My quoting Paul Krugman's nostalgic reminiscences about his upbringing has set off a broad but not particularly deep discussion (e.g., Kevin Drum, Alex Tabarrok, Matthew Yglesias, and Megan McArdle).
The funny thing is how economists and economically-minded writers ignore the economists' toolbox of concepts, such as ceteris paribus (all else being equal) and opportunity costs, that are most relevant for thinking about the actual issues raised by this topic. For example, Krugman himself says that he wouldn't want to go back because now, "You can get really good coffee just about anywhere." Similarly, Tabarrok reasons: "I remember those idyllic summers of the 1970s earning a few extra dollars mowing lawns–80,000 amputated fingers, hands and mangled toes and feet every year back then and just 6,000 today. Would I even let me kid use a mower from the 1970s?"
The point of thinking about the past is not to decide whether or not we'd rather live there. Since we don't actually have time machines, we aren't confronted with an all or nothing choice between living in the past and living in the present. Uninventing advances in coffee-making machines or lawnmowers isn't on the table. The point is to understand the past to help us make decisions in the present to make the future better.
For example, Benjamin Franklin explained in the 1750s why, all else being equal, a less populated America would be better for the average American's future than a more populated America, and the implications for immigration policy.
Please note that the relevant issue for policymaking isn't whether or not the future will be better or worse in some overall sense than the present or the past, the issue is to choose the policy now that would make the future better than alternative futures in which worse policies were chosen now. Fortunately, we have analytical tools for considering tradeoffs resulting from policies. Unfortunately, these are tools that are almost never used whenever the topic comes within a country mile of immigration.
For example, Benjamin Franklin explained in the 1750s why, all else being equal, a less populated America would be better for the average American's future than a more populated America, and the implications for immigration policy.
Please note that the relevant issue for policymaking isn't whether or not the future will be better or worse in some overall sense than the present or the past, the issue is to choose the policy now that would make the future better than alternative futures in which worse policies were chosen now. Fortunately, we have analytical tools for considering tradeoffs resulting from policies. Unfortunately, these are tools that are almost never used whenever the topic comes within a country mile of immigration.
The immigration policies that most of these pundits advocate have had tremendous effects of various kinds on the affordability of family formation, but most pundits would rather discuss side issues like coffee and lawnmowers.
My policy suggestion has long been that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. But that is not so much an unpopular view amongst the punditry as one that simply can't be remembered for more than a few seconds at a time because it so orthogonal to the dominant ideologies.
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61 comments:
People can't seem to understand that nostalgia isn't about having yesterday's technology, its about having yesterday's culture.
It truly boggles the mind how we managed to invent anything back before cheap labor when we had to invest in new capital,technology, and methods of production to substitute for labor.
Tabarrok: Growing up in Northern Virginia, my children experience far more ethnic, cultural, racial and sexual diversity and equality than just about any child growing up outside of a commune did in the 1950s and 1960s.
And isn't that what's really important? Turning America into a bigger version of a 1960's commune?
The Liberal Era in America is in the same phase as the USSR was in 1the 1980's. Everyone still mouths the idealogy, at least publicly, but a critical mass no longer believes it anymore. This critical mass has realized just how prevalent they are and are being emboldened exponentially. You can hear it around the water cooler, at little league games, at barbecues, in bars and among friends. The frog has realized it is being boiled and has about a 20 year window within which to save itself and begin anew. Our ruling elites know this well and anticipated that this 20 year end game would be the most difficult phase of their plan. Steve helped lay the groundwork for the interesting times ahead.
"The immigration policies that most of these pundits advocate have had tremendous effects of various kinds on the affordability of family formation, but most pundits would rather discuss side issues."
Why do you care so much about affordable family formation? You use this expression a lot and a lot of your concerns seem to revolve around this. What about those of us who don't want to start families and have no interest in getting married and having kids? Why is a Society of married men with children better than one of chiildless unmarried men? This is a value-judgement that you are making. Sure, children are proobably better of when their fathers stick around(debateable), but if unmarried men have sex using prophylaxia, no fatherless children are born and the problem doesen't exist. Sure, if it goes overboard the Society could go extinct, but there are many solutions to the problem and it is debateable whether more children are even necessary given the population at 300 million people. Sailer is always complaining about immigration because it increases population size, and yet he wants more men to get married and have tons of kids. Riddle me that? There will always be paternal and maternal people wanting kids, and even if there weren't the State could offer money incentives or tax reductions for people in committed relationships who are childless to have children. The State could also combine chosen sperm and ova from sperm and ova banks, and then have the children that results raides in State schools. This would also be eugenics, as only the best sperm and eggs will be used and the children will be given the best education possible. The womb could either be natural, as in a woman payed to carry the foetus, or an artificial womb. This is how a rational Society would replenish it's population, and not what he have now where a bunch of irrational traditionalists encourage every man and woman, no matter how poor and completely incompetent, to marry and bring upon the World chhildren who will be just like them. Bringing new people into a Society should be a scientific process based on the replenishing needs of the civilization, and not the dysgenics mess we have today. If there are advanced alien civilizations in distant star sytems, I think they would replenish their population by breeding new members in a scientific mannner, raising the geneticallly selected foetuses in artificial wombs - assuming they are placentary beings - and bringing only the amount needed to keep an ideal population size.
Alex's kids are going to get eaten by the kids of parents who let their kids toughen themselves up, and whose peer groups focus on toughening themselves up.
It's no different from pastoral nomads (barbarians) overrunning settled agrarian people (civilization), when the latter begin to sit on their laurels and grow weakened, physically and morally, due to insulation from the stresses of real life.
As you said about opportunity costs, they don't want to consider the full range of costs and benefits, but only those that justify their existing worldview.
So what if kids today grow up to be socially stunted, nerdy 40 year-old virgins with no driver's license and weak bones? That cost to their development is worth it so that their parents can enjoy the benefits of displaying their panini press to guests, blabbing about how wonderfully diverse their kid's school is, and having a larger pre-college fund to pay for $100-an-hour tutoring.
It's all about racial prejudice. Krugman and the others recognize that in many ways the fifties were better organized for the well being of most Americans. But they balance that against the racial prejudice of those times and conclude that we are better off now. Maybe they need to take the next step.
The fifties were a better place to live because of racial prejudice not despite it.
My sainted mother had a black girl help her one day a week. Most white women did. But that society has been swept away. The white women now have to fend for themselves and the black women went on AFDC. Modern black women may now be seen on YouTube beating up whomever.
Black people have lower IQs. That means that they are best suited for jobs requiring lower skills - like domestic housework. Modern liberals find that notion offensive but the science behind it it is irrefutable. Ignore reality and suffer.
Blacks are less creditworthy than whites. We have caused the entire world to suffer because we refused to recognize that again irrefutable fact. Ignore reality and suffer.
Overturning rational racial prejudice was a terrible mistake. Jefferson, Lincoln and Darwin would have been shocked. The Founding Fathers were against slavery but would have been amazed that we moderns would have gone so far as to ignore and deny racial differences.
This isn't the end. Racial prejudice will return and things will get better again - alas most of us will be gone by then.
Albertosaurus
The main point is this: you, as a white person, don't have even the mere right to remember with nostalgia a time when a vast majority of your own people lived a far better life. Even in Europe we are told that we *must* let in millions of alliens who are going to change our societies forever. Liberals, cultural marxists, professional politicians, media brahmins, so called intelectuals and, of course, the plutocrats who are always fawning for an ever cheaper labor force, are just a bunch of stupid bastards who will never stop till each and every one of the european nations is turned into a Brazil-like cosmopolitan dystopia.
An implicit point of yours is that standard economic indicators do not account for increased costs of middle class family formation in terms of money and effort. In a 2004 campaign gimmick John Kerry released a middle class misery index, which differed from the classic misery index of unemployment + inflation by also heavily weighing costs like health care, college tuition, and gas prices. It showed that middle class living was becoming more difficult even during the Bush bubbles. His motives were clearly more cynical than yours, but this is about as close as a high level politician has gotten to the problems you document.
Aside from Krugman the one leftist you can also catch saying positive things about the 1950s is Michael Moore, whose films sometimes start with clips from his idyllic childhood. Flint, Michigan was indeed nicer then than it is today.
First anonymous,
I highly doubt you'd find many blacks willing to go back to the 50s.
"The immigration policies that most of these pundits advocate have had tremendous effects of various kinds on the affordability of family formation, but most pundits would rather discuss side issues."
I think many pundits don't care that it is harder for young people to buy a house. Having a bigger selection of ethnic restuarants is more important to many pundits.
They just refuse to understand that some aspects of 1950 were better and a few were worse. According to our best and brightest we have to like everything that changed since 1950, or nothing. Take it or leave it!
Some changes in culture and policies has obviously benefited women and blacks (hispanics were 2% of the population in 1950, and were doing fine, so I am not going to include them).
But most changes in culture has hurt women and blacks as well.
To get the good changes (technology, women entering the labor market, desegregation) in no way required destroying core aspects of American culture and hence the way of life Krugman and Sailer enjoyed.
African-American income and social statistics converged to white income the fastest 1940-1960, and slowed or even reversed since.
Male black employment is lower now than 1950. Black out of wedlock births, crime victimization, incarceration and drug use is far higher now than 1950.
Wouldn't blacks have preferred getting technology + desegregation, while keeping the levels of social capital, family ties, work ethic, crime and quality of life at 1950s level?
For women, the employment rate went from about one third to a little less than two thirds. This is a good thing.
But wouldn't women have preferred getting technology + entering the labor market, while keeping 1950s equality, trust, community ties, year after year income growth, safe neighborhoods and good quality school for their kids?
Wouldn't Blacks and Women prefer civic participation blue collar employment stay at 1950s levels? Wouldn't they have preferred the national high school dropout rate not to increase compared to 4 decades ago?
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/930
People in the Soviet Union had access to technology that Russians didn't have in 1917. Indeed the Soviets improved gender equality. That doesn't imply that Russians didn't have the right to criticize the social order with reference to the pre-revolution period.
Claiming that every aspect of the culture is better now than 1950 is foolish. Similarly, it is idiotic to act as if conservatives don't have the right to point out the superior aspects of 1950s life, based on the argument that some things (or even most things) are better now than 2011.
We should identify the good aspects of the 1950s and the good aspects of 2011 in order to improve policy, instead of this ridiculous "take it or leave it" game.
The 50s were marred by having the most bloody awful pop music, being in the trough between Swing and The Beatles. Mind you, they seem to have shared that defect with the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughties and nowsies.
Evidence of diversity contributing to Intenet Age technology is emerging. There are countless TV commercials from the last two decades showing multiracial hipsters grooving through vibrant, urban, al fresco marketplaces of the new Zeitgeist. It's the whole vibe, man.
There's a hypothetical for you: Could the squarejohn have made the iPad?
Gilbert Pinfold.
Somehow the title of the post reminded me of Blacks Without Soul from the brilliant Amazon Women On The Moon. :-) In the same vein, immigration proponents certainly resemble the Son of the Invisible Man in their raving lunacy and refusal to face the reality.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/0511/Bloomy_Let_immigrants_in_to_Detroit.html
Bloomberg wants to send new immigrants to Detroit. Brilliant, more third world peasants to turn Detroit into
the Paris of the midwest. I'm sure it will benefit all the current residents, and their current school system. snark
Yeah, Krugman would rather live in a crowded, dysfunctional 3rd world slum than in the wonderful pre-mass immigration country he grew up in because he "can get really good coffee just about anywhere" now.
Great tradeoff, you evil, twisted aspie jackass. As long as you're cool with it, there's no need to get consent from the voters.
"In many respects blacks are worse off today than they were in the 50's."
Can this be documented -- apart from the deterioration of the black family and increase in imprisonment rates?
Drum "Still, Megan's caveat can hardly be repeated too often.......If you're......female, all the money in the world wouldn't make the 50s a great place to live your life."
McArdle and Drum are stating their liberal biases as if they were somehow grounded in hard facts.
But "it can hardly be repeated too often" 1950s women were happier than 2010 women.
"You can get really good coffee just about anywhere."
Did he really have to go with the most cliched bit of SWPL preening he could come up with?
"This is a value-judgement that you are making."
Yes. We do that here.
Modern household appliances -- everything from running water to washing machines -- so greatly reduced the time required to do all of cooking, cleaning, washing etc. the support the domestic side of family life that formerly fully occupied housewives found themselves with time on their hands and so entered the job market.
It was a case of automation and technological unemployment in the informal half of the economy and it could have, by all logic, just as easily resulted in two parents working half-time outside the home instead of one parent full-time. Total family income and parental time with the children would have remained the same. In fact it would have been even better than the 1950's idyll of a house in the surburbs and a full-time mom who stays at home with the kides. It still could. Here's what it would look like:
http://sites.google.com/site/lukelea2/thesoftpath
"The 50s were marred by having the most bloody awful pop music, being in the trough between Swing and The Beatles. Mind you, they seem to have shared that defect with the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughties and nowsies."
you hate good music.
ok, we're getting somewhere.
"My sainted mother had a black girl help her one day a week. Most white women did"
I doubt that. Most white people didn't even live around black people.
"To get the good changes (technology, women entering the labor market, desegregation"
Most white people don't want to live with blacks. This is obvious. Why do you think they fled desegration. Do elite liberals live with blacks? NO.
Why is women entering the labor market a good thing?
Anonymous,
In the 1950s, most black men were the patriarchs of their own families. You hear the echos of this in some of the comic routines by blacks in the 1980s. They were the masters of their families, and blacks in general enjoyed far lower crime victimization rates as well. In addition, a lot of them lived within a largely black bubble (the black middle and upper classes were pretty entreprenurial in those days rather than mostly working in the public sector or affirmative action jobs), and thus probably had a higher estimation of their status insofar as it actually matters. Having musical talent also provided more niches back then, because the mass media hadn't expanded the marketplace to the degree that it has today. Efficient mass media markets are brutal for people with positive 2-3 sigma artistic talents.
You know what? I had a thought. The coffee thing is really telling. I found myself appealed to it - sure, great coffee is vital. I couldn't get through the day without it. Why is that?
Well, because I live almost two hours from work. A lot of people do. It's simply not affordable to live in the city. Anything within about an hour's commute is shockingly expensive, to the point where you need to make serious bank to afford it. So, there's 3-4 hours of commuting every weekday for the typical person.
Then what? You get to work, and have to work overtime to make ends meet. Everything's so damn expensive nowadays. So, you have a long commute and long hours, not to get ahead, but just to pay your bills. No time to sleep. You need coffee! The rise of mass immigration and the strangling of the middle class has made that coffee oh so important! Can't be an overworked drone supporting the illegal welfare queens without your morning joe!
"The 50s were marred by having the most bloody awful pop music"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AHec7sfZ8
Uninventing coffee-making machine may not be on the table but you do have to uninvent a lot of technology to return to the 1950s. Automation has destroyed millions of jobs suitable for those on the left side of bell curve, so no more Dad supporting a family after graduating high school. Advances in communication and transportation made possible offshoring and "shipping the jobs to China". The Pill has wrought untold changes in the gender relations. Advances in drugs medical technologies raised the life expectancy tremendously, with all that this implies for pensions and health care expenditures. And so on, and so forth. It all comes in a package.
"You can get really good coffee just about anywhere."
But we didn't have to import a million Italian baristas to get it.
Agnostic:
Alex's kids are going to get eaten by the kids of parents who let their kids toughen themselves up, and whose peer groups focus on toughening themselves up.
So what if kids today grow up to be socially stunted, nerdy 40 year-old virgins with no driver's license and weak bones?
It's better to be happy than tough.
Or would you rather have parents have a toughness obsession like Hitler's father, or Granny Goodness?
Evidence of diversity contributing to Intenet Age technology is emerging. There are countless TV commercials from the last two decades showing multiracial hipsters grooving through vibrant, urban, al fresco marketplaces of the new Zeitgeist. It's the whole vibe, man.
There's a hypothetical for you: Could the squarejohn have made the iPad?
Lol!!!
For example, Krugman himself says that he wouldn't want to go back because now, "You can get really good coffee just about anywhere." Similarly, Tabarrok reasons: "I remember those idyllic summers of the 1970s earning a few extra dollars mowing lawns–80,000 amputated fingers, hands and mangled toes and feet every year back then and just 6,000 today. Would I even let me kid use a mower from the 1970s?"
Not one of these wonderful improvements is due to immigration or multiculturalism, of course.
Hey Whiskey; they caught Osama Goldstein!
"I highly doubt you'd find many blacks willing to go back to the 50s."
So what? There's no shortage of Black leaders looking out for what's best for Blacks.
The problem is that Whites are pathologized for even thinking about what's best
for Whites.
Uninventing coffee-making machine may not be on the table but you do have to uninvent a lot of technology to return to the 1950s.
I think one technological change that could restore a bit of the Old America would be a modernized return to a small workshop economy. Unfortunately, there is no push to put things like microfabrication techniques or modern materials technologies in the hands of the skilled craftsman. This even though computer technology ought to make such things increasingly possible.
Albertosaurus: It's all about racial prejudice. Krugman and the others recognize that in many ways the fifties were better organized for the well being of most Americans. But they balance that against the racial prejudice of those times and conclude that we are better off now. Maybe they need to take the next step.
This is exactly correct. People like Krugman think back and recognize that the 1950s were better for almost everyone from their background, but they then recognize the obvious non-PC racial implications and automatically take a step back.
Anonymous: I highly doubt you'd find many blacks willing to go back to the 50s
Well, that's probably true, but let's consider the actual reality a bit, rather than the media-induced system of perceptions. Just to be fair, let's focus solely on the situation of blacks.
In many respects, blacks are doing vastly better today than they were in the 1950s America, even factoring out the general increase of wealth and improved technology. For example, Barack Obama is President, Deval Patrick is governor of MA, and there are many, many hundreds of other extremely successful and wealthy black politicians, corporate executives, and entertainment/sports stars.
But on the other hand, almost 40% of all urban black men are currently dead or in prison. Add their immediate family members, and you can see why the "mysterious" degree of black despondency often noted in polls and often cited by the MSM is perhaps a bit less mysterious than it might seem.
I suppose in 1955, Nikita Khrushchnev could have given a speech pointing out how wonderful the Bolshevik Revolution had been for people of a Ukrainian rural peasant background such as himself. After all, in Czarist days someone like himself would have never had the slighest chance of becoming the national leader. Admittedly, starving to death something like 15% of the entire Ukrainian population was a significant minus, but breaking a few eggs and all that.
Similarly, I think that all historians agree that after the Black Death exterminated one-third of Europe's population, the survivors benefitted greatly by the increase in available land and the reduced labor competition. So presumably all the countries began building monuments and composing hymns praising their God for having sent them such a wonderful and mysterious blessing.
And actually, the current situation of American blacks is vastly worse in relative terms. My impression is that virtually the entire black middle class---the only sizable group of blacks that have actually benefitted from the social changes since the 1950s---is a creation of government jobs and government-induced AA policies. Now at some point, sooner or later, that system will become unsustainable and disappear. And at that point, the entire American black middle class will also disappear with it...
Modern household appliances -- everything from running water to washing machines -- so greatly reduced the time required to do all of cooking, cleaning, washing etc. the support the domestic side of family life that formerly fully occupied housewives found themselves with time on their hands and so entered the job market.
I sometimes wonder what percentage of modern households actually function better in an economic sense with two parents working outside the home than they would if those same women could still cook and even manufacture some basic foodstuffs, produce clothing, and accomplish numerous other cost-saving tasks women a century ago would have taken for granted. Unfortunately, women have so few domestic skills at this point that it's hard to reverse the trend.
Many employed women today are lousy spenders who somehow manage to dump most of their own income into black holes of frivolity, then eat away at any extra income their husbands and boyfriends earn, and then get themselves (and their spouses) into quite a bit of external debt besides without doing much to enhance their marital estate.
I notice that women are often prone to fiscal obligationism. That is, rather than seeing money as a way to escape commitments, like paying the rent ahead for six months, they instead use money to increase commitments, like shopping for a new home because they think the kitchen is too small. They tie up money (and credit scores) as quickly as possible and regard any attempt to save as being cheap.
Women often multitask their financial obligations in foolish ways. They'll take on major projects A, B, and C at once. When A turns out to be more expensive than they predicted, they begin to pull money out of B and C. This often causes projects B and C to fail because they've cut themselves short. Had they given themselves reasonable margins of error and attempted to tackle big projects one at a time, they would have made much more progress. Instead, they often accomplish little beyond the accumulation of debt.
"It's better to be happy than tough."
Re-read what I wrote. Kids can't be happy when they're "socially stunted, nerdy 40 year-old virgins with no driver's license and weak bones."
It's telling that you describe the alternative to the above malfunctions as having a "toughness obsession" to rival Hitler's father.
Anonymous said...
"In many respects blacks are worse off today than they were in the 50's."
Can this be documented -- apart from the deterioration of the black family and increase in imprisonment rates?
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
"I've Got You Under My Skin" is like Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" -- the content of the lyrics are all about how powerless the singer is, how possessed they are by the spirit of love or whatever.
Meanwhile the execution tells you that it's all a put-on -- you've never heard such composed, deliberate singing. They don't sound involuntarily head-over-heels at all, notwithstanding the occasionally blaring music.
Contrast that with a song where the singer truly does sound like he's lost self-control, and where the guitar solo mimics the trance-like, almost ecstatic state of mind that he's in:
"Sweet Child o' Mine"
The 50s were marred by having the most bloody awful pop music, being in the trough between Swing and The Beatles. Mind you, they seem to have shared that defect with the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughties and nowsies.
I think even the 70s and 80s were better than the 50s as far as pop music goes.
"My impression is that virtually the entire black middle class---the only sizable group of blacks that have actually benefitted from the social changes since the 1950s---is a creation of government jobs and government-induced AA policies."
Wrong. The lack of a black middle class previous to the civil rights act was a creation of not having fair opportunities.
"There's a hypothetical for you: Could the squarejohn have made the iPad?"
Ha ha ha...the "squarejohns" who put a man on the moon would not be able to build an iPad. That's rich.
Amazing that people think iPad's are advanced technology.
"The point of thinking about the past is not to decide whether or not we'd rather live there. Since we don't actually have time machines, we aren't confronted with an all or nothing choice between living in the past and living in the present."
Well said Steve. But then the only way Liberals & Liberaltarians can continue to support their immigration policy is by doing just that. I mean, its an obvious choice, do you want massive illegal and legal immigration, computers and a great Cafe Latte OR Segregation, restricted immigration and Raspberry Jello.
Its that simple.
Also, I love how today everything must be seen through the prism of "Was it - or is it - good for the blacks?".
Evidently, if sometime in the past it was good for us White Folks (90 percent of the country) - who cares? It was bad for black folks. So, it was a bad, terrible time.
And the idea that women were "oppressed" prior to 1970, is laughable - as is the idea that everyone in 50s was June Cleaver - or that everyone in 1970 suddenly became "liberated" and happy.
Farmers get beat up by pastoralists because farmers can't easily run away (unless they are swiddeners). It's much harder to retaliate against people who don't rely on a fixed-in-place resource. Eventually a "stationary bandit" tends to take on the role of expropriating the farmer surplus (again, something harder to do for pastoralists) and since that elite can divert its time from working to defense it may handle the raiding barbarians (as did Brian Boru, Basil II, Otto the Great and Ivan the Terrible). Since farmers are more productive per unit of land, they tend to eventually displace pastoralists.
I would actually be interested in seeing correlations between happiness and being in fights as a kid. Based on the "Lucky Jim" principle, I will guess that it is negative.
The point about lawn mower mutilations is pure bullshit.
The fact is that lawn mower accidents have decreased purely because of regulations that insist on pressure governed safety cut-outs.
OT but in covering yesterday's May Day "immigrant rights" rally in San Jose, CA, a _Mercury_ (sjmercury.com) reporter made a *major* off-message faux pas in mentioning, at one point, "amid a sea of Mexican flags".
No photo, unfortunately.
It's particularly unseemly for these "economists" to tie technological advances with immigration when immigration inhibits innovation and capital investment by reducing the relative cost of labor. Cheap (for the employer) Mexican maids didn't invent the Roomba. The availability of Mexibots retarded labor-saving innovations.
Also, I love how today everything must be seen through the prism of "Was it - or is it - good for the blacks?".
Believe it or not, most modern Americans don't like the idea of blatant social injustice.
Agnostic:
"It's better to be happy than tough."
Re-read what I wrote. Kids can't be happy when they're "socially stunted, nerdy 40 year-old virgins with no driver's license and weak bones."
What said is that the happy BE THEMSELVES kids of the modern age of parental love are "socially stunted ..."
I am the same person that wrote in The Atlantic's Valley mafia on Chua "do you want your kids to be happy, or to be 'successful?'"
Happiness = being one's own self.
Parents, whether out of misguided love or more base emotions, who want their kids to be tough, rich, successful, social, socially dominant, religious, moral, etc. at the expense of being happy, are committing the worst sort of child abuse.
It's telling that you describe the alternative to the above malfunctions as having a "toughness obsession" to rival Hitler's father.
What is telling is that some parents, in their zeal for their sons (and even daughters) to be "real men", are surprised when their sprogs become monsters instead.
"The 50s were marred by having the most bloody awful pop music, being in the trough between Swing and The Beatles. Mind you, they seem to have shared that defect with the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughties and nowsies.
I think even the 70s and 80s were better than the 50s as far as pop music goes."
5/1/11 9:36 PM
and yet it was the 50s music, even some of the poppest, like the girl groups, who inspired the Beatles, Stones, etc. Whenever I've read bios of these groups, they always go back to their early mesmerization by 50s skiffle, bubblegum, rockabilly, girl groups, soul, country, etc.
"For example, Krugman himself says that he wouldn't want to go back because now, "You can get really good coffee just about anywhere."
More Americans were going to Europe not 3rd world immigrants. I went to Europe about 1985 and on the trip back, was already missing the coffee. The stewardess commisserated with me about the good coffe back in Europe. I had culture shock, buying "coffee" in a carry-out in DC and getting brown water. Then out of nowhere came Starbucks (not my fav, but better than before) and trucks on the street, and in eateries, selling cappucinos and strong coffee. So now you can get it here and I wouldn't trade that for all the jello molds in Hoboken.
Parents, whether out of misguided love or more base emotions, who want their kids to be tough, rich, successful, social, socially dominant, religious, moral, etc. at the expense of being happy, are committing the worst sort of child abuse.
Confusing them too. Real dissonance. While "religious " has a bad rap these days, it doesn't mean socially dominant. Making huge money and climbing most corporate or political ladders pretty much cancels out morality. Yes, it does.
"'Also, I love how today everything must be seen through the prism of "Was it - or is it - good for the blacks?".'"
Believe it or not, most modern Americans don't like the idea of blatant social injustice."
Which is why most modern Americans are opposed to blatant social engineering.
Truth:
In fact, it is common knowledge among economist that virtually all the reduction in the Black-White earnings gap occurred prior to 1965, mainly between 1940-1960.
Adjusting for inflation, the earnings of Black men increased 2.5 times and black women 2.4 times between 1940-1960, one of the most dramatic gains in human history. This was twice the increase for whites. These figures are from "America in black and white: one nation indivisible" (in google books).
The convergence slowed after the end of the golden age.
In 1967, the first year the Census has public data online, Blacks median earning was 58% that of whites. In 2009 the figure was 63% that of whites. This is a mere 5 percent during 42 years.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/H05_2009.xls
Similarly the education gap closed most rapidity until the early 1970s, and than started to stagnate.
I am not saying the civil rights movement was not a good thing, it was extremely important, as not everything is about money. (The civil rights act also led to some improvement in earnings, although not very large compared to what happened 1940-1960.)
We need to get history straight: Blacks more than any other group benefited from the American Golden Age, which is the end of the depression until the late 1960s.
Black gains in earnings, education and social status 1940-1965 caused the civil rights movement, not the other way around.
Instead of accepting the official story as spread by liberals, you would like to point out to readers here that black gains came about without any external help through their own effort, and prior to the emergence of affirmative action and the like.
Making huge money and climbing most corporate or political ladders pretty much cancels out morality. Yes, it does.
"Moralistic" would have been a better word than "moral".
Re: Similarly, Tabarrok reasons: "I remember those idyllic summers of the 1970s earning a few extra dollars mowing lawns–80,000 amputated fingers, hands and mangled toes and feet every year back then and just 6,000 today. Would I even let me kid use a mower from the 1970s?"
Tabborak is attibuting the decline in lawn-mower accidents to lawn-mowers being safer, when in all actuality in the low-end lawn-mower has changed very little since the 1970s (prior to that I am sure there was a higher percentage push reel lawn mowers in use). I would venture to guess that the decline in lawn mower accidents is due to the fact that very few children seem to do chores such as that anymore.
"I notice that women are often prone to fiscal obligationism. That is, rather than seeing money as a way to escape commitments, like paying the rent ahead for six months,"
Oh that Sex and the City crowd. If only some nerd-brain could program a credit card that would give its owner a shock every time s/he swiped it for a profligate purpose. I'd get myself one posthaste.
But traditionally, the wife was in charge of the purse-strings (the Japanese are famous for insisting on this arrangement in their households), so if homes were run any better financially then, on average, be careful to whom you give the credit. In my family, my mother wasn't well and my father had to buy and plan everything, and didn't like it at all, since he worked 7-4 every day. He would talk about the financially efficient wives of his brothers and friends, and gave these ladies credit for why their families did so well with the same amount of money.
USAID found that when lending to third world poor, villagers mostly, the guys rarely paid back the loans, using the money for their own purposes, while the women usually used the money as the lenders intended, and did pay them back. Lamentations about weakening the male role would seem to be in order, but these "AID" organizations are actually a business, and they need to get their investment back. But then most villagers are not faced with the dilemma of Jimmy Choos.
Bravo Steve, as an amateur economist I am also extremely disappointed the current bunch of daff economist never or rarely try to explain the opportunity cost equation much less apply it to decisions.
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