Felix Salmon catches me off guard

When I see a headline like this:

Don’t donate money to Japan

I expect it to come from a Rush Limbaugh or some other professional xenophobe. Seeing it on Felix Solmon's site caught me off guard until I realized he was talking about earmarking money for Japan when you give:

We went through this after the Haiti earthquake, and all of the arguments which applied there apply to Japan as well. Earmarking funds is a really good way of hobbling relief organizations and ensuring that they have to leave large piles of money unspent in one place while facing urgent needs in other places. And as Matthew Bishop and Michael Green said last year, we are all better at responding to human suffering caused by dramatic, telegenic emergencies than to the much greater loss of life from ongoing hunger, disease and conflict. That often results in a mess of uncoordinated NGOs parachuting in to emergency areas with lots of good intentions, where a strategic official sector response would be much more effective. Meanwhile, the smaller and less visible emergencies where NGOs can do the most good are left unfunded.
...

That said, it’s entirely possible that organizations like the Red Cross or Save the Children will find themselves with important and useful roles to play in Japan. It’s also certain that they have important and useful roles to play elsewhere. So do give money to them — and give generously! And give money to other NGOs, too, like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which don’t jump on natural disasters and use them as opportunistic marketing devices. Just make sure it’s unrestricted. The official MSF position is exactly right:

The ability of MSF teams to provide rapid and targeted medical care to those most in need in more than 60 countries around the world – whether in the media spotlight or not – depends on the generous general contributions of our donors worldwide. For this reason, MSF does not issue appeals for support for specific emergencies and this is why we do not include an area to specify a donation purpose on our on-line donation form. MSF would not have been able to act so swiftly in response to the emergency in Haiti, as an example, if not for the ongoing general support from our donors. So we always ask our supporters to consider making an unrestricted contribution.

I’ve just donated $400 in unrestricted funds to MSF. Some of it might go to Japan; all of it will go to areas where it’s sorely needed. I’d urge you to do the same, rather than try to target money at whichever disaster might be in the news today.

At the risk of overselling, when it comes to questions involving money, whether investing it or giving it, Felix Solmon's blog should probably be the first place you click.

Science Fiction Thoughts

In an interesting post, Dominic Lukes asks if science fiction authors dream of dictatorships. It is an interesting question. Certainly one of the examples that he gives, Robert Heinlein (author of Starship Troopers) is a noted Libertarian. So there is certainly something to this.

But I think the key issue is that science fiction authors are, at least partially, about social criticism. Look at the more recent series of Battlestar Galactica, for example. Or the novels of authors like Mercedes Lackey or Elizabeth A. Lynn that dealt with gender in a very sophisticated way.

So I think we can find all sorts of extrapolations and thought experiments in science fiction. This is, in my opinion, the real strength of the genre and its most important function.

[and yes, I am one of those people who sees Fantasy as utterly distinct from Science Fiction; and Star Wars was a Fantasy]

Nobody talks about the Caulfield problem

This is one of those fundamental, difficult-to-resolve questions with important implications that almost no one in the education debate has any interest in discussing. How do we handle students learning things that aren't "on the list"?

There are valid arguments to be made on both sides. Some of the happiest educational outcomes often start with something far from the standard curriculum. (Goosebumps leads to King who leads to Lovecraft who leads to Machen who leads to Joseph Campbell. Puzzle books lead to Gardner who leads to Smullyan who leads to Gödel and Tarski.)

But as valuable as these excursion may be, there is still a case to be made for a body of essential knowledge, things that everyone should know. Not only are things that make it into the curriculum considered more important; the very fact that they are common is itself valuable. A diverse, democratic society functions better when its people have a shared frame of reference.

Those in the reform movement have come down heavily on the side of valuing only what falls within the curriculum. Schools are actually penalized when students go off-list since time spent reading Gödel, Escher, Bach or the Hero with a Thousand Faces is being taken away from learning those things that are being measured. That is a perfectly defensible position but I get the impression that it is largely an unintentional one, that proponents of a system built around standardized testing often failed to think through the implications of their policies.

The paradox of New Haven

Mark has been discussing Edward Glaeser and his comments on how universities can create urban prosperity. Now, I am a big fan of universities and think that they serve an important role in global economic development. However, I am dubious that they make any particular community prosperous. Consider New Haven, CT -- the home of Yale University (recently ranked the #11 university in the world).

According to wikipedia, the poverty rate in New Haven is 24%, which compares unfavorably with the rest of the United States where it is 14%. The poverty rate in New Haven, despite the presence of Yale, is nearly twice that of the United States as a whole.

Now, one might note that many of the poor residents of New Haven are likely to be students. This is true. But these students still use municipal services and thus require the local tax base to support them (in addition to the long term residents). They do not (after they graduate and make additional income) send money back to New Haven so, in a sense, New Haven is actually subsiding the urban communities that Yale graduates move to.

So, it is actually possible that a large university in a small community could be a drag on the economy due to the lower per capita tax base. Plus, you have a large segment of the population with only a short term interest in the community which may make long term planning more difficult. And New Haven, CT is not the only university town that I can think of with high levels of poverty.

Furthermore, if a strong local university (like the University of Washington) is a solution to urban poverty (as it was presented in the Detroit versus Seattle comparison of Edward Glaeser) then it is unclear why a stronger economy has not grown up around Yale which is a strong school by any measure.

This example highlights, I think, that predicting what factors create a prosperous community is a difficult question and not one that has easy answers.

Update: The discussion continues here and here.

Nate Silver takes apart another favorite political myth

I get out of the habit of reading 538 when we don't have an election looming and I miss out on things like this:

There’s Nothing Special About Ohio

Weekend Gaming -- The Game of Gale

As promised, here's an introduction to David Gale's elegant Game of Gale (and, no, Gale didn't come up with the name; Martin Gardner did)"

... Since then it has been a board game (Bridg-it), a programming exercise and a great pencil-and-paper game (or at least, a great colored-pens-and-paper game). GoG is a close relative of Hex and its rules are comparably simple. Start out with a grid of dots like the one below.

Each player gets a color then takes turns connecting his or her dots. The object for the blue player is to draw a continuous path from the top row to the bottom. The objective for the red player is to connect the leftmost column and the right. The only rule is that a red line can't cross a blue and vice versa.

There's a sample game at the site. Here's the decisive turn:



Red gets to go next but it doesn't really matter at this point. Blue has two winning moves for the next turn. Red can only block one of them.

I don't know what to make of this...

From the Monkey Cage (via DeLong):

Does anyone out there know Michael Winerip?

If so, please tell him that he needs to read this discussion on Andrew Gelman's blog. There are things he that he really ought to know.

Folsom Prison Blues

I previously alluded to some threats to California's spectacular university system. The most ominous one is a product, believe it or not, of an alliance between two Republican governors and a public sector union.

NPR did a brilliant job laying out the whole tragic story:

In January 1968, Johnny Cash set up his band on a makeshift stage in the cafeteria at Folsom State Prison in California.

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," he said in his deep baritone to thunderous applause. Song after song, the inmates thumped their fists and cheered from the same steel benches now bolted to the floor.

The morning that Cash played may have been the high-water mark for Folsom — and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The men in the cafeteria lived alone in their own prison cells. Almost every one of them was in school or learning a professional trade. The cost of housing them barely registered on the state budget. And when these men walked out of Folsom free, the majority of them never returned to prison.

It was a record no other state could match.

Things have changed. California's prisons are all in a state of crisis. And nowhere is this more visible than at Folsom today.

Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.

It's once-vaunted education and work programs have been cut to just a few classes, with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long.

Officers are on furlough. Its medical facility is under federal receivership. And like every other prison in the state, 75 percent of the inmates who are released from Folsom today will be back behind bars within three years.

California's prison system costs $10 billion a year. Its crumbling, overcrowded facilities are home to the highest recidivism rate in the country. And the state that was once was the national model in corrections has become the model every state is now trying to avoid.

...

Experts agree that the problem started when Californians voted for a series of get-tough-on-crime laws in the 1980s. The state's prison population exploded immediately. It jumped from 20,000 inmates, where it had held steady throughout the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Today there are 167,000 inmates in the system.

Jeanne Woodford was warden of San Quentin during the prison population boom.

"The violence just went out of control," she remembers. "And then the programs started going away. I was there during an 18-month lockdown. It was just unbelievably horrific."

California wasn't the only state to toughen laws in the throes of the 1980s crack wars. But Californians took it to a new level.

Voters increased parole sanctions and gave prison time to nonviolent drug offenders. They eliminated indeterminate sentencing, removing any leeway to let inmates out early for good behavior. Then came the "Three Strikes You're Out" law in 1994. Offenders who had committed even a minor third felony — like shoplifting — got life sentences.

Voters at the time were inundated with television ads, pamphlets and press conferences from Gov. Pete Wilson. "Three strikes is the most important victory yet in the fight to take back our streets," Wilson told crowds.

But behind these efforts to get voters to approve these laws was one major player: the correctional officers union.

In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.

We currently spend as much on prisons as we do on higher education. One of these two has to give.

One way of handling worrisome demographic shifts in the electorate

On the bright side, this does have a certain directness going for it (from Yahoo):

Boosted by major electoral gains in state legislatures nationwide in the 2010 campaign, Republican lawmakers in 32 states are pushing measures that would require citizens to show a state identification or proof of citizenship to vote. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, GOP lawmakers are proposing new limits on college students who vote in the state, potentially eliminating a key base of electoral support for Democrats in the state ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

As the Washington Post's Peter Wallsten writes, the measures have set off a partisan battle over voting rights across the country, with Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to suppress voters, including young people and minorities, who would cast their ballots for President Obama and other Democratic candidates next year.

In New Hampshire, Republicans are pushing to end rules that allow same-day voter registration in the state, which has often provided key swing votes for candidates from all parties in the state. State GOP lawmakers are also proposing new limits on students, including a bill that would allow them to vote in college towns only if they or their parents had established permanent residency in the state.

Some GOP lawmakers in New Hampshire have billed the measures as an attempt to crack down on voter fraud in the state--but recent remarks from the newly elected GOP state House speaker have suggested otherwise.

In a recent speech to a tea party group in the state, House Speaker William O'Brien described college voters as "foolish." "Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do," he said, in remarks that were videotaped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students, he said, lack "life experience" and "just vote their feelings."

GOP lawmakers in the state have distanced themselves from O'Brien's remarks.

Though not his policies.

A useful table and a few observations

Wikipedia has an interesting article on academic rankings. We could (and probably should) spend a lot of time going over this, but here are a few points to get things started:

1. This list seems to suggest that the USA has the best university system by a good margin. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve it, but this does make a case for being careful about making radical changes. When you're number one, unintended consequences can be a bitch;

2. As Joseph noted, California contains one of the two major clusters of major universities. Most Californians would like to keep it that way. I'm not so sure about most of Sacramento.

3. It's a good idea to go through this list periodically while reading Edward Glaeser (since it's obvious his editors didn't).

Universities and Growth

Mark had a really nice post about one of Edward Glaeser's points. Mark points out that it seems odd that Glaeser overlooked the schools in the Detroit area when he pointed out how important the Univeristy of Washington is to Seattle's success. Curiously, he did not mention Microsoft, which seems to also be an important explanation for Seattle's success. I think the underlying issue here is that simple explanations (location of schools) do not really describe complex phenomenon (relative prosperity) well.

If you look at the the top ranked schools, there are really two major clusters in the United States (one in the Northeast, peaking in Boston and one in California, peaking in San Franscisco). But the causal direction is unclear to me -- did these schools become excellent due to their proximity to vibrant economies or vice versa?

Or are these factors independent, which schools like Princeton might argue for.

What type of instrument or experiment could we use to decide on this?

These questions matter because we care about how to best handle things like economic slumps. It might be that there is no effective policy response (that would be worth knowing). But, at the very least, overly simple explanations should concern us.

If only there were a major university in the Detroit area

Maybe we could put one in Ann Arbor.

From Edward Glaeser:

But there was a crucial difference between Seattle and Detroit. Unlike Ford and General Motors, Boeing employed highly educated workers. Almost since its inception, Seattle has been committed to education and has benefited from the University of Washington, which is based there. Skills are the source of Seattle’s strength.

Part of an ongoing series.

update: Note to self -- unlabelled sarcasm may be a bad idea in a blog.

Felix Salmon shoots the elephant in the room

A few years ago, there was an infomercial for something called the AIM (Automated Investment Management) System. The developer, a disreputable-looking character with a cheap suit, a bad comb-over and the absurdly modulated voice of a smooth jazz DJ, explained to the 'interviewer' that with his system you would automatically sell a stock when it peaked and buy when it bottomed out.

Though the whole thing was scripted down to the last chuckle, you still half-expected the 'interviewer' to ask the obvious question, "If you have a sure-fire way of beating the market, why are you wasting your time selling audiotapes on basic cable at three in the morning?"

Linda Stern's recent column, "Saving up for a big down payment? Sucker!" raises similar questions. Fortunately, Felix Salmon is here to go off script:

This, in a nutshell, is everything that was wrong with the housing market before the crash — everything that we want to avoid going forward. Can’t Linda look around at the current devastated state of many people who bought with little or no money down, and see the dangers here? Evidently not. Instead, she seems to think it’s a bright idea to borrow more money than you need, to the point at which you’re pushing the envelope of what you can reasonably afford. And then take the cash you’re not using for a down payment, and “put your money to work for yourself.”

I barely know where to start on this. Here’s one way of thinking about it: banks are not charities, and that they expect to make money from their loans. They have a cost of funds which is lower than the mortgage rate that you’re paying; the difference between the two rates is their profit. You, however, if you follow Linda’s advice, have a cost of funds which is your mortgage rate: if you wind up getting a lower return on your savings than you’re paying on your mortgage, you would have been better off just using the money for a down payment. Needless to say, if there was an easy way of getting a higher return on capital than the mortgage rate, the banks would have done it already, rather than lending you the money. And it’s pretty delusional, frankly, to think that you can invest better than say JP Morgan. Yes, there are tax benefits to having lots of mortgage-interest payments. But they’re not sufficient to make the difference here.

Firing Teachers

Yikes.

In the same blog post we have:

But I also recognize that this is no panacea. At a minimum, making teachers easier to fire needs to be paired with extensive reforms: a move towards defined contribution rather than defined benefit plans (which make a mid-career job loss catastrophic); elimination of seniority and useless credentials as the primary criteria for setting pay; broadening the recruiting base by eliminating a requirement for ed degrees; and a shift towards paying teachers more, especially in math and science. I also think it's absolutely crucial to set up some sort of Federal bonus to recruit high-performing teachers to the lowest-performing districts--a bonus sizeable enough to attract top teachers, and available only on one-year contracts.

and

Let me start by saying that I think there are some jobs that are too important to let any consideration intrude other than the best way to get the job done. Nuclear power plants, firefighters, poison control--I don't want to let other social goals, no matter how laudable, hamper their mission.


Teaching is one of those jobs. I just can't prioritize making teachers' work environments fair, interesting, or pleasant for them--not if there's any potential conflict with the goal of providing the best possible education for kids. Particularly disadvantaged kids, since I basically assume that educated and competent parents are going to ensure that their offspring are educated and competent. But where there are needy kids, my entire focus is on them. I want to make teachers' lives pleasant only insofar as this advances the goal of helping kids who need a lot of help.

and

Contra E. D. Kain, however, I don't think that all organizations should strive to minimize turnover. Why do fast food restaurants have turnover rates in excess of 100%, when they could lower them substantially by paying higher wages? Answer: because in a dirty, stultifying job like fast food service, it costs a lot in wages to reduce turnover a little, and people won't pay enough for a hamburger to justify those wages.

Okay, this seems like a slippery analogy but let us go with it. Ms. McArdle would like to make teaching into a high turnover profession. Okay, I can deal with that. She also thinks that it is so high priority that considerations like humane treatment are secondary to child outcomes. Curiously, I can deal with that too.

But what are the low job security professions with a high level of responsibility, high educational requirements and no limits on costs? Medical doctors come to mind but it's unclear to me that they represent the wage level that we should be shooting for.

I think a much more plausible story is that we have cut education to the bone. It's a large part of many state budgets (see California as a key example). The lack of resources has been partially helped by using job security and a sense of vocation in order to keep employee costs low. So what precise program cuts are we considering to raise wages or to pay "some sort of Federal bonus"? Or are we talking actual tax increases?

After all, according to Wikipedia, we spend $11,000 per student and have 76.6 million students in the United States. Is this really a place where we want to increase costs from?

Or, is the alterative to make education low cost and low skill? It has had this model in the past in the US (with the one room school house model) but that seems to contradict the importance of teaching. A lot of things are important and should not be trivialized. But is this really the best way forward?