Taken from –
Mother Jones
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With Kevin Drum continuing to focus on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from economist Dean Baker.
The main point of the Affordable Care Act was to extend health insurance coverage to the uninsured. While this is a tremendously important goal, a benefit that is almost equally important was to provide a guarantee of coverage to those already insured if they lose or leave their job. This matters hugely because roughly 2 million people lose their job every month due to firing or layoffs. As a result of the ACA most of these workers can now count on being able to get affordable coverage even after losing their job.
The ACA also means that people who may previously have felt trapped at a job because of their need for insurance now can leave their job without the risk that they or their family would go uninsured. This could give many pre-Medicare age workers the option to retire early. It could give workers with young children or other care-giving responsibilities the opportunity to work part-time. It could give workers the opportunity to start a business. Or, it could just give workers the opportunity to leave a job they hate.
While it is still too early to reach conclusive assessments of the labor market impact of the ACA, the evidence to date looks promising. Republican opponents of Obamacare have often complained that the program would turn the country into a “part-time nation.” It turns out that there is something to their story, but probably not what they intended. The number of people who are working part-time for economic reasons, meaning they would work full-time if a full-time position was available, has fallen by almost 16 percent from the start of 2013 to the start of 2015. This is part of the general improvement in the labor market over this period.
The number of people working part-time involuntarily is still well above pre-recession levels, but it has been going in the right direction.
It is true that the employer sanction part of the ACA has not taken effect (which required that employers with more than 50 workers provide insurance or pay a penalty, but it is not clear this would make a difference. Under the original wording of the law (Obama subsequently suspended this provision), employers would have expected that the sanctions would apply for the first six months of 2013. We found no evidence of shifting to more part-time work during this period compared to the first six months of 2012.
But there is a story on increased voluntary part-time employment. This is up by 5.7 percent in the first four months of 2015 compared to 2013. This corresponds to more than 1 million people who have chosen to work part-time. We did some analysis of who these people were and found that it was overwhelmingly a story of young parents working part-time.
There was little change or an actual decline in the percentage of workers over the age of 35 who were working part-time voluntarily. There was a modest increase in the percentage of workers under age 35, without children, working part-time voluntarily. There was a 10.2 percent increase in the share of workers under the age of 35, with one to two kids, working part-time. For young workers with three of more kids the increase was 15.4 percent.
Based on these findings it appears that Obamacare has allowed many young parents the opportunity to work at part-time jobs so that they could spend more time with their kids. Back in the old days we might have thought this was an outcome that family-values conservatives would have welcomed.
As far as other labor market effects of Obamacare, there has been a modest uptick in self-employment, but it would require more analysis to give the ACA credit. Similarly, older workers are accounting for a smaller share of employment growth, perhaps due to the fact that they no longer to need to get health care through their jobs. These areas will require further study to make any conclusive judgments, but based on the data we have seen to date, it seems pretty clear that Obamacare is allowing many young parents to have more time with their kids. And that is a good story that needs to be told.
Original post:
Mother Jones
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The Washington Post features a simple headline today that encompasses decades of personal tragedy and public policy disaster:
Freddie Gray’s life a study in the sad effects of lead paint on poor blacks
When Freddie Gray was 22 months old, he had a tested blood lead level of 37 micrograms per deciliter. This is an absolutely astronomical amount. Freddie never even had the slightest chance of growing up normally. Lead poisoning doomed him from the start to a life of heightened aggression, poor learning abilities, and weak impulse control. His life was a tragedy set in motion the day he was born.
But even from the midst of my chemo haze, I want to make a short, sharp point about this that goes far beyond just Gray’s personal tragedy. It’s this: thanks both to lead paint and leaded gasoline, there were lots of teenagers like Freddie Gray in the 90s. This created a huge and genuinely scary wave of violent crime, and in response we turned many of our urban police forces into occupying armies. This may have been wrong even then, but it was hardly inexplicable. Decades of lead poisoning really had created huge numbers of scarily violent teenagers, and a massive, militaristic response may have seemed like the only way to even begin to hold the line.
But here’s the thing: that era is over. Individual tragedies like Freddie Gray are still too common, but overall lead poisoning has plummeted. As a result, our cities are safer because our kids are fundamentally less dangerous. To a large extent, they are now normal teenagers, not lead-poisoned predators.
This is important, because even if you’re a hard-ass law-and-order type, you should understand that we no longer need urban police departments to act like occupying armies. The 90s are gone, and today’s teenagers are just ordinary teenagers. They still act stupid and some of them are still violent, but they can be dealt with using ordinary urban policing tactics. We don’t need to constantly harass and bully them; we don’t need to haul them in for every petty infraction; we don’t need to beat them senseless; and we don’t need to incarcerate them by the millions.
We just don’t. We live in a different, safer era, and it’s time for all of us—voters, politicians, cops, parents—to get this through our collective heads. Generation Lead is over, thank God. Let’s stop pretending it’s always and forever 1993. Reform is way overdue.
Taken from:
Mother Jones
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After Baltimore police and a crowd of teens clashed near the Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore on Monday afternoon, news reports described the violence as a riot triggered by kids who had been itching for a fight all day. But in interviews with Mother Jones and other media outlets, teachers and parents maintain that police actions inflamed a tense-but-stable situation.
The funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody this month, had ended hours earlier at a nearby church. According to the Baltimore Sun, a call to “purge”—a reference to the 2013 dystopian film in which all crime is made legal for one night—circulated on social media among school-aged Baltimoreans that morning. The rumored plan—which was not traced to any specific person or group—was to assemble at the Mondawmin Mall at 3:00 p.m. and proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward downtown Baltimore. The Baltimore police department, which was aware of the “purge” call, prepared for the worst. Shortly before noon, the department issued a statement saying it had “received credible information that members of various gangs…have entered into a partnership to ‘take-out’ law enforcement officers.”
When school let out that afternoon, police were in the area equipped with full riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police were stopping busses and forcing riders, including many students who were trying to get home, to disembark. Cops shut down the local subway stop. They also blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Mall and Frederick Douglass High School, which is across the street from the mall, and essentially corralled young people in the area. That is, they did not allow the after-school crowd to disperse.
Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:
Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, Frederick Douglass High School students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of students…It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.
The kids were “standing around in groups of 3-4,” Harris said in a Facebook message to Mother Jones. “They weren’t doing anything. No rock throwing, nothing…The cops started marching toward groups of kids who were just milling about.”
A teacher at Douglass High School, who asked not to be identified, tells a similar story: “When school was winding down, many students were leaving early with their parents or of their own accord.” Those who didn’t depart early, she says, were stranded. Many of the students still at school at that point, she notes, wanted to get out of the area and avoid any Purge-like violence. Some were requesting rides home from teachers. But by now, it was difficult to leave the neighborhood. “I rode with another teacher home,” this teacher recalls, “and we had to route our travel around the police in riot gear blocking the road… The majority of my students thought what was going to happen was stupid or were frightened at the idea. Very few seemed to want to participate in ‘the purge.'”
A parent who picked up his children from a nearby elementary school, says via Twitter, “The kids stood across from the police and looked like they were asking them ‘why can’t we get on the buses’ but the police were just gazing…Majority of those kids aren’t from around that neighborhood. They NEED those buses and trains in order to get home.” He continued: “If they would’ve let them children go home, yesterday wouldn’t have even turned out like that.”
Meg Gibson, another Baltimore teacher, described a similar scene to Gawker: “The riot police were already at the bus stop on the other side of the mall, turning buses that transport the students away, not allowing students to board. They were waiting for the kids.…Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.” With police unloading busses, and with the nearby metro station shut down, there were few ways for students to clear out.
Several eyewitnesses in the area that afternoon say that police seemed to arrive at Mondawmin anticipating mobs and violence—prior to any looting. At 3:01 p.m., the Baltimore Police Department posted on its Facebook page: “There is a group of juveniles in the area of Mondawmin Mall. Expect traffic delays in the area.” But many of the kids, according to eyewitnesses, were stuck there because of police actions.
The Baltimore Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Around 3:30, the police reported that juveniles had begun to throw bottles and bricks. Fifteen minutes later, the police department noted that one of its officers had been injured. After that the violence escalated, and rioters started looting the Mondawmin Mall, and Baltimore was in for a long night of trouble and violence. But as the event is reviewed and investigated, an important question warrants attention: What might have happened had the police not prevented students from leaving the area? Did the department’s own actions increase the chances of conflict?
As Meghann Harris put it, “if I were a Douglas student that just got trapped in the middle of a minefield BY cops without any way to get home and completely in harm’s way, I’d be ready to pop off, too.”
On social media, eyewitnesses chronicled the dramatic police presence before the rioting began:
#LIVE #SATELLITE #MondawminMall …”Cops in Body Armor for H.S. STUDENT”
On Twitter, Baltimore residents vented their frustration with the situation.
Mondawmin Mall is where lots of students catch the bus, when you shut down MTA how the heck they gonna get home? @BaltimorePolice
— Jay (@Ms_lionesss)
These are not gangs. These are children. You close Mondawnin, close the metro stop. And wonder why children are just “around” Mondawnin.
— Clifton Norbury (@seabethree)
More:
Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots Didn’t Start the Way You Think
Mother Jones
Towards the end of his annual speech to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in the nation’s capital Saturday night, President Obama got “angry.” Aided by Luther, his “anger translator” (a character played by Comedy Central’s Keegan-Michael Key, from the TV show Key and Peele), President Obama launched into an epic tirade against climate deniers on Capitol Hill.
For those who aren’t familiar with the set-up of the skit featured on Key and Peele: “No-drama Obama” (played by Jordan Peele) can’t risk getting angry in public, so Luther translates what he’s really thinking, behind all the political soft-ball rhetoric. It’s quite brilliant.
When the real Obama got around to mentioning the big challenge of climate change on Saturday, Luther chimed in, filling in Obama’s supposedly unspoken rage: “California is bone-dry! It looks like the trailer for the new Max Max movie. You think Bradley Cooper came here because he wanted to talk to Chuck Todd? He wanted a glass of water! Come on!”
Eventually, though, Obama didn’t need his anger translator anymore:
“Look at what’s happening right now. Every serious scientist says we need to act,” Obama said, pitch and volume rising. “The Pentagon says it’s a national security risk. Miami floods on a sunny day, and instead of doing anything about it, we’ve got elected officials throwing snowballs in the Senate! It is crazy! What about our kids?! What kind of stupid, short-sighted, irresponsible…”
Luther finally intervenes:
“With all due respect, sir? You don’t need an anger translator. You need counseling.”
Link:
Obama Just Burned GOP Climate Deniers In “Anger Translator” Rant
Mother Jones
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A recent research paper suggests that the amount of time you spend actively parenting your children doesn’t really make much difference. Lots of people have cried foul. Justin Wolfers is one of them:
This nonfinding largely reflects the failure of the authors to accurately measure parental input. In particular, the study does not measure how much time parents typically spend with their children. Instead, it measures how much time each parent spends with children on only two particular days — one a weekday and the other a weekend day.
The result is that whether you are categorized as an intensive or a distant parent depends largely on which days of the week you happened to be surveyed. For instance, I began this week by taking a couple of days off to travel with the children to Disneyworld. A survey asking about Sunday or Monday would categorize me as a very intense parent who spent every waking moment engaged with my children. But today, I’m back at work and am unlikely to see them until late. And so a survey asking instead about today would categorize me as an absentee parent. The reality is that neither is accurate.
Trying to get a sense of the time you spend parenting from a single day’s diary is a bit like trying to measure your income from a single day.
This really doesn’t hold water. Sure, Justin’s Monday this week might be different from his usual Monday. But if your sample size is big enough, this all washes out in the averages. And in this case, the sample size is 1,605, which is plenty big enough to account for individuals here and there whose days are atypical for the particular week of the study. This is basic statistics.
At the risk of igniting a parenting war—and no, I don’t have children—middle-class parents tend to resolutely reject the idea that their parenting matters a lot less than they think. It’s easy to understand why, but unfortunately, there’s a considerable amount of evidence that parenting styles per se have a surprisingly small impact on the personalities and life outcomes of children. Obviously this doesn’t hold true at the extremes, but for the broad middle it does.
In a way, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. We all know families whose children are wildly different even though they share parents and share half their genes just to make them even more similar. Is this because the children have been treated extremely differently? That’s unlikely. They’ll be treated differently to some degree—boys vs. girls, firstborns vs. middle kids, etc.—but the differences generally aren’t immense. What’s more, the differences that do exist are often reactions to the personalities of the kids themselves. A quiet child will get treated one way, while a loud, demanding child will get treated a different way. But parents shouldn’t mix cause and effect: the child’s temperament is largely driving the difference in treatment, not the other way around.
There’s a second way this shouldn’t come as a surprise: when you think about it, parenting is a surprisingly small part of a child’s upbringing. There are also peers. And school. And innate personalities. And socioeconomic status. And babysitters. And health differences. Parenting is a part of the mix, but not even the biggest part. Maybe 20 percent or so. The rest is out of your direct control.
Judith Rich Harris made this case at length in The Nurture Assumption, and it’s a controversial book. But I think she’s right on the basics. As an example, think about this: kids whose parents come from a different country generally grow up speaking English with an American accent. Why? Because they take their cues from peers, not parents. Their peers, and their interactions with peers, are more important than their parents. This means that the single biggest difference you can make is to be rich enough to afford to live in a nice neighborhood that provides nice playmates and good schools.
Now, none of is a license to ignore your kids—I’m not personally as dismissive of parenting as Harris, and it seems clear that parenting styles do have some impact—but parenting probably matters less than you think. Kids are born with personalities, and to the extent they get molded, there are lots of influences. Direct parenting styles play only a moderate role.
But my experience is that middle-class parents pretty flatly reject this idea. They simply can’t stand the idea that they’re unable to guide their kids in the direction they want. And yet, the number of kids who don’t take after their parents is enormous. Neat parents raise slobs. Quiet parents raise extroverts. Honest parents raise crooks. Pacifist parents raise Army recruits. Bohemian parents raise Wall Street analysts.
So this latest study is probably roughly right. You might not like it, but it’s probably right. And there’s good news here too: Don’t beat yourself up too badly if you think you’re blowing it as a parent. Unless you’re way off the charts, you’re probably doing OK.
Link –
Mother Jones
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With measles cases in the United States at a 20-year high, some Republican presidential hopefuls have gotten heat for pandering to conservative voters who doubt extensive scientific evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism. With Chris Christie and Rand Paul making controversial comments on the issue, Hillary Clinton came out strongly Monday night on the side of science:
The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)
But in 2008—when a widespread theory linking vaccines to autism had already been debunked—Clinton wasn’t so definitive on this point. In response to a questionnaire from an autism advocacy group, she wrote, “I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines…We don’t know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism – but we should find out.”
Clinton has a long history of supporting efforts to get children vaccinated. In 1993, she spearheaded the Childhood Immunization Initiative and the Vaccines for Children program, which aimed to make vaccines affordable. Yet, she also has been a strong voice for families dealing with autism, calling in 2007 for $700 million per year to fund research and education. Her comments in 2008 reflected a certain tension to advocating on both fronts.
More stories on vaccines and outbreaks:
Vaccines Work. These 8 Charts Prove It.
Map: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria
How Many People Aren’t Vaccinating Their Kids in Your State?
Measles Cases in the US Are at a 20-Year High. Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers.
This PBS Special Makes the Most Powerful Argument for Vaccines Yet
Mickey Mouse Still Stricken With Measles, Thanks to the Anti-Vaxxers
If You Distrust Vaccines, You’re More Likely to Think NASA Faked the Moon Landings
She also wasn’t the only prominent Democrat hedging about autism and vaccines during the 2008 election cycle: At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that April, Barack Obama was asked about a link. “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate,” he replied. “Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines…The science is right now inconclusive, but we have to research it.”
It used to be more politically difficult for Democrats to come out swinging against anti-vaxxers, a problem that now appears to be growing for Republicans. In 2009, 26 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats believed parents should be able to decide whether to vaccinate their kids. Now, according to a new Pew survey, 34 percent of Republicans and 22 percent of Democrats hold that view.
Obama’s position has evolved too: On Sunday, he urged parents to get their kids vaccinated. “There aren’t reasons not to,” he said.
Originally posted here:
Hillary Clinton Says All Kids Should Get Vaccinated—But She Wasn’t Always So Certain
Libros
