Economics of soft corruption

In an age of increasingly sophisticated and miniaturized recording and surveillance tools, it has become hazardous for those seeking to buy political or regulatory favor to do so with explicit transactions of the old form: I will give you $X million in return for a favorable decision for this bid for work with the government or for this regulatory change which will be beneficial to my commercial interests.

In local politics, at least in my state, there is, instead, a lot of soto voce corruption. Nothing that is illegal but favors that are done at two and three removes. Donor X gives to Recipient Y's cause or foundation, Recipient Y being a confidante or patron of Politician Z with regulatory or commercial purview over Donor X's industry. Nobody is bribing anyone but the taxpayers interests are not being served and ethics are not being minded.

As an economist, the lack of causal connectivity between the actions of Donor X and the regulatory decisions of Politician Z poses a problem. From a real world perspective, you know there is an issue but being able to measure it is problematic.

Consequently, A Quick Guide to the Questions About Clinton Cash by David A. Graham caught my eye. The Clinton Foundation has long struck me as at best a minefield of conflicts of interest and at worst, self-serving soft corruption. Its low rate of expenditures on activities that are demonstrably philanthropic in nature heightens that concern.

I have long wondered whether Hillary Clinton's continued role in politics, first as Senator, then as Secretary of State and now as a second-run Presidential candidate might not simply be a means of keeping the cash flowing. Her baggage train looks like that of an ancient potentate, her positions mixed, muddled and contradictory, her retail political skills negligible and indeed destructive, her tin ear deaf to the common vernacular, etc. Her age and health might be issues. There seems like an almost inexhaustible number of reasons why she perhaps ought not to run. So why is she running? Hunger for power is the easy answer and cannot be discounted. But I have wondered as well for a couple of years whether her running isn't the means of keeping the cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation and into their personal accounts. What will happen to the flow of donations and payments for speeches if she drops out and there is no Clinton running for any position of authority? My suspicion is that the money tap closes at that point.

Graham provides a data point which bolsters that cynical economic view.

While the Times story focused on the policy implications of money coming into the Clinton Foundation, it also pointed to the other side of that coin—that Hillary Clinton's time at Foggy Bottom was lucrative for the Clinton family. ABC digs more deeply into that, and finds that Bill Clinton's speaking fees doubled or tripled once his wife become secretary of state:

Where he once had drawn $150,000 for a typical address in the years following his presidency, Clinton saw a succession of staggering paydays for speeches in 2010 and 2011, including $500,000 paid by a Russian investment bank and $750,000 to address a telecom conference in China.

Some of the groups shelling out to hear the former president speak also had business before the State Department. Department ethics officials reviewed the speaking engagements, but apparently rarely, if ever, objected. As with the other cases, there's no clear proof of a quid pro quo, but it's also hard not to imagine that those paying Bill Clinton might have hoped it would give them extra access or sympathy with Hillary Clinton. ABC's scoop partly follows on Schweizer's book.

Bill Clinton's speeches have a going rate of X. His wife becomes Secretary of State and, nothing else changing, those same speeches are now valued in the marketplace at 3X - 5X. From a strictly economic perspective this is strong evidence for the expectation on the part of donors that payments to Bill Clinton will yield benefit in the future in terms of decisions Hillary Clinton will make. That doesn't mean that that benefit was delivered, merely that the donors expected that it would be.

In social sciences, the null hypothesis is that nothing makes a long-term, scalable, replicable difference

From The Null Hypothesis in Education is Hard to Disprove by Arnold Kling.

In education, the null hypothesis is that nothing makes a long-term, scalable, replicable difference. That is:

1. Take any pedagogical innovation or educational intervention.

2. Subject it to a controlled experiment.

3. Evaluate the experiment’s outcome several years later.

4. If the experiment works, attempt to replicate the experiment in more situations.

By the time you reach step 4, if not sooner, you will be unable to show that the innovation makes any difference in outcomes. What this suggests to me is that in the long run it is the characteristics of the students that determine outcomes, at least on average. Think of an individual student as “predestined” to reach a certain outcome. An educational intervention can disturb their path to the predestined outcome but will not change the outcome. I do not literally believe this model, but it is a null hypothesis that is difficult to disprove.

I would expand this null hypothesis to the social sciences in general, not just education.

I would also argue that this is an example of the argument I have made elsewhere on Thingfinder, that one of the challenges in the social sciences is that the pace of social change (along with technology, regulation, demographic, etc.) effectively precludes the application of the scientific method. You can never step in the same river twice. You run a longitudinal study showing pedagogical practices X in grade school in the 1970's are associated with desirable life outcome changes Y in the 2000s. According to the scientific method, you now have to replicate these findings. But technological, regulatory, societal, and other changes mean that there are material differences between your grade school population in 2015 and your grade school population in 1970. You are now, on an empirical basis, comparing apples and oranges. In other words, for reasons beyond your control, you cannot actually replicate the conditions of your experiment conducted in 1970 in 2015.

That is the tragedy and paradox of social sciences. They want to be respected like the hard sciences and yet the nature of the field precludes them from using the methodologies and techniques which allow the hard sciences to be respected. Social Sciences can give us indications or informed speculation but it struggles to produce anything that is robust and replicated.

Critical thinking and an intolerance of alternative points of view cannot coexist

Well, yeah.

Dear Professors: You can't do trigger warnings, cancel events b/c people get upset, then sell the humanities as teaching "critical thinking"

— Will Antonin (@Will_Antonin) April 24, 2015

Calling out classist privilege

I have seen a lot of people criticize Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for her brand of feminism claiming that you can have it all if you will only "lean in." The specific criticism has been "fine to lean in, if you can afford it." This has been a subset of the not uncommon criticism of current feminism which is that it is a fiercely classist movement seeking to advance the interests of privileged upper class women at the expense of all men and most women.

This artcile, The True Cost of Leaning In by Hannah Seligson begins to put some meat on those argumentative bones. As Seligson points out,

How much do you have to spend on household help to replace a traditional at-home mom—someone to do the schlepping, cooking, cleaning, child care, and laundry? About $96,261, according to Investopedia.

I am not confident in Seligson's close to $100,000 figure. I suspect that the figure is more likely in the $30-60,000 figure for a solidly middle class family. But precision isn't so important in this argument as simply having a concrete number with which to test the suppositions. On that basis I will use Seligson's figure.

So your job has to pay you at least $100,000 in order to cover the costs of not being at home with a child. Approximately 75% of all households earn less than $100,000 and about 90% of individuals earn less than $100,000. And $100,000 is the minimum you have to earn to make it worthwhile by covering your outflows. If you want to actually have some take home pay, that has to be on top of the $100,000. So let's say your goal is to have at least $50,000 on top of the replacement costs of $100,000, then you are looking at finding a job earning $150,000. You are already in the top 5% of earners.

So Sandberg is really only talking to the privileged upper class 5% of women. 100% of men and 95% of other women are not invited to the conversation based on Seligson's reporting. Seligson drives home the classist elitist message.

In the face of these spiraling costs at home, it’s hardly a mystery why many women choose to lean out of modest-earning careers.

If this all sounds elitist, let’s remember that even though Sandberg does her best to get folksy and put on her I-am-every-woman-persona, she isn’t. The dead giveaway is when she recounts an anecdote from her senior year at Harvard about how she forgot to connect the Freudian id to Schopenhauer’s conception of the will on a European intellectual history exam. I’m sorry, this book is a primer for women with impressive pedigrees—the types who apply, and land, jobs at McKinsey, who work in prestigious government jobs, and get plum internships as high school students. This is the breed of women who are fast-tracked for success, but get stymied for a number of reasons, one of which is the cost of child care and the lack of planning for it.

Increasing your odds of literary posterity

I have long been fascinated with the question regarding what factors are there which might predict which books succeed or fail. Which ones might not sell at all, which ones sell well for a couple of years but then fade out, which ones are runaway bestsellers, which ones last for decades and longer in print and which one last centuries? To make it concrete - Why, of the thousands of children's books published before 1970, is it that Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (first published in 1947) which sells hundreds of thousands of copies a year nearly seventy years later, indeed outselling virtually all but the hottest of bestsellers.

Or is it all a matter of chance and serendipity. I suspect that chance and serendipity play their roles, important roles, but it also seems to me that there are some underlying commonalities.

The Bizarre, Complicated Formula for Literary Fame is a book review y Joshua Rothman of a new book, Those Who Write for Immortality: Romantic Reputations and the Dream of Lasting Fame by H.J. Jackson.

Jackson never denies the excellence of Wordsworth’s poems, or the brilliance of the novels of Jane Austen, whom she also writes about. But she does show, convincingly, that a number of other factors, some of them quite bizarre, help literary fame to endure.

Take Wordsworth: it helped, Jackson shows, that he wrote so many different kinds of poems. During his lifetime, people enjoyed reading long, philosophical poetry, and many readers, including Wordsworth himself, assumed that poems like “The Excursion” would insure his fame. Later, though, when tastes in poetry changed, it was the shorter poems in “Lyrical Ballads” that kept his readership from dwindling. It was another stroke of fortune that Wordsworth happened to write poems suitable for children; they could be included in textbooks, gaining him new generations of fans. Many of his poems take place outside England, but, early on, Wordsworth became associated with the Lake District; as a result, for hundreds of years, tour guides, travel writers, and other people interested in the cause of Lake District tourism have kept him in wide circulation. Moreover, because his poems contain so much vivid nature imagery, they lend themselves to illustration. Illustrated books tend to sell well. (Jackson is too serious a scholar to mention the perfection of Wordsworth’s name; I, unencumbered by scholarly sobriety, will note here that it’s a perfect advertisement for his literary greatness.)

Here's the code for literary greatness per Jackson.

From the examples of Wordsworth and a few other writers—Austen, Keats, and their almost-forgotten contemporaries, Mary Brunton and Barry Cornwall—Jackson derives a “checklist” of fame-enhancing characteristics. The first step, of course, is to be a talented writer, although you don’t have to be transcendentally great (“Longevity sets a high standard,” Jackson writes, but it’s “not stratospheric”). Once that’s out of the way, it helps to get along with your extended family, since, after you die, it’ll be your nephew who assembles your “Collected Poems.” It’s also a good idea to leave something artfully unfinished or unpublished—letters, a diary, half of a novel—so that your descendants can dig it up and, by publishing it, renew interest in you. (Don’t leave too much behind, or you’ll bury the good stuff.) She finds that a “shrine,” if you can manage it, is also a plus: “Choose a pretty place to live (or die) in,” Jackson writes, and “die young.” All these occurrences contribute to a compelling “personal myth,” which is worth a hundred good reviews.

Not having read the book but from other items in the article, along with my own elaboration, I would summarize differently. In order to achieve literary longevity you want to:

Write well

Write for many years

Write for many audiences

Write in many forms

Write on many topics

Write voluminously (but not incontinently)

Have many friends

Be involved in many communities

Be associated with at least one place/issue/community

Write about the quotidian as well as the unique

Engage people beyond the literary

Nothing is guaranteed but I suspect that these attributes substantially increase your odds for literary posterity.

The leaders of tomorrow are one tick short of a working cuckoo clock

Remind me not to cross Heather Wilhelm. From Attack of the Leftist Snowflakes by Heather Wilhelm.

On college campuses across America, an army of leftist snowflakes — a generation long told they’re special, fragile, and never, ever wrong — is on the march, aiming to squelch any threatening idea that “triggers” uncomfortable thoughts. On the downside, these marauding bands have sparked an epidemic of protests, hysteria, and Nathaniel Hawthorne-style banishings. On the upside, they’re doing a heck of a job alerting the nation that a significant portion of the “leaders of tomorrow” might be one tick short of a working cuckoo clock.

Witness Christina Hoff Sommers, a well-known author, former philosophy professor, and, most recently, a YouTube star. Sommers, who describes her approach as “equity feminism,” is a refreshing change from mainstream modern feminism, which long ago click-clacked aboard the crazy train, ripped up all return tickets, and then hit the bar in the club car hard — not in a fun way, alas, but rather to weep and mutter various bad words over low-grade apple martini knockoffs garnished with mascara smears. Partnering with the American Enterprise Institute, Sommers has made a splash with her “Factual Feminist” video series, in which she calmly challenges and debunks oft-accepted and frequently absurd feminist talking points.

While I prefer arguments to be more substantive, and Wilhelm does get to the meat of the issues later, it is amusing to see this author flex her mockery wings.

Wilhelm does prompt a question though. Just how big is this army of leftist snowflakes? They make headlines. They shout and scream. They banish speakers and suppress opinions they don't like. I acknowledge all that.

With my third child getting ready to head off to college, I have spent the past half dozen years making some dozens of college visits all across the nation, though mostly the Midwest, South and Northeast. Some things stand out. Parents want their kids to be educated but that goal barely gets a head nod. Most universities, particularly liberal arts universities, tend to focus on four selling points - 1) Good food, 2) Lots of student clubs, 3) Access to professors and 4) Service opportunities to "the community". International semesters abroad get mentioned fairly often. Nice residential rooms occasionally get a mention as does campus technology, but usually a distant mention at best.

Actual learning, academic achievement, job placement, etc. usually are not dealt with at all, or cursorily, or statistically deceptively.

So yes, I can see where there is an impression of an army of callow, low cognitive wattage, irony-immune, leftist snowflakes but what are the numbers? Most of the big public engineering or STEM type universities I have visited seem to carry a much lighter social justice nonsense burden. Are we talking about 10% of the university population that are devotees of these Gramscian memes? 5%? An extremely vocal 1%. It would be interesting to know.

Alternate explanations

An interesting argument on a subject with likely little partisan heat. Americans are forgetting how to write checks, Google data show by Christopher Ingraham.

Here's solid evidence to support that Americans are writing fewer checks:

Today, Americans are writing fewer checks than ever. According to the Federal Reserve's most recent study of how Americans pay for things, "the number of checks paid declined more than 50 percent since 2000." Meanwhile, electronic and card payments tripled over the same period.

But that's not what the headline is arguing. It argues we are forgetting how to write checks.

What evidence is there that people knew how to write checks but have forgotten?

Here's an interesting fact: falling check use has been accompanied by a rise Google searches for "how to write a check." Today, those searches are nearly five times as prevalent as they were 10 years ago. And each year, those searches peak in late August and early September -- when kids are returning to college. Students living off-campus for the first time are likely facing the daunting task of writing their first check, for an electric bill, a cable payment, or, especially, for rent.

That's reasonable evidence but searches are a proxy, albeit a pretty good one, for not knowing how to write a check. It is also probably significant that there is an annual spike when kids go off to college. However, there are some loose ends. The spike might possibly explain the timing, but most kids graduating high school make some sort of transition to independence. They join the army, they join the workforce, they move out of the house. All of them are likely to be facing the task of writing checks for the first time.

But did kids know and have forgotten how to write checks? Not likely. They either knew or they didn't know, it seems unlikely that they simply forgot.

Are there alternate explanations for why people are searching on how to write checks. Yes. The geographic distribution of the searches is probably significant.

Looking at the geography of check befuddlement, searches for "how to write a check" appear to be clustered in the Northeast -- Pennsylvania leads the pack, followed by Delaware, New York, Massachusetts and Hawaii. There are a lot of colleges in the Northeast, which fits the hypothesis of confused college kids driving the trend. But it doesn't explain why there are also a lot of people looking for check-writing help in Oklahoma, or in Louisiana.

Ingraham properly notes, to support his hypothesis that lack of knowledge of check writing is a demographic cohort issue, that there are a lot universities in the Northeast. However, what else is notable about the map in the article? The most prevalent searches are in areas with high immigrant populations. 15% of the US population is now foreign born and all of them have to become accustomed to American practices including how to write a check. So perhaps, searches on how to write checks is not an issue of native born kids forgetting how to write checks, or even not knowing how to write them in the first place. Perhaps it is the foreign born population which is driving those searches.

There is nothing riding on whether Ingraham is right or wrong. All this is is an exercise in revealing how easy it is to get caught up in Just So stories about the causes of a phenomenon and leaving unexplored alternative explanations, well, unexplored.

The efforts of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry

From The echoes of Walt Whitman’s ‘Drum-Taps’ book review by Richard Kreitner. Kreitner quotes an earlier review from 1865 by a reviewer, no less than Henry James, reviewing Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps.

In October 1865, a 22-year-old wordsmith living on Ashburton Place, behind the Massachusetts State House, filed what has to be one of the nastiest book reviews ever published. The volume before him was “an insult to art,” a brash and haughty Henry James told readers of The Nation, a then-months-old New York weekly. Written in free verse, each line beginning “in resolute independence of its companions, without a visible goal,” the book demonstrated, according to James, “the efforts of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.”

The poet himself James found downright distasteful. “Mr. Whitman,” he harrumphed, “is very fond of blowing his own trumpet.”

Well. There you have it.

With coercion, nobody wins unless someone else loses

This article, All Pay Raises Are Not Created Equal by Jared Pincin & Brian Brenberg, is pretty standard economics but there is a chrystalizing statement which is worth capturing.

Rising wages driven by a growing economy mean more opportunity for both businesses and job seekers. But when politics is behind a pay increase, nobody wins unless someone else loses.

I don't have much to add. Simple and true.

Why would you let your children read books by racist, sexist bigots?

There is certain strain of extremist intolerance in America today, mostly circulating in universities and in the media. People who believe that America is a uniquely racist and sexist country, oppressing people of color and women in ways that are worse than in the past and worse than elsewhere in the world. They believe that there is readily identifiable and widespread male privilege, white privilege, institutionalized racism, and patriarchy. They have supped at the table of European Marxist scholars and social critics of the 1960s and 70s and have received an understanding that most of the rest of us fail to grasp. They espouse critical thinking and tolerance while blindly following ideology and suppressing discourse and dissent everywhere they can.

They can be found in MFA programs and are heavily concentrated in any university Studies program, in English Departments, in Anthropology, and terribly thick in Education, Sociology and Psychology.

They are delusionists of course. Generally they are inconsequential and marginal so what they think and do has no significant impact on the welfare of the commonweal. Independent of whatever, non-doctrinal writing talent that they might have, they are generally woefully bereft of even the most basic numeracy. Lately though, it seems, they are becoming more and more comfortable pulling back the curtain and revealing just how racist and sexist they are, how bigoted, how ignorant, and how authoritarian.

Is this a good trend or bad? It's good to know who the authoritarian bigots are but it is disturbing that they are so proud of their bigotry. Bull Connor was terrible in his racism but his downfall was his willingness to be so blatantly racist.

There is a common belief among a certain vocal class of writers that the publishing industry is horribly discriminatory against people of color and women authors. The evidence proffered is that only 15% of children's books are about or authored by people of color (African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans) versus 34% of the general population. Also offered as evidence of discrimination is the fact that usually about 65% of the elite Caldecott Awards for illustrated children's books are awarded to men.

Fair enough. Two isolated facts. What about the whole context? Have people of all colors won all of the top children's awards at different times? Yes. Are some of the bestselling authors and illustrators people of color? Yes. Do most of the major publishing houses have imprints that focus on books by and about people of color? Yes. Are there major independent publishers who concentrate solely on literature by and about people of color? Yes. Have the number of books by and about Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans been steady or rising in the past twenty years? Yes. Aren't the Newbery Awards (children's literature and the counterpart to the Caldecott for children's illustration) usually awarded about 65% to women? Yes. So this is not an issue of redlining or preclusion. It is an issue of proportionality.

Are there counterfactuals that might explain the disparate numbers? Sure. Social Justice Warriors might be focused on their perception of Social Justice but publishers have to focus on what sells. They have to make a profit. There is evidence that some types of by and about books simply don't sell well. Winning a Caldecott or Newbery virtually assures a long print life for a title, usually of more than forty years. There are some still in print from the very first Newbery award in 1922.

There is a corresponding award for books by-and-about African Americans called the Coretta Scott King Award which is administered by the same American Library Association which administers the Newbery and the Caldecott and which is also awarded annually. Unlike the other two, a winner of a King award is usually, despite the attention and fanfare, out-of-print within five or ten years. For whatever reason, people simply aren't buying those books.

A second counterfactual is that there is a much stronger correlation between winners of any award and the number of books they have written and the number of years they have been published. Most award winners have been writing/illustrating books for more than a couple of decades before they win an award. It isn't race or gender that is predictive, it is volume of work and duration of work. Simplistic evidence of the old adage that practice makes perfect.

Yet another counterfactual, particularly to the claims of a male dominated publishing industry has to do with the actual numbers involved. 60-90% of editors, agents, teachers, librarians are women. From first writing to actual reading by children, at every step of the way, women are the majority of the participants determining outcomes. It would appear difficult to make the argument that all these professionals are under some male hypnotic spell (transmitted by the "male gaze?") which causes them to discriminate against women authors.

So there's the context. A lot of evidence against the proposition that the publishing industry discriminates based on sex and race and hardly any evidence for that argument. More tellingly, the social justice warriors are never able to advance a causal mechanism for the discrimination. How exactly is this happening (given that it is illegal to discriminate based on race and gender)? Sure, there are anecdotes of the "My friend said . . " sort or "They rejected my manuscript and I am sure it was because . . . " sort. But that is anecdote. We love stories but when it comes to reality, we need data and evidence. The social justice warriors are either unwilling or unable to make the specific and concrete case that editor X or publisher Y discriminated against me in this fashion with these results.

In short, it is not true that the publishing industry is dominated by men and there is no evidence that there is any discrimination based on race or sex. But that should be no impediment to a lovely social signalling cause. I am for X even if there is no evidence of X. Its as if we are back in the stone ages associating thunder with angry gods, simply because.

Someone at the recent annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference asked 23 writers about what message they wanted to send to straight white male publishing. The answers are in 23 Writers With Messages For Straight White Male Publishing. It is pitiable that there were at least 23 writers willing to accept the implied but factually incorrect premise the publishing industry is dominated by straight white males. But indeed there apparently were 23 people who were willing to offer an opinion about a subject about which they appear to be factually ignorant. But there's always someone or some people in a crowd if you look for them hard enough. The flat-earthers, the evolution denialists, etc. What struck me was the readiness, in a professional environment among people who nominally are well educated and likely to self identify as liberal and tolerant, for them to express explicitly racist and sexist opinions. And not just express them but advertize them (see 23 Writers With Messages For Straight White Male Publishing for the pictures).

The messages they want straight white male publishers to hear are:

Read less straight white men

Get over it

We owe you nothing

Grow up

Sit down and let us abolish you

She's coming for you

We are not tokens

You've not doomed us. You've doomed yourselves.

Hire women. Diversity makes you strong. (In an industry already dominated by women)

We don't need you

Take a vacation (a long one)

The sophomoric presumption, ignorance and arrogance are quite startling. There's no tolerance or acceptance or respect in this lot.

Why on earth would you let your children read anything by these bigots? Too bad they did not attach their names to their cards. They are perfectly free to express their opinions. It would be nice for them to identify themselves so that readers are able to make informed choices about which authors to support by buying their books.

UPDATE: From Most authors earn less than minimum wage from their writing, survey finds by Nick Clark. The key finding probably underpins the tantrums illustrated above.

The report, compiled by Queen Mary, University of London, concluded: “There is a high concentration of earnings in a handful of successful writers whereas most do not earn much at all.”

Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the Society of Authors, said: “While it’s always been a profession where the biggest authors earn disproportionately more, what’s concerning to see is that the inequality is getting wider.”

[snip]

The bottom half of writers – those who received less than £10,432 in 2013 – earned just 7 per cent of total earnings between them. “It appears that writing is a profession where only a handful of successful authors make a good living while most do not,” the report said.

Many try, most fail. Failure has to have a cause other than one's own inabilities. Hence the eager hate of the dreaded "other", in this case straight white males.