Krugman vs. Brooks: The Times' columnists' amazing brawl over Charles Murray's new book... - 0 views
www.slate.com/...arles_murray_s_new_books_.html
decline white US americans culture economics politics
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American education is not without its problems, but, as Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz masterfully demonstrated in their recent book The Race Between Education and Technology, the issue isn’t that schooling has actually gotten worse, it is that the rate of progress has slowed down.
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Brooks is right that materialist explanations for social decline are unpersuasive, but if the streets are safer and kids are doing better in school than their parents, then what is it that needs explaining?
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Two related facts seem to trouble both Brooks and Krugman. Marriage rates are down, and so is male workforce participation. Brooks sees this as a cultural crisis that’s leading to declining material welfare, while Krugman sees declining male wages as driving both trends.
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what if this is a non-crisis driven by abundance? The obvious place to look for an explanation of the declining marriage rate is the vast increase in the economic opportunities available to women. Newly empowered and less dependent on male economic support, women have become somewhat choosie
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As for labor force participation, Krugman must be right that poor labor market conditions explain the trend over the past few years. But the long-term decline has been going on since as far back as we have data. Male labor force participation rates were declining in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and in the ‘80s, and now in the aughts. Maybe the value of leisure is increasing?
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it’s a natural outgrowth of progress. On the whole, the American population has grown less desperate over time and less interested in working—an entirely typical pattern, globally and historically.
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The short-term jobs situation is a real crisis, but the longer-term decline of work is an opportunity. If men want to tempt women back into marriage, they’ll have to use more of their free time to pitch in with housework and child care, building a more egalitarian tomorrow. If employers want to tempt people back into working, they’ll have to offer higher pay or more pleasant jobs