It is impolite to mention demographic change, especially when racial differences are obvious. “Our increases in income are counteracted by the swelling ranks of poor non-whites” does not make newspaper editors happy.
But they’re not “counteracted” at all. White people’s wages have actually increased. You don’t have to try very hard to put a positive spin on the fact that everyone is making more money, women are becoming more equal with men, and previously poor non-whites are now finding more jobs. What’s not to like?
It seems unlikely to me that people discovered this explanation for the data and then covered it up. More likely that they simply hadn’t noticed that Simpson’s paradox was in effect (maybe because they never even looked at the demographic data).
There’s a similar situation with PISA scores: American students of all races are the highest or second highest scorers of that race. The average American PISA score is mediocre, though, because the US’s racial balance is not, say, Shanghai’s or Finland’s racial balance.
America has less Europeans than Finland does, and less Asians than Shanghai does, and more Hispanics and Africans than either. Asian Americans and European Americans score better on the PISA than Hispanic Americans or African Americans. I’m using the word “balance” to mean “distribution,” not some measure of race relations.
Cowen built a lot on the median income in The Great Stagnation; reading it, there was not a whisper about demographics, though Cowen is a pretty honest author usually (and in fact was the one who publicized this one!).
Publicized it, I said, not discovered it. Cowen has a huge readership, and pretty much anyone who ever hears of this will do so because Cowen publicized it; and Cowen knows this, so the honesty argument is still true.
No, I got it from Henderson’s blog, but the source data got lost and reconstructed as Tyler. I haven’t seen any Marginal Revolution post publicizing it.
simply hadn’t noticed that Simpson’s paradox was in effect
You don’t understand academic culture. Steve Landsburg (like myself) is a college professor. Because of political correctness almost no college professor would dare point out what Landsburg just did.
You’re underestimating both how good economists are at math and how bad we are at resisting political correctness.
You don’t have to try very hard to put a positive spin on the fact that everyone is making more money, women are becoming more equal with men, and previously poor non-whites are now finding more jobs. What’s not to like?
Speaking as a leftist who disapproves of “honesty” and “fairness” to still-living opponents in a culture war… haha, no way! Why the flying fuck would we want a “positive spin” on a competing project, especially the fact that it seems to move towards our own declared preferences? We want people to get unhappy, restless and desperate; that’s the only opportunity to really engage their implicit assumptions! Our folks have even been kind of up-front about that, really:
“I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword”—Matt. 10:34 ″...the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it.”—Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism ”The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”—Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
Of course, it’s not very certain how much actual influence hardcore and committed leftists really have over American upper-brow media. Nonetheless, it’s fun to pretend that someone like Dumbledore on crack might be behind our ever-present intellectual confusion.
P.P.S. Although the “cultural Marxists’” reputation on the modern Voldemort flank is rather more impressive than that of Dumbledore’s—certainly a plan to “destroy the Western civilization” sounds rather bold and badass. Unfortunately for the Right, as shown above, such “destruction” and “subversion” are in fact just an ancient, refined and respected tradition of the Western civilization. It suffuses much of our general cultural outlook and gives it a unique character, I’d say—or, some angry and cyncial observers would say, it comes from an underlying feeling of pride, achievement and triumphalism. Only a culture immensely secure in its own dominance and privilege would try such relatively scathing self-criticism. That’s oh so human. I’m not perfectly OK with it, but I’d be even less cool with an openly “white nationalist” or “racially realistic”, Apartheid-style thinking.
Also. Why e.g. Carlyle should necessarily be ascribed more merit, cultural or otherwise, than e.g. Susan Sontag is beyond me. They were both fairly talented writers with a clear individual voice, and highly elitist. How certain… contrarian elements can say that all fans of the latter are a traitorous degenerate menace to all that is White, while even a communist wouldn’t attack the former because Hitler and Goebbels happened to like him… well, it’s pathetic.
[The above is basically bullshit without a good spin behind it.]
How so?
It is impolite to mention demographic change, especially when racial differences are obvious. “Our increases in income are counteracted by the swelling ranks of poor non-whites” does not make newspaper editors happy.
But they’re not “counteracted” at all. White people’s wages have actually increased. You don’t have to try very hard to put a positive spin on the fact that everyone is making more money, women are becoming more equal with men, and previously poor non-whites are now finding more jobs. What’s not to like?
It seems unlikely to me that people discovered this explanation for the data and then covered it up. More likely that they simply hadn’t noticed that Simpson’s paradox was in effect (maybe because they never even looked at the demographic data).
They are for the metric of median wages.
There’s a similar situation with PISA scores: American students of all races are the highest or second highest scorers of that race. The average American PISA score is mediocre, though, because the US’s racial balance is not, say, Shanghai’s or Finland’s racial balance.
I’m curious by what steps of reasoning do you pick out the hypothesis of “racial balance” rather than, say, “income inequality”?
It’s not at all clear to me how “income inequality” is a theory that predicts the datapoints I’m discussing here.
It’s not at all clear how “racial balance” is, either. That’s why I asked the above, with a link to the relevant Sequences post.
America has less Europeans than Finland does, and less Asians than Shanghai does, and more Hispanics and Africans than either. Asian Americans and European Americans score better on the PISA than Hispanic Americans or African Americans. I’m using the word “balance” to mean “distribution,” not some measure of race relations.
Cowen built a lot on the median income in The Great Stagnation; reading it, there was not a whisper about demographics, though Cowen is a pretty honest author usually (and in fact was the one who publicized this one!).
Drat, I hat-tipped Cowen instead of David Henderson of Econlog, in an example of the Matthew Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect_(sociology)#Sociology_of_science
Publicized it, I said, not discovered it. Cowen has a huge readership, and pretty much anyone who ever hears of this will do so because Cowen publicized it; and Cowen knows this, so the honesty argument is still true.
No, I got it from Henderson’s blog, but the source data got lost and reconstructed as Tyler. I haven’t seen any Marginal Revolution post publicizing it.
Whoops, you’re right; it was Henderson/EconLog, not Cowen.
You don’t understand academic culture. Steve Landsburg (like myself) is a college professor. Because of political correctness almost no college professor would dare point out what Landsburg just did.
You’re underestimating both how good economists are at math and how bad we are at resisting political correctness.
Speaking as a leftist who disapproves of “honesty” and “fairness” to still-living opponents in a culture war… haha, no way! Why the flying fuck would we want a “positive spin” on a competing project, especially the fact that it seems to move towards our own declared preferences? We want people to get unhappy, restless and desperate; that’s the only opportunity to really engage their implicit assumptions! Our folks have even been kind of up-front about that, really:
“I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword”—Matt. 10:34
″...the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it.”—Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
”The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”—Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
Of course, it’s not very certain how much actual influence hardcore and committed leftists really have over American upper-brow media. Nonetheless, it’s fun to pretend that someone like Dumbledore on crack might be behind our ever-present intellectual confusion.
(I’m just making random Aqua vs. Turquoise noises again.)
P.S. I’m so adopting “Dumbledore on crack” as a brief summary of the Frankfurt School to recommend it to HPMOR fans.
P.P.S. Although the “cultural Marxists’” reputation on the modern Voldemort flank is rather more impressive than that of Dumbledore’s—certainly a plan to “destroy the Western civilization” sounds rather bold and badass. Unfortunately for the Right, as shown above, such “destruction” and “subversion” are in fact just an ancient, refined and respected tradition of the Western civilization. It suffuses much of our general cultural outlook and gives it a unique character, I’d say—or, some angry and cyncial observers would say, it comes from an underlying feeling of pride, achievement and triumphalism. Only a culture immensely secure in its own dominance and privilege would try such relatively scathing self-criticism. That’s oh so human. I’m not perfectly OK with it, but I’d be even less cool with an openly “white nationalist” or “racially realistic”, Apartheid-style thinking.
Also. Why e.g. Carlyle should necessarily be ascribed more merit, cultural or otherwise, than e.g. Susan Sontag is beyond me. They were both fairly talented writers with a clear individual voice, and highly elitist. How certain… contrarian elements can say that all fans of the latter are a traitorous degenerate menace to all that is White, while even a communist wouldn’t attack the former because Hitler and Goebbels happened to like him… well, it’s pathetic.
[The above is basically bullshit without a good spin behind it.]
It’s not just impolite, it’s an act that makes one unclean.