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saberal

Opinion | Coal Miners' Courage - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coal-miners.html

US Culture Workers

shared by saberal on 03 May 21 - No Cached
  • “Getting Real About Coal and Climate.” It’s one thing for folks in Boston or New York City to cheer for President Biden’s promised 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It’s quite another for coal miners to outline a climate policy they can live with that could end many of their jobs on the promise of an uncertain future.
  • United Mine Workers leadership — have shown both wisdom and courage in recognizing the road we must walk and telling us how we can get there together. Let’s hope that Washington hears them.
  • Paul Krugman’s characterization of hopes for bipartisan support for a carbon tax as “hopelessly naïve” is difficult to swallow for one who, like me, volunteers with Citizens’ Climate Lobby to push for carbon fee and dividend legislation. At the same time, Mr. Krugman admits that a price on carbon will prove necessary in the end, despite political obstacles.
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  • Our history provides many examples of hopes for progress that seemed hopelessly naïve, up until suddenly they weren’t: abolition, female suffrage, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and now, possibly, a just climate policy. Let’s not throw in the towel, Mr. Krugman.
  • These paid family leaves need to be divided into two parts: postpartum recovery time for a parent who gave birth to the child joining the family, and additional weeks of paid leave for each parent for the purpose of family bonding and adjustment.
  • The distinction between postpartum time and bonding time is key. Research has shown that, in many professional fields at least, gender-neutral family leave programs advantage male parents and disadvantage women parents. Men, receiving equal benefits with nothing close to the same burden, use the extra time off to advance their careers while women fall farther behind.
rerobinson03

Opinion | Biden Plots a Revolution for America's Children - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-child-poverty.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Biden’s proposal to establish a national pre-K and child care system would be a huge step forward for children and for working parents alike. It would make it easier for moms and dads to hold jobs, and above all it would be a lifeline for many disadvantaged children.
  • But the United States never developed such a system, because for half a century as other countries were investing in children, the United States was stiffing them. Today one of our saddest statistics is this: American children ages 1 to 19 are 57 percent more likely to die than children in other rich countries.
  • o the most historic part of the Biden agenda, to me, is a determined effort to invest in America’s kids and reverse decades of child neglect. Just as Franklin Roosevelt revolutionized conditions for the elderly by instituting Social Security, Biden may be able to do the same for children.
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  • any early childhood programs pay for themselves when aimed at the most disadvantaged, notes the Nobel-winning economist James Heckman, because they reduce spending on criminal justice, special education, health care and other services. One study by Heckman found that programs for vulnerable young children generated a 13 percent annual rate of return.
Javier E

The Three Degrees of Racism in America - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...613333

racism meaning interpretation anti-racism hiring metrics

shared by Javier E on 24 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Thirty years ago, my dad gave me his playbook to put racism to rest, and it inspired me to dedicate my career to executing his vision
  • Dad’s playbook included one insight that all Americans should hear, at least those who hope that when it comes to addressing racism, we can do better. As an economist, he told me that we have to “increase the cost of racist behavior.” Doing so, he said, would create the conditions for black people to harness the economic power essential to changing the narrative in white America’s mind about race.
  • To be outed as a racist is to be convicted of America’s highest moral crime. Once we align on what racist behavior looks like, we can make those behaviors costly.
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  • The first step is to clarify what constitutes racist behavior. Defining it makes denying it or calling it something else that much harder.
  • The final, most pernicious category undergirds the everyday black experience. When employers, educational institutions, and governmental entities do not unwind practices that disadvantage people of color in the competition with whites for economic and career mobility, that is fundamentally racist
  • This is racism in the first degree.
  • Then there is opposing or turning one’s back on anti-racism efforts, often justified by the demonization of the people courageously tackling racist behavior. I call this racism in the second degree, akin to aiding and abetting
  • Companies that sign on will be recognized and celebrated. Senior management teams that decline to take these basic steps will no longer be able to hide, and they will struggle to recruit and retain top talent of all colors who will prefer firms that have signed on
  • The most well-understood dimension involves taking actions that people of color view as overtly prejudiced—policing black citizens much differently than whites, calling the police on a black bird-watche
  • This dimension of racism is particularly hard to root out, because many of our most enlightened white leaders do not even realize what they are doing. This is racism in the third degree, akin to involuntary manslaughter: We are not trying to hurt anyone, but we create the conditions that shatter somebody else’s future aspirations.
  • Eliminating third-degree racism is the catalyst to expanding economic power for people of color, so it merits focus at the most senior levels of education, government, and business.
  • I have not seen 10 diversity plans that have the foundational elements that organizations require everywhere else: a fact-based diagnosis of the underlying problems, quantifiable goals, prioritized areas for investment, interim progress metrics, and clear accountability for execution
  • We can increase the cost of this behavior by calling on major employers to sign on to basic practices that demonstrate that black lives matter to them. These include: (1) acknowledging what constitutes third-degree racism so there is no hiding behind a lack of understanding or fuzzy math, (2) committing to developing and executing diversity plans that meet a carefully considered and externally defined standard of rigor, and (3) delivering outcomes in which the people of color have the same opportunities to advance.
  • Organizations cannot be meritocracies if their small number of black employees spend a third of their mental bandwidth in every meeting of every day distracted by questions of race and outcomes. Why are there not more people like me? Am I being treated differently?
  • Rooting out third-degree racism is what will ultimately change the narrative about race. When white people see more black people on the same path as they are, when white people are working in diverse organizations, and when they are proximate to black leaders beyond athletes and entertainers, only then will they stop fearing and feeling superior to the black people they don’t know.
  • When these executives are challenged on hiring practices, their first excuse is always “The pipeline of qualified candidates is too small, so we can only do so much right now.” Over the past 20 years, I have not once heard an executive follow up the “pipeline is too small” defense with a quantitative analysis of that pipeline
  • Employers whose efforts to increase diversity lack the same analytical and executional rigor that is taken for granted in every other part of their business engage in practices that disadvantage black people in the competition for economic opportunity. By default, this behavior protects white people’s positions of power.
aidenborst

Opinion: A company in Brazil made a controversial move to fight racism. Other CEOs shou... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US history crisis Culture policy injustice race positive-controversy

shared by aidenborst on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Although she's not a household name in the United States, billionaire Luiza Trajano, the richest woman in Brazil, might very well become one soon if her radical new model to confront structural racism takes hold.
  • Its coveted trainee program, long considered a major stepping stone into Brazil's corporate world, will now only admit Black Brazilians into its ranks in an effort to upend a system that oftentimes sidelines Brazilians of African heritage from rising up the corporate ladder.
  • The Magalu announcement quickly reverberated across the Brazilian media landscape. It was a bold move, no doubt, but not one without blowback; there have been calls across social media for a boycott of the company's stores.
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  • Of course, such a move in the United States would immediately run afoul of long-established laws stemming from Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which set up the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to adjudicate race-based hiring, firing and promotional grievances. Seminal cases such as Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973) and Hazelwood School District v. United States (1977), among many others, served to advance the legal structure through which American companies now deal with matters of race and equity in the workplace
  • Over time, these lawsuits gave EEO policies more teeth by defining a legal framework for ensuring workplace protections. They also forced companies to rewrite or get rid of unfair employment policies and practices.
  • However, the cruel irony of America's efforts to curb workplace discrimination is that once Title VII forcibly removed race from the hiring equation, it immediately became that much harder to enact programs to address systemic racism in ways that might be beneficial, which is why our country's long attempts at promoting affirmative action programs ultimately failed.
  • No matter how we got here, the current system is clearly not working; White males still account for the majority of executive positions. Among the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, only 1% are Black.
  • America has a diversity problem, and our largest corporations need to embrace bold new models about how to accelerate social and racial justice within their ranks.
  • CEOs should start by stripping down America's foundational myth of meritocracy -- the notion that one's ability to get ahead in life is solely a function of the combined strength of their efforts and abilities -- and approach corporate recruiting from a new angle.
  • Several corporate programs, such as Starbucks' College Achievement Plan, have taken steps to make higher education more accessible for employees, but fall short of addressing the social, environmental and economic vectors that impinge upon disadvantaged youths.
  • What if growing up in a low-income, single-parent household, instead of being seen as an impediment to climbing the social ladder, positioned high-potential young teens for corporate-sponsored talent development programs that would support them from junior high, through high school and college and into the sponsor's corporate ranks? Such a program executed at scale would invariably lift up disadvantaged White youths as well, but that would be a feature, not a bug, making the entire initiative less controversial.
  • Despite the controversy around the decision, the Trajanos are not wavering. "We want to see more Black Brazilians in positions of leadership in Magalu; this diversity will make us a better company, capable of delivering a better return to our shareholders," Frederico Trajano wrote in a recent article.
  • "Today the racial make-up of Brazil is over 50% Black and Brown -- it basically looks like what the United States is projected to look like by 2050," observed Frederico Trajano in a recent Zoom interview with me. "American CEOs of large companies would be well-served by looking at what we are doing down here in Brazil on many fronts, including how to ensure that a company's leadership team better reflects the public it serves."
  • Here in the United States, Americans just elected the first woman of color, Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, as vice president
  • American CEOs should look south, and take their cues on racial justice from a bold businesswoman and her son from Brazil.
kaylynfreeman

The problem with changing the Electoral College (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US politics trump

shared by kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The Electoral College has been a controversial topic over the past few years. People tend to have very strong opinions about the institution, which, in most instances, comes down to who citizens believe is advantaged or disadvantaged by it. Ideally, a good electoral system should be neutral, where no party, candidate or region is advanced at the expense of another. Yet, this is among the chief criticisms we hear about our system.
  • This has recently led many to call for the abolition of the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote. Yet, critics realize how resilient the institution has been, surviving nearly 800 attempts to amend or abolish it over the course of our nation's history. Most changes that have occurred have happened at the state level.
  • First, it is important to recognize that the Electoral College process leads candidates to ignore a majority of states across the country
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  • In 2008, Barack Obama captured an electoral vote in Nebraska's second congressional district. In 2016, Donald Trump earned an electoral vote in Maine's second congressional district. This year, both of these congressional districts have received attention from the presidential campaigns.
  • All other states use the winner-take-all method, which awards all of a state's electoral votes to the ticket that earns a plurality of the vote in the state. This method can lead to some pretty disproportionate outcomes which most often work to amplify the difference between a candidate's popular vote total and electoral vote total.
  • Because so many states are not competitive, many voters in these states may feel like their votes are wasted. This is reflected in President Trump's recent claim about the Electoral College system that "The Republicans have a disadvantage.
  • Concerns over gerrymandering have persisted in American politics for two centuries. The term is attributed to Elbridge Gerry and it refers to the practice of drawing legislative districts to favor one political party over others.
  • A second potential problem could be found in the role of third-party spoilers. It is conceivable that third parties or independent candidates could have strong showings in a few highly conservative or liberal congressional districts and ultimately claim a few electoral votes.
  • A third concern is that moving to a district selection process could lead to even more misfire elections --elections where the winner of the national popular vote does not win in the Electoral College.
  • These outcomes underscore the role gerrymandering by state legislatures would have on the presidential selection process. It also suggests why Reince Priebus supported having some states adopt the district plan when he was the head of the Republican National Committee in 2013.
Javier E

Black families pay significantly higher property taxes - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...black-property-tax

Black Lives Matter racial disparity inequality white privilege

shared by Javier E on 03 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • State by state, neighborhood by neighborhood, black families pay 13 percent more in property taxes each year than a white family would in the same situation, a massive new data analysis shows.
  • Black-owned homes are consistently assessed at higher values, relative to their actual sale price, than white homes
  • To expose the structural and historical factors behind these discriminatory property tax assessments, the economists analyzed more than a decade of tax assessment and sales data for 118 million homes throughout the country.
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  • In almost every state, property tax assessments were higher in areas with more black and Hispanic residents
  • The gap between white families and minority households remains large — 10 percent — when you combine data for Hispanic and black families
  • “We’ve always considered that in addition to paying your regular tax, there was a black tax that goes along with it,”
  • “It’s almost like it’s in the soil,” he said. “It stretches all across the board. It’s not just real estate. It’s not just housing. It’s not just food deserts. It’s not just racism on the street. It’s not just that you can’t get a cab at night. It’s everything.”
  • “The structure of the property tax system operates to disadvantage black Americans,” she said. “That’s how structural racism is. It’s built into the system. The property tax system itself discriminates against black Americans.”
  • One in five black households have reported missing a mortgage payment since mid-March, compared with about 1 in 20 white ones
  • Facing the accumulated disadvantages of centuries of repression and systemic racism, black Americans are likely to earn less than similar white workers in lower-paying service jobs, a dynamic that makes it more difficult to buy a home. Now, by hitting those jobs first and hardest, the coronavirus pandemic has made a bad situation worse
  • “During the Jim Crow era, local white officials routinely manipulated property tax assessments to overburden and punish black populations and as a hidden tax break to landowning white gentry,”
  • white officials going to extreme lengths to hike black taxes. In one such case in 1932, a black North Carolina resident was taxed for the value of two stray dogs that had been seen on her property.
  • Many county assessors intentionally overvalued black properties, sometimes in direct retaliation for black political action
  • As early as 1901, W.E.B. Du Bois showed that because of their unequal tax burden, black people paid more in taxes than they received in public education funds,
  • The fiction that “black people take services but they don’t pay taxes” remains widespread,
  • The values of black-owned homes tend to grow more slowly than values of white-owned ones. The white people who make up the vast majority of home buyers tend to avoid black neighborhoods, which cuts black sellers off from many potential buyers.
  • Given that difference in price appreciation, if an assessor assumes a black-owned home gains value as quickly as a white-owned home, the assessed value of the black-owned home will quickly outstrip its market value.
  • Nearby white families benefit from the opposite trend: Their homes increase in value more rapidly than their assessments, giving them an ever-growing tax break.
  • the appeals process illustrates how much of the property tax system functions in a way that penalizes black wealth, even as it appears neutral on its face.
  • While neighborhood and race are the biggest drivers of the property tax gap, the economists found others
  • As part of their study, the economists reviewed 3.4 million property tax appeals from Chicago and surrounding Cook County and found black homeowners were significantly less likely to appeal their property tax assessments. When they did appeal, black homeowners were less likely to win. And when they won, they earned smaller assessment reductions.
  • “White people feel more comfortable working within the system that was set up to make them succeed,”
  • “It makes sense that a black family who has been disenfranchised from these systems wouldn’t challenge it.” It is also difficult to work within the system for Latinos, many of whom do not speak English as a first language, she added.
  • was not taught about appealing property taxes or any of the other small strategies white homeowners have used to accumulate generational wealth.
  • “They feel their property taxes were being used to push them out of their places, especially when communities started gentrifying,” Avenancio-León said. It helped him see how property taxation can be used as a means of social engineering.
  • the duo, then working on doctorate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, combined 118 million real estate transactions and assessments from 2005 to 2016 with maps of more than 75,000 local taxing entities — such as counties, school districts, airport authorities and utility districts.
  • They used the maps to sort homes into areas that faced the same property tax burdens, identified the races of homeowners using federal mortgage data, and looked at every time a dwelling was assessed and then sold in the same year. That allowed them to compare a home’s assessed value and its market value, alongside the homeowner’s race and ethnicity.
  • The property tax gaps are worst for low earners, but even the highest-earning black Americans pay more on average in property taxes than similarly well-off white peers living nearby.
  • Whether or not these gaps were caused by explicit racism, Brown said, “you should be just as outraged that this is going on, and we should find a way to fix it.”
Javier E

The Dictionary Definition of 'Racism' Has to Change - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...613324

definition racism language dictionary culture

shared by Javier E on 15 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • the Merriam-Webster dictionary has, up to now, given us what we might consider the 1.0 definition of racism, the one we would cite for the curious child. That is, what used to be referred to as prejudiced: “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
  • For example, many people would say that the fact that, on average, black students do not perform as highly on standardized tests as white students means that the tests are racist, in that they disadvantage black students.
  • For example, one might say that societal racism is to blame for neighborhoods with decaying infrastructure, because white flight lowered tax revenues.
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  • These terms have naturally often been shortened to just racism, such that the word has acquired a 2.0 definition. Merriam-Webster captures this as well, noting that racism can mean “a political or social system founded on racism.”
  • Mitchum noted that racism “is a system of advantage based on skin color.”Here, the focus of the definition is less on attitudes than results: The societal disparities between white people and others are themselves referred to as racism, as a kind of shorthand for the attitudinal racism creating the disparities
  • This 3.0 definition of the word is now quite influential, such that the best-selling author and Atlantic contributor Ibram X. Kendi calls all race-based societal disparities racism that ought to be battled. It is a usage of racism that one often acquires in college classes in the social sciences, and that is fundamental to modern discussions of race and racism.
  • in my idealized English, people would be prejudiced while a society would exhibit racism.
  • itchum was frustrated by people telling her, in debates about racism, that her 3.0 definition was erroneous given that it wasn’t “what’s in the dictionary.” Her frustration was justified. She wasn’t creating her own definition of the word—it is shared by legions of people, especially educated ones, across our nation.
  • Dictionaries can lag behind societal developments, and the idea that a “word” indisputably “means” what dictionaries say is simply sloppy. Words’ meanings change inevitably and constantly
  • Sexist replaced chauvinist around the same time racist did prejudiced, and for the same reason—potent terms need refreshment, especially when heavily used. This is why, more and more, white supremacy is easing out racism. It was only a matter of time, and dictionaries should be on notice.
  • Racist was, initially, potentially applicable to alternate interpretations. Is the racist someone who is of a certain race? Or a supporter of people of other races? Or someone calling attention to the existence of different races? Or is racist something that refers to a policy? That latter direction is where things wen
  • Since the 1960s, however, racism has often been used in terms such as societal racism and institutional racism, referring to structures of society that disadvantage people of subordinated races because of the collective effect of bigoted attitudes.
  • To extend a word’s definition from a personal quality to a society is, in itself, hardly unusual. The progression of racism 1.0 to racism 2.0 follows a line of metaphorical reasoning common as far back as the Greek philosophers treating societies as individuals in macrocosm. The conceptual step between a healthy person and a healthy society is a short one, as is that between a racist person and a racist society.
  • The 3.0 usage implies that calling racial disparities “racism” is natural because it is indisputable that racial disparities stem from bias-infused barriers.
  • If I had it my way—which I won’t—we would allow that racism now refers to a societal state, and revive prejudice to refer to attitudinal bias.
Javier E

Opinion | At Harvard, Affirmative Action Shouldn't Be Just Black and White - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mative-action-harvard-unc.html

affirmative action scouts decision history policy

shared by Javier E on 07 Jul 23 - No Cached
  • It’s not that I oppose affirmative action per se; boosting opportunities for members of a historically disadvantaged group as a means of reparation and social justice seems to me easily morally justifiable.
  • nothing so defensible has been playing out in the admissions offices of the most selective American universities.
  • The voluminous record in the cases brought against Harvard and U.N.C. suggest that in order to maintain a vaguely defined notion of “diversity,” the schools’ admissions officials bumped up the chances primarily of Black and Hispanic applicants by undermining opportunities of another historically disadvantaged racial group — Asian Americans.
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  • As The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang writes, elite colleges’ affirmative action programs seemed “designed for a racially binary America” and “never got meaningfully updated for today’s multiracial democracy.” He argues that much of the public debate about the court’s decision seems stuck in that binary, too.
  • As Roberts and Gorsuch observe, these categories are in some ways too broad and in other ways too narrow
  • Perhaps the fundamental problem with these schools’ policies is their limited conception of the capacious and fluid nature of racial identity.
  • at Harvard, U.N.C. and other colleges that use the common admissions application, applicants are asked to choose one or more options from a list “to explain ‘how you identify yourself.’ The available choices are American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; Hispanic or Latino; or White,” adding, “Applicants can write in further details if they choose.”
  • He’s right. As I followed the case, it was this outdatedness that stuck in my craw
  • I will note a couple of points to undercut the liberal justices’ worry: First, it’s worth remembering that the decision’s impact is limited — as the sociologists Richard Arum and Mitchell Stevens argued recently in The Times, affirmative action mattered most for only a small group of the most selective colleges
  • Where do these categories come from? Gorsuch puts it pithily: “Bureaucrats.
  • Another instance of confusion came during oral argument, when U.N.C.’s attorney was asked which box a person from Jordan, Iraq, Iran or Egypt should check. He said he didn’t know, which seemed a pretty revealing answer: If U.N.C. doesn’t know what race a person of Middle Eastern descent is, should it really be making decisions based on race?
  • according to the American government, there is a correct answer to this question: Although some Arab American groups have lobbied to change the designation, people of Middle Eastern descent are officially classified as white.
  • the records suggests that Harvard also treated racial categories quite like stereotypes: Applicants of Asian descent were more likely than members of other racial categories to be labeled “standard strong,” meaning that admissions personnel determined they were academically qualified but otherwise unremarkable
  • Asian Americans scored better than other groups on academic and extracurricular measures, but Harvard’s admissions officers consistently gave Asians lower “personal” ratings than members of other groups. Harvard’s use of such subjective criteria to curb the number of Asian students admitted smacked of its efforts a century ago to keep out Jewish applicants it deemed unworthy of its “character and fitness” standards.
  • In dissent, the three liberal justices argued persuasively that the court’s ruling might significantly reduce enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite colleges. I agree this is a serious concern
  • Ignore if you can the ugly stereotyping — how the perfect SAT score would have been more impressive if the student had been “brown,” how “of course” it was an Asian kid who did so well, even if “still” impressive — and note the racial confusion: According to the colleges’ own categories, Asian includes brown people from, or whose forebears hailed from, the Indian subcontinent. But apparently U.N.C.’s officers’ mental picture didn’t match their official racial boxes.
  • The ruling presents us with another opportunity, too: To think about race more realistically, with far more specificity and precision. The 2020 census showed that America is growing more multiracial and more ethnically and racially diverse. We are far more than six categories on a demographic form — we contain multitudes, and we should recognize them.
  • “The ruling provides America with an opportunity to redirect the conversation from a relatively small number of schools and instead direct urgently needed attention to the vast middle and lower tiers of postsecondary education,” they wrote.
Javier E

Is Rush Limbaugh's Country Gone? - NYTimes.com - 1 views

campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/...is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone

welfare state capitalism socialism values survey attitudes US politics

shared by Javier E on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Two post-election polls – one released Nov. 14 by the Democracy Corps (founded by Stan Greenberg and James Carville), the other released Nov. 16 by the Public Religion Research Institute – reveal the decisively liberal views of the core constituencies within the rising American electorate and its support for government activism, especially measures to help the disadvantaged.
  • By a margin of 60-13, voters on the left side of the spectrum favor raising taxes on incomes above $1 million, while voters outside of the left are much less supportive, 39-25. In the case of raising the minimum wage, the left backs a hike by an overwhelming 64-6 margin, while those on the right are far less supportive, 32-18.  The rising American electorate backs raising the minimum wage by 64-6, while the people outside it back a hike by just 32-18. The left coalition supports a carbon tax or fee by 43-14 while right-leaning voters are opposed, 37-24.
  • the rising American electorate represents a direct threat to the striking array of government benefits for the affluent that the conservative movement has won over the past 40 years. These include the reduction of the top income tax rate from 50 percent in 1986 to 35 percent; the 15 percent tax rate on dividend and capital gains income, which was 39.9 percent in 1977; the lowering of the top estate tax rate from 70 percent in 1981, with just $175,000 exempted from taxation, to a top rate of 35 percent this year with $5.1 million exempted from taxation.
Javier E

Robots and Robber Barons - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-robots-and-robber-barons.html

economics profit labor capital inequality US

shared by Javier E on 11 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • profits have surged as a share of national income, while wages and other labor compensation are down. The pie isn’t growing the way it should — but capital is doing fine by grabbing an ever-larger slice, at labor’s expense.
  • Increasingly, profits have been rising at the expense of workers in general, including workers with the skills that were supposed to lead to success in today’s economy.
  • there are two plausible explanations, both of which could be true to some extent. One is that technology has taken a turn that places labor at a disadvantage; the other is that we’re looking at the effects of a sharp increase in monopoly power. Think of these two stories as emphasizing robots on one side, robber barons on the other.
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  • similar stories are playing out in many fields, including services like translation and legal research. What’s striking about their examples is that many of the jobs being displaced are high-skill and high-wage; the downside of technology isn’t limited to menial workers.
  • can innovation and progress really hurt large numbers of workers, maybe even workers in general? I often encounter assertions that this can’t happen. But the truth is that it can, and serious economists have been aware of this possibility for almost two centuries. The early-19th-century economist David Ricardo is best known for the theory of comparative advantage, which makes the case for free trade; but the same 1817 book in which he presented that theory also included a chapter on how the new, capital-intensive technologies of the Industrial Revolution could actually make workers worse off, at least for a while — which modern scholarship suggests may indeed have happened for several decades.
  • increasing business concentration could be an important factor in stagnating demand for labor, as corporations use their growing monopoly power to raise prices without passing the gains on to their employees.
  • that shift is happening — and it has major implications. For example, there is a big, lavishly financed push to reduce corporate tax rates; is this really what we want to be doing at a time when profits are surging at workers’ expense? Or what about the push to reduce or eliminate inheritance taxes; if we’re moving back to a world in which financial capital, not skill or education, determines income, do we really want to make it even easier to inherit wealth?
Javier E

Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-measures-new-report-says.html

health US comparative international report

shared by Javier E on 11 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.
  • The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.
  • “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”
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  • The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.
  • Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.
  • Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.
  • The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. B
  • the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”
  • The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.
  • In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.
  • Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.  
  • Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages.
  • the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.
Javier E

What the Right's Intellectuals Did Wrong - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-intellectuals-did-wrong.html

conservatism politics crisis culture gop intellectual

shared by Javier E on 26 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • “This is the crisis of the conservative intellectual,” writes Matthew Continetti,
  • “After years of aligning with, trying to explain, sympathizing with the causes and occasionally ignoring the worst aspects of populism, he finds that populism has exiled him from his political home.”
  • “what makes this crisis acute is the knowledge that he and his predecessors may have helped to bring it on themselves.”
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The only word amiss in this analysis is “may.” The crisis described in Continetti’s essay was not created by the conservative intelligentsia alone. But three signal failures of that intelligentsia clearly contributed to the right’s disastrous rendezvous with Trumpism.
  • The first failure was a failure of governance and wisdom, under George W. Bush and in the years that followed. Had there been weapons of mass destruction under Iraqi soil and a successful occupation, or had Bush and his advisers chosen a more prudent post-Sept. 11 course, the trust that right-wing populists placed in their elites might not have frayed so quickly.
  • The second failure was a failure of recognition and self-critique, in which the right’s best minds deceived themselves about (or made excuses for) the toxic tendencies of populism, which were manifest in various hysterias long before Sean Hannity swooned for Donald Trump
  • But the same Bush-era failures that alienated right-wing populists from their own intelligentsia also discredited conservative ideas within the broader elite.
  • Some conservatives told themselves that Fox and Drudge and Breitbart were just the evolving right-of-center alternative to the liberal mainstream media, when in reality they were more fact-averse and irresponsible.
  • Both of these errors were linked to the most important failure of the right’s intellectuals: The failure to translate the power accrued through their alliance with populists into a revolution within the managerial class
  • What the intellectuals did not see clearly enough was that Fox News and talk radio and the internet had made right-wing populism more powerful, relative to conservatism’s small elite, than it had been during the Nixon or Reagan eras, without necessarily making it more serious or sober than its Bircher-era antecedents.
  • There was even a period in the 1990s — and again, briefly, after Sept. 11 — when a soft sort of social conservatism seemed to be making headway among Atlantic-reading, center-left mandarins.
  • Partial revolutions there were. Free-market ideas were absorbed into the managerial consensus after the stagflation of the 1970s. The fall of Communism lent a retrospective luster to Reaganism within the foreign policy establishment.
  • So it is that today, three generations after Buckley and Burnham, the academy and the mass media are arguably more hostile to conservative ideas than ever, and the courts and the bureaucracy are trending in a similar direction
  • Reflecting on this harsh reality has confirmed some conservatives in their belief that the managerial order is inherently left wing, and that the goal of a conservative politics should be to sweep the managerial class away entirely
  • This idea strikes me as fatuous and fantastical at once. But is there an alternative?
  • Continetti’s essay hints at one: to make intellectual conservatism a more elite-focused project, to seek “a conservative tinged Establishment capable of permeating the managerial society and gradually directing it in a prudential, reflective, virtuous manner respectful of both freedom and tradition.
  • To begin anew, at such steep disadvantages, what amounts to missionary work?
  • as another alternative, conservative elites might simply try to build a more intellectually serious populism out of the Trumpian wreckage and wait for a less toxic backlash against liberal overreach to ride back into power.
  • can the populist right actually be de-Hannitized, de-Trumpified, rendered 100 percent Breitbart-free? Or would building on populism once again just repeat the process that led conservatism to its present end?
alexdeltufo

The GOP's electoral-map problem is not about Trump. It's about demographics. - The Wash... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • Start here: Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election between 1992 and 2012. Add them up, and you get 242 electoral votes.
  • What that means in practical terms is that if Clinton wins the 19 states that every Democratic nominee dating to her husband has won and she wins Florida (29 electoral votes), she wins the White House. It’s that simple.
  • But to do so ignores recent history. Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Democrats’ electoral-map advantage echoes the clear headstart Republicans had during the 1980s, when Bush’s 426 electoral votes were the fewest that the GOP presidential nominee won that decade.
  • The current Republican disadvantage in the electoral map is less about any individual candidate than it is about demographics.
  • Perhaps the best example of this movement and how it has hurt Republicans is New Mexico, whose population is almost half Hispanic.
  • Obama won the state by 10 percentage points over Mitt Romney; neither side targeted it in any meaningful way. In 2016, it’s not even on the long list of potentially competitive states.
  • At the same time, as these states have grown friendlier to Democrats, there are very few states that are growing increasingly Republican. Wisconsin and Minnesota are two, but neither is moving rapidly in Republicans’ favor just y
  • The counter-argument made by Trump allies is that he can make the industrial Midwest more competitive than past Republican nominees because of his strengths among white male voters.
maddieireland334

The Weaknesses of a Popular Primary System - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484415

voting politics US democracy system weaknesses

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • James Ceaser, a University of Virginia professor, outlined the history and potential weaknesses of various nomination processes, including one that largely relies on popular primaries.
  • Starting in the early 1970s, Democrats and Republicans began reforming their primary-election processes, transferring influence over nominations away from party leaders to voters.
  • The ideas [for reform] were laid in the Progressive era: to take control over the nomination process from the party leaders and transfer it to a popular following within the party or even outside, in a primary.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • I spoke with Ceaser about Trump and the unintended effects of trying to make democracy more democratic.
  • You lay out four goals that a selection system should ideally be able to achieve:(1) It should promote candidates with presidential character,(2) the accession to power should be seen as legitimate,(3) the executive should have qualifications for the office, and(4) “highly ambitious” people should be prevented from taking office.
  • When Woodrow Wilson proposed [a popular-vote nomination system], the idea was that the types of appeals made to the public would be high-minded, and we would have these very deliberative debates by great statesmen. The minute this got underway, though, people started believing more in propaganda, public relations, and advertising.
  • When you look at recent races, you notice something in play: people for whom running for the presidency is their entry into politics rather than the capstone of a career
  • The difficulty of really walking it back substantially would be to ask the American people to have a different conception of what’s legitimate in the nomination.
  • There are disadvantages to a limited system, too—no system is perfect. It can become stale; it can protect too much of the status quo; it can fail to hear messages that are surging up.
  • They have other reasons, too—political reasons. They fear the opposite party more. They’re united in their distaste for Hillary Clinton. But it’s powerful—look, Trump is the winner. He won, fair and square.
  • For example, in the period of the Progressive Era up until the 1970s, you had some primaries—so you got to taste a little of what the people wanted—but the party still held control. You had a little bit of both. And that’s the superdelegate idea—you try to mix.
  • They don’t have a basis even of limiting who the candidates are to their own party. Bernie Sanders is not a Democratic. He was a socialist. And Trump was really not a Republican. But they came in and rented a party because that’s the way the rules are set up.
  • A party was a private organization that worked by its own rules and had its own purposes. It wasn’t obliged to run things according to popular majority rule of all the people, but maybe majority rule of all the party members—people who have been important in the party.
  • That was the idea—you’d have a high-minded debate, and the people would decide, it would be highly legitimate because there’s no stronger principal in a democracy than that the people should rule. Instead of forcing people to make deals behind the scenes and all that used to go on at conventions, they would articulate a program and the best person would win.
  • The Libertarian Party has been around—they’ve been trying to build up an actual party over the long term, and the better they do, the more that would be a conceivable strategy. I just don’t think they’re anywhere near a majority of the American people.
Javier E

Joseph Stiglitz Talks About Inequality and the Economy - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...479952

economics economic politics education inequality crisis economist theory failure market fundamentalism

shared by Javier E on 02 May 16 - No Cached
  • White: Early on in The Great Divide you ask who is to blame for the crisis and the inequality that grew after it. One of the answers you say are economists. To what extent do you feel economist and economic theory is culpable for the crisis?
  • tiglitz: The prevalent ideology—when I say prevalent  it’s not all economists— held that markets were basically efficient, that they were stable. You had people like Greenspan and Bernanke saying things like “markets don't generate bubbles.” They had precise models that were precisely wrong and gave them confidence in theories that led to the policies that were responsible for the crisis, and responsible for the growth in inequality. Alternative theories would have led to very different policies
  • For instance, the tax cut in 2001 and 2003 under President Bush. Economists that are very widely respected were cutting taxes at the top, increasing inequality in our society when what we needed was just the opposite. Most of the models used by economists ignored inequality. They pretended that macroeconomy was unaffected by inequality. I think that was totally wrong.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The strange thing about the economics profession over the last 35 year is that there has been two strands: One very strongly focusing on the limitations of the market, and then another saying how wonderful markets were. Unfortunately too much attention was being paid to that second strand.
  • The second major issue: 50 years after the march on Washington, 150 years after the end of slavery, we still are suffering from the legacy of that, and we have problems of inclusion. Racial inclusion, gender inclusion, and that dimension of inequality is so undermining of our society
  • there are two major things I would focus on: one is education. When you don't have equality of opportunity because you don't have equal access to education, it just seems so outrageous. It weakens our economy and leads to more inequality. We have a locale-based education system, we have increasing economic segregation, we clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.
  • What can we do about it? We've had this very strong strand that is focused on the limitations and market imperfections. A very large fraction of the younger people, this is what they want to work on. It's very hard to persuade a young person who has seen the Great Recession, who has seen all the problems with inequality, to tell them inequality is not important and that markets are always efficient. They'd think you're crazy.
  • We're so far out of line with the other advantaged countries. Those are two things that I think are the most striking in the sense that they are inconsistent with deeply held values and are leading to both more inefficiency and more inequality.
nataliedepaulo1

Trump pivots to economic message in Boeing visit - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by nataliedepaulo1 on 23 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Trump pivots to economic message in Boeing visit
  • North Charleston, South Carolina (CNN)President Donald Trump credited his young presidency Friday with creating a business climate that is incentivizing American companies to keep their businesses in the US and invest in American manufacturing.
  • Trump also vowed to "very strongly enforce our trade rules and stop foreign cheating," though he has not yet taken steps to label countries he decried during the campaign -- such as China -- as currency manipulators, which he could do by executive action. Trump has also floated imposing a tariff on imports from countries where he believes the US is at a trade disadvantage, though he did not specifically address those plans on Friday.
malonema1

Obama is staging a political comeback - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ressional-redristicting-2017-2

us obama pol

shared by malonema1 on 02 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Obama is staging a political comeback
  • Former President Barack Obama is staging his political re-debut, Politico reported on Tuesday. 
  • Ultimately, the goal for Democrats is to fix what they see as a party disadvantage — congressional districts that are overwhelmingly dominated by one party. The concept is better known as "gerrymandering."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Holder said there will be a difficult legal battle ahead, calling Sessions' latest actions in Texas "disheartening" and adding that Democrats are gearing up to file lawsuits nationwide to challenge districting maps and get the party in a stronger position at the state level.
Javier E

Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills in New York City Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-in-new-york-city-schools.html

reading curriculum education K-12 core

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 12 - Cached
  • For three years, a pilot program tracked the reading ability of approximately 1,000 students at 20 New York City schools, following them from kindergarten through second grade. Half of the schools adopted a curriculum designed by the education theorist E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s Core Knowledge Foundation. The other 10 used a variety of methods, but most fell under the definition of “balanced literacy,”
  • The study found that second graders who were taught to read using the Core Knowledge program scored significantly higher on reading comprehension tests than did those in the comparison schools. It also tested children on their social studies and science knowledge, and again found that the Core Knowledge pupils came out ahead.
  • The study found that for each of the three years, students in the Core Knowledge program had greater one-year gains on a brief reading test than their peers in the comparison schools.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Under the balanced literacy approach, which was used by seven of the comparison schools and remains the most popular method of teaching reading in the city’s schools, children are encouraged to develop a love of reading by choosing books that are of interest to them.
  • Reading nonfiction writing is the key component of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts. While the curriculum allows children to read fiction, it also calls on them to knowledgeably discuss weather patterns, the solar system, and how ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia compare.
  • The curriculum may have a particular appeal for city schools beginning to adopt the Common Core standards, which emphasize nonfiction reading and will go into effect in 2014.
  • anonymous on 23 Mar 12
     
    Though the Core Knowledge approach seems to have its merits when it comes to standardized test scores, there are certainly disadvantages. Students in the Core program are receiving higher scores on the test because they have been "trained" in that specific field. Now, as a junior, I have recently taken my first SAT. The SAT tests three areas of study (critical reading, writing, and mathematics). If my entire school experience had been based solely upon these three areas, I would be lacking much vital information. Sure, in this alternate universe, I might be a 2400 scoring genius debating between Yale, Brown, and Princeton, but does that mean I am at all prepared for such colleges? By these standards, we might as well just toss out History class (Not on standardized testing? Get rid of it!). I am not suggesting that preparation for standardized testing should be completely overlooked in school curriculum; I just think that it should not be the main objective. In the long run, reading "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" in 1st grade may not have made my scores as high as those reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest work, but it did something just as important. It, along with numerous other books of my choosing, cultivated my love for reading. This love for reading will stay with me long after standardized test scores even matter, and I might just get to that Gladwell book after all.
Javier E

White Roofs May Actually Add to Global Warming | 80beats | Discover Magazine - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...actually-add-to-global-warming

conservation energy roof

shared by Javier E on 28 May 12 - Cached
  • in a warm, sunny climate, a white roof almost certainly doesn’t hurt on an individual basis and may help reduce the need for air-conditioning (as inhabitants of sultry climes have known for a long time)
  • While a white roof in the southern states will reduce cooling loads and therefore save energy even some white roof manufacturers agree that the benefits of white roofs in the northern states an especialy in most of Canada are negligible at best and even an energy negative in many areas. In the north the only minor benefit may be a slight reductioin in heat island effect, but that only applies while the roof is clean and in urban areas
  • While programs such as LEED promote white roofs as a blanket policy people need to think the process through, if you have 10 heating degree days for every 1 cooling degree day what is more inportant. In the north most buildings have much higher insulation values negating many of the possibile benefits of the reflective roofing
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • At the end of the day, having a white roof cannot hurt. It does keep buildings cooler which translates into lower energy costs
  • white roofs aren’t always practical, especially because many people have ordinary shingle roofs and while shingles come in very light colors, I’ve never seen any that are white. That, and as has been mentioned, keeping them clean!
  • white roofs may reduce cooling costs. What about 75 percent of the US where there are more heating degree days (HDD) than cooling degree days (CDD) and a dark colored roof actually provides more benefits by reducing the heating costs…
  • We have found that white roofs do provide a low-cost solution that can help buildings reduce energy costs, in a wide variety of climates, as well as cool the atmosphere regionally and globally. We have also found disadvantages. The reflective roofs may cause unwanted glare, for example, and may modestly increase heating costs in winter. But answers to these issues are exactly the ones we’re working hard to find.
  • In our opinion, all of these arguments and studies suggest that selective use of white and other reflective roofs makes sense as part of an integrated strategy
  • n an urban environment you also have thermal mass to take into account, I don`t have the mathematics to put here, however a simple analogy would be if you painted a piece of concrete black and put it in the sun and had another identical piece painted white, the black piece would still be radiating heat longer after the sun has gone down.
  • Most urban environment are made of high thermal mass products, Concrete, Bitumen Steel, these all will heat up more if they are darker colors and radiate back into the local environment after dark. Where as if they radiated heat back into the air instead of absorbing it all day, there might be a better chance of a cool down before the sun comes up the next day.
Javier E

With Fears About Safety, Football Faces Uncertain Evolution - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...faces-uncertain-evolution.html

football brain injuries risks

shared by Javier E on 21 Jun 12 - Cached
  • Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw said he believed that concern over head injuries would cause football to be eclipsed in popularity by soccer and other sports within 10 years.
  • “Football is really on the verge of a turning point here. We may see it in 15 years in pretty much the same place as boxing or ultimate fighting.” In other words, less a lucrative American colossus and more a niche sport beloved for its brutality.
  • there is a growing sentiment among those who love the sport and those who loathe it that football has come to a critical juncture.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “Football is resting on this foundation of parental and cultural and masculinity-issued support that could be pushed to the background once people start to realize that taking the chance of brain damage isn’t worth proving that you’re a particular kind of man,” Coakley said. “We’re beginning to see the erosion of that support.”
  • He also advocated flag football as a worthy substitute for young players, who can learn rules and fundamentals in a controlled environment where the risk of head injury would be significantly diminished. He deflected the concern that children who start playing late are at a disadvantage, saying that talent is the ultimate determining factor.
  • “There’s plenty of ways to get exercise without risking not only head injuries, but the accompanying orthopedic problems that come with playing football.”
  • “It’s really a serious discussion and a secret fear that I think all of us feel. We’ve accepted the knees and the other ailments, but we really never thought about the deterioration of your brains as a result of concussions in football.”
  • If the suit goes to trial, he predicted, data that would be made public would prompt some parents to not allow their children to play football.
  • Entities from Pop Warner to high school could require parents to sign waivers preventing officials or the league itself from being sued.
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