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Heathens are still greener than Christians

by PercyBarbosa Posted on July 9, 2014

Cleanliness is next to godlessness?

Heathens are still greener than Christians

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Pope Francis issued a rousing lamentation about the “sin” of environmental destruction over the weekend. But is that message getting through to his Catholic flock? And are other Christians stepping up to protect God’s green earth?

Pacific Standard reminds us that “much has been written about the ‘greening’ of Christianity” during the past two decades. Indeed, much as been written about it right here at Grist. But writer Tom Jacobs points to new research published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion that found “no clear evidence of a greening of Christianity among rank-and-file Christians in the general public between 1993 and 2010.” From the Pacific Standard article:

A research team led by Michigan State University sociologist John Clements reports attitudes about the environment among American Christians have remained fundamentally unchanged between 1993, the year the “green Christianity” movement began, and 2010.

“The patterns of our results are quite similar to those from earlier decades, which documented that self-identified Christians identified with lower levels of environmental concern than did non-Christians and nonreligious individuals,” the researchers write ...

Expanding on a study they released last year, the researchers compared data from the 1993 and 2010 editions of the General Social Survey, an ongoing, large-scale measure of societal trends. They found that, at both points in time, self-identified Christians were less likely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors than other Americans.

Godspeed to all the green Christian activists out there. You’ve got a lot of converting to do.


Source
The ‘Greening’ of Christianity Is Not Actually Happening, Pacific Standard

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Chart of the Day: The Super-Rich Spend a Ton of Money on Politics These Days

by MelodeeLum Posted on May 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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What do you do when you have so much money you don’t know what to do with it anymore? Well, you can buy a bigger yacht, or gold-plated bathroom fixtures, or throw lots of fabulous parties. Or you can take up an expensive hobby. Collecting old masters, say, or sponsoring NASCAR drivers.

Or politics. Seth Masket points today to a fascinating study from a team of researchers who have been investigating political polarization and political contributions. As you can see in the chart on the right, the super-rich used to account for about 10 percent of all political contributions. Then, starting around 1990, that started to rise steadily, reaching 30 percent by 2010. Then came Citizens United, and the sluice gates really opened. Within two years, the share of contributions from the super-rich had skyrocketed to 40 percent.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle. Based on other data in the study, Masket concludes that the super-rich are less polarized than the electorate as a whole:

The 30 wealthiest donors in the country are actually pretty moderate, at least judging from this measure. Apart from some extremists like George Soros and the Koch brothers, most exist between the party medians.

This presents an interesting conundrum. We know Congress has grown more polarized over the past three decades. And we know that the very wealthy are donating more and more each year. But the very wealthy aren’t necessarily that polarized. If they were buying the government they wanted, they’d be getting a more moderate one than we currently have.

This deserves more study. I’m not so sure that wealthy donors are quite as moderate as Masket thinks, since they often have strong views on one or two hobbyhorses that might get drowned out in broad measures of ideological extremism. The Waltons hate unions and Sheldon Adelson is passionate about Israel, but they might be fairly liberal about, say, gay marriage or Social Security reform. But does that make them moderate? If they spend all their money on the stuff they care about and none on the other issues, then no. They’re single-issue extremists.

This is pretty common among the anti-tax business crowd, for example. They might not care much about the hot buttons that animate the tea partiers, but they’re perfectly willing to support them as long as they oppose higher taxes on businesses and the rich. In practice, this makes them pretty extreme even if their overall political views are fairly centrist. If you’re willing to get in bed with extremists, then you’re effectively an extremist regardless of whether you publicly share their views on everything.

In any case, this is hard to get a handle on and requires more detailed research than we have at hand. Still, Masket’s observation is an interesting one and deserves a closer look. Are America’s rich really getting their money’s worth? Or has politics simply become an expensive hobby that they’re not very good at?

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Chart of the Day: The Super-Rich Spend a Ton of Money on Politics These Days

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America Does Not Really Have a Big Aging Problem

by JonathonSundber Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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This isn’t exactly breaking news, but the Census Bureau released a report on America’s aging population today, and the basic takeaway is something we already know: as the Baby Boomers age, our population is going to get steadily older. However, what’s less widely recognized is that this is only true for the next couple of decades. After 2030, our elderly population stabilizes at about one-third the size of the working-age population.

In other words, all the sturm and drang over Social Security aside, our demographic problem isn’t really that bad. What’s more, compared to other countries, our outlook is positively sunny. Take a look at the red bars in the chart on the right. They show the projected size of the elderly population in various developed countries in 2050, and the United States is in by far the best shape. Our elderly population stabilizes in 2030 at about 21 percent of the total population, a number that’s significantly lower than even the second-best country (Britain, at 24 percent). Most other countries not only have elderly populations that are far larger, but their elderly populations are growing. These countries have demographic problems.

It’s worth driving this point home: America doesn’t really have a huge aging problem. We have a very moderate aging problem, which could be handled in the federal budget with fairly modest changes to Social Security and Medicare. What we do have is a health care problem. But that’s a problem for us all.

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America Does Not Really Have a Big Aging Problem

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GOP Gov. Rick Scott Raising Big Bucks With Founder of Abusive Teen Boot Camps

by BrigitteHarmon Posted on April 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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This Thursday, a who’s who of Florida big shots will hold a private, $1,000-a-head fundraiser for the Republican Party of Florida and Gov. Rick Scott’s reelection effort, led by a host committee that includes Mel Sembler, the founder of a notorious substance abuse rehab program that folded after allegations of extreme abuse were lodged against several of its facilities.

The program, Straight Inc., was founded in 1976 by Sembler, a developer, and his wife, Betty. In the 17 years that it operated drug treatment centers, Straight Inc. was plagued by news reports and at least one civil suit claiming that its staff kidnapped its adult patients and mentally, physically, and sexually abused their underage charges. Two state investigations substantiated reports of abuse.

Straight Inc. officials consistently denied these allegations. Sembler’s biography on the Sembler Company website hails Straight Inc. as having “successfully graduated more than 12,000 young people nationwide from its remarkable program.” Sembler, it adds, “is nationally recognized as an activist in the anti-drug campaign.” Sembler could not be reached for comment.

Critics paints a much darker picture. “Children had to flap their arms like chickens or else face shaming as ‘sluts’ and homosexuals,” John Gorenfeld reported in the May 2006 issue of Mother Jones. “Hundreds of Straight alums now claim they were scarred for life, among them Samantha Monroe, who was enrolled in 1980…and claims she was starved, raped, and confined in a closet.”

Sembler is a longtime Republican fundraiser. He’s already donated $25,000 to Scott’s reelection PAC. And even after abuse allegations against Straight Inc. were widespread, the program enjoyed public support from many high-profile GOP figures. In 1985, Nancy Reagan brought Princess Diana to a Straight Inc. facility in Virginia—two years after a jury found that staff from that facility had kidnapped a college student. In his inaugural address, President George H.W. Bush celebrated Straight Inc. as one of a “thousand points of light” that exemplified stewardship. In 1993, the year that Straight Inc.’s last drug treatment facility closed, Sembler was serving as a US ambassador; he had been appointed by the elder Bush.

Straight Inc. staffers were alleged to have abused clients at a number of clinics. After Monroe escaped a Straight Inc. program in Florida at age 13, she says, Straight Inc. staff hog-tied her, brought her back to the facility, and placed her in a “timeout room.” “Monroe had no choice but to soil her pants with urine, feces and menstrual blood,” a 2002 St. Petersburg Times article reported. “She says Straight staffers called this punishment ‘humble pants.'” Soon, a staffer began raping her, the Times reported, and she became pregnant at age 14.

In 1989, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse released a damning report of Straight Inc.’s Dallas-area Straight Inc. clinic. “The report said that clients were tied up with rope and with an automobile towing strap to prevent escape, that clients were physically restrained for minor infractions such as ‘failure to sit up properly,’ and that bedrooms were overcrowded and furnished with ‘containers to be used for urination,'” the Times reported. Citing the huge need for drug treatment facilities in Texas, the commission allowed Straight Inc. to remain open, pending oversight and changes to its program.

In 1990, the California Department of Social Services ordered Straight Inc.’s Yorba Linda facility to close after investigators said they substantiated several complaints of abuse. According to these complaints, Straight Inc. staff had subjected children in their care to “unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse…and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

In 1983, Straight made undisclosed financial settlements with two Florida women, Arletha Luann Schautteet and Hope Yvonne Hyrons, who claimed that they had been kidnapped by employees of a Straight Inc. facility in Florida and imprisoned there. In a sworn statement, Hyrons, 19, said she was abducted from a gas station, physically prevented from leaving the Straight Inc. facility, and strip-searched. That same year, a judge awarded 20-year-old Fred Collins $220,000 after a jury found that he had been detained against his will at a Straight Inc. facilities in Virginia and St. Petersburg in 1982. An appellate court later denied Straight Inc.’s appeal. Schautteet and Hyrons testified on Collins’ behalf, according to the Washington Post, repeating the allegations they made against Straight Inc. prior to their financial settlements.

Straight Inc. repeatedly denied allegations of abuse and kidnapping. A Straight Inc. clinical director told the St. Petersburg Times that Hyrons “has a history of pathological lying…the girl is just playing scapegoat kind of games.” After complaints about the Yorba Linda program led to its closing, a Straight counselor told the Los Angeles Times that he had “never seen anyone tormented.” “Some kids get very upset and lie and some parents believe them,” he said. Reacting to the jury verdict for Collins, a Straight Inc. clinical director told the Washington Post that the outcome was “unfair” and “really scary…It means that every time I or any other staff member tries to help a young person, we’ll have to be frightened of the legal consequences.”

In 1991, after Virginia state officials stripped that Straight Inc. facility of its license, the operation moved to Maryland. State officials in Maryland spent hundreds of hours investigating abuse allegations before licensing Straight Inc., in an agreement which noted that investigators “found no truth to any of the allegations.” In response to the Texas commission report, staff at the Dallas-area Straight Inc. program pointed out that they had fired at least one offending staff member whose actions were highlighted in the report, who had gagged a patient with a Kotex pad. By the time that Monroe made allegations against Straight Inc., the program no longer existed.

After Straight Inc. closed, the education arm of Sembler’s organization lived on as a new program named the Drug Free American Foundation, which still exists today. Sembler, after serving as ambassador, continued to fundraise for prominent Republicans, including Mitt Romney. He also hosted an event to raise money for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s legal defense fund when the former Bush White House aide was on trial for perjury.

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GOP Gov. Rick Scott Raising Big Bucks With Founder of Abusive Teen Boot Camps

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Chart of the Day: Social Security Is More Important Than Most People Think

by ShelbyNorthcott Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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EBRI’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey is out, and you can find it here if you want to read the whole thing. In a nutshell, retirement confidence dropped sharply in 2008 when the Great Recession started, and finally started to increase a bit this year for the first time since then. Nonetheless, the number of people who are confident they have enough to retire on is still around 55 percent, way below the 70 percent number that felt this way during the 90s and aughts.

There are plenty of interesting facts and figures about retirement in the report, and I’ve excerpted an interesting pair of charts about worker expectations below. These numbers have bounced around a bit over the years, but generally speaking, only about a third of active workers think Social Security will be a major part of their retirement. In reality, about two-thirds of actual retirees report that Social Security is a major part of their income. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone blithely talking about cutting Social Security benefits, especially among low-income workers.

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Chart of the Day: Social Security Is More Important Than Most People Think

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Alaska Republican: “Birth Control Is for People Who Don’t Necessarily Want to Act Responsibly”

by MichaelMaddock Posted on March 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Fetal alcohol syndrome is a devastating problem in Alaska, so state Senate Finance Committee co-chairman Pete Kelly, a Fairbanks Republican, has made it his personal mission to stamp it out. This week, in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, he described the ways he plans to clamp down on the problem, including spending “a lot of money” on media campaigns and providing publicly funded pregnancy tests in Alaska’s bars and restaurants, so that women will be discouraged from shooting whiskey if they find out they’re pregnant. But make no mistake: Kelly is not interested in providing state-funded birth control in public places. He says that “birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly” and that would amount to “social engineering.”

Providing pregnancy tests in bars isn’t an entirely new concept. In 2012, a pub in Minnesota got national attention for installing a vending machine that dispensed pregnancy tests at $3 a pop—but the tests weren’t state-funded. Kelly envisions the government contracting with a nonprofit to make the tests widely available at places that serve alcohol. As he explains, “So if you’re drinking, if you’re out at the big birthday celebration and you’re kind of like, ‘Gee, I wonder if I…?’ You can just go in the bathroom and there should be a plastic, Plexiglas bowl in there, and that’s part of the public relations campaign, too. You’re going to have some kind of card on there with a message.”

The interviewer asked Kelly whether he would also support offering state-funded birth control in bars. Alaska does not accept federal money from the government’s Medicaid expansion, which would fund contraception, and state Sen. Fred Dyson (R-Eagle River) recently spoke out against it, declaring that if people can afford lattes, they can afford birth control. In response to the birth control question posed by Anchorage Daily News, Kelly said he wouldn’t support it:

No, because the thinking is a little opposite. This assumes that if you know, you’ll act responsibly. Birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly. That’s—I’m not going to tell them what to do, or help them do it, that’s their business. But if we have a pregnancy test, because someone just doesn’t know. That’s probably a way we can help them.

When the interviewer pointed out that using birth control could be seen as being responsible, Kelly replied: “Maybe, maybe not. That’s a level of social engineering that we don’t want to get into. All we want to do is make sure that people are informed and they’ll make the right decision.” He then said that lawmakers would consider, down the road, discussing involuntarily commitment if someone “is damning her child to a lifetime of mental problems and physical problems.” But he added, “We haven’t gone down that road far enough to make a decision.”

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Alaska Republican: “Birth Control Is for People Who Don’t Necessarily Want to Act Responsibly”

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Inside Alaska’s New "War on Women"

by BradyKhanx Posted on March 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, a Republican state senator in Alaska took to the floor to explain that the government should not pay for family planning services for low-income women, because anyone can afford birth control. “Even the most sexually active folks don’t need to spend more than $2 or $3 a day for covering their activity,” state Sen. Fred Dyson (R-Eagle River) said. He explained that it’s easy for women to get access to birth control in Alaska, given that they can get it delivered via Alaska Airlines’ express delivery program.

Dyson was talking about birth control as part of the debate on a controversial abortion bill. He is one of six Republicans senators cosponsoring the fast-moving bill, which would stop low-income women in the state from using Medicaid to fund abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to “avoid a threat of serious risk to life or physical health of a woman.” The bill outlines a list of 22 conditions that would qualify a woman for a Medicaid-funded abortion, such as risk of coma or seizures. Under Alaska law, since 2001, a woman could still only use state Medicaid to pay for an abortion that was “medically necessary”—but the definition was left up to the woman and her doctor. Critics of the bill say that the bill’s new definition is much more restrictive. (Last year, more than 37 percent of abortions reported in Alaska were covered by Medicaid.) Recently, Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services tried to enforce the same restrictions contained in the bill, but Planned Parenthood sued the state over that decision. A court put the regulations on hold as the case unfolds. If this bill passes, it is expected to be challenged as part of that lawsuit. And it’s expected to pass—Alaska has a Republican majority in the House, and Republican Gov. Sean Parnell opposes abortion.

Democrats in the state have been trying to limit the bill’s effects on women, successfully adding an amendment to this bill last year that would have allowed at least 14,000 low-income Alaskans without children to get their family planning services—including STD testing and birth control—covered by Medicaid. (Right now, Alaska has chosen not to accept money through the government’s Medicaid expansion.) But in February, the House Finance Committee stripped the amendment from the bill. State Sen. Berta Gardner (D-Anchorage), who proposed that amendment, says that if the state really wants to prevent abortions, lawmakers should focus on giving women access to birth control. “We know that the best and most efficient way to reduce abortions is to ensure that all women have access to contraceptive services. We do not understand the opposition to doing this,” Gardner says, characterizing the Republican opposition as part of “the continuing war on women.”

Debate has been ongoing about the bill, and whether the birth control amendment should be added back in. At a Senate floor meeting on March 5, Dyson explained that low-income women don’t need their birth control paid for, because it’s already easy to get: “No one is prohibited from having birth control because of economic reasons,” he said, arguing that women can buy condoms for the cost of a can of pop and get the pill for the price of four to five lattes each month. He added, “By the way, you can go on the internet. You can order these things by mail. You can make phone calls and get it delivered by mail. You all know that Alaska Airlines will do Gold Streak, and get things quickly that way.” (When reached by Mother Jones, Dyson says that he was referring to the fact that even women in tiny villages in Alaska can get their prescriptions delivered.)

Dyson’s “latte” estimate is correct for the cheapest brands of the generic birth control pill—but it doesn’t take into account the cost of doctor’s visits to get a prescription, and alternative methods, such as IUDs. Additionally, according to our own birth control calculator, small co-pays on birth control add up to big expenses for women who don’t have insurance, not including the costs of a doctors’ visit associated with getting birth control. For example, a 25-year-old woman without insurance who takes the birth control pill until she hits menopause (estimated at age 51) will end up spending about $150 a month, or $46,650 over her child-bearing years (about $8,290 with insurance). Dyson told Mother Jones, “My guess is that most of those women, if they weren’t able to pay, their partner would be able to. I don’t see the costs being that big of an issue, in reality.”

According to the National Institute for Reproductive Health, uninsured women are less likely to consistently use birth control due to high costs, and low-income women are four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy than their higher-income counterparts. (The Obama administration’s birth control mandate, which requires private insurers to cover family planning services, is changing that—it has increased the percentage of women who currently don’t have to pay for the pill from 15 percent in 2012 to 40 percent in 2013.)

“It is frankly shameful for Sen. Dyson to claim that low-income people are buying lattes instead of birth control,” says Jessica Cler, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest. “It’s truly puzzling that Dyson and his like-minded colleagues, including Gov. Sean Parnell and Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, think that they are responsible for making the personal medical decisions of Alaskan women.”

Dyson disagrees, adding, “I don’t think public money ought to be paying for Viagra, either.”

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Inside Alaska’s New "War on Women"

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Chained CPI Was Never Going to Happen, And Now It’s Still Never Going to Happen

by SheilaGellert Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Chained CPI is the dog that didn’t bark. President Obama’s latest budget proposal doesn’t include a switch to chained CPI, and this absence has put chained CPI back in the news. Does that make sense?

Probably not. In any case, you probably don’t care much about what chained CPI really is. I’m sure I’ve written up a technical explanation in the past, but I’m too lazy to—oh hell. Hold on. Here it is if you’re interested. Or you can just google it. Long story short, it slightly reduces the way we calculate inflation. And since Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation, it would slightly reduce future Social Security payouts.

Obama has proposed in the past that we adopt chained CPI. On its own, this is a terrible idea. However, under certain circumstances, it might be a good thing. At a minimum, those circumstances are threefold: (1) There would be some kind of adjustment to prevent low-income retirees from taking a hit. (2) It’s part of some broader deal on Social Security. (3) It’s adopted everywhere, including in the tax code, where it would raise taxes slightly by slowing down the inflation indexing of tax brackets. Hey, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander. Chained CPI is either more accurate or it’s not, and if it is, then we should use it everywhere.

If these circumstances were met, I’d have a certain amount of sympathy for switching to chained CPI beyond the purely wonkish consensus that it’s a more accurate measure. One reason is that it forces everyone to put their money where their mouths are. And by “everyone” I mean today’s retirees. You see, one of the things that pisses me off about discussions of Social Security is that it’s always future retirees who are supposed to take one for the team. We’re supposed to believe that Social Security is in crisis mode, a true threat to the republic, and therefore we have to cut benefits. But look. If this is really such a huge crisis, then we should all pitch in to save Social Security, including current retirees. If current retirees think their existing benefits are too generous, then they should support cutting them. If they don’t think that, then why should they get to keep their current benefits but cut them for future retirees?

They shouldn’t. Either benefits are too high or they aren’t. And one of the features of chained CPI is that it would have a small but immediate effect on benefits, cutting future COLA increases slightly every year. If that’s acceptable to current retirees, then I figure I can accept a cut too. If not, then I want the same benefits they’re getting. Deal?

In any case, none of this matters, because Republicans have never shown the slightest willingness to cut a broader deal. They want chained CPI, but they want it only for future retirees and they want it only for Social Security. They are willing to make precisely zero concessions in return for this. So as Jonathan Chait points out, it really doesn’t matter if Obama includes chained CPI in his budget proposal:

In reality, the fundamentals of the situation have not changed at all. Last year, Obama was willing to adopt C-CPI in return for concessions Republicans would never, ever make. This year, Obama is still willing to adopt C-CPI in return for concessions Republicans would never, ever make. Putting the compromise in his budget was merely Obama’s way of locating the blame for the reality that Republicans in Congress will never, ever, ever strike a fiscal deal with him. The disappointed deficit scolds sitting just to Obama’s right, and the joyous progressives just to his left, are committing the same fallacy. They are mistaking a step premised on an impossibility for a semblance of reality.

One thing I’m curious about in an academic sort of way is whether Obama ever really truly supported chained CPI. He’s enough of a wonk that he might have. Or, it might merely have been a bargaining chip that he knew would never go anywhere. We’ll probably never know.

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Chained CPI Was Never Going to Happen, And Now It’s Still Never Going to Happen

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Gregory Clark Says We Humans Suck at Social Mobility

by HildegardTraylo Posted on February 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Gregory Clark writes interesting books. His last one, A Farewell to Alms, made a contentious argument about why, after a hundred centuries of zero average economic progress, growth suddenly exploded around 1800 in the tiny island of England and then spread throughout Europe and the world. Basically, Clark argues that the Industrial Revolution started in England because of “accidents of institutional stability and demography….and the extraordinary fecundity of the rich and economically successful. The embedding of bourgeois values into the culture, and perhaps even the genetics, was for these reasons the most advanced in England.”

Bourgeois values! Genetics! Rich people reproducing faster than poor ones! That was bound to piss off some people. I myself found it pretty fascinating, but I also felt like Clark was drawing some pretty spectacular conclusions from some pretty scant data. Sadly, I read Farewell to Alms on one of the original Kindle reading devices, and thus found it virtually impossible to follow. It relies heavily on tables and charts, and those rendered so poorly that I had a hard time following Clark’s argument. Shortly after that I ditched my Kindle.

I’ve since replaced it with a succession of tablets, all of which render the book just fine. But I’ve never gone back to reread it, and now Clark has a new book out, The Son Also Rises.1 His latest big idea is that status is remarkably stable over periods of centuries. Families that were well off in 1700 are, on average, still pretty well off. Basically, we suck at social mobility. Josh Harkinson interviewed him for Mother Jones:

MJ: How do you measure status?

GC: I have a number of different measures for different societies. So for England, where we have some of the best data, we know everyone who went to Oxford and Cambridge from 1200 to the present. That tells us who the educational elite were in England over 800 years, and then we can ask, “What are the names that are showing up in that elite, and how persistent is their appearance in this elite?”

….We find that there is a very strong persistence of elite families at the universities. In recent years, the universities have tried to become more meritocratic and more democratic: They admit students based on performance on national exams. They don’t give any privilege to the fact that your parents went there. And public financing for tuition is now available. But what we find is that elite families persist at Oxford and Cambridge at the same rate as they did in the 19th century. It hasn’t managed to change the rate of social mobility.

Clark uses this strategy of following family names in other countries as well, and comes to similar conclusions. Is this legit? Are family names enough to figure out who’s going up and who’s going down? I have my doubts, but I haven’t read the book. And I have to say that my personal experience is a data point in favor of Clark’s thesis. Many years ago I got interested in genealogy and started digging up my family tree. Roughly speaking, I managed to go back about 200 years through most of my branches. And one of the things that intrigued me was just how homogeneous it all was. Some of my ancestors were better off than others, but mostly within a pretty narrow band. As near as I can tell, none of them were destitute and none of them were rich. They were small farmers, shopkeepers, linen drapers, sign painters, electricians, and stonecutters. Over seven or eight generations, social mobility has been pretty close to zero.

So maybe there’s something to this. I’ll let you know what I think if I end up reading the book.

1Yes, he’s apparently stuck on Hemingway puns. This is undoubtedly a rich vein for economists. Next up: To Have and Halve Not. Followed by For Whom the Swell Toils and The Gold Plan and Me.

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Gregory Clark Says We Humans Suck at Social Mobility

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Quote of the Day: Why Immigration Reform Is Probably Going Nowhere

by ManuelXNZotpv Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the Republican Party, immigration reform is basically a battle between the tea party, which opposes it, and the Chamber of Commerce wing, which supports it. In a nutshell, Dave Weigel explains why this means it’s doomed:

The chamber wing does want immigration reform, badly, but not as intensely as it wants to defeat Democrats in 2014. So it’s easy for the party to fall into a holding pattern, with new rhetoric, without actually passing a bill.

I guess anything is possible, and immigration reform has always been the one big legislative priority that I give a nonzero chance of passing Congress. But Weigel is right. The business wing of the GOP just doesn’t want it badly enough to risk starting a bloody, party-rupturing fight with the social conservatives. For once, I’d say that Ted Cruz probably has the right take on this.

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Quote of the Day: Why Immigration Reform Is Probably Going Nowhere

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