I’m going to be franker and more brutal in this post than I generally am. The problem with the evils that David Brooks points to in his column today is that nobody knows what to do about any of them. Here’s his headline example:
Parlier’s father abandoned her when she was young and crashed his car while driving drunk, killing himself and a family of four. Maddie is smart and hard-working. She did reasonably well in high school but got pregnant her senior year.
She and the father of her child split up, which put the kibosh on her college dreams because she couldn’t afford day care. She temped for a while. Her work ethic got her noticed, and she got a job as an unskilled laborer at Standard Motor Products, which makes fuel injectors.
Parlier earns about $13 an hour. She’d like to become one of the better-paid workers in the plant, but, in today’s factories, that requires an enormous leap in skills.
What’s the key message in that parable? Is it that we need subsidized daycare? That we need job training programs? No. Is it that some people are unlucky? No. It’s that bad choices can stunt your life and your children’s lives. Abandoning your family is a choice. Drinking and driving is a choice. Based on what was reported in the column getting pregnant was a choice. Raising your child as a single parent rather than giving him or her up for adoption is a choice. Electing to raise your child as a single parent is a choice. All of these choices have implications The sum total of these implications is that “smart and hard-working” Maddie is stuck in a job with pay low enough that her life and that of her child won’t be easy.
Would subsidized daycare help? Would job training programs help? They might. No government program can immunize you against making bad choices and, at least for some of those who’ve made bad choices, ameliorating the consequences of making bad choices will lead them to make more bad choices. I’d rather see our sympathy enlisted on behalf of those who are just plain unfortunate and there are plenty of them.
As to Mr. Brooks’s assertion that insecurity drives men to do stupid things, the insecure we shall always have with us.
I think we’ve reached a critical point at which the salvage value of any number of our institutions is approaching zero. Tinkering around the edges just won’t cut it any more. Our system of public education is no longer about educating children—that much is obvious from the raw numbers. Real spending on education has tripled while on-time graduation rates in major urban school districts has hardly budged. Judging by its results the primary objective of the public education system is not educating children but employing adults at rates of pay that would otherwise elude them.
It may well be that the low on-time graduation rate is a result of choices. Whose choices? The difference between adults and children is that we don’t generally encourage children to make life-threatening choices. Their parents? How do those choices justify the additional spending?
Is the primary purpose of our healthcare system healing the sick or boosting those who work in the industry into the 1%? Real healthcare spending, at least three-fifths of it government spending, has increased dramatically over the period of the last 30 years. Is the population that much healthier?
It may well be that the results our healthcare system achieves relative to those in other OECD countries is due to poor choices on the part of Americans. We eat too much, we eat the wrong stuff, we don’t exercise enough, we smoke, we use drugs. How do those choices justify the additional spending? The retort that healthcare is a luxury good or the like is a non sequitur. If I spend my money on more healthcare as a display of wealth, that’s a luxury good. When the federal government spends Party A’s money to pay Party B for Party C’s healthcare, that’s no luxury good. It’s an abuse of the democratic process.
I think it’s reasonable to believe that we can and should do more to help the unfortunate. As I’ve written above I think that our institutions are failing us in that regard and need a major overhaul.
However, I don’t believe that without becoming a society of slaves we’ll ever succeed in protecting people from the consequences of their bad choices or those of their parents. Anything that’s not worth doing is not worth doing well.
“When the federal government spends Party A’s money to pay Party B for Party C’s healthcare, that’s no luxury good. It’s an abuse of the democratic process.”
Medicare and Medicaid are abuses of the democratic process? Is this but a particular instance of this general principle: Anytime the government takes money from Party A to pay Party B for enhancing the welfare of Party C, this is an abuse of the democratic process? How is that defensible? That’s pretty much what we do when, for instance, we allocate moneys to build roads and highways in different parts of the country. How is this kind of thing an abuse of the democratic process?
Or, on second reading, did I misunderstand the rhetorical thrust?
As they have evolved, yes they are.
There’s a difference between public goods and private goods. A public good is something that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Healthcare is a private good. Public health (as in preventing the spread of communicable diseases) is a public good.
You still have not shown, then, how they constitute an abuse of the democratic process.
“Democratic” is short-hand for liberal democracy, which includes protection of the rights of the minority. I don’t mean majoritarianism.
Taking money from Party A to give to Party B on behalf of Party C because you can is just majoritarianism.
Public goods like public health, defense, police protection, and so on are different. In that case you’re taking money from Party A to spend on behalf of Party A.
Note, too, that I am a pragmatist. I can tolerate a little abuse of the democratic process when there’s a very good reason. At a sixth of the economy and growing fast that’s no longer a little abuse.
The Atlantic piece Brooks is riffing on is better and more complicated than his summary, and indeed I think concludes there are no easy solutions.
One thing to peel back about Maddie is that it is by luck and hard work that she has this job not conscious design. She was washing floors as a temp when someone saw her work ethic and offered her a kind of job that she hadn’t imagined. Before her life derailed she wanted to get a degree in criminal justice and work as an animal control officer. It doesn’t appear that she took a lot of hard math in high school, probably by choice, but the article doesn’t say.
Now that she has a job she’s proud of, that she knows is good at, she wants to do more. She’s hungry to advance, but the next step up, a machinist at the plant, requires not just knowledge of advanced math and computer language skills, but an intuitive feel for numbers and materials. Its not clear that any amount of training will give her those things; it may simply not be the color of her parachute.
That’s my objection to the “everybody must get a college education” trope, PD. More than half of the population just aren’t college material. What do we do, write them off?
I think that the most important thing we need to do is stop subsidizing people in the top 1% of income earners. I don’t object to their being among the top 1% of income earners; I object to the subsidy and, especially, if the subsidy puts them there.
Steven Hsu managed a better summary with a lengthy quote from The Atlantic article and one short paragraph. I’m betting the comment section has some illuminatiing stuff, too, but being one of the longer threads over there it undoubtedly contains some of the usual (for that site) trolling.
Is it that some people are unlucky? No. It’s that bad choices can stunt your life and your children’s lives.
For the children that’s the same thing as bad luck. One can’t choose one’s parents.
As to Mr. Brooks’s assertion that insecurity drives men to do stupid things, the insecure we shall always have with us.
Yes, the insecure will do stupid things, such as become opinion writers for the NYT, or run for President.
@icepick, the summary gets closer to the heart of the issues raised in the article about Maddy. Maddy is making an above average salary for South Carolina, without having to have paid for college. Her life story isn’t really that tragic at this point. The concern in the original story is the coming of robots; Maddy’s future job security is in doubt.
And the original story juxtaposes Maddy’s life against “Luke’s.” And yes Luke has a more stable family background, a mother who is a radiologist who pushes him to go to school to become a dentist. But he drops out of college, bored with academics and bored with teeth. What he really has that Maddy doesn’t have is an aptitude for math and computer language, plus a two year vocational community college program. He’s making two-three times the average SC salary and he doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree.
The article concludes that while job training programs are widely popular, its more likely that Luke would get the benefits and not Maddy. (If the subsidies produce more machinists than South Carolina can bear, then it would also end up benefiting the instructors)
And not to keep beating a dead horse, but one of the main questions about Maddy is why is she not an animal control officer? Does that job really require college? Or are their so few openings that college will help her get hired? Are government budgets preventing any new hires? Is she no longer interested, or would switching jobs at this point require a pay cut?
The summary of the Atlantic article to which Icepick linked returns to the point I made above: a hefty proportion of the population just can’t master the skills. What’s the solution to that? It’s not education or healthcare or child care.
As PD points out there’s something fishy about Maddie’s story. Unless the job requirements of an animal control officer in South Carolina are substantially greater than they are in Chicago (which I doubt) it’s a red herring. And look at the starting pay! It’s about what she’s getting now in South Carolina. I’m guessing that the pay there would be less. Also, I see that there are no job openings for animal control officers in South Carolina right now.
But he drops out of college, bored with academics and bored with teeth.
Not everyone is cut out to be a Full Metal Elf.
“In that case you’re taking money from Party A to spend on behalf of Party A.”
As this doesn’t happen, at least in reference to the federal government, you should be happy.
I think we’ve reached a critical point at which the salvage value of any number of our institutions is approaching zero. Tinkering around the edges just won’t cut it any more.
I see that Sebastian Thrun is making an effort to help tear down the old system of education.
I could make the case (I don’t, but could) that there’s no such thing as free will. That idea wouldn’t exactly be original to me.
At the very least it’s superficial to talk in terms of choices only, as though free will was everything. Does a lucky kid with all cylinders firing have the same free will as a kid with fetal alcohol syndrome? Or Downs? Or schizophrenia? Or autism spectrum disorder? Or a thousand other identified and not-yet-identified syndromes that directly affect judgment?
How about physically or sexually abused kids? Or kids who’ve grown up in drastically dysfunctional homes? Does a kid with an IQ 0f 130 have the very same free will as a kid with an IQ of 80? Kids born with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or drug addiction?
Societies have always taken a hand in directing decisions and most societies have attempted to varying degrees to compensate for poor decision-making. It’s not either/or. It’s not a choice between do it all or do nothing. Our judgment as to what to do, as to what we can do, as to what we should do, evolves over time.
The reality is that we protect people from the consequences of their bad choices all the time. Limits on drug prescriptions, seat belt laws, Medicare, day care inspections, food stamps, limits on payday loans, speed limits, on and on and on. In a world of competent rational actors we’d need almost no regulation, almost no safety net. Guess what: humans are not rational actors. They’re superstitious, incoherent, easily-led, emotion-driven and often self-destructive chimpanzees. And yet, we have to build a civilization and hold our society together.
Therefore we will continue to take money from A to give to B in one form or another, and we’ll continue to pass laws intended to keep people from suffering the full consequences of their actions. The alternative is a society that is attractive only to those who lack imagination.
Getting pregnant/having a baby is always a choice for the woman. This is a fact.
Doing so while young will almost surely mean a tough hard life for you and your child.
Why I have to be held responsible for that irresponsible choice is something I still don’t get.
That making others responsible for a person’s bad choices is merely a subsidy for making bad choices–i.e. it leads to more bad choices is something most people who want me to be responsible for the irresponsible choices of others just don’t seem to get.
It is pretty much that simple when you strip away all the bullshit.
Yes, they’d help if you want more teenage moms in high school. Duh.
Basic result of economics: subsidize something you get more of it.
Probably not. What many people don’t realize is that there is such a thing as decreasing returns to scale. We hear lots of talk about economies of scale and returns to scale. But after a certain point the opposite starts to kick in…it is why we can’t grow the worlds food supply in a flower pot. Most people ignore decreasing aspect of scale.
We drive alot more and tend to shoot each other as well. At least if we are going to talk about life expectancy you need to include those too. Interestingly health care spending will do little about these last two, but WTF.
As I’ve tried to make clear in comments I don’t object to government addressing any of those issues. But that wasn’t the example that Mr. Brooks offered: his example was strictly one of choices.
My objection to what we’re doing now as a society is that we’re insufficiently focused on those who’ve really had bad luck and give far too much to the fortunate.
I picked healthcare and education carefully. Both suffer from Gammon’s Law: they’re producing progressively fewer outputs per input however outputs are measured. Not just marginal output. Actual output. Next year’s high school education will cost more than this year’s high school education. IMO that’s a characteristic of system failure.
Suppose we change it from health care to something else like say books. Suppose the government takes your money same, pays it to Michael, who then churns out books I get to read, but you don’t (well unless you pay Michael a second time). You still cool with it? I’m fine with it as you are paying for my reading, Michael probably wont mind as he loves to write and is getting paid. You on the other hand…what do you get? I’m thinking not much, unless you like the fact that Michael is getting paid with your money and that I get to read those books your money paid for.
Dave:
He’s defined it that way, but my point is that nothing is strictly a mater of choices.
Steve:
May I say that I endorse your brilliant and visionary plan for paying me twice.
Heh, I figure you would. 🙂
Hmmm, I think it is a matter of degree. A child born with fetal alcohol syndrome is an unfortunate in Dave’s terminology. Of course, that unfortunate is the result of poor choices. So, how do we deal with this situation where you have both the unfortunate and poor choice ties closely together. I see your point, that nothing is black & white, but still lets try to minimize subsidies for bad choices when and where we can.
Thus, I think the idea of providing health care and day care that is heavily (even entirely) subsidized for teen/HS mothers is problematic in that it makes becoming a teen/HS mother less burdensome–i.e. easier.
I know it’s axiomatic that we get more of whatever we’re willing to pay for (subsidize.) But is it empirically demonstrated? I recognize the problem with cross-cultural comparison, but do we get more teen pregnancy in countries with state-subsidized day care? France has subsidized day care IIRC, but they seem to be having some difficulty getting enough women to bear children. Ditto the Swedes-Norwegians-Dutch etc…
Michael,
Having teen mothers and having enough babies to replace an aging population are not exactly the same problem. In other words, you could have both problems at the same time and be worse off if you just had only one of the problems.
As for actual studies on things like teen pregnancy I haven’t seen any, but typically the results tend to hold. Subsidize something you get more of it, so then the question becomes what is the magnitude and are their offsetting factors.
Didn’t Heilein define a professional writer as someone who gets paid multiple times for the same piece of written work?
Dave- Dropout rates are dropping and graduation rates increasing.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011012.pdf
That’s interesting, steve, but it doesn’t necessarily contradict the point I have made repeatedly: on-time graduation rates (something different than the rate the report you cite is pointing out) in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major urban school districts are painfully low and have been for generations.
The Atlantic’s Adam Davidson says the output of goods by U.S. factories has increased 33% while factory employment dropped 33%.
This fact drives the narrative. What do these people, these same people who make up the 6 million jobs lost in the last 10 years, do to stay afloat? Where in the United States are 6 million jobs for those 6 million people laid off?
As we know the narrative, it was not Maddies choice for her father to abandon her child. It was not Maddies choice for her father to drink and drive. Both of those choices have profound affects on Maddie for which she is not responsible.
The message in David Brook’s parable, the whole parable and not a piece taken out of context, is that people who do good work may still not recieve their dues because of economic and social forces that stunt, blunt, or derail their progress.