I'm not feeling reassured here

Derek Thompson, one of my favorite journalists, has a post worth reading that pushes back against the job loss from automation-- but also read the comments, which make a lot of good rebuttal's to what Thompson is saying. Part of what I like best about Thompson is that he is a remarkably even-keeled guy, a rarity in a newsmedia that gravitates towards the euphoric and the apocalyptic. It's especially unusual in a guy who writes often about tech, and a guy with a generally neoliberal flavor, as they tend to be the ones in a rush to ignore human suffering. Optimism that doesn't degrade into absurd technoutopianism, or that doesn't discount the incredible hardships of the poor, is a rarity these days. I appreciate his sobriety, and I don't know, maybe he's right. But there seems to be a lot of wishful "hey, it's probably not gonna happen soon" going on there. Worth saying, too, is that Thompson focuses exclusively on employment rate, and doesn't consider job quality, which to my lights is equally important. As his colleague Matt O'Brien points out, automation doesn't have to lead to mass joblessness to severely undermine the conditions for workers.

Seriously, read the comments of Thompson's post. Tons of insight there.

One thing I'd like to point out is that even if we merely have a change in the skills or temperament needed for some jobs, rather than just the elimination of jobs, that essentially renders large swaths of people unemployable. Jobs that interface significantly with technology (which is to say, jobs) typically require significant retraining for people who have been laid off from other careers. People who can't adjust-- or, even worse, people who aren't given the opportunity to adjust because employers assume they can't-- are left behind, and fall into the precarious lives that so many are suffering through right now. As one of the commenters on the post points out, economists tend to think of jobs in net; if 5,000 people are laid off, and then 5,000 jobs added, hey, that's balance. But the original 5,000 people are very unlikely to be significantly represented within the 5,000 newly employed, and the longer a person is unemployed, the harder and harder it is for them to eventually find work.

Matt Yglesias continues a recent trend in writing a post on this issue that is, well, bizarre. His Slate blog has taken a turn for the odd in general lately. In the post-- which, in keeping with another recent trend of moving towards a positively Mickey Kaus-like brevity, runs all of two paragraphs-- simply says that technology that eliminates jobs has always been with us and that it's strange to talk about it now. Well, yeah-- it's a long term trend. But as is the case with global warming, the fact that the trend is old says nothing about whether it is accelerating or whether we are reaching an inflection point that will undermine our basic way of life. I'm not sure what Yglesias thought is saying here. The fact that the trend has been going on for a long time doesn't mean it isn't causing massive human suffering. But suffering hasn't really been Yglesias's beat lately.

There's plenty to read. If it isn't clear, I'm mostly interested in these issues because they seem like a useful frame to discuss the long-term trend of less and less income going to labor, and in broader strokes, the way in which our society has become a massive machine for generating wealth for those at the top. I find the "income inequality" conversation to be frustrating on a variety of levels, in large part because it is so well worn. I'm trying to address how we think our society is supposed to function, and what happens when one of the basic planks starts to degrade. Contrary to Thompson and Yglesias, I don't think it's too early to think things through, even if these problems don't start to affect us in mass in the near future. We have a habit of deciding problems are problems too late rather than too soon.

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actual fascism

It seems to me-- just spitballing here-- that enforcing a regime of joblessness and national humiliation, as is happening with austerity measures in Greece, does not have a great track record in history.

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where the fuck is the IT department

Well, today, somebody told me that the margins were too wide on the blog. So I shrunk them. Then someone told me that the margins are too thin, causing him to have to drag a pull bar thingy to see the archive. When I had a layout that was (I believe) variable width, though, it wasn't wide enough for me, and Youtube videos and such would constantly get chopped.

This is the sort of thing that I'm really bad at and the sort of thing that drives me insane with frustration.

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the backwards causation

Since reading educational research changed from being an amateur interest of mine to being a daily professional commitment, nothing has been more consistently striking than the strength with which educational outcomes are correlated with demographics of socioeconomic status, parental education background, and race-- and the relative weakness of pedagogical and educational variables.

Broadly speaking, the demographics of students within a given school are far more determinative of educational outcomes than any pedagogical variable that can be isolated. Given this, people who complain that poor students can't get a good education because they are systematically excluded from the good schools have the line of causation backwards; rather, schools are regarded as good because they have systematically excluded the poor students who contribute to poor metrics. Typical complaints that poor students underperform because they are ineligible to attend the best schools ignore the fact that the best schools would necessarily perform worse with an influx of poorly performing students. The response then should not be to expect education to elevate people out of their current station but rather to elevate them out of their current station in order to improve the outcome of their education.

The racial achievement gap is vexing and necessarily controversial. My own stance is that there is very likely no single cause, but rather a series of causes working together in a vicious cycle. I'm confident that our systems to measure educational outcomes are culturally biased in a way that disadvantages black and Hispanic students; that systematic economic exclusions and inequities undermine parental and community stability which contribute to educational outcomes; and that educational disadvantage is hereditary, in the sense that parents who were disadvantaged are likely to pass that disadvantage down to children, due to an inability to model and engender intellectual skills students need. (Indeed, this hereditary disadvantage is widely acknowledged in language and literacy, which are disproportionately influenced by exposure and modeling during the formative years that precede schooling.)

Given the difficulty in isolating variables that contribute to racial disadvantage, it makes the most sense to address the most obvious and manipulable correlate: parental income. We can likely affect major positive changes in educational outcomes through a brute-force method of giving parents money. Typically, addressing educational disadvantage through spending is focused on schools. But since students spend a large majority of their lives outside of schools, and because of the previously-discussed power of demographic and family factors, this is perhaps a misapplication of funds. Rather, giving parents money is likely to have a more direct and immediate effect. Some people say that you can't just give people money. But as Matthew Yglesias has repeatedly discussed, just giving people money has a strong track record. In addition to preventing an unduly paternalistic system from constraining poor parents from making decisions with the same freedom of the rich parents whose children perform so well, such a system would avoid having to create an onerous and costly bureaucracy that would be necessary for enforcement of particular rules about use. I would pay for such a program through significantly more progressive income taxation, which would likely result in slightly higher tax rates for the middle class and significantly higher tax rates for the upper class. Perhaps more traditional social programs that attempt similar interventions could be shrunk or phased out altogether due to the positive effects of a simple transfer of money. In time, if such a program was successful, it would likely reduce costs of other social programs. I am dedicated to protecting our current system of material support for the elderly, but to enact it to the exclusion of similar redistributive efforts for children and parents seems quite strange.

This would all take time. Poverty, in terms of both real capital and social capital, is a cyclical and effectively hereditary problem. In a country in which it is not uncommon to find families who are in their third or fourth generation of poverty, we cannot expect any programs to make miraculous changes overnight. Standards that are universal are inherently an error, as there will always be those who perform below standard, no matter what the social system. And I have been and remain dedicated to a long-term social overhaul that removes material security from chance and demographics in general. A universal basic income, while far from a panacea, would accomplish a great deal of what I'm advocating for here. But if a universal minimum income is not in the cards politically in this generation, perhaps an explicitly child-and-education focused effort like this one could be justified. If we take education as seriously as we say, and if we are really dedicated to attending to the needs of all children, a program of redistribution is likely a necessity-- particularly in the context of a school reform movement which has proven to be, empirically, one of the greatest failures of modern policy making.

When the correlate is determinative, change the correlate. If you want to make sure that no child gets left behind in a capitalist system, give the parents capital. And then, in the long run, we can address why their parents were ever poor in the first place. Let's turn vicious cycles into virtuous.

Update: Two (preemptive) reasons why this doesn't represent a nihilistic argument for the irrelevance of education. (That would be a particularly odd stance for me to take, as I am an educator, and a researcher whose major research interest is how to make education better.)

First, arguing that educational quality (which includes but is certainly not limited to teacher or school quality) is largely determined by demographic and familial inputs is not the same as arguing that there is no such thing as educational quality. I have little doubt that differences in educational quality are significant, in both the practical sense and the statistical sense (that is, I believe that differences in educational metrics exist that we can say with great confidence are not the result of random quantitative chance). But addressing education as a broad social issue means tackling the largely determinative part of educational outcomes first. Indeed, practically assessing educational quality would be made vastly easier if we had the ability to remove the powerful demographic confounds.

Second, it is plausible (although for the time being largely unverified empirically, to my knowledge) that educational quality has an unevenly distributed impact depending on a student's overall educational level. In other words, educational quality could be more determinative of student outcomes for students who have reached a certain threshold, but be largely irrelevant to the success of students who have not. Think about an illiterate 10th grader. Such a student is overwhelmingly likely to have come from a low socioeconomic background. The ability of high school educators to improve that student's learning outcomes is likely severely restricted. A high school is not designed to teach basic reading and writing skills, likely lacks the resources to do so, and likely lacks educators who are specifically trained or experienced in that area. So for such a student, the lack of prerequisite ability could render educational quality irrelevant. But educational quality could still exist for mediocre and high-achieving students. Again, the natural response seems to be to address the demographic and familial factors that are strongly associated with a lack of basic skills.

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Randy Moss's unforgivable blackness

I don't have a real rooting interest in the game tonight. But a part of me is rooting for the 49ers, only because I'd like to see a championship for Randy Moss-- one of the most transcendently gifted and criminally mistreated athletes of my life.

I typically don't get particularly exercised about sports, but Moss has become one of those issues on which I'm willing to rise to genuine anger. At his peak, Moss was, in my estimation, the most dangerous weapon in the history of football. Take it from a Bears fan who often had to watch him brutalize our defense twice a year: you felt genuine fear when he lined up. He was exhilarating and dominant. And he did it with, shall we say, frequently uninspiring quarterback play. Recently Moss declared himself the best WR ever, provoking guffaws from many who prefer Jerry Rice. But Rice, of course, had either Joe Montana or Steve Young throwing to him for the large majority of his career-- two QBs who are probably among the top 5, and certainly among the top 10, to ever play the game. Daunte Culpepper had a few glory years, but some poor ones as well. Rob Brad Johnson, Jeff George, and Kerry Collins hardly need to be explained. (If Moss played with Montana and Young for 15 years... god.) When Moss was traded to the Patriots and finally played with a great quarterback, the results were amazing: 98 catches, 1493 yards, 23 touchdowns, and dozens of incredible highlights.

The football case, I'm sorry to say, is not really what's defined Moss's career. Today, he is commonly talked about as a disappointment or worse. And it is eminently clear to me that this interpretation is totally bound up in his race. The case against Moss on the football field is like a rundown of every racist sports trope you can think of: his production is all about natural talent and athleticism, not work ethic; he lacks character/leadership/team spirit/toughness; he never got the most out of his talent; he loafed and dogged it; and he generally did not play "the right way," a vague term that is almost always applied to white athletes who are sold as hustlers and hard workers. Moss's off-the-field sins, which many people casually assume are significant, are largely minor. He has been associated with smoking weed; if he does smoke, it's a habit he shares with millions of Americans, and which large percentages of Americans believe he should be legally allowed to do. A notorious incident in a playoff game, where Moss mined mooning the crowd in Green Bay, has been replayed endlessly. I honestly didn't think it was that bad at the moment, despite Joe Buck's absurd howls; afterwards, when I learned that Green Bay fans are notorious for actually mooning opposing teams, I found it funny and totally fair. Much more serious is an allegation of domestic violence. The charges and an attendant restraining order were later dropped by his accuser, and there was never a formal exploration of the facts. I take the accusation very seriously, but I also don't feel that I can fairly judge him for an accusation that was later rescinded.

A strong case can be made that Jerry Rice was a better WR than Moss. It's fine to think that Moss should have accomplished more in the last years of his career, when he bounced around and wasn't productive. But the notion that he is some sort of terrible disappointment, or that he's some terribly malcontent or thug, is just ridiculous. And given the way that the complaints about him always echo typical attempts to undermine black athletes, I have to believe that race is a factor. This is especially the case because of Moss's self-presentation-- thick Southern accent, oftentimes a big afro, considerable (and admirable) disdain for hoary old sports cliches.

Compounding all of this is Moss's relationship to Boston, home of the New England Patriots. I was listening to the BS Report, Bill Simmons's podcast, and his regular guest Sal Iacono said something like, "It must kill you that Moss might win a championship." That's hardly an unfair thing for Iacono to say, as many Boston fans indeed have animosity towards Moss. But while listening I couldn't help but ask myself, why? He was transcendent for the Patriots. Yes, the relationship turned sour. But it takes two to tango, and he would hardly have been the first Patriot to leave the team under bad terms during the Belicheck era. Making this worse is the fact that, during their undefeated regular season, everyone involved with the Patriots went out of their way to say what a model citizen Moss was being. It was only later that Moss was suddenly regarded as a malcontent. For all that he accomplished for that team, to be turned into an object of derision so quickly is shortsighted and unfair.

Boston teams, fans, and media have a really ugly history of this sort of thing. Once there is a dispute between a Boston team and a player or coach, the Boston media immediately begins to undermine him. Anonymous quotes are printed, "team sources" reveal embarrassing details, and efforts are generally made to insist that the person on the outs was a bad citizen. It happened with Nomar Garciaparra, it happened with Manny Ramirez, it happened with Terry Francona, it happened with Antoine Walker, and it happened with Moss. Speaking as someone from New England, it's deeply depressing how much of the fanbase tends to march in lockstep with whatever story ownership has dreamed up. Boston's history of race problems-- which continue, according to many black residents-- makes all of this a little bit darker. I wince every time I hear Patriot fans wax on about how much more they like Wes Welker than Randy Moss. The love for Welker is the perfect complement to the disdain for Moss: Welker is a gamer; he thrives on superior effort; he maximizes limited talent; he has heart, guts, character; he "plays the right way." The contrast between them is indeed illustrative, but not in the way most people pointing it out think. Personally? I'd rather have a one-armed Randy Moss than Wes Welker.

I am not making a blanket accusation of racism against Boston sports fans, of course-- I know and love many. And I am not making a blanket accusation of racism against critics of Randy Moss. But I am asking that people think a little bit harder before they make these kinds of critiques. Sports are all bound up with racial politics, and our sports narratives have a long history of echoing racist tropes long after it has become verboten to express them explicitly. I also think that sports fans in general should be far, far less credulous towards stories of bad behavior from players and coaches who are out of favor with team management; local sports media, after all, has far more incentive to tell ownership's side than that of employees. Finally, I'm asking that you appreciate the career of one of the most electrifying athletes of all time. Constantly complaining about what someone didn't accomplish is unfair, when they did accomplished so much. And it's a perverse habit, anyway; it takes enjoyment and makes it into disappointment.

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still tinkering

Hey guys, as you can see, I've once again monkeyed with the blog's layout. I may keep this ultra-minimalist look. I am going to attempt to restore the old header image soon. I say attempt, because (if you can believe my dopiness) I have lost the old image. When I started changing the layout I backed up the old one, believing that would preserve the picture. But sadly it appears to be gone, and as I am an absent-minded dope, I never saved it. I do still have the original picture that I took that I made the header out of, though, so with a little futzing and playing around with fonts, I can hopefully approximate it again.

Let me know what you think of this new, super-minimalist look. I quite like it.

test test

Update: Found a (somewhat small) version of the header in Google. Gonna keep playing around for a bit, we'll see.

Update II: Well, maybe this will do for now. It kind of drives me nuts that the header image doesn't line up with the posts, but oh well. It doesn't look as contemporary as the last change, which I liked, but I couldn't keep the picture nor adjust the widths with that one. We'll see.

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Thanks, Dr. K

Perfect timing for me, following my Bloggingheads appearance, although it's worth saying that I suggested that this phenomenon had been going on for a lot longer than Dr. Krugman is here. I still don't know if this is really happening-- but I do know it's really important to talk about.

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