President Obama proposed eliminating federal funding for abstinence-only education, apparently because of the overwhelming evidence that the programs have failed spectacularly everywhere they've been tried. The White House wanted to redirect those funds to broader teen pregnancy-reduction programs.If there are two things conservative lawmakers love most, it's cutting government spending and eliminating wasteful programs, right? Wrong.
The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday night approved an amendment providing tens of millions of dollars to fund abstinence education programs for teens.
The proposal, offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would provide $50 million per year through 2014 exclusively for abstinence education programs. The measure would effectively reinstate the controversial Title V program, which offered $50 million per year to states for abstinence education, but prohibited them from tapping the funds for other sex-ed subjects like contraception. The same prohibition would accompany the Hatch amendment. [...]
The vote was 12 to 11, with Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) voting with every Republican to secure passage of the measure.
Hatch, defending the truly ridiculous government spending, said, "Abstinence education works."
That's true, if you live in a fantasy world in which reality has no meaning.
The facts have been stubborn on this. The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that abstinence programs do not affect teenager sexual behavior. A congressionally-mandated study, which was not only comprehensive but also included long-term follow-up, found the exact same thing. Researchers keep conducting studies, and the results are always the same.
This isn't complicated. Simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn't affect behavior, doesn't prevent unwanted pregnancies, and doesn't stop the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. Teens who receive comprehensive lessons of sexual health, with reliable, accurate information, are more likely to engage in safer, more responsible behavior.
And yet, every Republican -- you know, the guys who want to cut government spending -- insisted on throwing another $50 million -- of our money -- at programs we know produce the opposite of the desired result. The measure would have failed, were it not for two conservative Democrats who decided to help them.
The provision may eventually be scrapped as the bill progresses, but that it passed at all is an embarrassment.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Abstinence-only education programs don't work
NIKE LATEST TO REJECT USCOC ON CLIMATE CHANGE....
Following up on an item from yesterday, it appears that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's conservative line on global warming isn't done alienating its one-time supporters.Nike will relinquish its spot on the board of directors at the Chamber of Commerce to protest the business lobby's opposition to climate-change legislation.
"We believe that on the issue of climate change the Chamber has not represented the diversity of perspective held by the board of directors," the company says in a statement obtained by POLITICO. "Therefore, we have decided to resign our board of directors position."
Nike has long been a strong advocate for government action to combat global warming and has said it "fundamentally disagrees" with the Chamber's position on the climate bill. The company helped found Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy, a coalition of businesses supporting congressional action to address climate and energy legislation.
The move comes on the heels of Exelon, Pacific Gas and Electric, and PNM Resources all quitting the Chamber over the group's efforts to derail energy reform. Nike is withdrawing from the COC's board, but will remain with the association, with the stated intention of "advocating for climate change legislation" from within the Chamber.
Either way, it's additional evidence that the business community is hardly united on the subject of climate change, and the Chamber of Commerce's reflexive, conservative line, premised on the rejection of scientific evidence, is proving to be unacceptable in several corporate circles.
What's more, Amanda Terkel highlighted a strong editorial on this from the New York Times today: "The United States Chamber of Commerce's Web site says the group supports 'a comprehensive legislative solution' to global warming. Yet no organization in this country has done more to undermine such legislation..... [Responsible chamber members] see a carbon-constrained world coming and want to get out ahead of the curve -- not behind it like the chamber."
@JimN2010 Ideologues are the problem not the solution....
A great example of why Republican Ideologues have done damage to the quality of life for citizens was in the Henry Citizen Newsletter #123 on July 31 where the husband of a teacher wrote in about the impact of furlough's on their family. He ended up having to take the day off of work to assist in getting the class ready, and pointed out that they have spent money out of pocket to buy white boards, supplies, and decorations for the classroom. Private citizens footing the bill for our obligations as a state is unacceptable.
@JimN2010 Republican ideologues have created a mess of State Government
It appears that the former Chairman of the Henry County Republican Party, Charles Mobley, has decided to tag me the tax increase king. This kind makes my case for me: Republican ideologues do a lot of damage when they are in government and can't be trusted to promote fiscally responsible solutions. Its not that they are bad people--they just don't get it!
Its pretty straight forward--Republicans are in the majority and have proved politically incapable of scaling back spending. This proves the irresponsibility of Republican leaders who continue to promote tax and spending cuts that further deteriorate the quality of life for citizens in this state putting their safety and prosperity at risk.
Steve Davis and the Republican majority have created a structural deficit in this state and I'm headed to the State House to clean it up Its not rocket science--you have to pay for the spending the citizens have demanded of their state government. Its unfortunate that the Republican leadership has declined so far--we deserve responsible leadership from both sides of the aisle. Doing the right thing won't be popular with Republican ideologues. They've created the problem, its time to clean up their mess.
Newsmax article talks of overthrowing Obama in coup...
A new Newsmax column advocates a military coup to unseat Obama or usher in a period of "shared responsibility" between military government and a ceremonial Obama presidency. "A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible."
The author, John L. Perry, claims not to be 'advocating', only describing what he says is already being considered and is the best option available. But give it a read and you be the judge.
And just so we're totally clear, no, I'm not expecting any military coups. This is just one more nugget to add to the backdrop list of incitement now coming from the right.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Why Everyone Younger Than You is Spoiled: the Foibles of Amateur Accounting
Sociologist Katherine Newman is working on a fascinating study of a new phenomenon called “delayed adulthood.” According to Newman, parents are bemoaning the extended amount of time their kids are taking to “grow up” in First World countries (e.g. U.S., Japan, Norway, Spain, etc.). Along with this phenomenon of “delayed adulthood,” Newman similarly finds media articles dotting the globe that discuss how parents regard their children as increasingly “spoiled.”
I can’t wait to read Newman’s book on this phenomenon when it comes out. However, from a personal standpoint, I think younger generations are already well aware that older generations (particularly boomers) think we’re a bunch of slackers. In fact, I’ve gotten so tired of hearing this from my elders that I’ve spent some time contemplating why older generations think us younger generations are so spoiled.
While there are many things that must feed into this complex phenomenon, I think that a major culprit here is our elders’ amateur financial accounting. In fact, I’ve isolated four main issues with the economic accounting of older generations that I believe leads them to think of us youth as spoiled (and which us youngins’ should remember for when we get older). To spare your attention span, I’m spreading the four issues over two posts. So if you want the exciting conclusion to this week’s post, you’ll have to come back next week.
Inflation
Inflation is a pretty familiar concept. We all know that things cost “more” now than they used to. Even in my short life I’ve seen the nominal price of using a payphone move from 25 cents to 50 cents. Dispensed sodas once were 50 cents, and now they are damn near $1.25. Still, despite everyone’s vague sense of increasing prices, few people (in any generation) actually have a strong grasp on what inflation is, or a specific idea on exactly how much things have changed over time.
As Dan has pointed out in previous posts, the exact way to measure inflation is questionable, primarily because it’s a diffuse phenomenon with a number of different causes. Still, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the best it can to track it. And using the BLS inflation calculator as a reference point, we can see the first factor that leads older generations to go wrong: discounting inflation.
Why is Inflation Accounting a Problem for Older Generations?
Take a classic example. My soon-to-be mother-in-law has offered to fund part of my upcoming wedding. I am very grateful for her contribution. However, like any good boomer she cannot help but point out how “exorbitantly” priced our wedding is, and just how “spoiled” we are. She loves to point out, on many occasions, that “all her parents ever gave her was $900 for her wedding.”
$900 does sound pretty reasonable compared to the nearly $3,000 we’re asking her to give us. But, of course, there’s inflation.
My mother-in-law was married in 1974. When you put that into the BLS’ inflation calculator, you find out that $900 in 1974 dollars turns out to be $3,892 in 2009 dollars. And, if you want to be nitpicky about it, I’m certain that the percentile rank of her current household income is certainly higher than her parents’ percentile rank, and also that her inflation-adjusted expenses are much lower (she has only one child – not four, like her parents – as well as various other factors that reduce her costs).
This case is a perfect showcase for the problems of discounting inflation. In it we see how a boomer thinks she’s suffering to give us more than we deserve, when in fact she is giving us less than her parents did, even though she is “better off” than they ever were.
My future mother-in-law is just one example of not adjusting for inflation; but as you will see, it isn’t just your “average boomer” who is making this kind of error. Take my Dad, for example.
My father is an auditor for the Department of Defense. He’s also a Certified Public Accountant. My dad knows how to keep track of money, like few others. But strangely, he is no more immune to the problem of miscalculating inflation than your average lay citizen.
One of my Dad’s favorite stories is about how, when he just got out of college, he bought himself a brand new dark-green Mustang. He says he could only afford enough gas to take him to the grocery store, but he stilled loved that car. Frequently at the end of this story he does his diligence (as a good boomer) to chide his children for their frivolous lifestyles. You probably see what’s coming – further investigation into the inflation-adjusted value of a 1972 Mustang casts doubt on which generation of Lundy has self-indulged more.
The cheapest Mustang my father could have purchased in the year 1972 cost $2,679 . Plug that into the inflation calculator and we find out that in today’s dollars that equals $13,666.
Now, it’s been about 5 years since I left college. To equal my father’s Mustang purchase during my post-college years, I would have to spend around $2,733 per year in big-time-fun expenditures (not counting things like going to the movies, which I know my father did as well, and probably just as frequently). Seeing that my annual income has never been higher than $18,000 a year since leaving college (and very frequently much lower), it seems hard to believe that I would spend, at a minimum 15% of my yearly income on some fun trip or other big-time leisure expenditure. But of course, I don’t have to guess about this matter. I didn’t spend this amount. And for the few “big fun” expenditures I did make (e.g. hiking the John Muir Trail two summers ago), most of this was paid for out of my own (meager) resources, and the rest was helped out by the usual money given to me by my family for Christmas, birthday, etc.
Let me make it clear: I don’t mean to whine. I do recognize the privileged life I lead (and have led). However, as we see from these examples, taking account of inflation would probably help older generations to fully account for the privileges they also enjoyed in their childhoods, and in their current lives.
Substitution
It’s easy to see how inflation might trick someone who is looking retrospectively at the past. Without memorizing a list of inflation factors for every year since your birth, it’s hard to have a realistic sense of how much you need to adjust for changes in the nominal prices of goods. However, one of the more mystifying errors older generations commit is their lack of accounting for substitution.
Substitution is not a hard concept to grasp. When life circumstances change, people tend to buy a different “basket of goods.” So, for instance, when a couple goes from living alone to having children; their basket of goods sees a drop in movie-going expenditures, and a precipitous rise in diaper and bottle purchases.
The same principle of substitution can be loosely applied to generational changes. Kids today just aren’t into pet rocks as much as they were in the 1970’s. Conversely, the interest of today’s youth in constantly texting one another would certainly stump the kids on That 70’s Show.
Why is Substitution Accounting a Problem for Older Generations?
Discounting substitution is caused by a sampling error: older generations only see the “inexplicable” things that younger generations do buy, but not any of the things that younger generations are no longer buying.
To put it in practical terms, my parents look at my desire to buy clothes from Banana Republic with horror. All they ever wore were “cheap, worn-out Levi jeans.”
But what my parents don’t see are all the 75-RPM records and 8-track tapes I’m not buying. In fact, I don’t ever buy music. I download it from a bittorrent site. Or I hear it free from a streaming Pandora radio station. Or I hear it free from videos posted on YouTube (you get the idea).
So with all those record purchases of my parent’s youth that I’m not buying, I’m taking that money and buying what’s fashionable now. But again, it’s much harder to see something I’m not buying, than something I am buying. So my generation looks spoiled to elders, both because older people don’t like the kinds of things I buy, but also because they don’t see all the “essential costs” my generation no longer makes.
Should Obama be killed Poll... sigh...
A blog called The Political Carnival is getting credit this afternoon for calling out the ridiculous "Should Obama be killed?" poll that showed up on Facebook over the weekend (and is now being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service).
GottaLaff, one of the blog's authors, pointed out the offensive post last evening. Today, says GottaLaff, the Secret Service tracked her down to say thanks for having posted a screen grab of the poll.
Facebook, the company, had nothing to do with the poll, according to spokesman Barry Schnitt. It's no longer on the site.
Monday, September 28, 2009
My Interview with Matt Weyandt
Download now or listen on posterous
The Trucks won't load themselves... the Douglas Adams edition...
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. ---Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. --Douglas Adams
Four Arguments for the Free Market
Somewhere in his exposition of liberal theory from Hobbes to Marshall (my copy is elsewhere at the moment [EDIT: Page 104, about Malthus' idea that competition served as a social regulation mechanism, Parsons doesn't actually use the phrase free market]), Parsons notes that the importance of the free market for liberal* theory has a lot to do with the way it prevents anyone from exercising power over anyone else, and less to do with the way it maximizes productivity. Parsons is not the only one to make this argument – it shows up also in a lot of the work in the “corporate governance” tradition in the mid-20th century, authors like JK Galbraith and Carl Kaysen argue that the rise of large corporations is potentially dangerous because such corporations have discretion in a way impossible under a competitive market.More generally, I think in sociology we can sometimes forget that the Free Market has been praised, defended and fought over not simply because of its virtues in allocating resources. Rather, I can think of four analytically distinct arguments in favor of relatively unfettered markets as the best way to organize economic life**:
1. Market allocate scarce resources efficiently. This is the most commonly used argument, and is associated most strongly with the entire neoclassical economic tradition. Supply matches demand, markets clear, everybody maximizes their welfare. Hooray! It’s most closely related to the next argument. 2. Markets take advantage of all of the information in society. This view is expressed most clearly in Hayek’s famous essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society. Hayek argues there that centralized planning systems cannot adequately capture all of the everyday and local sorts of knowledge about production techniques, materials, demand and more possessed by workmen, shopkeepers, etc. all the way on up. Top-down coordination fails because information is too expensive to centralize, and the free market reigns supreme because it lets society have a kind of distributed cognition. It’s mostly an argument against central planning. 3. Markets generate the perennial gale of Creative Destruction, that is, innovation that produces wondrous new goods and cheaper and better ways to do everything. This view obviously comes straight out of Schumpeter and his classic work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Schumpeter argues that markets are good not because they allocate resources efficiently on a moment to moment basis (and thus refutes argument 1 above), but rather because they promote innovation. Businesses with some limited monopoly power emerge naturally, and are healthy, as they provide some stability in the face of the perennial gale, while simultaneously investing in the R&D that produces it. Capitalism = Innovation. Innovation = Win. 4. Markets limit discretion and power. This argument is most famously explicated and belittled in Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. According to free market liberals, in a competitive market, no actor has the power to set prices (see any microeconomics textbook), and thus no actor has power over any other. The system runs itself, no one fights, and no one tells anyone else what to do. Polanyi calls this a “stark utopia”, and argues that it is as unreal and destructive as the communist utopias inspired by Karl Marx and lambasted as impossible by liberals. As mentioned above, authors concerned about the rise of the large corporation in the 20th century also draw a lot on this notion of the market. Anti-trust law, for example, is seen not just as a way to make the market more economically efficient, but also to prevent the enormous build-up of power in the hands of the corporate elite. Ok, so there you have it. Four arguments in favor of the Free Market (along with some bits of some counter-arguments). Enjoy! And leave a comment if you think I’m missing any, or grossly mis-characterizing the ones I have.