Tag Archives: slideshows

Objectivity in Journalism Has Some Serious Pitfalls

by ReneAyk4899 Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve been a little chart heavy this morning, and now I’ve got one more. This comes from a paper written a few months ago by Jesse Shapiro of Brown University, and it presents a model of how journalism can fail when special interests are involved. The model itself is pretty simple: if journalists present both sides of an argument at face value, then special interests are highly motivated to invent plausible-sounding evidence for their side of the argument—regardless of whether it’s anywhere close to true. As long as they get quoted, the public will be suitably confused even if the journalists themselves know that it’s mostly hogwash.

No surprise there. But this works only if journalists abide by a convention which demands that both sides are treated as equally credible. What happens if that’s not true? The chart below tells an interesting story on climate change:

In the United States, journalists tend to simply present both sides of an argument without taking sides. In other countries, where that norm is less strict, reporters often tell their readers which side has the better argument. When that happens, the public is more likely to believe in climate change.

Now, there are obviously pitfalls to reporters deciding which side has the better argument. You can end up being better informed by this, or you can end up like Fox News. Still, it’s an interesting comment on the American style of journalism.

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Objectivity in Journalism Has Some Serious Pitfalls

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Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

by AngelaJNTN Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to a note in Nature, honesty and curiosity are the most highly prized traits among scientists.

That’s all well and good. I’m also happy to see perseverance and objectivity on the list. Also humility, attentiveness, skepticism, courage, and willingness to collaborate. But I’m a little dismayed that meticulousness barely even crack the top ten. Most of the greatest scientists in history were extraordinarily meticulous: Newton, Darwin, Galileo, Feynman, etc.

Meticulous attention to detail is how you turn all that curiosity and perseverance into lasting results. It’s also how you maintain your objectivity, your humility, and your skepticism. I hope that in their daily lives, scientists value meticulousness more than they do when they answer survey questions.

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Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

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It’s Been Quiet Lately. Maybe a Little Too Quiet…

by FrederiSiemens Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Didn’t there used to be some guy named Donald Trump running for president? Whatever happened to him? It seems like days since I’ve heard a desperate cry for attention from the campaign trail.

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It’s Been Quiet Lately. Maybe a Little Too Quiet…

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

by bibw6a Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sad news today from the Wall Street Journal. Among CEOs of big companies, stock-based pay was up 7 percent last year and cash pay was up 2 percent. But thanks to slower growth of CEO pensions, overall compensation was down 4 percent.

But perhaps CEOs will be mollified by the broader picture, which you can see in the chart on the right. CEO pay is up about 44 percent since 2007 in nominal terms, and up about 38 percent when you account for inflation. For ordinary workers, pay has decreased 5 percent since 2007 when you account for inflation.

For anyone wondering why Bernie Sanders has struck such a chord with the electorate, this pretty much tells the story. The Great Recession sure didn’t affect everyone equally, did it? Ordinary schlubs paid a high price, but the folks with the most lavish pay to begin with just shrugged it off like it never happened. If the rich wonder why calls to tax high incomes at 90 percent sound pretty good to a lot of people, this should clue them in.

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

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Helping the Poor Is the Right Thing to Do, But Maybe Not Much of a Political Winner

by DinaRamsey Posted on April 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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I don’t want to make too big a deal out of one comment from one guy, but here’s the response of a minimum-wage worker who got a big increase when Emeryville raised its minimum wage to $14 per hour:

Security guard Kenneth Lofton was among the workers who benefited last year when this East Bay city hiked its hourly minimum wage to nearly $15 for employees at large companies. The jump was almost 70% more than what he used to make in nearby Oakland when he was paid $10 an hour.

….”It’s somewhat better, but not much,” Lofton said Tuesday morning while eating breakfast and manning the security gate at an Emeryville parking lot. “The high cost of living here takes a big bite out of whatever monetary increase you get, so it’s like not getting an increase at all.”

But, he said, “at least they’re trying.”

This is crazy. If Lofton works full time, he’s seeing an increase of $160 per week. Call it $130 or so after taxes. That’s real money. But “it’s like not getting an increase at all.”

Raising the minimum wage—whether to $12, $14, or $15—is the right thing to do. But as a purely political matter, comments like Lofton’s make you wonder if this kind of thing provides any benefits for Democrats. It earns them plenty of annoyance from employers, along with at least some annoyance from consumers who have to pay higher prices, but it’s not clear if this is offset much by increased loyalty from the folks who are helped. Is Lofton more likely to show up at the polls in November because he got a raise? Hard to say.

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Helping the Poor Is the Right Thing to Do, But Maybe Not Much of a Political Winner

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Is Russia About to Shoot Its Future in the Foot?

by StellaAudet Posted on March 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few days ago I read a piece about a proposed new oil tax in Russia, and it sounded vaguely important. But other stuff happened and I never wrote about it. Max Fisher says that was a mistake:

The most consequential development in international affairs this week may have come, believe it or not, in a proposed change to Russian tax policy….When oil was selling for $100 a barrel, about $74 of that went to the state in taxes…leaving oil companies with about $11 a barrel in profit….Now, oil is selling at $35 a barrel, and taxes only take $17 a barrel….Oil companies only take $3 a barrel in profit.

….While we think of oil companies as taking profits just to shower on themselves — and indeed, there is some of that — they also spend heavily on finding and developing new oil sources….The new tax would make it much harder for Russian oil firms to develop new oil sources. Over time, as current oil wells dry up, new ones would not come online to replace them….Even if oil prices go back up, Russian oil output will decline so drastically that its economy might never recover.

….The potential consequences here — of Russia so cannibalizing its own oil industry that its current economic decline becomes more or less permanent — are really difficult to overstate. Sooner or later, the Kremlin would have to do one of two things (or even both): cutting back the Russian military, which is wildly expensive but gives Moscow the geopolitical muscle it believes is so crucial, or cutting back already weak social services, which does risk political instability.

Read the whole thing for more details. This is still just a proposal, and even if it goes through it might well get modified before it does serious damage. Still, much of Russia’s foreign policy is driven by the brutal fact that it has an economy about the size of Italy’s and demographic problems even worse than Italy’s, but still wants to be thought of as a great world power. As this becomes ever harder to pull off, Russia’s leaders may feel the need to somehow prove that they still matter. This would be bad.

This tax may or may not go anywhere, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

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Is Russia About to Shoot Its Future in the Foot?

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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

by HarleyShapcott Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Just for the record, here’s what Hillary Clinton was doing today in the wake of the Brussels bombings: talking about combating terrorism at a roundtable in Los Angeles.

And here’s what our Republican presidential hopefuls were doing: in between panicked demands for surveilling Muslim neighborhoods that even the NYPD rolled its collective eyes at, Donald Trump was lobbing juvenile insults at Ted Cruz’s wife and Cruz was calling Trump a “sniveling coward.”

Remind me again: which party is it that takes national security seriously?

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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

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Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

by BrockBroadbent9 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m not sure what brought this on—oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly what brought this on. Anyway, I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:

Crack babies
Super predators
Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
Mad cow
Deepstar Horizon
Daycare child molesters
Ebola
ISIS/Syrian refugees

I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.

And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early 80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that—other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here, hive mind.

POSTSCRIPT: I should mention that despite my choice of illustration, I’ve never really blamed anyone for the tulip panic. Personally, I think tulips are worth going crazy over.

Source – 

Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

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It’s Old People Who Have More Debt, Not the Young

by LouisGoldstein Posted on March 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ylan Mui points today to a February note from the New York Fed called “The Graying of American Debt.” Here’s the basic picture:

The student debt story is about what you’d expect: young consumers have more of it, but their total debt load is lower than it was in 2003 because they have lower mortgage debt. Basically, they’re trading student debt for mortgage debt.

But older age groups make up for it with higher debt than they had in 2003. This is especially true at age 65, where total debt is up by about a third over the past decade. So what does it all mean?

The close relationship between credit score and age…reflects an average credit history that is considerably stronger among older borrowers….Further, older borrowers’ income streams are comparatively stable, and they have greater experience with credit. Survey of Consumer Finances data show that net worth levels for households with heads who are age 65 and older in 2013 are quite similar to their 2004-07 levels. This holds despite the evidence, seen in the second chart in this post, that consumers are holding substantially more per capita debt at age 65 and beyond. If history is any guide, then, we expect older borrowers to make more reliable payments. Indeed, our data show no clear trend toward higher delinquency at older ages as average balances at older ages have increased.

Hence the aging of the American borrower bodes well for the stability of outstanding consumer loans. At the same time, the likely combination of muted credit access and lower demand for credit that we observe among our younger borrowers may well have consequences for growth. The graying of American debt that we observe between 2003 and 2015, then, might be interpreted as a shift toward greater balance sheet stability, and away from credit-fueled consumption growth.

More stability, less growth. Just what old people want. But is it good for the country?

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It’s Old People Who Have More Debt, Not the Young

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Three Cheers For a Contested Convention

by AnaBruxner Posted on March 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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I guess a contested Republican convention has now made a full circle1 from “Spare me” to “I always said that”:

In multiple television interviews Sunday, Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, raised the prospect of a protracted convention fight with multiple rounds of voting needed to determine the winner. “We’re preparing for that possibility,” Mr. Priebus said on ABC. That marks a shift from earlier this month, when Mr. Priebus told a gathering of conservatives that a contested convention was “highly, highly unlikely.”

Sounds like fun. Seriously. Just think of all the free publicity this gives the Republican Party.

1Half circle?

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Three Cheers For a Contested Convention

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