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Opinion

college_tuition_cost_student_loan_dent

This is the season of college graduations, and many people may be wondering what kinds of gifts would be most appropriate for young people leaving the world of academia and heading out to face the challenges and opportunities of adulthood in the real world.

Given the narrow range of left to far left views of the world on most college campuses, and the vast ignorance of other views, even among graduates of elite academic institutions, one valuable gift might be a book giving a different perspective on the world.

The recent publication of “American Contempt for Liberty” a hefty, 417-page collection of columns by economist Walter E. Williams, would be an excellent choice. For many college graduates, this book would be virtually an education in itself, covering many issues and presenting many perspectives they have never encountered before, in this era of academic lockstep thinking on social issues.

How often will most college students have seen Social Security exposed as “The National Ponzi scheme,” as one of Professor Williams’ columns does in plain, hard-hitting English? Or see minimum wage laws examined in terms of their actual results, rather than their pious rhetoric?

Another book that would open the eyes of most of today’s graduates to a world they have never encountered or conceived is “Life at the Bottom” by Theodore Dalrymple. It shows the actual effects of the welfare state on the way people live their lives. It is not a pretty picture, but inexperienced young people need to become acquainted with realities, after years of hearing high-sounding theories.

The fact that “Life at the Bottom” is about low-income whites in England, living lives remarkably similar to the lives of blacks in American ghettos, means that it cannot be dismissed as racism, the way American promoters of the welfare state evade responsibility for the social disasters they have created.

Any of a number of blockbuster best sellers by Ann Coulter can provide eye-opening revelations about the economic madness and moral dry rot originating on the political left. Her recently published book, “Adios, America!” is about the heedless rush to solve our immigration problems by simply declaring millions of illegal immigrants to be legal.

Like other Ann Coulter books, its cutting wit and take-no-prisoners style is backed up by thoroughly researched facts, including facts that most of the media refuse to report.

Books are not the only graduation gifts that could let young people, who are leaving the world of campus groupthink, know that there is another world called reality. Subscriptions to high quality publications with a different viewpoint are another possibility. The quarterly publications “City Journal” and “Hoover Digest” are gems of this genre.

My own favorite approach to controversial issues, going back to my teaching days, is to confront students with the strongest arguments available on opposite sides of these issues. The point of this approach is not to feed the students prepackaged conclusions, but to force them to seek facts and apply logic, in their own attempts to resolve complex and important controversies.

Nor should they be allowed to cop out with some vague pieties about how “the truth lies somewhere in between.” The truth is wherever you find it — and the process of trying to find it is what education should be about, regardless of what conclusions they reach.

For those who share this conception of education, one of the best gifts to graduates — or to undergraduates still going through lockstep academia — would be a subscription to publications with opposite viewpoints, to make up for the narrow range of views in our educational institutions today.

My suggestion would be to give young people a subscription to both the “New York Times” and “Investor’s Business Daily.” Seeing how the editorial pages of these newspapers clash, day after day on issue after issue, should build up some mental muscles that students seldom get from being mental couch potatoes on politically correct campuses, where one viewpoint fits all.

Since both newspapers have electronic versions available for iPads and other devices, that should fit the current lifestyle of the young, while they move beyond the current groupthink.

This is the season of college graduations,

Policy


Claire-Cain-Miller

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – JUNE 12: The New York Times The Upshot Writer Claire Cain Miller attends The New York Times Next New World Conference on June 12, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times)

When I write about columns in the New York Times, I’m normally pointing out silly examples of bias or exposing absurd mistakes (with Paul Krugman deserving his own special category for sloppiness, as seen here, here, here, and here).

But every so often, there’s an insightful piece that is worth sharing rather than worth mocking. And that’s the case with a column by Claire Cain Miller on the unintended negative consequences of feminist economic policies that ostensibly are supposed to help women but actually hurt them.

In Chile, a law requires employers to provide working mothers with child care. One result? Women are paid less. In Spain, a policy to give parents of young children the right to work part-time has led to a decline in full-time, stable jobs available to all women — even those who are not mothers. Elsewhere in Europe, generous maternity leaves have meant that women are much less likely than men to become managers or achieve other high-powered positions at work.

Why all these bad results, which seemingly are contrary to the intentions of lawmakers?

…these policies often have unintended consequences. They can end up discouraging employers from hiring women in the first place, because they fear women will leave for long periods or use expensive benefits.

Amen. You don’t make workers more attractive to employers with laws and regulations that increase the real and/or potential costs of employing those workers.

The column cites some research on the impact of the Family and Medical Leave Act in the United States. As well as the harmful effect of similar laws in other nations.

Women are 5 percent more likely to remain employed but 8 percent less likely to get promotions than they were before it became law, according to an unpublished new study by Mallika Thomas, who will be an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University. …These findings are consistent with previous research by Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, economists at Cornell. In a study of 22 countries, they found that generous family-friendly policies like long maternity leaves and part-time work protections in Europe made it possible for more women to work — but that they were more likely to be in dead-end jobs and less likely to be managers.

The bottom line is that government intervention is not a recipe for helping people, especially once you factor in the effect of unintended consequences.

Speaking of which, I made the same argument when looking at a government proposal to help those struggling with long-run unemployment.

All of which tells us that you must have asked a very silly question if the answer is more government.

P.S. My favorite articles and columns from the New York Times are the ones that accidentally show the superiority of small government and free markets.

P.P.S. Since I wrote the other day about the wisdom of allowing successful foreigners to emigrate to the United States, here’s a related graphic.

income-education-foreign-born-americans

Source: The Economist

Maybe I’m missing something, but doesn’t this suggest we should welcome more Indians to America?

After all, the economy isn’t a fixed pie and sensible folks understand that the rest of us benefit when there are more rich and successful people.
[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

NYT's columnist Claire Cain Miller on the

Politics

obama-executive-amnesty-speech

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses during a ceremony honoring the National Medal of Technology and Innovation awardees at the White House in Washington November 20, 2014. Obama briefly touched upon his planned executive amnesty action on immigration, which was announced that same night. (Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

DEVELOPING: A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled to uphold the injunction against President Obama’s executive amnesty handed down in February by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s argument and attempt to fend off the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states.

“The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle,” Judge Hanen wrote, flat-out stating that he agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that the burden from legalizing millions of people is sufficient for standing, He said the order — if allowed to take effect — would be a “virtually irreversible” action.

In a 2-1 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the president could not move forward with deferred deportation and additional benefits for at least 5 million illegal, undocumented immigrants. Justices Jerry Smith and Jennifer Walker Elrod denied the stay, stating in an opinion authored by Smith that the administration is unlikely to succeed on the merits of the case. Judge Stephen Higginson dissented.

“Because the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its appeal of the injunction, we deny the motion for stay and the request to narrow the scope of the injunction,” the judges wrote.

As PPD has previously examined, particularly in the case of immigration, the results get worse when the question is asked more plainly. We have examined and explained the data on this topic in great detail in the past, but most voters still oppose President Obama’s executive order to exempt millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. In fact, according to Rasmussen tracking, more than ever say he doesn’t have the legal authority to take such action, which is precisely the question presently making its way through federal courts.

While 59 percent say Obama does not have that legal power to issue the order, which is up from 52 percent in February and a new high to date, 43 percent of voters want their state to sue the administration. That’s still more than the 39 percent who say they are opposed, but a significant 18 percent remain undecided.

Meanwhile, President Obama could either decide to ask the entire 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case again, or he could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in. There, Justice Antonin Scalia could either decide on the stay, himself, or move the case to the entire court.

But the underlaying issue remains. The Obama administration and the executive order are now 0-4 in the federal courts. The Justice Department has also asked the 5th Circuit to reverse Hanen’s overall ruling that sided with the states. That case will argued before the court in July, and a decision could take months.

The states suing Obama over his unilateral amnesty order now includes Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Prior to the ruling, and despite assurances by top administration officials to the contrary, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services began reallocating significant resources away from a computer system — known as the “Electronic Immigration System” — in order to send letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election.

A newly obtained document (viewable on a previous article) written by Leon Rodriguez, the “director and co-chair of the Task Force on New Americans,” details an “integration plan that will advance our nation’s global competitiveness and ensure that the people who live in this country can fully participate in their communities.”

“The last time I checked, injunctions are not mere suggestions. They are not optional,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. “This disregard for the court’s action is unacceptable and disturbing, especially after Secretary Johnson’s assurances that his agency would honor the injunction.”

A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled to

Economy

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that demand for durable goods — or, products designed to last at least three years — fell last month more than expected. Orders declined a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent in April from the month prior, while March durable goods orders were revised up to show a gain of 5.1 percent, up from a previously reported 4.4 percent.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected overall orders to fall 0.1%.

While it is true that durable goods are volatile and subject to large revisions, the broader trend after several weak months in still uncertain. Compared with a year earlier, overall orders fell 1.3 percent in April.

Last month saw a drop in orders for aircraft and, excluding the volatile transportation sector, orders ticked up by just 0.5 percent.

Most economists now believe the government’s expectations were widely off in the first quarter, and that the economy contract rather than an abysmal 0.2 percent gain.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that demand

Science

green-lacour-science-study-gay-marriage

Donald P. Green, left, a co-author of a challenged study by Michael LaCour, right, from Mr. LaCour’s Facebook page.

Recent revelations indicate that Science, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, published a completely fabricated study on gay marriage in December. Now, following reports from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, one of the study’s co-authors has asked the journal to retract the publication.

Michael LaCour, a political science researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, was hoping to kill two birds with one stone in 2012. Following the defeat of California’s Proposition 8 at the ballot box, LaCour thought he could help build support for gay marriage under the pretext of conducting a study that asked if canvassers who had a personal stake in an issue — in this case, gay men and women — could sway voters’ opinions in conservative areas of the state?

But, as the study demonstrates, the real question people are asking now is whether the leftist-dominated world of academia is even trustworthy, honest and impartial enough to conduct such “scientific” experiments.

“I thought it was a very ambitious idea, so ambitious that it might not be suitable for a graduate student,” said Donald P. Green, a Columbia University professor who signed on as a co-author of Mr. LaCour’s study in 2013. “But it’s such an important question, and he was very passionate about it.”

On Tuesday, however, Dr. Green asked Science to retract the study, citing Mr. LaCour’s inability to produce the study’s raw data to be scrutinized. It seems Mr. LaCour claims that he erased the study’s raw data.

“Given the negative publicity that has now surrounded this paper and the concerns that have been raised about its irreproducibility, I think it would be in Michael LaCour’s best interest to agree to a retraction of the paper as swiftly as possible,” Marcia McNutt, editor in chief of Science said Friday. “Right now he’s going to have such a black cloud over his head that it’s going to haunt him for the rest of his days.”

Dr. Green is understandably trying to salvage his own reputation, but to his credit, he did doubt the studies findings several times. Unfortunately, perhaps because of his biases, his push-back on the shocking findings never moved beyond light questioning.

LaCour claims the study canvassed neighborhoods where same-sex marriage performed poorly at the ballot box, including Boyle Heights, South Central and East Los Angeles. The voters, allegedly, were randomly assigned to gay and straight canvassers, who were equally trained to strike up conversations with them.

He also claimed to have tracked voters’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage over a period of nine months, using a survey tool called the “feeling thermometer.” But LaCour’s findings reported a response rate of the participants who completed surveys at 12 percent, which was so high that it raised red flags with Dr. Green, who insisted the work be repeated.

LaCour told Dr. Green that the response rate was so high because he paid the participants, but in reality, he didn’t. Regardless, after he came back to Green with similar results the second time around, the doctor ended his inquiry and signed on as a co-author.

“Michael said he had hundreds of thousands in grant money, and, yes, in retrospect, I could have asked about that,” Dr. Green told The New York Times. “But it’s a delicate matter to ask another scholar the exact method through which they’re paying for their work.”

It wasn’t until David Broockman, a future assistant professor at Stanford, decided to test the same method on the issue of transgender equality in Florida that the fraud surfaced. Dr. Broockman, along with Joshua Kalla, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, paid participants as they thought Mr. LaCour had. However, their response rate was just 3 percent.

“We started to wonder, ‘What are we doing wrong?’ ” Mr. Kalla said. “Our response rate was so low, compared to his.”

Mr. LaCour, who now claims to have offered an i-Pad as incentive rather than money, declined to be interviewed. But, he has said through a lawyer statement that he still stands by the study’s findings. That’s not surprising, considering he banked his entire academic and professional future on the fabricated study.

LaCour posted on his Facebook page three months ago that he would soon be moving across country for his “dream job” as a professor at Princeton. However, no official offer has been made, according to the university, who is now looking into the matter.

“We will review all available information and determine the next steps,” Princeton spokesman, Martin Mbugua, said.

Recent revelations indicate that Science, one of

Economy

home-prices-reuters

Home sales and home prices data and reports. (Photo: REUTERS)

Markets digested decent home price data on Tuesday, though experts are already cautioning long-term trends are still worrisome. U.S. single-family home prices rose in March from a year earlier, led again by strong increases in the western half of the United States, according to a closely watched survey.

The S&P/Case-Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas gained 5 percent in March on a year-over-year basis, mirroring February’s increase. The March index topped a Reuters poll of economists that forecast a rise of 4.7 percent.

“Home prices have enjoyed year-over-year gains for 35 consecutive months,” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director & Chairman of the Index Committee for S&P Dow Jones Indices. “The pattern of consistent gains is national and seen across all 20 cities covered by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. The longest run of gains is in Detroit at 45 months, the shortest is New York with 27 months. However, the pace has moderated in the last year; from August 2013 to February 2014, the national index gained more than 10% year-over-year, compared to 4.1% in this release.”

For the second straight month, San Francisco and Denver reported the highest year-over-year gains, with prices increasing by 10.3 percent and 10 percent, respectively, over the last 12 months.

“Given the long stretch of strong reports, it is no surprise that people are asking if we’re in a new home price bubble,” Blitzer said. “The only way you can be sure of a bubble is looking back after it’s over. Home prices are currently rising more quickly than either per capita personal income or wages, narrowing the pool of future home-buyers. All of this suggests that some future moderation in home prices gains is likely.”

Markets digested decent home price data on

Economy

real-estate-broker

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that new home sales of single-family units rose more than expected in April and the median price surged. Sales increased 6.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 517,000 units. March’s sales pace was revised up to 484,000 units from the previously reported 481,000 units.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for 9.3 percent of the market, rising to a 510,000-unit pace last month. New homes sales jumped 36.8 percent in the Midwest to a seven-year high and increased 5.8 percent in the South, where most of the construction takes place. However, sales fell 5.6 percent in the Northeast and 2.3 percent in the West.

Still, despite the upbeat report, the stock of new houses available on the market rose 0.5 percent last month to 205,000, while supply remains less than half of what it was at the height of the housing boom before the bubble.

At April sales pace it would take 4.8 months to clear the supply of houses on the market, down from 5.1 months in March.

With supply still tight, the median price for a new home rose 8.3 percent from a year ago to $297,300, which could reduce affordability.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that new

Polls

memorial day polls remember The importance of Memorial Day among American voters continued it’s three-year upward trend this year, according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports. While most Americans now say Memorial Day is one of the most important U.S. holidays, an even larger number of voters say they will do something special to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

2018 UPDATE: Memorial Day Stilled Viewed as One of the Most Important Holidays

GET FREE E-BOOK BELOW

A new Rasmussen survey found that 52 percent of likely U.S. voters now rate Memorial Day as one of the country’s most important holidays, up 13 points from the 39 percent measured 1 year ago. That is up significantly from the 31 percent who said the same the year before that, while only 5 percent this year said it is one of the least important holidays. Meanwhile, 42 percent said Memorial Day fell somewhere in between the most and least important holidays.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 19-20, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Two years ago, when PPD first began tracking various pollsters’ surveys relating to the holiday, the results were extraordinarily disappointing to our military readers and their families. I, myself being a veteran, believed the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) did a great service to the public releasing a FREE ebook for all to read in the hope of proliferating knowledge about the holiday.

So, for the 5 percent who disregard the holiday altogether, and those in the 42 percent who remain on the fence, we wanted to again share this informative ebook with our readers. Just one of our national holidays, and one alone, bears the name and a specific call to remembrance — Memorial Day.

But how should we, the growing and living 52 percent, best honor the lives of all those who have died in service to our country? In what manner and spirit should we remember them, or their sacrifices?

The Meaning of Memorial Day: The American Calendar, written by Amy and Leon R. Kass, helps us to explore these questions. It contains a fantastic group of selections from American authors and statesmen, including Herman Melville, Ernie Pyle, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Each selection includes a brief introduction by the editors with guiding questions for thought-provoking discussion. And it’s yours to read for the low, low price of absolutely free.

Download it for later or read it right here on PPD. To all our military members, veterans and their families, thank you for your service from all of us at People’s Pundit Daily!

 

The importance of Memorial Day among American

Policy


Capitol-Hill-dollar-background

When I first came to Washington back in the 1980s, there was near-universal support and enthusiasm for a balanced budget amendment among advocates of limited government.

The support is still there, I’m guessing, but the enthusiasm is not nearly as intense.

There are three reasons for this drop.

  1. Political reality – There is zero chance that a balanced budget amendment would get the necessary two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. And if that happened, by some miracle, it’s highly unlikely that it would get the necessary support for ratification in three-fourths of state legislatures.
  2. Unfavorable evidence from the states – According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, every state other than Vermont has some sort of balanced budget requirement. Yet those rules don’t prevent states like California, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York from adopting bad fiscal policy.
  3. Favorable evidence for the alternative approach of spending restraint – While balanced budget rules don’t seem to work very well, policies that explicitly restrain spending work very well. The data from Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Colorado is particularly persuasive.

Advocates of a balanced budget amendment have some good responses to these points. They explain that it’s right to push good policy, regardless of the political situation. Since I’m a strong advocate for a flat tax even though it isn’t likely to happen, I can’t argue with this logic.

Regarding the last two points, advocates explain that older versions of a balanced budget requirement simply required a supermajority for more debt, but newer versions also include a supermajority requirement to raise taxes. This means – at least indirectly – that the amendment actually is a vehicle for spending restraint.

This doesn’t solve the political challenge, but it’s why advocates of limited government need to be completely unified in favor of tax-limitation language in a balanced budget amendment. And they may want to consider being more explicit that the real goal is to restrain spending so that government grows slower than the productive sector of the economy.

golden-rule

Interestingly, even the International Monetary Fund (which is normally a source of bad analysis) understands that spending limits work better than rules that focus on deficits and debt.

Here are some of the findings from a new IMF study that looks at the dismal performance of the European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact. The SGP supposedly limited deficits to 3 percent of GDP and debt to 60 percent of GDP, but the requirement failed largely because politicians couldn’t resist the temptation to spend more in years when revenue grew rapidly.

An analysis of stability programs during 1999–2007 suggests that actual expenditure growth in euro area countries often exceeded the planned pace, in particular when there were unanticipated revenue increases. Countries were simply unable to save the extra revenues and build up fiscal buffers. …This reveals an important asymmetry: governments were often unable to preserve revenue windfalls and faced difficulties in restraining their expenditure in response to revenue shortfalls when consolidation was needed. …The 3 percent of GDP nominal deficit ceiling did not prevent countries from spending their revenue windfalls in the mid-2000s. … Under the SGP, noncompliance has been the rule rather than the exception. …The drawbacks of the nominal deficit ceiling are particularly apparent when the economy is booming, as it is compatible with very large structural deficits.

The good news is that the SGP has been modified and now (at least theoretically) requires spending restraint.

The initial Pact only included three supranational rules… As of 2014, fiscal aggregates are tied by an intricate set of constraints…government spending (net of new revenue measures) is constrained to grow in line with trend GDP. …the expenditure growth ceiling may seem the most appealing. This indicator is tractable (directly constraining the budget), easy to communicate to the public, and conceptually sound… Based on simulations, Debrun and others (2008) show that an expenditure growth rule with a debt feedback ensures a better convergence towards the debt objective, while allowing greater flexibility in response to shocks. IMF (2012) demonstrates the good performance of the expenditure growth ceiling

This modified system presumably will lead to better (or less worse) policy in the future, though it’s unclear whether various nations will abide by the new EU rules.

One problem is that the overall system of fiscal rules has become rather complicated, as illustrated by this image from the IMF study.

IMF-EU-SGP

Which brings us back to the third point above. If the goal is to restrain spending (and it should be), then why set up a complicated system that first and foremost is focused on red ink?

That’s why the Swiss Debt Brake is the right model for how to get spending under control. And this video explains why the objective should be spending restraint rather than deficit reduction.

[brid video=”9014″ player=”1929″ title=”Deficits vs. Spending Deficits are Bad but the Real Problem is Spending”]

And for those who fixate on red ink, it’s worth noting that if you deal with the underlying disease of too much government, you quickly solve the symptom of deficits.
[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Dan Mitchell explains why advocates of limited

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