or pro-business shill despite his writing being uniformly uncontroversial (is it really a surprise to anyone that smart people get paid more and tend to live amongst each other in nice parts of town, and that as a result they are unaware of how their fellow citizens live?)

I'm beginning to think that, just as Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam" and Marie Antoinette never said ''Let them eat cake," so too will Murray be remembered for statements he didn't make and opinions he never held.

And twin studies - upon which much of this research rests - have been described by geneticists as next to useless in explaining intellectual acumen. Regarding "culture", that too is pretty ill defined in all of this. Where does that come from? I'd suggest it is borne out of (or at the very least highly influenced by), again, one's economic position, and is not some indigenous familial or neighborhood characteristic that one simply "has" or decides to embrace.

Twin studies have been a valuable source of information for scientists attempting to tease out nature/nurture interactions, and what they keep finding is just how strong genes are--counter to the prevailing behaviorist school of thought in psychology the past 40-50 years. See here, for instance.

This of course is the premise of Stephen Pinker's excellent book on nature vs. nurture, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. See too Bryan Caplan's exploration of twin studies in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.

james said...

Mike, one more point of clarification—I think the question of appropriate levels of taxation, social safety nets, etc. are informed by these broad economic trends, not invalidated by them.

So maybe we're not so far apart on this issue.

Big Myk said...

Before saying anything here, I think that I ought to disclose that about three weeks ago, Mike took us out to a very nice Brazilian restaurant in Berkeley, and we had a great time. So, there may be some unconscious bias in what follows.

James, you say that culture and genetics absolutely play a role in life outcomes, but I'm not so sure. If by genetics you mean innate talent, that's a pretty elusive category. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, after much study, concluded that “the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect.” (By the way, how is Dan McLaughlin doing at his golf game?)

Similarly, the great Daniel Kahneman saw talent as a less important factor from another direction. He observed after studying Wall Street firms investment reports, “the evidence is unequivocal — there is a great deal more luck than skill involved in the achievements of people getting very rich.”

And, as Mike point outs, who knows what IQ actually measures? The murkiness of IQ is demonstrated by the Flynn Effect (a term coined by Charles Murray in The Bell Curve). As Steven Pinker states: "An average teenager today, if he or she could time-travel back to 1950, would have an IQ of 118. If the teenager went back to 1910, he or she would have an IQ of 130, besting 98 per cent of his or her contemporaries." To do it the other way, the average person in 1910 who stepped through a time-warp to today would have an IQ measurement of 70. That is, to quote Pinker again, "at the border of mental retardation." The Flynn effect and other studies lead Malcolm Gladwell to conclude “I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.” See None of the Above.

On the culture end, the question is, as Mike says, one of correlation vs. causation. While I agree that there is a very strong correlation between marriage and wealth, it's unclear whether people get married because they have real future prospects or that those prospects come about because of marriage. See Can Marriage Cure Poverty? (W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project: “Unless we improve the fortunes of poor working people, particularly poor working men, we aren’t going to see marriage coming back.”)

But my real problem with the focus on genetics and character as the causes of poverty and human suffering is that it sounds just too Calvinist to me. Murray -- as you present it -- seems to be echoing the point of Proverbs: "Trouble pursues the sinner, but the righteous are rewarded with good things." And, on top of that, whether you are righteous or not is predestined by your genetics. This sort of thinking absolves the well-off for any responsibility whatsoever for anybody’s outcomes but their own, and allows them to carry on with own lives untroubled by the welfare of others. I’m not so sure how well this would sit with Bonhoeffer.

Big Myk said...

One other point that I couldn't make in the last comment becuae blogger wouldn't let me.

James, you say that “the difficult questions Murray raises aren’t easily fixed by public policy.” Perhaps they are not easily fixed by public policy, but it’s difficult to argue that public policy has no effect on the outcomes of individual lives. To take an extreme example just to make a point: Zimbabwe’s relatively prosperous economy did not spiral downward because people suddenly got stupid or because their culture went south. I think that it is generally accepted that it was Mugabe's horribly stupid policies that accomplished this.

And, we have fairly solid proof that government policies do, indeed, affect the large wealth gap in America. We all know that the Gini coefficient measures inequality in a society. Janet Gornick of the Luxembourg Income Study (2013) compared the Gini index of 14 industrialized countries before and after taxes and government transfers. Before taxes and transfers, the US does well comparatively in the Gini index, ranking 5th out of the 14. But after taxes and transfers, we are dead last in inequality. Ireland, on the other hand, which ranks last in inequality before taxes and transfers, is able -- through it’s government policies -- to pull itself up to 6th out of the 14. Government Does Little to Help. I’m not sure what Ireland does that we don’t, but, clearly, government policies affect the levels of inequality in a society; it’s not just genetics and culture.

Mike said...

Yes, re pre vs post tax/transfer poverty...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty#/media/File:Absolute_Poverty_Rates_before_and_after_the_introduction_of_welfare.svg

Policy!

Mike said...

I like this one too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty#/media/File:The_Antipoverty_Effect_of_Government_Spending_Vector_Graph.svg

Mike said...

I'd say Ireland taxes wealth at a higher rate, and more aggressively redistributes it among the poor, chopping off the long tails on both ends of the distribution and thereby decreasing inequality significantly. I vote for that.

Re marital status and poverty, I like Matt Bruenig at Demos:
http://www.demos.org/blog/4/14/14/single-mother-child-poverty-myth

The marriage-to-cure-poverty prescription has become a central talking point of republicans, and we'll hear more of it in the months ahead:
http://www.demos.org/blog/1/8/14/marriage-and-poverty-again

...This one gets to some of the "cultural" claims of Murray.

I won't argue the legitimacy of twin studies (because that's larger project), though we can say that there is wide disagreement among geneticists (and within the social sciences... how does one control for racism or the stigma of being adopted, etc?) regarding their usefulness.

I think what intelligence is and what IQ reflects (the wealth of your school district?) and the nature vs nurture question (maybe not dichotomous?) are similarly beyond my ability to pontificate intelligently here, but Murray seems to fall on the opposite side of the spectrum than I do.

I'll say that where you and Murray seem to disagree (or maybe agree?) is -- assuming his narrative about the world is true -- what to do about it. You seem to be saying that innate ability/behavior derived from genetics (or even being born into a super wealthy family... or even within the upper quintile) is inherently unfair.

So, do we propose a Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance, whereby we fight for equal opportunity? (This is almost the conservative line; as long as we have equal opportunity, we don't need to ensure equal outcomes.) Some boats will rise, others will fall, but at least we started everyone on equal economic (if not genetic) footing. Ok, let's do that. White households have 10X the wealth as Black households. Rich households have ??X the wealth as poor households. Let's start there and even that out.

But Murray (and you?), bucking centuries of progressive tradition, claim there is no policy that is appropriate to accomplish equal opportunity. Certainly this is true on Murray's part, who has been fighting to dismantle the welfare state for decades. From what I glean from the book, Murray wants the wealthy to impart strong cultural habits on the genetically and culturally inferior so that they may rise like he has. I'm not sure where that position would sit on the political spectrum... oligarchic, maybe? My main question is, what does Murray propose we do??

Mike said...


In that vein, I'll take issue with this line...

"The fact that millions of people paid hundreds of millions to lease and watch Bol’s talents is not due to structural unfairness or a rigged system. The reality is that as long as human traits like height and intelligence are unequally distributed in society demand for those traits will vary, as will, ultimately, income."

1. You assume that wealth is a function of ability, which I'd disagree with. The Nozickian skilled basketball player example (he uses Wilt Chamberlain in Anarchy, State, Utopia) is not illustrative of how wealth is generally reproduced in society.

2. You treat the market mechanism as inviolable and sacred. So some guy is 7' 8" and makes $1b a game. (Or they started facebook. Or they're a quant hedge fund manager. Or they inherited wealth.) Let's decide to tax the hell out of him to remediate the deficiencies of capitalism. That's democracy. It's only a rigged system when democratic mechanisms of wealth redistribution are thwarted by these very individuals bankrolling political campaigns... or when the "morality" of the market takes precedence over the democratic system of policy formation.

To your point -- "And let's be clear, even if we suddenly provided universal, uniformly great education and ensured everyone had a great home life, stark differences would still exist in innate intelligence, just as they would in height even if we fed everyone creatine from birth." -- I'd just say, let's find out. Wouldn't that be the truly empirical way of going about it? Unfortunately, Murray precludes this option due to his aversion to any kind of redistribution.

His positions on women and intelligence are similarly unsettling... http://www.aei.org/publication/where-are-the-female-einsteins/ But I digress.

I think this really just comes down to Nozick and Rawls. Murray tries to hide behind culture and genes to avoid saying what Nozick was more than happy to; taxes are theft and inequality is morally justified. We should have more Nozick and Rawls on this blog. And Michael Sandel! The true Rawlsian.

Mick, I'll one-up your Bonhoeffer reference to say that Oscar Romero was beatified this week. Maybe I'm just excited to be back on the liberation theology train: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/popes-focus-on-poor-revives-scorned-theology.html

Mike said...

But - to be fair - I haven't read more than a few words of Murray... so who knows. I hope my responses only lend credence to the idea that we oughtn't read the books we comment on here.

james said...

Great points, all.

Myk, I had no idea you were so easily bought. I’ll remember that the next time you’re in New York—I hope you like Greek food. You say

...who knows what IQ actually measures? The murkiness of IQ is demonstrated by the Flynn Effect (a term coined by Charles Murray in The Bell Curve). As Steven Pinker states: "An average teenager today, if he or she could time-travel back to 1950, would have an IQ of 118. If the teenager went back to 1910, he or she would have an IQ of 130, besting 98 per cent of his or her contemporaries."

Basically IQ tests measure abstract reasoning ability, and do so rather well. Despite the Flynn effect, Steven Pinker also says that “IQ tests have surprising predictive power in real-world outcomes. All of this tells us that a large part of intelligence consists of some big, robust, unsubtle dimension of individual variation.”

But fine, let’s say we never agree what exactly it is they measure. Tests still predict—on a group level—adult differences in income, arrests, divorce, and a host of other life outcomes. And though the Flynn effect has led to higher mean scores, the normal distribution of scores has not changed. Even Pinker “believe[s] that..IQ variation has a substantial genetic component.”

Further, IQ is better at predicting outcomes than socio-economic status. Siblings raised in the same middle-class house, who go to the same schools, and have the same parents, still differ in IQ. Unsurprisingly, their future income differs, and correlates to their scores. It’s hard to make nurture any more uniform than comparing siblings from the same house.

This is what has surprised me most about the latest research in genetics and neurology. Nurture or environment or whatever you want to call it often comes down to...we have no idea what really, but it’s not what we've traditionally thought. Pinker again:

"The problem is in identifying those "massive environmental effects". This is a complex question (see, e.g., the "Children"chapter in The Blank Slate). At any one historical period, and holding culture more or less constant (e.g., more-or-less middle class), the 50% or so of the variance that is not genetic (the "environmental"effect) is, as far as I can tell, due to random chance, probably in prenatal or early postnatal development of the brain; it doesn't correlate with anything in the environment you can measure."

So here’s what research has been revealing: many of our traits come significantly hard-wired, and many of those that can be modified are modified by, well, random chance. Like the universe, our natures seem to be both Calvinist and Quantum-like.

When I bring up this research to other parents with young kids, they actually get a little upset with the idea that they really don’t matter much in terms of child development. Twin studies have consistently revealed that kids are not clay to be molded by their parents, but rather, as Caplan says, rigid pieces of plastic that bend slightly under their parents’ thumb, only to snap back once they leave the house.
It is unsettling to think we’re subject to more deterministic forces than we thought. You say “this sort of thinking absolves the well-off for any responsibility whatsoever for anybody’s outcomes but their own, and allows them to carry on with own lives untroubled by the welfare of others.”

I strongly disagree. I said this to Mike earlier, but the knowledge that human traits are completely unearned and random reduces misanthropy completely. Think of it this way: now that you know George Bush didn’t have much of a choice in who he was as a person, you’ll hate him just a little bit less. And when it comes to philanthropy, such knowledge makes it harder to think you deserve your millions after realizing you merely won the life-outcome lottery.

Mike- I'll try to get a response to you tomorrow, you raised a lot of points that, as you said, could be discussions all on their own.

Mike said...

Take your time. I have the luxury of not having small children or a 9-5 job at the moment.

I should say Steven Pinker is not my favorite either, but that's another discussion.

Ted said...

I had some response to a comment much earlier on (something about policies not mattering much in determining income inequality, but culture and IQ being more determinant. If that's the case, than the policies of the last 40 years should not have had that much impact on income inequality. Rather, IQ and/or culture must have changed. Personally, I don't see it. But I didn't read Murray, so I really have no idea what I'm saying)

Anyway -

"When I bring up this research to other parents with young kids, they actually get a little upset with the idea that they really don’t matter much in terms of child development. Twin studies have consistently revealed that kids are not clay to be molded by their parents, but rather, as Caplan says, rigid pieces of plastic that bend slightly under their parents’ thumb, only to snap back once they leave the house."

James, I LOVE the fact that I don't matter that much in my children's development. It certainly gives me piece of mind to know that if I inevitably mess up on something having to do with raising my children, it is likely not as detrimental to their development as one would think. You have to figure that people have been raising children for thousands of years and generally most turn out fine/normal/human. The variances between how someone raises a child must be HUGE so it is a good thing, I think, that we rely on "nature" so much in our development.

Of course, a parent could use this as an excuse to put minimal effort into raising their children, or no effort. And, if this is true, than my extra work I put into parenting seemingly would have little to no benefit as compared to someone who puts no effort into parenting (of even someone who is just a bad parent). Which I suppose is why parents get upset when they learn the harsh truth of their necessity. Still, as I stated before, having this information actually makes parenting a little easier and less stressful, which I will take any day.

James R said...

I'll restate a small email conversation I had with James. Pinker lends some authority to the idea that parents don't have that big an influence on child raising, but all of you should have learned that independently—from your grandmother. (I believe Pinker stole some of her ideas.) Yes, of course, you make a big difference—as single parent or no parent children show, but, in raising children, please heed what your grandmother said. The children will most likely come out fine (as long as you don't do stupid things). In raising children it's all about making sure the parents come out fine. That's where your effort should go.