Government Salaries

 Today in the NYTimes Magazine the ethics column written by Prof. Attiah has a letter from a young attorney-to-be, who will have $150K in student loans and dislikes the idea of working for a big firm where:

The salary would be enough for me to pay off my loans, help my family and establish a basic standard of living for myself — plus maybe own a house or even save for retirement, which would be impossible for me on a public-interest or government salary.

I'm not sure what the writer thinks a "basic standard of living" involves. FWIW new attorneys for the federal government start at about $56K (with locality adjustments). 

When Did Ass Become (Semi-)Proper?

 An article in the Harvard Magazine described the Harvard Law experience of a woman who preceded RBG (Orin Kerr linked to it in a tweet).  The author describes a class where women were grilled over past legal cases with language which would be embarassing.  Hers was a case involving a farmer's ass (donkey) who got out onto the road.  This happened in 1956, a year I remember well enough to know that "ass" was never mentioned in polite society; neither was "butt" for that matter, except in the context of cigarettes.  

I've been struck by changes in language usage over the years--"ass" being one.  These days it seems pretty common in the print media, much more so in entertainment.  So I decided to do an ngram search. In America its frequency of usage seems to take off in the mid '90's, reaching a peak in 2014 and declining slightly since.  (The British usage pattern differs.)

Unbelievable--So Much for White Superiority

The other day the Times had an article discussing the composition of the cabinet selected by PM Truss, which notably had no white males in the top four positions. Rather buried in the depths of the article was this fact: 

In part, the gains in government by people of color reflect social change and advances through education. On average, ethnic minority pupils have outperformed white Britons at school in recent years. In every year from 2007 to 2021, white pupils had the lowest entry rate into higher education.

I'm used to looking at the various breakdowns of statistics about our society and seeing what I might call the "usual suspects"--that is, Euro-Americans or Asian-Americans at the top, if the statistic relates to something good (wealth, income, etc.) and Afro-Americans and Hispanic-Americans at the bottom. The positions reversed if the statistic relates to crime, helath, life expectancy, etc.

We see that so often we, at least I,  start thinking it's the expected order, which is just a step away from being "natural". 

But this statistic from the UK upsets those expectations. And it raises the key question: what the hell is going on; why the difference in societies? 

The Hero in History

 As part of a seminar on historiography I had to read Sidney Hook's book with this title.  Still have the paperback somewhere in the house, and I can remember the crimson cover, but not anything of its contents.

The issue is and was whether the individual can influence the course of history. The answer I give now, whether or not it represents Hook's conclusions: it depends, sometimes "yes", sometimes "no". 

It partly depends on the level of analysis. A story today in the Post on the death and burial of a WWII paratrooper, who fought heroically and was part of the force liberating a slave labor/concentration camp, where he formed a connection with a 17-year old inmate. He began working for peace.  Did he change the world?  No, 

Gorbachev died the other day--he changed history. You can safely say the Cold War would not have ended in the way it did if any other communist leader had been in office. 

Jury Duty and Historians

 I had jury duty for one month when I lived in DC. A big room of us gathered in the morning, waiting around for a panel to be called or for the manager to call it a day.  It was boring, but the juries were interesting. I think I was called for 4 cases, got on three juries.  The fourth was a marijuana case.  I took the position that I couldn't be objective and was excused by the judge. I look back on that now with some amazement--I think in the same situation today (though I'm too old for Fairfax juries) I probably wouldn't say a thing.  Did my opinion of pot change? Perhaps. But I don't remember ever believing in legalizing it; decriminalize it was, I think, my likely position in the early 1970's. These days I don't know; I've probably voted to legalize it but I don't know if it's the right answer.  It's the popular position these days, but I'm not totally convinced it's working out. 

Bottomline, I'm less confident now, because I'm older, have seen more, have changed my opinions more.

How does this tie to historians?  A juror is required to put aside one's personal feelings and convictions and become an objective trier of fact.  That's what I couldn't commit to back then. I'd argue a historian as a teacher is required to do the same; as a research scholar also. 

The Role of Robots

 Matt Yglesias has a piece at substack on the need for robots, attacking the thesis that robots will take away workers jobs.

I didn't study it, but it did cause me to think about farming and robots. My impression is that robots and AI are making rapid progress. Robotic milking in dairy, self-driving tractors, flame-throwing weeders, big data and precision agriculture. At least in the world of farming I don't see robots taking jobs.  What seems to be happening is two-fold:

• reduction in immigration, which mostly supply the low-end work. When TFG tries to build a wall reducing immigration, that increases the incentive for robots. When robots are developed that reduces the incentive for immigration.  
• reducing the number of real farms--most obviously in the world of dairy. The investment in robotic milkers means you need a bigger operation to make it economical, which means the big farms drive out the small dairies. 

Smiley on Farming

Jane Smiley is an award-winning novelist; her book "A Thousand Acres" is King Lear updated to 1980's Iowa.  Here she  reviews "Bet the Farm", describing a couple's return to an Iowa farm owned by her father-in-law.  It came out last year. Smiley's review annoys me, but I did put a hold on it with the Fairfax library.

I wonder if there any good books by someone who's been farming their entire life, doing it full time without a sideline providing cash income? 

Runaway Administrative Agencies

 The title is a phrase from a libertarian team's take on how to improve our politics and government. It's mentioned in passing as self-evident truth, without any suggestions that I see to make Congress more effective. 

I take exception, of course.  I am, after all, a bureaucrat.

The problem is not runaway agencies, not usually, but the failure of Congress to act so they either:

1. pass laws which don't resolve issues but insteand  kick them over to the agencies.
2. fail to act, leaving a vacuum which the courts and agencies are forced to fill. 

Weapons Maintenance

An ex-Marine writes here  about the difficulties in properly cleaning/maintaining weapons.  I wasn't a Marine, but the piece seems valid to me. 

It struck a chord because I remember the captured soldier in the early days of the Iraq war.  For a while she was made an icon of the fighting woman.  Eventually it turned out that her weapon jammed so she never fought.  I had sympathy for her.  I don't think I ever cleaned my weapon in Vietnam.  As a matter of fact, there was a screwup in getting my departure orders to me, so it was a mad dash to get to Camp LBJ and go through out-processing, one step of which was turning in my weapon. When I tried to, the guy (spec-4 maybe?) refused to take it until I cleaned it.  I tried to explain the situation, my flight was due out shortly, but he was adamant.  Finally I threw some money at him >$50<$100 and he agreed to take it.

I made my flight. 

(It seems possible that the Russian soldiers fighting in the Ukraine have been as lax in their maintenance as I was. )

Loan Forgiveness and Reparations

 Vox has a discussion of the student loan forgiveness program.  It seems to me there's a parallel between this program and proposal for reparations, most notably reparations to black Americans.

In both cases, at least part of the rationale is to redress wrongs which people have suffered in the past, and to recognize and mitigate the damage currently being suffered. (There is a difference--in the case of slavery the people who would receive the benefits would be the descendants of those wronged; in the case of student loans those who took out the loans would receive the forgiveness.  I'm assuming the death of the borrower wipes out the loan obligations, which isn't totally clear.)

In both cases, there's the problem of fixing the problem which caused the damage. In the case of loan forgiveness, it may have been a bad loan from the start, based on fraud or misjudgment by the lender or the borrower. Or it may have turned bad by subsequent events--illness of the borrower, economic hardship, failure of the college, etc. In the case of slavery the damages resulting from slavery have carried forward. 

Biden seems to be trying to correct the problems in student loans, although I get the idea  there's skepticism about the effectiveness.  So there's the fear that students will end up with bad loans in the future, and that colleges will raise tuition anticipating future forgiveness.  In the case of reparations it's not clear to me that the various proposals really address the ongoing problems.  IMO that's the big weakness of reparations.