Category Archives: Politics

More bad economic figures: median household income down, poverty up

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The effects of the economic crisis are reflected in two key updated figures just released by the US Census Bureau:

Data released by the Census Bureau today showed the proportion of people living in poverty climbed to 15.1 percent last year from 14.3 percent in 2009, and median household income declined 2.3 percent. The number of Americans living in poverty was the highest in the 52 years since the Census Bureau began gathering that statistic. Those figures may have worsened in recent months as the economy weakened…

The ranks of people in poverty increased to 46.2 million from 43.6 million. The last time the poverty rate reached 15.1 percent was in 1993. It climbed to 15.2 percent in 1983. Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, down from $50,599 the year before…

The income figures declined even as the U.S. economy expanded 3 percent in 2010. Growth has slowed this year to an annual rate of less than 1 percent, raising concern that the financial struggles of families will continue to worsen and hamper the recovery…

It was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate, a trend that won’t reverse itself without “concerted action” on the part of policy makers, said Melissa Boteach, who leads a campaign to reduce poverty at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based research group with ties to the Obama administration.

I would love to hear politicians talk about this ahead of the 2012 elections and to do so in ways that go beyond typical “political speak.” Talking about taxes and jobs might make some sense: they have an effect on incomes and poverty rates and every politicians loves to promise more jobs. However, there are other factors involved as well and talking about taxes and jobs means that the conversation never really turns to these indicators but only stays on “safe” ground.

UPDATE 9/13/11 3:20 PM: Here is some more data on the topic, including time-series charts that give some perspective on poverty rates and median incomes by race.

What journalists should know about religion

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In the last week, several journalists have addressed the issue of how journalists should talk with politicians about religion. Ross Douthat followed up on his August 29th column with a blog post providing examples of what he is trying to address. And last Friday, Amy Sullivan provided a number of steps journalists could take in order to write intelligently about the religious beliefs of politicians.

This brings several thoughts to mind:
1. What happened to religion writers among major newspapers or magazines? I think most of them have disappeared, even respected ones like Catherine Falsani who used to write for the Chicago Sun-Times. At a time when religion is alive and influential around the world, media sources don’t have dedicated people who can comment on these particular issues. Asking political writers to write about topics they don’t regularly cover seems like a problem. I know media outlets have had to make major cutbacks in certain areas but there are repercussions for this.
2. The burden seems to be on politicians who have “non-mainstream” religious beliefs to explain how they are not dangers to society. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Americans have more unfavorable feelings toward minority religions like Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists/non-religious (not quite a minority “religion”). Of course, much of this debate could really be about whether evangelicals are mainstream or not. Their size would suggest they are mainstream as would their political influence since the late 1970s.

Netflix’s distribution problems

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Netflix has had a lot of bad press in the last few months.  First, they decided to split their online-only streaming service from their mailed disc service, substantially increasing their customer’s prices.  Second, word came that they are losing their Starz distribution agreement, which will severely curtail the availability of (genuinely) recent movies on their streaming service.

Now, here comes a potential supply shock on the physical distribution side:

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances….

Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30, intended to finance retirees’ future health care, won’t cause immediate disaster. But sometime early next year, the agency will run out of money to pay its employees and gas up its trucks, officials warn, forcing it to stop delivering the roughly three billion pieces of mail it handles weekly.

To be sure, a long-term interruption in mail service would be an economic catastrophe extending well beyond Netflix.  Nonetheless, viewing this problem from Netflix’s perspective shows just how dependent even web-savvy companies are on physical infrastructure and distribution systems.  There will be a lot of collateral damage if businesses can no longer count on a robust and dependable USPS.

Housing, IP, and Disney

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A New York Times article from last week reports on the convergence of housing, intellectual property, and the Walt Disney Corporation in a recently built suburban home near Salt Lake City:

The sherbet-colored structure sits at the intersection of Meadowside Drive and Herriman Rose Boulevard here, but you don’t need directions to find it. Just look for the swarm of helium-filled balloons that the developer tied to the chimney of a house that has a gabled roof, scalloped siding and a garden hose neatly coiled next to the porch — all details taken from “Up,” the 2009 hit about an old man and his flying abode.

Developer Blair Bangerter duplicated Pixar’s Up house with as much fidelity as physical reality would allow.  And he got permission to do this from Disney!  As the article notes, getting such permission from Disney is highly unusual:

This is a company that once forced a Florida day care center to remove an unauthorized Minnie Mouse mural. More recently, Disney told a stonemason that carving Winnie the Pooh into a child’s gravestone would violate its copyright [though it later “reversed its ruling on that Winnie the Pooh tombstone after the news media reported the rejection”].

So how is a homebuilder in this Salt Lake City suburb getting away with selling a near-identical copy of the floating house in the Disney-Pixar film “Up”?

Although Disney declined to comment for the story, the article suggests several reasons:

  • The developer is the son of a former Utah governor.
  • The developer was able to convince Up‘s director, Pete Docter, to “personally intervened on behalf of the project.”
  • Disney “is trying to evaluate with more care the hundreds of requests it receives a month from people wanting to use its characters and imagery.”

Taking these suggested reasons at face value, it sounds like Mr. Bangerter obtained permission primarily because (a) he was well-connected and (b) Disney sensed a PR opportunity.  There are at least two ways of interpreting this:

  1. Bangerter and Disney saw a market opportunity and bargained to create value.  Most homes in the subdivision are priced around $300,000; the Up home is listed at $400,000.  Disney is often seen as an IP bully; it now looks a bit nicer.  Thus, a deal between Bangerter and Disney created almost $100k in new economic value for the developer and (possible) new goodwill towards Disney.
  2. IP is being used here to create an unnecessary monopoly rent to benefit the already well-connected.  It’s hard to see how Disney would suffer any economic loss if everyone were free to build Up houses–Disney is in the business of selling media and related merchandise, but generally not houses.  However, since everyone is presumably not free to build Up houses, Bangerter and Disney had to spend time and money hammering out an agreement.  As a result of their agreement, Bangerter (apparently) gets ~$100k more for the Up house than he gets for comparable houses in the subdivision, and Disney successfully pacifies a politically powerful developer.

Especially insofar as Disney only considers such deals with well-connected developers like Bangerter, the IP issues quickly blur into fairness issues.

The large homes of politicians

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While this gallery of photos doesn’t offer “proof” that most or even many politicians have big homes (and it may just be a play to pull in Internet visitors and clicks), it is an interesting subject to think about:

1. What exactly is the causal relationship here? Did they have bigger than normal homes before they were politicians (meaning they were wealthy when running for office) or are the big homes in part because of their political office?

2. Are there large homes any different than other people within their income brackets?

3. How should the public think about this? Should there be outrage that public servants don’t live like public servants? Do we not usually care because it is their private home and many Americans would buy bigger homes if they had the opportunity? Occasionally, this becomes part of a campaign – John Edwards took some grief for this and his haircuts – and others like Al Gore can be mocked.

4. How much time can a politician even spend in these homes with duties and homes elsewhere?

5. Would a politician who lives in a McMansion (and the implications regarding bad taste, etc.) be considered worse off than one who lives in a mansion?

American politicians push small town values in a suburban country

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America is a suburban nation: more than 50% live in the suburbs, roughly 30% live in cities, and about 20% live in small towns or rural communities. Despite these demographics, this article suggests that politicians still frequently draw on the idea of small town values:

American politics may live in the cities and suburbs — but it dreams in small towns.

More than a century after the American people migrated from the farms to the cities and then to the suburbs, the image of small-town America endures as the birthplace of solid character and sound values. In the gauzy image of politics, as in popular culture dating back more than a century, small-town America is a place where the people go to church, work hard and help one another in ways unknown in the cities and suburbs of America…

Still, politicians love to wrap themselves in the sentimental image.

“The people still have the same spirit in Waterloo that Iowans have always come to exemplify. We work hard. We don’t spend more money than what we take in,” Bachmann said in Waterloo, where she was born.

Perry wears his childhood in Paint Creek, Texas, as a badge of honor. “Doesn’t have a zip code. It’s too small to be called a town,” he said during a recent visit to Waterloo. “What I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift.”

Obama can’t claim a childhood in a small town — he was born in Honolulu. But he, too, reveled in small-town values during his recent Midwest bus tour.

So while Americans may no longer live in small towns, they want to hold on to particular characteristics such as hard work, community, and religious values. These are symbolic values, perhaps even more so than actual actions that people carry out. (There is often a disconnect between what people say they believe and what they actually do.) And, of course, people may want to hold on to these values but they don’t necessarily want to live in the places where these values arose.

This reminds me of a theory I have had about the popularity of American suburbs: they are a uniquely American adaptation that combines some of city and rural life. This is about perceptions. On the rural side, suburbs still offer lawns, single-family homes, good schools, safety, and community life. On the city side, suburbs have easier access to the city, more cultural amenities, more jobs, are more open-minded, and more opportunities over all. Suburbs don’t really offer the best of either of these worlds but offer some of both, allowing Americans to straddle these two worlds.

A question: how difficult is it for Americans to elect urban politicians to higher office (particularly compared to more rural candidates), candidates who would portray themselves solely as a city dweller and act like city dwellers? Perhaps Barack Obama is the closest we have come to this but because of political realities has primarily tried to appeal to working and middle-class suburbanites who may just swing the election.

Example of problems with statistics “nearly 1,500 millionaires” (out of more than 235,000) “paid no federal taxes”

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Statistics can be used well and they can be used not so well. Here is an example where the headline statistic suggests something different from the rest of the story:

Of an already small pool of millionaires and billionaires, 1,470 didn’t pay any federal income taxes in 2009, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Just over 0.1% of taxpayers — or 8,274 out of 140 million total — made more than $10 million in 2009, according to the agency. More than 235,000 taxpayers earned $1 million or more, according to a recent report from the agency.

But of the high earners who avoided paying income taxes, many did so due to heavy charity donations or foreign investments.

About 46% of all American households won’t pay federal income tax in 2011, many due to low income, tax credits for child care and exemptions, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The headline makes it sound like there are a lot of millionaires who are avoiding paying taxes. The actual percentage hinted at it in the story suggests something else: less than 0.63% of all millionaires (1,470/235,000 – less than 1 in a 100)) paid no taxes. In the midst of a political debate about whether to raise taxes for the wealthy in America, each side could grab on to factual yet different figures: the 1,500 figure sounds high like the country is missing out on a lot money while the 0.63% figure suggests almost all pay some taxes. It wouldn’t take much to include both figures, the actual number and the percentage in the story.

Examples like this help contribute to the reaction some people have when they see statistics in the media: how can I trust any of them if they will just use the figures that suit them? All statistics become suspect and it is then hard to get a handle on what is going on in the world.

Two sociological studies on politicial self-selection in academia

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The topic of political bias in academia comes up now and again – it was in the news earlier this year after when a social psychologist made a presentation at a professional meeting. In bringing up the topic again, two sociological studies about self-selection in academia are briefly discussed:

Tierney describes the research of George Yancey, professor of sociology at the University of North Texas, who found that more than a quarter of sociologists he surveyed would be favorable toward a Democrat or an ACLU member and unfavorable toward a Republican; about 40 percent said they would have an unfavorable attitude toward a member of the NRA or an evangelical. “If you were a conservative undergraduate,” Tierney asks, “would you risk spending at least four years in graduate school in the hope of getting a job offer from a committee dominated by people who don’t share your views?”

Tierney also mentions a field experiment, conducted by Neil Gross, professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, in which researchers posing as potential graduate students sent emails to various humanities departments — including literature, history, sociology, political science, and economics — describing their interests and credentials and asking if the department might be a good fit for them. Some of the mock applicants mentioned working for the McCain campaign and some for Obama. There was no discernible difference in the promptness of the reply or the enthusiasm expressed in the replies. This was taken as proof that discrimination is not a serious factor. But couldn’t it be that a feeler e-mail is not the same thing as an actual application, and it costs nothing to respond positively to something that is only potential? (Alternatively, could it be that many humanities departments are so aching for good students that they can’t afford to discourage potential applicants who at least exhibit signs of life? By the way, isn’t there something dishonest in this kind of research?)

Several quick thoughts:

1. Gross’ study doesn’t sound like dishonest research to me: it might include a little deception (suggesting there is a student behind the email) but ultimately it is just an email.

2. There may indeed be a different response for graduate students who are needed (to some degree – some programs can be pickier than others) may still be moldable versus other academics or people outside the academic realm. If graduate departments showed overt biases, they may find themselves with fewer applications, decreasing their pool.

3. Yancey’s research sounds like it found disapproval of conservatives but these numbers are still minorities among sociologists. Perhaps sociologists were unwilling to reveal their true feelings but it suggests there is still room for alternative viewpoints.

On the whole, I’m glad we have some studies about this rather than just having to rely on sweeping generalizations and anecdotes.

Pew again asks for one-word survey responses regarding budget negotiations

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I highlighted this survey technique in April but here it is again: Pew asked Americans to provide a one-word response to Congress’ debt negotiations.

Asked for single-word characterizations of the budget negotiations, the top words in the poll — conducted in the days before an apparent deal was struck — were “ridiculous,” “disgusting” and “stupid.” Overall, nearly three-quarters of Americans offered a negative word; just 2 percent had anything nice to say.

“Ridiculous” was the most frequently mentioned word among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It was also No. 1 in an April poll about the just-averted government shutdown. In the new poll, the top 27 words are negative ones, with “frustrating,” “poor,” “terrible,” “disappointing,“ “childish,” “messy” and “joke” rounding out the top 10.

And then we are presented a word cloud.

On the whole, I think this technique can suggest that Americans have generally unfavorable responses. But the reliance on particular terms is better for headlines than it is for collecting data. What would happen if public responses were split more evenly: what words/responses would then be used to summarize the data? The Washington Post headline (and Pew Research as well) can now use forceful and emotional words like “ridiculous” and “disgusting” rather than the more accurate numerical figures than about “three-quarters of Americans offered a negative word.” Why not also include an ordinal question (strongly disapprove to strongly approve) about American’s general opinion of debt negotiations in order to corroborate this open ended question?

This is a possibly interesting technique in order to take advantage of open ended questions without allowing respondents to give possibly lengthy responses. Open ended questions can produce a lot of data: there were over 330 responses in this survey alone. I’ll be interested to see if other organizations adopt this approach.

Redistricting with “sociological integrity”

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Redistricting can often a contentious activity. But what if it is done with “sociological integrity”?

“Districts are ordered generally to maintain sociological integrity. Seward was happy paired with Homer and Seldovia as having the only outside deep water ports for the Kenai Peninsula,” Seaton said. “Now Seward is with Nikiski and Sterling – Homer with no other ports; Seldovia with Kodiak.”

A well-ordered voting district is one that generally has an amiable sociological mix that share economic and cultural ties to work toward common legislative goals. Nonetheless, Homer fares well with other Lower Kenai Peninsula communities like Ninilchik and Kasilof, and now the Russian village of Nikolaevsk, which formerly was represented in an entirely different district. The residents of Funny River Road may lack common issues and it “could take a while to develop that cohesiveness,” Seaton said. “It’s just different issues because they are looking at a main economic structure that is inland and revolves around the river. Not that there’s anything wrong with their new alignment, it’s just people will need to feel their way through and acclimate to working with different areas and different interests.”…

Since Alaska is one of the few states once found guilty of gerrymandering districts to favor issues or candidates, Alaska elections are overseen by the Federal Election Commission to ensure a strong voice for electing a minority candidate.

I like this term, “sociological integrity,” and think it has potential if it generally referred to positive social outcomes and plans drawn up from sociological principles.

Perhaps this is unique to Alaska, but this sounds like a different way of drawing up legislative districts: they should have a “amiable sociological mix that share economic and cultural ties to work toward common legislative goals.” What sounds different about this is that districts in other states are often drawn to collect a certain number of votes for a particular party. Those in charge of redistricting want to solidfy their own positions and reduce the ability of their competition to compete in districts. The definition from this article refers not to votes but rather a shared cultural and economic history as uniting voters. Perhaps party affiliations are tied to this (an example from the article above: perhaps deep water port communities are all on one side) but cultural and economic ties are also important as this is how residents and community leaders connect with each other more frequently.

Does any other state consider cultural ties when drawing up legislative boundaries or is it all just a naked grab for votes?