Changing Contours of Class

Joel Achenbach has an article on class in the US in today's Washington Post. One thing toward the end of the article struck me. Someone is discussing current class lines: today, the rich have staff, a personal assistant or whatever.

I think it's true before WWII most upper middle class families had staff--i.e., maids/cooks. Electric appliances in the home, the spread of restaurants, and processed food reducing cooking time has had an impact. I wonder, is it easier to accept inequalities of income when there's no employer/employee relationship involved?

Emulation and Envy

Robert Frank, an economist, has a liberal argument for higher taxes. Facetiously, the idea is that money is a positional good, used for ranking people and that gold stars would be just as good. More seriously, Alex Rodriguez doesn't care that much what's left in his pocket from his new Yankees contract after agent fees and taxes are deducted--what's important is that he maintains his rank as highest paid player.

Via Greg Mankiw, an economist writing for Cato takes on Frank's arguments here. I'm not up on the subject enough to offer much comment, but I did find the climax of Henderson's argument interesting:

It is true that we often want something when we see that someone else has it. But what doesn't ring true is Frank's view about why we want things. One of my earliest instances of an intense want was in 1955, when the coonskin cap came along after Walt Disney had made Davy Crockett famous. I saw some of my friends wearing them and I badly wanted one. My father, though, would not buy one for my brother or me. I remember the intense pain I had about not having it. But did I want that coonskin cap because I was competing with my friends for status and position? Not at all. I wanted it because it was so neat. Now, you might doubt the memory of a 56-year-old about his introspection 52 years earlier. Fine. Then consider this case. I also remember when the Ford Mustang and the Mercury Park Lane came along in 1965, when I was 14. I wanted either one of those cars badly. I tore out the full-page magazine ads picturing those cars, taped them on my wall, and pined for them every day. But the reason I wanted them was not that I saw people around me with them. I lived in a small town in rural Canada where you didn't see new cars as soon as they came out. I had seen the ads for these cars and started yearning for them long before anyone in my town owned one. So, why did I want one of these cars? Because they were just so beautiful. I've asked other friends why they want the new expensive gadgets when they come out and invariably the answer is that they're such neat toys. Few mention that they want them because they want to be higher up on the positional scale.

It seems that the invisible hand of the positional good market operates much the same as the invisible hand of the free market. Free market capitalism doesn't really require everyone to be price/quality conscious all the time. Many of us can continue to operate in ruts, buying what we always buy from the vendors we always buy from. But some people have to be different. That difference is enough to make competition operate.

So too with positional structures. Dr. Henderson wanted goods as a boy because they were beautiful. What he considered beautiful were the rare goods, the neat ones, the ones only a few of his friends had. What does that mean--they were expensive, they were above average in cost. So Dr. Henderson, even though he's pure of heart and doesn't envy others, is looking up the positional ladder.

Babies Recognizing Helpful People

New Scientist reports on research on babies, specifically that babies seem to recognize and prefer helpful characters in a puppet show.

Demanding Immigrants

Paul at Powerline has problems with a Washington Post article on delay in processing applications for citizenship. I take exception to his close:

To me, the most interesting aspect of this story is the sense of immigrant entitlement that comes through, especially in the quotations from the leaders of hispanic organizations. Even those who favor lots of legal immigration, as I do, should be concerned about the implications of that attitude for the future of our country.

I've no problem at all with people who pay taxes demanding good service from their government, especially since taxpayers don't pay for processsing citizenship applications, the applicants do via a fee.

Thank You for All the Faceless Bureaucrats

On this day to give thanks, it's time to say: "Thank you, faceless bureaucrats".

(Until now, it was what Gene Weingarten [Updated--my memory for names is going] of WaPo calls a "googlenope"--no hits on Google)

Think of it like thanking your mother, now dead, for cooking all those Thanksgiving dinners for you. (I know, now I'm getting silly, comparing bureaucrats and mothers.)

Gun Control--Mr. Fischer's TAke

Marc Fischer, a local columnist for the Washington Post, has a column on the Supreme Court's taking of the appeal by DC of the Second Amendment decision. For what it's worth (nothing), I agree with his take--the court's going to decide that DC can't ban handguns but can regulate them. Which is about where we ought to end up. If we can take car keys away from senior citizens who can't drive safely, we can (and should) also take guns away from people who can't shoot safely.

I'd treat guns like cars. Every American, even including illegal immigrants, has the right to drive a car, once they've been tested.

Graduated Payment Limitation in Europe

Mulch notes the discussion in the EU of instituting graduated payment limitations (taking some credit because the EU has started opening up the data on who gets how much to the public, much as the EWG has done for the last 13+ years).

I made a similar proposal several months ago.

Mobility Rates--Shocking Downward Rates

Here's a link to a Brookings institution study on mobility across generations. What's amazing and distressing is that 33 percent of Americans are downwardly mobile (they end up lower in the income distribution than their parents were, i.e., falling from the top 10 percent to the bottom quarter). I hope some of our Presidential candidates will pick up on this. Where is the man or woman who will come forth and promise to reduce this rate to zero, to guarantee that no one will end up lower than his or her parent? Surely that's a goal we can all rally around. Whatever our race or religion, our background or aspirations, everyone wants to do better than our parent, to rise at least one rung on the ladder of success.

Write the candidates, strike a blow for clear thought and achievable goals.

Mobility--The Importance of Heritage

Henry Louis Gates, Jr, had an op-ed article in yesterday's Times citing the importance of a family heritage of success (my words). The article is "Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth" and he says that of the prominent African-Americans he has studied, the big majority had ancestors who had been able to buy land. He takes off from that to the importance of middle-class values, and to a vague call for action.

Greg Mankiw, another Harvard prof, is skeptical. 3 generations means 8 grandparents, only one of whom has to have land to meet Gates' criteria.

I'm more with Gates, though he'd need a much bigger sample and to do the mirror image study to be convincing. (What proportion of inner city welfare recipients had ancestors who had property or position?)

Why Does the No-Fly List Work So Well?

From an article in Government Executive, summarizing an IG report:

Skinner expressed concern that the manual procedures for TSA's watch list could pose a security risk. The agency currently receives data from the Terrorist Screening Center, standardizes this information and enters it into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which is posted on a TSA Web site daily. Airlines can then download or print out the spreadsheet.

Skinner believes this system leaves room for problems to occur at many stages. For example, the watch list can be downloaded or printed out by unauthorized parties. Also, there are no standard guidelines for how airlines should use the information; some check multiple spellings of names while others use only exact spellings. Some smaller airlines manually check the names against the spreadsheet, which Skinner says can lead to human error.

Can lead to human error--no kidding! Apparently they reinvented the wheel when they put TSA together, lots of stovepipe systems as all the bureaucrats with their individual missions went to work and did their thing.