Michael Kevane

Heather O’Connell and Robert Reece find sizable correlation of extent of slavery with public school enrollment and attendance in the present (see summary here):

Drawing from our regression analysis, we argue that slavery history shaped the local social structure in a way that facilitates contemporary white disinvestment from public school systems. We examine two potential explanations for this legacy of slavery—the number of private schools and racial threat—particularly their manifestation within the Deep South. Despite evidence of subregional differences rooted in history, neither pathway explains the initial slavery association. We argue that processes tied to the legacy of slavery are a foundational component of black disadvantage and that further examination of this foundation is necessary to stem the tide of recent resegregation.

And slave counties had considerably slower decline in a major public health outcome, heart disease mortality, according to a multi-author study:

Nearly 50 years of declining heart disease mortality is a major public health success, but one marked by uneven progress by place and race. At the county level, progress in heart disease mortality reduction among Blacks is associated with place-based historical legacy of slavery. Effective and equitable public health prevention efforts should consider the historical context of place and the social and economic institutions that may play a role in facilitating or impeding diffusion of prevention efforts thereby producing heart healthy places and populations.

Glenn Loury back in 1998 had many interesting things to say on the issue. An example from his essay, provocative to some but to others almost banal in its reasonableness:

A social scientist of any sophistication recognizes that societies are not amalgams of unrelated individuals creating themselves anew–out of whole cloth, as it were–in each generation. A complex web of social connections and a long train of historical influences interact to form the opportunities and shape the outlooks of individuals. Of course, individual effort is important, as is native talent and sheer luck, for determining how well or poorly a person does in life. But social background, cultural affinities, and communal influence are also of great significance. This is the grain of truth in the conservatives’ insistence that cultural differences lie at the root of racial inequality in America. But the deeper truth is that, for some three centuries now, the communal experience of the slaves and their descendants has been shaped by political, social, and economic institutions that, by any measure, must be seen as oppressive.

More regression analysis from Acharya, Blackwell and Sen:

We show that contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South trace their origins to slavery’s prevalence more than 150 years ago. Whites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves in 1860 are more likely to identify as a Republican, oppose affirmative action policies,and express racial resentment and colder feelings toward blacks. These results cannot be explained by existing theories, including the theory of racial threat. To explain the results, we offer evidence for a new theory involving the historical persistence of racial attitudes. We argue that, following the Civil War, Southern whites faced political and economic incentives to reinforce racist norms and institutions. This produced racially conservative political attitudes, which in turn have been passed down locally across generations. Our results challenge the interpretation of a vast literature on racial attitudes in the American South.

The Census Bureau a couple of weeks ago released an update on the U.S. economy for 2017. The headline was that real median household income had increased by 2.6 percent, and was about $61,000, and the poverty rate was 12.3%. The poverty line for a family of four with two children under 18 is about $25,000. (The New York Times defines an “affordable” seaside getaway as costing about $500 a night, so there is room for disagreement on what constitutes poverty.)

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Note: A Brookings commentary suggests viewing the Census report, based on responses to surveys, with caution, since the quality of survey measures in general has been declining as Americans are less likely to respond.

If you think that improving health insurance coverage is a good measure of progress in constructing a society of equal opportunity for all, where people can afford to be more entrepreneurial because they will have insurance against serious illness, then this graphic suggests the country has been moving in the right direction.

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

The one area probably that worries economists the most about the U.S. economy is persisting low (relative the pre-2007) prime-age participation in the labor market. One study by the San Francisco Fed staff suggested that this decline was mostly “attributable to the disappearance of manual labor positions in manufacturing and other industries…”. The study concludes on a pessimistic note:

Moreover, as the job market has evolved and some labor force participants have dropped out, other long-term economic and social trends have reinforced low participation rates among prime-age individuals. As discussed in Abraham and Kearney (2018), these factors include the rise in disability claims and other indicators of poor health (such as opioid abuse), an increasing fraction of individuals (primarily men) with prison records, and improvements in the availability and quality of leisure pursuits, such as online gaming; these factors are also discussed in Board of Governors (2018) and CBO (2018).

I’m in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso,doing good things hopefully, talking with interesting people, learning about how our programs to support village libraries are going, and this Steve Bannon-The New Yorker thing comes up and I’m sooooooo disappointed. And pissed. Why? Because The New Yorker stands (or stood) in my home as a child, and in my mind in the present, for clear-thinking discussion and the best fiction and poetry, and well-written and provocative culture reviews (and oh so clever cartoons). And now they have decided to invite a boorish blowhard to their festival.  Any intellectually alive person knows he is, and indeed The New Yorker knows he is.

Can we verify though that he is a blowhard (and set aside the boor part)? For evidence we need look no further than Bannon’s Vatican “speech” (can you call a speech something so obviously cobbled together or just made up on the spot?) that Buzzfeed kindly reproduced here. So some summary, and extracts, in sequence, with commentary.

He starts by saying “the Judeo-Christian West” is in “crisis” and he started Breitbart to let people know about the crisis. Then he calls something ironic, and it is clear he has no idea what “irony” actually means. He says it is ironic the audience is meeting that day because 100 years earlier was the start of World War I.  Please if you can come up with a way that is ironic, let me know.  I guess if they were meeting to discuss “A re-appreciation of tourism potential in the Balkans in the early 1910s” that would be ironic. Or a meeting to celebrate a new book “Assassinations of imperial personages are unimportant historical events.” That would be ironic.Whatever though.

He goes on, “Just to put it in perspective, with the assassination that took place 100 years ago tomorrow in Sarajevo, the world was at total peace.” No grammatical sense or even historical sense. Just go look at Wikipedia’s list of wars during that period. The Mexican Revolution was total peace?

He goes on to say there were a lot of wars in the 20th century. OK so the “total peace” was just a little poetic license. Then what happened? “But the thing that got us out of it”…. followed by an incoherent shambling set of words and then, “the underlying principle is an enlightened form of capitalism…” So not clear if that is “the thing” or “an underlying principle” but who needs to be clear when it’s Steve Bannon, right? That thing or principle “beat back a barbaric empire in the Far East.” Wait. Russia? Germany? Japan? Soviet Union? I don’t think he even cares what he is saying.

Then: “It was many, many years and decades of peace.” Wait, so the 20th century after 1914 suddenly wasn’t all war, like he said at the beginning. By the way, that empty poorly constructed phrase: “It was many, many years and decades of peace.” Sound like anyone you know?

Early speech climax now: “And I believe we’ve come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we’re starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism.” Hmmm… the “both” there doesn’t quite work, does it? From “partly offtrack” to “crisis” seems also a bit of a rhetorical stretch. Are they the same? Would an editor at The New Yorker say, “Wow that is fresh writing for sure this guy’s great”?

What is the crisis? State-sponsored capitalism is one part. Define it, Steve! Give us an example of that here in the United States. No? OK, keep moving. To where? To this: “However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the “enlightened capitalism” of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost — as many of the precepts of Marx — and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they’re really finding quite attractive. And if they don’t see another alternative, it’s going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of “personal freedom.”

Hello? Anybody listening. (Gotta get in Marx there! He’s bad, I think, for Steve, but unclear why or how). Any coherence here or just words? Yes, you are right, dear reader, words of the worst sort. Strung together to signal a mood, with no actual content.

I give up. Read the rest if you like. (I mean, it is not really reading, more like frowning your way through it.)