US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Jester]

I think the problem is that the research asked the questions, and people didn't like what the data revealed.

I personally hate it when my research asks its own questions. I usually prefer to ask them myself. Charles Murray didn't come into his research with anything in mind. No sir, he just stared at his data until it asked its own questions!

Or not.

I'd be the first to poke holes into the methodology.

Do tell.

The important factor here is that the book always qualifies that intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) is both genetic and environmental. Why is it a surprise that through "social class" segregation we perpetuate a divide between those with above average intelligence (who have more earning power), with those with below average intelligence (who don't earn as much)? His conclusion was that this was a dangerous social trend. Is that outrageous?

His conclusion is that IQ is really important, that the American meritocracy by and large reflects IQ differences (which are heritable and largely unchangeable) rather than prejudice, and that therefore spending money helping poor people is a waste. They're not stupid because they're poor, they're poor because they're stupid, and you can't fix stupid.

Oh, and black people tend to be stupider than white people. Which has interesting implications when combined with the above argument. Just saying - the research asks the questions, not Charles Murray. But he certainly regrets writing those chapters. Must have just kind of snuck in. You know how it is when you're writing a book.

I don't think single parenthood is "black culture" -- I think he attempts to draw a distinction between those things that uplift society from those things that tear it down. How is it racist to believe (regardless of race) that we need to promote stable and loving families, not absentee parents who are disconnected from their children's lives (i.e. Columbine)?

Just because he's a reactionary, doesn't mean he's not also a racist. He spent most of his career discussing these phenomena in context of black culture, to the point where he had to make his last book title a suspiciously specific denial.

Shouting him down as a racist does not reveal the flaws in his research -- whereas, I believe Stephan Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" is a more appropriate academic response.

Funnily enough, I don't think The Mismeasure of Man is at all an adequate answer to Murray.

And, yet in our age we still have the chorus of "They should pay their fair share!" when the top 50% of earners pay 95% of income tax revenue, and the top 1% pay 34% of income tax revenue.

The top 50% pay 95% of income taxes because they earn 85% of income, and the top 1% pay 34% of income taxes because they earn about 20% of all income. That's why they call it an income tax - if you don't earn much, you don't pay much. It would only be proportional to your share of the population in the case of absolute income equality, which is anathema to the very idea of capitalist meritocracy.

My understanding was that Murray recommended the government stop subsidizing those factors that lead to more poverty, such as increasing the amount of aid based on the number of children you have. We've discussed these freakanomic factors before, but extending unemployment or welfare benefits leads to more dependence and higher unemployment. Paying women more money for having more children results in more impoverished children. Now, you can take a cruel uncaring approach, or you can create policies that encourage the kinds of behaviors we would really want, such as subsidizing poor peoples educations, or not punishing them for getting work, while still needing some welfare.

These are very poorly established as causal links. Most of the trends Murray singles out began long before the reforms he blames for causing them. The effect of welfare on child-bearing is very low. Unemployment, slightly more, but still not that large. None of these things comes within a country mile of explaining the observed levels of inequality.

It is amazing to me how you can trivialize most anyone you disagree with as anti-intellectual blather.

The day Ross Douthat provides me with a strong argument, rather than a moralizing, self-congratulatory narrative that I'm supposed to believe because it "feels right," I'll stop trivializing him. In the meantime, he strikes me as a vapid reactionary paid to flog a legend about how wonderful things were in 1950s America, when men were real men, when women knew their place, and nobody really thought all that much about gays, or blacks, or any of those other sorts.

-Jester