The Poverty of Detroit

            Have you noticed the media’s tendency to focus on the trivial and unserious, and in doing so magnify them beyond any reasonable proportion? The corollary to this is that more severe issues, that are longer lasting and deep seated, get ignored.

            In the wake of the Zimmerman trial, the last few weeks have been pretty slow in terms of news. The headlines have been largely dominated by the Weiner scandal and the opening squabbles of the 2016 GOP primary. The summer months bring a fade in the import of the political, and rightfully so. One can only take too much politics.

            However, there was another story that popped up and then rapidly died, whose causes and effects are far more fundamental to the era in which we find ourselves. I’m speaking, of course, of the declared bankruptcy of Detroit. Detroit, once synonymous with America’s industrial might (and the fourth largest city), is now synonymous with decay, corruption, and severe poverty.

            Aside for a few op-eds, Detroit has been ignored by the general political discourse. My theory as to why is the content of this post. Detroit, its poverty and dysfunction, represents a sharp rebuke to the conventional economic philosophy of both parties. It’s decline is a challenge not only to the conventions and economic orthodoxy liberalism (which has governed it unobstructed for over fifty years) but also to conservatism. Detroit is really a question about poverty – what causes it and how it can be fixed. With the ongoing stagnation of the economy, the weakening of the American middle class, and the fall in income mobility and economic optimism, understanding Detroit is about understanding our current malaise, and the potentiality for a solution

The Left’s Solution

            I considered reviewing all of the economic numbers for Detroit that highlight its decline, but that’s mostly unnecessary. The images of Detroit, with its barren fields and abandoned buildings constructed during a more prosperous era, tell the story. The population has fallen from 1.8 million in 1950 to 700,000 in 2010. The unemployment for the city stands at 15.8%, well above the national average. Over 31% of Detroit families live in poverty along with over 36% of individuals. Homes sell for a $1 a piece, and for many streets basic services such as lights have long since shut down. Entire zones have been declared unofficial no-go areas, with emergency services showing up only after a twenty minute wait, if the crime is severe enough. Crime of all sorts is high and shows no sign of abating, unlike the national trend.

            The left has a particular burden of proof when explaining Detroit, because the city and the state have long been a center of leftism in action. The failures of this city cannot be blamed on an obstructionist Republican Congress or the local GOP. The Republican Party in Detroit is non-existent.

            Because of this, the failure of Detroit is blamed on a variety of macro-trends, outside of the power of local government, thus excusing leftist economic policy from any failures or shortcomings. They are as follows:

1.      Capitalism. Free trade caused increased pressure on the workers to work at a cheaper wage. When they were unwilling to do so, the companies shipped their jobs overseas.

2.      White Flight. Racists whites left the city for the suburbs, and abandoned the black population. Whites couldn’t handle a black mayor, and did everything in their power to sabotage him and the city.

3.      The Automotive Industry. Detroit was entirely dependent on the automotive industry. Because the auto industry has declined, Detroit’s fortunes have declined as well. Detroit’s failures are due to the misfortune or bad luck of having been a mono-industry city. See Youngstown, OH, Gary, IN, Cleveland, OH, Buffalo, NY and to a lesser extent Toledo, OH and Pittsburgh, PA.

There may be more reasons that I’m missing, but those three capture the main thrust of their argument. It’s not our fault Detroit’s failed! Look over here! Or there!

To an extent, all of these reasons have some grounding in the truth, but they don’t explain the particular severity of Detroit’s crisis. Moreover, and the thrust of what I’m getting at, they leave a large question remaining – Now what? Let’s suppose all of those outlined factors are true. What is the liberalism’s answer to the poverty of Detroit? What is the solution?

And it is here, I think, that the left has a huge problem. Even if all of these larger forces are the sources of Detroit’s demise, how does modern liberalism seek to address them? The left’s answer seems to have taken on two parts, at made evident by its governing policies.

1. Increase demand. If we keep wages high (through unionization, protection of workers) and create lots of make work projects (building bridges, sports centers, public work projects) we’ll create enough demand in the economy that jobs will come back.

2. Soften the effects of poverty by keeping public assistance programs (food stamps, welfare, etc) fully funded.

That seems to be it. Oh wait, I forgot one more.

3. Education. Increase funding to public schools and universities so people can get high paying jobs that require higher education (in an entirely unrelated coincidence, teachers and higher education employees are major contributors to the Democratic Party).

Note that none of these proposed solutions even begin to solve Detroit’s problems. How do I know this? Because they’ve been tried.

The wages of the big three have long been higher than the trend for the rest of their sector. Detroit has had a multiplicity of public works programs. They even have a monorail! But these public works programs have done little to turn the city around, and even less to dint poverty of the city. It’s my suspicion that the main benefactors are the politicians who get to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony and the contractors who get to pocket the profits of building whatever public project that will be abandoned and vandalized in 10, no 5, years’ time.

As for point two, there may be a case that due to the severity of Detroit’s economic problems (and the national economy as well), we should give all we can through public assistance programs to lessen the pains of poverty. Fine, but we should give up the illusion that these programs end poverty. Does anyone seriously believe that if we increased food stamp and welfare spending for Detroit, along with raising the minimum wage, that it would soon turn into a Silicon Valley?

As for education, Detroit public schools spend anywhere from $12,801 - $15,570 per pupil, well above the national average of $10,615 per pupil. And what do the people of Detroit get in return for such spending? A city that is 47% functionally illiterate, and a graduation rate of 68%. Will $18k per pupil get us a city that is broadly literate? $20k? How about $25k? Those that say yes, go to the back of the classroom.

My point isn’t to beat up on the city of Detroit. I imagine a majority of the city’s population are hardworking individuals who want what’s best for their family and want to escape a city mired in poverty. My point is instead to show the lack of solutions offered to us by economic liberalism. And why do I do that? Because their solutions for Detroit are the same solutions they offer for the rest of America. What is Obama’s economic policy? High public spending, increased spending on social support funding, and higher education spending. If those policies have not, and cannot work in Detroit, why should we expect them to work in the rest of the country?

An addendum:

This post was originally going to be longer, highlighting the lack of solution’s from the right. The right’s diagnosis for Detroit is that it was killed by unions, large public pension plans, and poor government. These might all be true, but again they don’t offer a solution. Should we lower taxes in Detroit? If so, given the city’s already low tax base, how are they going to provide rudimentary services? The stimulative power of tax cuts eventually loses its effects. Charter schools? They may work, but they take a long time to reverse severe gulfs in education, and they are no guarantee that their graduates will stay locally. Dismantle the unions? And how will the workers make their new living in a world of ever higher costs?

I can’t say definitively what caused Detroit to decline. But I can say that the solutions from both the right and left (but primarily the left) are extremely wanting. Detroit is a part of America, and its citizens should not be deprived the opportunities inherent in American citizenship and liberty because of the poor decisions of their elected leaders and others. 

The NSA, Doublethink, and the Left

            I apologize in advance for writing a column on the state’s surveillance powers and immediately resorting to a reference from 1984. It’s become cliché at this point. Any and all articles dealing with the rising national security state seem to always include a reference to George Orwell’s masterful work. It must be a clause in their contract. Bonus points if they challenge themselves to squeeze in a reference to the slightly less referenced dystopian book, Huxley’s Brave New World.

When the revelations came out about the NSA’s PRISM program and the government’s seizing of Verizon’s metadata for phone records, I was angry. Since I’ve had time to process the news, my anger has not gone away, but a flurry of other realizations have emolliated this anger. Chief among them is the public apathy, particularly among Generation Y, over these revelations. I saw five, maybe a few more, posts on facebook about the NSA’s creation of a total surveillance network, but that was it. Compare that to the major outpouring of red equal sign profile pictures, and I think you come away with a picture of a public that is aphetic, at best, about these revelations. Sure, they broadly disapprove, but if their willingness to condemn can’t even rise to the pathetic effort of a status or profile picture change, then little is going to be done.
            I wanted to write about this, but I’ve been trying to come up with some angle. Various other writers could summarize, in a far more cogent and acute analysis, the problems with yielding ever more of our privacy to a group of nameless, faceless, bureaucrats in the bowels of some federal office. You can read these arguments as to why this is all wrong (or conversely why this is right), so I have to offer something different. I can’t just repackage op-ed pages. My five readers demand, and deserve, more.
            And here it is where I will introduce my argument. The left, as an ideology, holds a contradictory view towards government specifically and power generally. Let’s start with the obligatory Orwell quote. Doublethink, a concept introduced in his 1984, is defined as:

            To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

            Modern American liberalism, long since divorced from its classical European heritage, has seen its primary form of implementation in the aggregating of power within the centralized federal bureaucracy. Having correctly identified the ailments of American society, including powerful corporations, systemic racism, and economic inequality, American liberalism’s solution to all of these problems has taken the form of adding to the federal government’s programs, power, and scope. Both the New Deal and the Great Society, the twin planks of progressivism, have at their core the accumulation of power and responsibility to the federal power structure. While the ideology ostensibly claims to be in favor of individual liberty, it seeks to improve that liberty through an activist and powerful central government. For leftism, power must be concentrated, preferably (though not always) in democratic hands.

That is not to insinuate an evil or authoritarian motive to leftism, at least the contemporary American strain. Many of the programs they have fought for and seen enacted bring quantifiable, real gains to the individual. If you look back over history, the motivations behind the left’s most ardent advocates are both noble and humanitarian. Accordingly, liberalism as enacted takes the form of programs that are beneficial and helpful, particularly to the poorest among us. Nonetheless, they involve a transfer and concentration of power.

This trend, of concentrating power to achieve material and societal improvement, necessitates a trusting view of the federal government. There has to be a level of trust and belief in the institutions of Washington, or else it would make little sense to give them more power. Though modern American liberalism can criticize the excesses of federal power, its core ideology must and does hold that the exercise of that power is ultimately benevolent.

Yet, as the NSA revelations have highlighted, there are some contradictions, some doublethink, inherent deep in the core of the current formulation of American liberalism. The trust with which they give to the state in economic and societal matters, they withhold in security and foreign policy matters. Though the outrage has been bipartisan, it is the left who feels personally betrayed about the explosion in the size, scope, and power of the NSA. If we rewind the tapes a few years to the Bush administration, it was the left that critiqued the vast grab in powers after the 9/11 attacks. Warrantless wiretapping, wars, torture, soldier abuses, the Patriot Act, etc were all the subject of blistering op-eds in Mother Jones, the Nation, and the New York Times. It was the left, and primary leftist intellectuals, that shrieked the loudest when all of these events were occurring. Having found an antidote to Bush in Obama, they thought that they had a champion that would turn back the clock and begin to reign in a national security state that had grown outside the bounds of democratic control.

And now, they are shocked to find out, that their champion, far from ending the worst excesses of the Bush administration, has continued them. All of the policies they, and he, once condemned have continued and in many respects are being expanded and institutionalized at an unprecedented rate.

But the betrayal by Obama should come as no surprise. You cannot hold that the federal government is a benign friend and partner when it comes to the economic sphere, and then shout fascism when it accumulates police powers, spies on the world, and goes around blowing up villages at the touch of a button. This is the doublethink that I speak of. Either the federal government is an amoral power hungry entity, or it isn’t. You cannot condemn the federal government for accumulating police powers, spying powers, and the like, while celebrating its takeover the healthcare industry etc. 

People are now complaining that the national security state has grown beyond the boundaries of democratic rule making, but hasn’t the welfare state as well? Do think the entitlements are within the bounds of a democratic body? If so, try to cut back, let alone eliminate, Social Security or Medicare and get back to me. We have already crossed the boundaries of a limited government constrained by laws. We are on the other side of the Rubicon, and now we have the left wanting to go back. You can’t.

The NSA debate is a debate over security, but so too is the creation of the welfare state. The welfare state is about sacrificing liberty for security: food security, health security, education security. It may be the case it’s a good trade off to make, but don’t pretend there hasn’t been a trade off in the first place. We cease to be free citizens and instead yield our responsibilities to the state, we turn it into a parental figure, mother and father. And now we complain that it assumes that paternal protective instincts of a power mad father, always watching, always vigilant, always seeing. 

So, my argument is simple. The left is confused at best or lying to themselves at worst about the nature of the state. You cannot have the state as both a demon and an angel.
            There is, perhaps, another possibility. The left at its core doesn't care about liberty nor the creation of the Big Brother spy state. Perhaps the shrieking during the Bush years was mere partisanship, because Bush had an R after his name. Perhaps the left isn't really against intervention in foreign lands, as long as the president supports gay marriage. Perhaps, as evidenced by history, the left has no objection to power as long as its power within their hands, the hands of an enlightened vanguard class.
            But that's just cynical.
           

Guest Post: Asking the story, or telling the questions?

Dane here: an anonymous contributor wanted to submit their thoughts on the recent outing of Jason Collins, the NBA player. The author concludes that this story is an example of the media framing, and thus making, the news instead of being passive reporters. Give it a read, it's posted below. 

By now you’ve heard the first-hand account. You can probably quote it yourself. “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” That was the monumental announcement from Washington Wizards’ reserve center Jason Collins, as he stepped out of the closet and into the spotlight as The Big Four’s first openly-gay male athlete. That was the quote printed in Sports Illustrated that had news outlets heralding the arrival of a historic day, one that had been long in the making, one which American culture had been slowly striving toward. And there’s no doubt that for Collins, today is historic. He mustered the courage to come forward and say, “This is who I am, take it or leave it” – no small feat for anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, race, creed, gender, etc. – and his decision is admirable. But I can’t help wondering about the forces at work behind his announcement.

Before we go any further, let me make one thing clear: I am in no way suggesting Jason Collins’ coming-out is in any way an attention-grabber, a money-maker, an opportunistic answer to the call of narcissism, or anything other than one man’s honesty about himself, and with himself, laid bare. It’s crucial to approach this argument with that in mind. Are we good? Can we breathe? Great. Let’s explore.

I want to go back to that quote, that one we all know by heart. That snappy epiphany with the easy rhythm. It’s pretty profound, it’s got a groove. And I hope you like it, because you’ll be seeing a lot of it in the days and months to come. “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” It’s got ‘headline’ written all over it. And already, it’s the de facto epithet for Collins’ big announcement. News of his newly-come-to-light sexual orientation broke shortly before noon on Monday, April 29^th. By the time I drove home only a few hours later, the phrase had been beaten into my head, writ bold in online publications, plastered across lower-thirds on the cable newscasts, trumpeted on the radio talk shows. The banner was flying. The message was clear: Collins’ triumph is our triumph.

Ours. Right. Let’s define “ours.” Is it a triumph of the people? Well, it can’t be all people, because I’ll admit my first reaction when I read the announcement wasn’t one of triumph. And it wasn’t one of catharsis. Like I said, I admired Collins’ decision, and I most certainly respected it, but the truth is, it has zero bearing on my life. I’m a straight male, and I’m certainly not the sportiest, so I’m sure you can say I don’t understand what it’s like to live your life with a giant secret; to live your life in fear of what others might think of you since you’re “outside the norm,” whatever the norm may be anymore – and you’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. I can’t speak to the insecurities so many people live with each day. But I’m not trying to, because that’s not the point. The point is that this sense of triumph being put on parade is an exhalation of relief for the media, because at last the prophecy is come true. Our gay athlete is here, and the prodigal son is returned.

Overly cynical, conspiracy theorist, whack job – plenty of like phrases are applied if people take an overly critical look at the media, especially in matters of popular social opinion. And there can be no equivocating on the fact that regardless of where you stand on the matter, gay rights are a driving cultural force in our country today. From politics and business to civil institutions and religion, the issue of homosexuals and their rights is changing the face of the United States. But it’s in this very issue I feel the media have forgotten their place. Social media, your Twitters and your Facebooks, need not apply here; that’s you speaking, not the fourth estate. I’m talking about the news media, what has ever been lauded as the staple of any lower-case “d” democratic society. If you take a look at the coverage leading to today’s announcement from Jason Collins, there can be little question his decision to open up about his sexuality was akin to a proxy outing on behalf of major news outlets. For months, it was said some such announcement was only a matter of time, that a gay athlete was sure to reveal himself in the coming months. The headlines read like some hack fortune-teller cobbling together a vision, the shapes in the swami’s crystal ball clouded by the mists of journalistic integrity. The vagaries, however, didn’t matter; the story practically wrote itself.

I can’t recall when exactly the buzz over the identity of the mystery gay athlete began taking shape. Not for a lack of research, I promise, but because the issue seems to have materialized from those same mists that kept the media from crafting an accurate, insightful narrative. Minnesota Vikings kicker Chris Kluwe has long spoken in favor of openly gay athletes, and has gone to extreme lengths to make his opinion known. But what sticks in my mind as the crystallizing point was the end of January 2013, when San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said gay players were not welcome on his team, or in professional football. Game time. Both sides of the story were on the record, and the box for the bare minimum of accuracy and fairness could now be checked with a clean conscience. It’s up, it’s good. And to a large extent the story was good – it was reportable, it was factual, and one could certainly make the argument for relevancy given how heavily gay rights play in our culture right now. But as the debate heated up, the tone changed. The media began posing more and more questions not to whether there was support for gay athletes – there was; the aforementioned Kluwe, for one, the Ravens Brendan Ayanbedajo for another, heck, a full 22 athletes speaking in support of any closeted players – but when those gay players were going to come out. “Magic Johnson, Mark Cuban agree on support of gay athletes,” read the LA Times on April 5, 2013 ("’If that ever happened, I would support them 150 percent,’ Johnson said when asked what he'd do if a player on the Dodgers announced that he was gay.”). “Leagues prepare for day when gay athlete comes out,” says USA Today on April 11 (“The day is coming when that will happen, maybe even some day soon). The Huffington Post grabbed viewers with its story boasting Nike’s quest to give an endorsement deal to the first openly gay athlete.

And there they were. The pieces that not only postulated as to the presence of a gay athlete, but every-so-carefully stayed just a few words short of promising one. Behind all these stories, that niggling message to any gay athlete was one of a culturally-driven voyeur show. Step forward, we want to see your face, those stories said. Hurry it up, we want to show how much we support you, they cried. Come out, come out, whoever you are.

The implications of this are startling. To want something is one thing. To craft an outcome is another. I’ve noticed a growing backlash – among my friends, among my family, among the back-and-forth on the same social media sites I was quick to spurn – against this selective cherry-picking of stories. I’m loath to use the word agenda; not only because it immediately shuts down any capacity for critical thought, but because it’s a false flag. Few are the respectable news outlets who are out to “get anyone,” no matter what anyone of one political bent or the other says. But I’ve found a swell in the consensus that there’s an emergent narrative, a creation – intentional or otherwise – of the same story those outlets are meant to cover.

The media was looking for Jason Collins, and in doing so they forgot their role to ask the questions and then to tell the story.  Whether that impacted today’s announcement from Collins is something that’s far too soon to say. Collins took the first step today in a long journey shared by people across the United States, and across the world. For many, it’s a journey shared in secret, maybe even one shared in solitude. I just hope he took this step today because in his heart, he felt it was time; and not because someone else felt it was time in theirs.

On Landslides

If you’ve been paying any attention to my dull life, you’ll know that I live on an island. Not just any island, mind you, but Washington’s own Whidbey Island, the second longest island in America. Besides being proximate to Seattle, Whidbey Island is known for its occasional landslides. Landslides?

Yep, landslides. That happened on Wednesday, and you can read about it here (with more pictures):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300117/Whidbey-Island-landslide-Thirty-homes-threatened-swathe-coastline-falls-sea-massive-landslide-Washington-island.html

But this post isn’t about landslides, but rather about the rise and rise of gay marriage. What was once an unheard of policy has become, in the span of about ten years, one of the most popular and pushed for social changes. The previous consensus define marriage as between a man and a woman has collapsed, not too unlike the land underneath these property owners’ homes.

At this point, you’re probably well versed in the talking points of the pro and anti gay marriage sides. I’m not interested in rehashing that debate. In fact, this post contains no such statement on the merits or demerits gay marriage itself. Instead, I find far more fascinating and far less discussed the speed by which this cause, once espoused only at the fringes, has become mainstream opinion. Why is gay marriage such a strong and fiercely debated issue, and how did it find widespread acceptance? I’ll give an answer to both of those questions in what follows. Stick around.

Cultural Anarchy

In the gay marriage debate, proponents of same sex marriage insinuate that it is religious people imposing their definition of marriage on the rest of the population. This verb, "imposing," is very interesting, because it implies that gay marriage is the status quo, and traditional marriage is an aberration, or reactionary action against it. In other words, gay marriage existed, and religious people are now trying to implement their more limited version of marriage in opposition to it.

This cannot be, because it clashes with both facts and recent history. Traditional marriage was the norm, gay marriage is the radical change. I think people that push for gay marriage know this, but heir language contradicts this observation. Rhetorically, it’s smart to portray the debate this way, because it puts on the defensive the traditional marriage crowd. Gay marriage is presumed to be the default option, and traditional marriage being a new plan, but only in the rhetorical sense, must justify its position, not the other way around.

Why then did the previous consensus on what defines marriage fall apart? What was it that caused a separate definition to emerge, and so suddenly? I’ll get to the second part, on the speed of the change, later, but let’s stay focused on the first part.

Allow me to present the idea that at the heart of the gay marriage debate is a struggle between competing cultures for control of the American public sphere. Their rhetoric is different, and their adherents may not even be aware of this fact, but these various cultures are fighting a war of language as much as they are fighting a war of policy. The prize in this battle is control of mainstream opinion, and the resulting defining of their particular preferences as normal and accepted.

Let’s rewind the tape two hundred years (do people under the age of twenty even get that idiom?). The United States was founded as a religiously pluralistic nation. Although primarily a protestant country throughout most of its history, it tolerated different sects and religions. The Russian Jew as well as the Irish Catholic fled to our shores, and they each became part of our shared culture. Though they were ethnically and culturally different, I’d argue that they shared more in common than in differences. Up until, let’s say the 1960s, this situation defined the US. We had a dominant protestant culture, with Catholics, Protestant blacks (unique for a variety of historical reasons), and Jews forming the primary minority groups.

Let’s look at the fancy ven diagram that I hastily, yet beautifully, whipped up in power point. Each circle represents the preferences, opinions, laws, traditions, and social mores associated with a particular culture/religion. A note before I proceed. I keep using culture and religion as synonyms for each other. Why? I’d argue that before the advent of mass media, particularly the television, your culture was primarily defined by your religion. Imagine yourself in a small town or an ethnic ghetto in a large city. Your world view, your morality, your preferences are largely defined by what religious group you happen to be born in. Regardless, the situation as it existed is presented here:

Imagine each circle is the worldview of a particular religious culture. A black Protestant, for example, has a collection of preferences, social mores, taboos, and a moral system unique and different from an Irish Catholic or a Norwegian Protestant. Alcohol, for example, was historically condemned as an evil by Protestants while being a central part of certain Catholic cultures. If we look at this chart, we can see that although there are differences, the cultural overlap is strong. A former slave and a recent Italian immigrant both knew the stories of Moses, Noah, and Abraham. Prior to the advent of the 1960s, the culture of the United States, far from being homogeneous, was composed of a variety of cultures with a high degree of overlap. The political battles of this time reflect this fact. The main battles of this era were economic in nature. Several presidential campaigns were fought over the gold standard and the climax of the era was FDR’s New Deal programs, which sought to benefit the poor and middle classes at the expense of the rich. It was an era of class warfare, not social issues. The social issues that were important, such as the prohibition on alcohol, were reflective of the cultural rupture between Protestants and Catholics.

But it all changed. Modernity, and how the various religions responded to it, caused a proliferation of new cultures and the dissolution of the consensus that did exist. Let’s return to our circles.

The areas of cultural cohesion have lessened. The cultural cleaves have multiplied. For the first time, we have the widespread emergence of a secular culture that forms its morality from non-religious sources. Increasingly, the media, Hollywood, and the political realm become the determinants of value systems. Many people are still religious, but the church has fallen to one factor among many that define the identity of a person. Additionally, we have the introduction of entirely new cultures/religions with the expansion of the immigration system in the 1960s.

The consensus that existed has died out. The common ground in American culture life is becoming shallower. As a result, we not only have increasing political polarization but an increasing prominence of social issues. As our shared definitions become no longer shared, a struggle develops over who controls those definitions.

Gay marriage is just another front in this ongoing war. I think this explains why its developed into an issue, but it doesn’t explain its victory.

Class matters

During this period, class has not gone away. Not only has it not gone away, I think it plays a crucial role in the rise of gay marriage.

The upper middle class possesses the power to enact social change, but this can only be done with the consent and popular support from the broader and larger middle class. Areas in which the interests and views of both the middle class and upper middle class align are areas in which we are more likely to witness reform.

Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) remains politically unpopular because it benefits the lower class at the expense of the middle class. Welfare too for similar reasons. Social Security and Medicare, both giveaways from the state, have continued political support and remain impervious to reform because they benefit, and thus get supported by, the middle class.

Gay marriage is successful because it was an issue that affected the cosmopolitan upper middle class and middle America. Gay people are not confined to a social class but exist across all incomes and races. The tony New York liberal has many gay friends. What changed was the fact that increasingly so too did Sally from Peoria. When out gay people were confined to San Francisco and New York, their cause was not popularly championed. As soon as they started coming out in the small towns and suburbs across America, millions of Americans soon came to know a neighbor or family member that was a homosexual. As determined by Gallup (and confirmed in other polls that I am too lazy to link to) knowing someone who is a homosexual is the primary determinant of whether someone is for or against gay marriage.

The overlap between the middle class and the upper middle class on this issue is the single largest factor pushing forward its rapid advance from popular opinion into policy. There are lots of issues that are popular, but fail to find political success. Gay marriage is not only popular, it’s popular among the right people. That’s why it’s winning. 

The Google Glasses are both Gauche and Evil

 If you know me, you’ll know that a core portion of my life involves incessant checking of the Drudge Report. I don’t use it as my only source for news and views, but Matt Drudge’s autistic like constant updating of the nineties-esque site provides me with the needed jolt of sensationalized headlines to get my day going. 

Imagine, then, the scene this morning where upon waking up, I used my smartphone to check the Drudge Report. What did I see staring back at me? The death of humanity, otherwise known as these:

What is this garish monstrosity? The latest design from chronically try-hard Oakley? A pair of glasses linked up with a USB cable?

Nope. This is the first prototype of Google’s entry into the world of hardware and personal computing. The Google Glass is the world’s first device that combines a computer with eyeglasses designed for everyday wear. The full capabilities of the thing are still uncertain, but in this eerie video, the wearer uses the glasses to record video, take photos, perform Google searches, and get directions from the device simply by speaking a command.

Watch that video and check out the rest of the website. Afterwards, record the day and time you witnessed this, so you have for your personal records the exact moment you witnessed the decline and fall of humanity. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. At the very least, I think we can expect a further coarsening of the culture. How? Supply and demand, baby.

Human beings place value on things that are rare and don’t value things that are common. There are individual exceptions to this rule, but it generally stands. A laptop computer is more valuable than a can of green beans, for example, because a laptop has a large utility value, that is you can do a lot with it, and cans of green beans are relatively common. As something increases in supply, its value declines. Think of salt. During the Roman Empire, the legions guarding the borders of Rome were paid their salaries in salt. Salt was useful in the curing of meats and as a flavor enhancer, but was also rare and difficult to produce. Nowadays, if you’re employer paid you in salt, you throw it in their face and take them to court. Thanks to scientific advancement and industrialized mining techniques, salt is common and cheap and as such we value it less.

To a certain extent, this same general relationship holds to intangibles. A jet-setting business man shrugs at his next flight to exotic Tokyo, while a pasty poor teenager who has never left his mother’s basement would be in a state of rapture at the mere thought of going to the land of Ninetendo and anime. The first moments with a new baby are wonderful. Parents like to sit and watch their newborn children learn to talk, walk, and so on. But after a few months, the novelty wears off, and the adorable toddler learning to mouth a few words becomes a mouthy teenager. As the supply of something becomes more common, we devalue the particular thing. A single cupcake brings joy. Ten cupcakes bring pain.

This holds true, I argue, for information. Information is a commodity, like iron or wheat. It, too, has a supply and a demand. Prior to the invention of the printing press, information was rare. There were few books in existence and if a new book were to be made it would have to be copied by hand. Information, as such, had a high value despite a globally illiterate population. Want proof? Observe the strict control the Catholic Church, national governments, and other elites placed on the dissemination of Bibles, ancient texts, and other sources of information. The printing press, in a way, caused one of Europe’s most destructive wars, the Thirty Years War, as Protestantism was able to quickly disseminate throughout northern Europe as a result of its invention.

Now, though, the opposite is true. The supply of information, articles, knowledge, the written word, books, newspapers, everything, has exponentially grown. Thanks to the internet and the computer, we now have reams of data on almost every conceivable topic.

It’s inarguable that the supply of information has increased, but what is more important is the relationship between human beings and information, and the subsequent devaluing of information. We are bombarded with thousands of bits and bytes of data every day, every second. As smartphones, computers, and Google Glasses become more common, this constant stream of information will only quicken. It is simply not possible to process every news story, every new scientific article, and every update and photo and video posted by one of our friends. Accordingly, the value of each of these drops.

I think I could better get my point out by looking to an example. Let’s take health. The amount of studies, research papers, news blurbs, and the like on what is and isn’t healthy is overwhelming. One day, carbohydrates are bad. The next, carbohydrates are good. Eggs will kill you. Eggs are the best thing you can eat. Running every day places too much stress on your joints and wears out your body. Running every day keeps you in good cardio shape. And on and on it goes. For every piece of health advice out there, you can easily within seconds find another piece of advice recommending you do the opposite. What happens to the common Joe and Jane when confronted with all of this? They devalue the information, and simply tune out. The result? A national obesity crisis.

Politics is another example. There’s thousands upon thousands of articles, research reports, and policy papers on any given political topic. You can spend a lifetime reading about something as arcane as the tax code, and you still would not know all that there is to know. How do people respond to this? By devaluing and thus trivializing politics. Our national discourse has been reduced to memes and images encapsulating some half-thought out political point posted on facebook. People post these because they enable to the poster to feel, and show, as if they actually care about civic engagement without having to do any of the real work and effort that such engagement involves. We have thousands of data points on Republicans, Democrats, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, etc. It’s impossible to process them all, so they great many of us tune out, slink away into our little bubbles, and fall back on innate biases and ideologies.

The explosion of knowledge has caused, paradoxically, it to be devalued. The most potentially informed people in the world become the least informed. This ignorance is not irrational or stupid. It’s a rational response to the saturation of something.

Let’s return to the Google Glass. What this technology promises to do is record every moment of your life. It’s a Faustian bargain in which every emotional, transcendental, or life changing experience can now be safely stored away in high definition. These moments, instead of being cherished memories, become data on a hard drive. Subtly, maybe not noticeably at first, we’ll start to devalue this. I know it goes against my image as an economist, but human beings are more than rational consumers. They have a spiritual side, a spark of consciousness that bends, but never reaches, towards the eternal, the mysterious.

Life, with its wonders, its pitfalls and disasters, its successes, the birth of new babies, the death of the old, marriages, divorces, sex, romance, violence, is a continual process unfolding in real time. To constantly record it, to take it apart and categorize it, to never forget, to eternally capture everything, reduces its charm. There is something to be said for the memory, slightly faded, blurred by time, that is continually recalled into the mind as a source of strength, or nostalgia, or fear. The Google Glass, and the trend that it represents, is a small step, but a step nonetheless, towards man as machine, a biological robot.

Plus they look really bad.

Newsflash: GOP is not going to win Hispanics

People are busy. I recognize that. Few have the necessary spare hours per day to devote themselves to closely but accurately following the constant march of political news. Legislators, the people we elect to do exactly this task, don’t even have enough time to read their own legislation. That job responsibility has been largely outsourced to the few hundred staffers who author Congress' legislation.

A civic duty, however, compels people to pay at least some attention to politics. So they read a few article here and there, and occasionally scan an op-ed article. The rise of America’s punditocracy is evidence of this fact. We now have an entire industry dedicated to forming opinion on whatever the political issue of the day happens to be. It’s easy, then, to see how conventional wisdom develops. If a bunch of really (usually only a few) smart people agree on something, then that something must be true.

Conventional wisdom is really just the reason of a crowd, and crowds are inherently irrational. As such, conventional wisdom should always be doubted. This does not mean that it should always be rejected, as the common argument may hold some validity, but it does suggest that all assumptions underpinning that argument should be at the least be questioned.

I bring this up because it’s become conventional wisdom that the GOP needs to back immigration reform in order to win Hispanics. A variant of this argument is that Hispanics are a large, socially conservative voting bloc. If the GOP supports some form of amnesty/open borders, they can win them in droves!

Except, it’s false. Not true. Invalid. Whatever word you want to use to represent falsehood, use it because the idea that the GOP is going to get Hispanic voters in large numbers within the reasonable future is simply bunk.

Here’s why

The border is not the only concern of Hispanics:

I frankly find it insulting that minority groups get pigeonholed into an issue, as if the wider spectrum of political issues is somehow off-limits to them. Pick the minority group, and there’s a single issue that they’re expected to vote on. Gay people – gay marriage. Women – abortion rights/birth control. Hispanics – citizenship. This one dimensional view towards minority groups treats them as exactly that, a group, and ignores the fact that they are individuals with different needs, wants, beliefs, and concerns.

And so, lazy thinking leads people to think that the predominate issue for Hispanics has to be the border. Never mind a whole host of other issues, including gun control, the cost of living, wages, civil liberties, national defense, the environment, and so on. I think there’s a subtle form of racism at play here. White people are expected to take into account the various political issues when voting, but if Hispanics or Blacks dare vote for a conservative politician due to placing a higher emphasis on issues not tantamount to their ethnicity, they are labeled as “voting against their race.” It’s absolutely disgusting, but it’s a popularly approved form of societal peer pressure.

Call me crazy, but I think Hispanic families and individuals face similar challenges that we all face. Wanting the best education for their kids, finding healthcare that is affordable, owning a home, receiving a rising paycheck, and being a part of a free and prosperous country are all things that Hispanic, and all American families, want. These issues matter to Hispanics, and as I’ll get to later, Hispanics line up against the GOP position in all of these issues.

Republicans seem to think that if they just back immigration reform, Hispanics will fall into line with their policy prescriptions in these other areas. That’s both simplistic and wrong.

I have numbers to back me up on this.

Healthcare, not immigration, is the number one issue for Hispanics in the US.

See here:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155327/hispanic-voters-put-issues-immigration.aspx

Unemployment is second. The border/immigration comes in third. Only 12% of Hispanic voters rate the border as their top priority.

At the last election, Hispanics turned out strongly for Obama. In this poll, linked here:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/latinos-see-obama-as-best-to-handle-economy-deficit-and-foreign-crisis/

Six in ten Hispanic voters rated Obama as being better able to handle the economy, which was their top concern. Hispanic voters don't really care about the border, and that's a logical position to take. Since they are voters, they must have citizenship. Once you have citizenship, your concern for immigration naturally declines. You're already here, you're a citizen, why worry about your compatriots trying to enter this country, when you have more immediate and pressing concerns. 

Even if the GOP came out in favor of immigration reform, the Dems still outclass them on the issue:

People have memories. If immigration reform is your number one concern, and the GOP now comes out in favor of it, are you going to switch your ideological stance to supporting the GOP? Doubtful. Why would you suddenly join or support a party which opposed your pet issue for all of these years? Let’s look at a mirror example. Due to the popularity of the gun rights crowd, Dems are now increasingly abandoning their hard-line gun control stances. Yet, gun advocates still distrust Democrats. It’s extremely difficult for parties to out-party the other.

If the GOP embraces some form of moderate immigration reform, the Democrats will just move the goal posts further to the left, and continue to demagogue them. Ok, so you now support a pathway to citizenship? Why not full amnesty? So you now support full amnesty? Why not total open borders?

A GOP President granted amnesty before:

Assuming that your definition of Hispanic rights (When is the group based rights movement going to ever cease?) comes down to who supports amnesty, then who is the strongest backer of Hispanic rights in our history? Ronald Reagan, a Republican president.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which legalized all immigrants who entered this country before 1982. In 1988, a mere two years later, Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, ran for president and won.

Pop quiz, what percent of the Hispanic vote did he win?

A measly 30%.

Anyone out there who thinks backing immigration reform is going to win votes for the Republicans, please explain this example.

By the way, Mitt Romney’s share of the Hispanic vote?

A measly 27%.

Hispanics are liberals:

Returning to the beginning of this post, conventional wisdom states that Hispanics are “natural Republicans, they just don’t know it yet.” They might be a fiscal liberals, but they sure are social conservatives!

For the record, the religious right has really bought into this line. See this link.

Ha!

Let’s look at some polling data.

Three out of ten Hispanics identify themselves as liberal, compared to two in ten Americans. Native Hispanics are more liberal than immigrant Hispanics, by 37% to 24%.

What about on abortion?

Take it away, Politico:

More than half, or 51 percent, of Hispanics told pollsters that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, compared with 41 percent of the general population. But there is a divide among Hispanics — 58 percent of immigrants say abortion should be illegal, while 40 percent of second-generation and 43 percent of third-generation Hispanics agree.

And gay marriage? Sorry, religious right, you lose again. From the New York Times:

More than half of the nation’s Latinos are in favor of same-sex marriage, according to a survey released on Thursday, dispelling a long-standing notion that their religious beliefs offered a safe path to Republicans looking to stake a claim in the community through shared social values.

           
What about on economics? In another study, done by the Latino Decisions group, Hispanics are favor a larger government, increased government intervention, higher taxes, higher spending, and are skeptical of a more robust free market.

The link to this excellent report is here.

In short, Hispanics are progressives. Shocker.

Conclusion:

Is it possible for the GOP to win more of the Hispanic vote? Sure, but it’s a long, uphill struggle that involves changing a culture and deep held political beliefs. A simple vote on immigration reform isn't going to cut it.

And nor should it. 

The constitution IS old. So what?

 Imagine this scenario.

You’re at a party. The battery in your phone has died, forcing you to interact with the other people there. No longer can you stand off to the side, playing angry birds while looking like you are texting someone important.

You survey the scene. Why did you go, you think to yourself. Just then, you see a small clatch of people engaged in vigorous discussion. You wander over there. As you get closer, you get to hear snippets of their conversation.

“I don’t know why people are so obsessed with the constitution. It’s so old.”

“Yeah, I mean why should we listen to what a bunch of old white guys thought about two hundred years ago.”

“They didn’t even have TV back then!”

“It’s irrelevant and out of date. I don’t know why those crazy winguts obsess over it. It doesn’t even guarantee you healthcare, like in Europe.”

“Europe! They’re so progressive.”

They spot you. Collectively turning to you, they ask:

“What do you think?”

This scene has happened thousands of times throughout America, and if you stop reading this blog post, it could happen to you. Read on, and you’ll have a witty, well argued, and original rejoinder to the conversation. However, it might cost you an invitation to a dinner party or two…

I usually give people on the opposite side of the political spectrum the benefit of the doubt. As I think I’ve explained before, no one side or ideology has a monopoly on truth. Listening to opponents’ arguments and understanding the logic behind what they are saying, are essential to a basic level of civility. We don’t do this, of course. It’s much easier to demonize someone you disagree with than concede that they may have a fundamental point.

All of this said, the argument that the constitution is old/irrelevant/racist/obsolete is so dumb, I have difficulty seeing any merit to it. Let’s breakdown these and their related arguments, so that I can show that contrary to popular belief, the constitution is extremely relevant.

The constitution is old.

The constitution is old. So what? The fact that something is old does nothing to limit its validity or enforceability. Yet, listening to some people, you would think that merely pointing out the age of the constitution is the equivalent to making a political point.

Contracts, which the constitution is modeled after, do not expire just because they are old. Imagine if I took out a thirty year loan from you. After twenty years, I stop paying. You come to me and demand your money that I agreed to give you.

“But that contract is twenty years old, man,” I reply.

Is that a legitimate defense? No. Contracts, unless specified, do not expire with age. You can’t agree to do something, and then, after some arbitrary passage of time, refuse to do it. The age of a document has nothing to do with its enforceability. Do you know what else is old? The Civil Rights Act, the nineteenth amendment, the existence of Social Security. All of these things are old, yet I don’t see people suddenly saying that we shouldn’t enforce them just because they are aged laws, and rightfully so.

Imagine what you are arguing for if you state that because the constitution is old, it shouldn’t be enforced. You’re basically arguing that after some undetermined period of time, agreed upon by no one, laws suddenly go out of force. Why pass laws at all, if this is true? Let’s just govern ourselves by dictats that last only as long as the current governing executive is in power. I mean, that’s worked so well for every other tyrannical regime, I’m sure it will work just fine here.

Laws are what separate civilized nations from the barbaric ones. Government by laws implies government by deliberation and wisdom and preclude government by men and whims. Let’s go to the next argument.

The constitution is obsolete/outdated (they didn’t even have TVs!)

This, I think, is the far more common argument. It goes something like this. When the founders created our country, a whole host of technological and social achievements weren’t in existence. The internet, railroads, television, Angry Birds, the refrigerator, birth control, and more weren’t even thought of. Major technological change have forced the constitution into obsolesce. We wouldn’t use a health book from the eighteenth century, so why should we use a constitution from then.

There are two counter arguments against this stupid, daft, unintelligent point.

First, the constitution is not a statement on technological craft. The document was created to a) acknowledge the rights and liberties of the American people and b) set up a structure for the federal government of the states. How does the existence of the internet, or any other technological invention, invalidate any of those things? It’s not like the founders were cavemen, unaware of the possibility that times could change. THEY LIVED THROUGH ONE OF THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF MAN. Of course they were aware that times, and technology, change. The existence of the United States Patent Office is proof enough for this. They knew that, over time, it may be necessary to tweak the structure of government. Maybe, as it was the case, states have too much power and are running ramp shod over peoples’ right to vote. Maybe there needs to be a new source of income to fight a global war. Whatever the case, the constitution created a process specifically designed to adapt to change. It’s called the amendment process, and it’s been used twenty seven times. The fact that the constitution is flawed in some way, or does not address some newly discovered problem, does not invalidate the entire document. No! You can, with popular consensus, add to the document to bring it up to speed. Amazing!

Second, if the constitution is out of date, I would like someone to point out what specific liberties it acknowledges are now obsolete. What about amendment III? No one even knows what that is.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

It’s so old! Except, it’s actually a very important right. That fact that it’s near unthinkable for the government to station troops in our home is a testament to its success. But it’s old. Let’s get rid of it. Let’s let the government forcibly station troops in our home. I mean, protecting one’s house and property is so 18^th century. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of this one.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—

That one is pretty old. It’s over 150 years old. That’s seriously out of date. Did they even have ipods back then? Let’s keep going.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

This one is a little more recent, but it’s from the seventies. The seventies! They thought mauve was cool! They thought shaggy carpets were hip! Let’s toss this one.

And so on and so on. Do you see how silly this is? I challenge anyone who says that the constitution is out of debate to go, find a section, and show to me why that no longer matters. Remember, just because you can’t find an obvious reason as to why a part exists, doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. In reality, when someone says the constitution is obsolete, what they mean is:

There’s this amendment that I don’t like, but because it’s broadly popular and I’m a weasel I’m not going to stand up and say this. Instead, I’ll crouch behind vague and ultimately indecipherable language to make my point.

Let’s go to the final point.

The constitution was written by white men. It’s racist and sexist.

While the previous argument is the most common, I think this point is the most in vogue. Over the past forty years or so, entire departments have taken hold of universities whose only insight is to find something well regarded, call it racist or sexist, and repeat until tenure.

The constitution was written by racist, white men. Why should it hold any currency?

Factually, they’re partially right. White men did in fact write the constitution. I don’t know if they were racist, as I do not know the content of theirs, or any person’s, heart, but I’ll go a step forward. The ideas behind the constitution were developed primarily by white men. Whoa! Should we not listen to what Martin Luther King Jr. said just because he was a black man? No, that’s racist! You’re right. Now apply that same logic elsewhere…

Granted, the constitution was initially flawed because it refused to recognize black men and women of all sort. This is a serious point, and I firmly acknowledge it. The hypocrisy of pronouncing all men as equal while simultaneously defining some men as only worth 3/5 of a person, is morally and factually wrong. I can’t speak as a black person or a woman, but I know that this is severely off-putting, to say the least. Why, if I am a black man, should I hold any fealty to a document that initially refused to even acknowledge me?

This is a serious question. To counter, I would answer that it was through the constitution that liberation, for both blacks and women, occurred. The constitution created a noble and perfect ideal, a republic governed by free citizens, even if in practice it initially failed to live up to that ideal. The spirit behind the constitution is the one that we are constantly striving to reach. The initial failure of the document does not mean that the ideals behind are failures.

The constitution adapted to bring itself in-line with its principles. People struggled for, and ultimately passed, amendments reconciling the wrongs inherent in the original draft of the document. If you are a minority in this country, you should cling to the constitution. Frame it on your walls, because it is only this document and the current social mores that prevent prosecution.

If you made it this far, thank you. There’s a final point I want to make before concluding.

If we throw away the constitution, and decide to govern ourselves based on current societal mores, we run into a huge trap. It is easy to assume that society, and all of us, will continually progress and become better over the long-run. This is a false notion. Nowhere is it written that society will be more free, fair, and humane in the coming years. The constitution, and laws in general, are a bulwark against trends, both good and bad. The document was designed to be somewhat out of step with current times. If we governed ourselves only by what is currently politically popular, we would cease to be a republic, and would instead become a tyranny of the vogue and trendy.