Population trends raise host of complex issues

 previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 28 August 2021

Early results of the 2020 Census are out. One headline trumpets U.S. population grew at its slowest rate since the Great Depression. Many pundits see this as a bad thing because population growth is believed tied to economic growth. Yet, the economy was doing well in the 2010s, until 2020 (Covid). The Dow was 10583.96 at the beginning of the decade and ended at 28.534.44.

The population growth rate between 1930 and 1940 and between 2010 and 2020 are about the same, 7.3%. In real numbers, the U.S. grew by just under 9 million people in the 1930s; in the 2010s, the population grew by 22.7 million people, a total that is 255% more than in the 1930s. So, yes, the rates are similar but the actual new population is much greater. I took these numbers from a New York Times article titled, “Population Bust.” If those new people were their own country, they would be the 58th most populous country in the world. Some bust.

Another headline trumpets U.S. becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and (quieter) that for the first time in U.S. history, the number of non-Hispanic white folks declined. They declined by 5 million. So, let’s connect the population “bust” (an increase of 22 million people) to the decline of people who identify as “white.”

Why has the population growth rate declined? Most important reason is the birthrate. The native birthrate is down, it’s down 50% since the end of the baby boom (early 1960s) and down 17% since 1990. Why? Women have more options today than even in the 1990s, and world-wide we see that educated and employed women have fewer kids. Our society is not very mom friendly meaning people respond to economics (not always the way economists think they “should” but they do) and while many moms indicate they would like to have more kids, they also calculate they cannot afford it. A second factor is a decline in legal immigration. This is a double whammy, because legal immigrants often have children whereas illegal immigrants often do not.

Why has the absolute number of whites declined? Low birth rates and lower immigration from Europe. The droves of European immigration in the past, people looking for a better life, is no longer a push factor. Indeed, Europeans today view the U.S. as a somewhat backward country. As American women overall have become more educated and are more likely to be in the workforce, it’s white women who have benefitted the most from these trends; the more educated and the more financially secure, the fewer children those women have. This is not just an American phenomenon, it's worldwide.

How will conservatives and liberals view these trends? Conservatives will not like that population growth is down (because they believe that hurts economic growth) and that whites have failed to even replace themselves. This will give more voice to the extreme rightwing racists who promote “replacement theory.” Liberals will like the reduction in population growth because that suggests less pressure on the environment. Liberals will point to the lack of societal support for motherhood as to why the birthrate falls, probably not saying too much about that the most educated and higher paid (white) women are the ones opting to not have (as many) children.

Conservatives favor the lower levels of immigration but not because it raises wages among the working class (as labor supplies tighten). Liberals will like the latter but not necessarily the former. The tighter labor market is also likely to reduce income inequality, a liberal goal.

Polls suggest that Americans want to have more children, but kids are expensive, especially child care. Letting the market work its magic isn’t working. Will tax credits do it? I don’t think so because they do not lower the price of child care. Tax credits might actually have the opposite effect.

The lack of paid parental leave from work is another barrier to having more kids. We are the only major industrial country that doesn’t have such a policy. However, those countries are seeing low (even lower) birthrates than the U.S. So, mandating paid leave isn’t necessarily the solution. Unlike Europe, we can absorb a lot more immigrants, but that is toxic for discussion unless it’s only immigration of people like the shrinking majority whites.

Twitter and sound bite politics make the kind of discussion we need nearly impossible. There is a severe shortage of actual, respectful, productive dialogue.

No Mistake: Our Nation Owns A Lot of Guns

 previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 5/15/2021

These are things I held in my hand within the first two hours of the day: toothbrush, toilet paper, pants, shirt, jacket, dog leash, coffee cup, cell phone, wallet, glasses. Seems pretty boring, normal, nothing really noteworthy. Certainly nothing dangerous, right?

According to some lists of items that police have mistaken for a gun in police-involved shootings, three of the 10 items I held were mistaken by police as a gun, thus justifying the shooting of the actually unarmed person. A person who was no threat to anyone.

I often hold some of the things mistaken by police for a gun: a wrench (last week), water-hose nozzle (Saturday), flashlight (Saturday), cane (most Tuesday evenings), broomstick (Saturday), sunglasses (and glasses, daily), underwear (daily), bottle of beer (almost daily), pill bottle (daily), Wii remote (well, a remote, daily), sandwich (Sunday).

A few things sort of look gun-like … the water nozzle, though hooked to a hose would seem to give it away, a cordless drill, maybe a remote controller. But, the others, sure, it’s dark, shadowy, I guess.

I can understand police officers’ concerns: gun sales are soaring in the United States; 40 million handguns were sold legally in the U.S. in 2020 and 4.1 million in January 2021. Estimates are that there are more guns than people in the US, nearly 400 million firearms. But it's handguns that get mistaken, and estimates are that there are about 100 million handguns in the U.S. Not everyone owns a gun, much less a handgun. Surveys suggest that about 40 percent of households have a gun; about 22 percent of Americans own a gun. Those numbers are down, when in the late 1970s, 51% of households owned a gun.

The Americans who own guns own a lot of guns. We make up about 4 percent of the world’s population but account for about 40% of the worldwide civilian ownership (though I wonder about the accuracy of such international comparisons). Even conservatively, one in five could be expected to own a gun, and probably it’s reasonable to believe even more than that can easily possess a gun.

Couple that with state legislatures making it easier and easier for citizens to carry guns without any restriction (it’s easier in many states to carry a concealed weapon than to get a driver’s license), one can understand that police might fall into the sense that everyone is armed. The International Association of Chiefs of Police position on firearms policy sounds like what polls show Americans to favor, better background checks, an assault weapons ban, some restrictions on concealed carry. That’s quite distinct from what the “gun lobby” wants, which is less restrictions. However, rank and file police officers support more armed citizens, going so far as to claim, in a survey of 15,000 police officers conducted by Police1, that more guns, in the hands of mentally healthy, felony free people, would actually reduce gun violence.

A study compared police officers with civilians in their ability to correctly detect a gun in hand from other objects and the response time to do so. Not surprisingly, police officers' reaction times were better than civilians’. And their error rate was only 5% compared to the 12% for civilians. The report did not, however, indicate whether the 5% error rate was to mistake something else for a gun or not.

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, in 2020, 45 police officers were shot to death in the line of duty. According to BLUE H.E.L.P, 228 police officers died by suicide in 2020. Civilians killed by police officers totaled 1,021. Since 2015, according to the Washington Post’s database of officer-involved shootings, 6% were unarmed. If that rate holds for 2020, then 61 unarmed people were killed, perhaps holding a cell phone, a remote, a wallet, or maybe nothing at all.

Logically, police officers in a violent nation awash in guns would be “edgy.” Yet, if the Police1 survey is accurate, over 90% of officers think more guns will reduce gun violence.

Even “drop it” is not always good as we saw with Adam Toledo, who threw his gun away and turned with his hands up, only to be shot and killed anyway.

One thing the research literature shows without doubt is that more guns equals more homicides, more guns equal more successful suicide attempts, more guns equals more homicides of police officers, and I’d suggest that more guns also means more police killings of unarmed civilians.

Trump has no right to Twitter's audience

 Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 1/16/21

When a social media company bans someone, for whatever reason, is that a violation of that person’s free speech rights?

Seems that a lot of people might think so, and actually support it. In a November 2020 Gallup/Knight Foundation poll, 44 percent of Americans expressed support for restrictions on free speech on social media. That was an increase of nine percentage points from the previous year.

I am a staunch supporter of First Amendment rights. But, like it or not, those rights are restricted to the “public square.” And in our current society, we have pretty much abandoned the public square for something that looks like the public square, except it’s privately owned. Disney’s Mainstreet is not the same as the grounds of a state capitol. Twitter, Facebook, Parler, even the webpages of newspapers, are not public space, they are ultimately private spaces which have very large audiences. Their right to publish is constitutionally protected, but it’s not unlimited. They can be sued for libel.

In short, we have freedom of speech, but with limits. The famous "yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire" is one example.

I have a right to write this essay. I don’t have a right to an audience. I can take this essay to city hall and read it out loud. No one can interfere with me, at least not a government official or anyone acting as their agent. But I cannot demand that people pay attention. I’m fortunate that the editor of the Tribune-Star believes that what I write is worthy of being presented to the newspaper’s audience. The paper has developed an audience. In some ways, perhaps by publishing this essay, they hope to maintain and perhaps even increase it.

Social media has changed access to an audience. With an account, one can have access to an incredible audience, both in terms of size and reach. And the ability to share expands that audience. Whereas a newspaper sells subscriptions, both for print and virtual, social media simply assembles an audience. Audience members consume an incredible amount of advertising and in exchange for “membership” social media companies gather a lot of information from that audience and sell it. Most people who have an account with social media spend more time as an audience member (consumer) than exercising their ability to express themselves to an audience.

The U.S. Constitution provides us with a right to free speech but not to an audience.

Social media doesn’t expand our ability to express ourselves. It expands our ability to reach an audience. And, with private social media companies, beyond the tech, they “own” the audience, or at least access to it.

When Twitter banned President Trump from access to Twitter’s audience, they did not violate his ability to express himself; they denied him “their” audience. President Trump might have millions of “followers” but they have to have a Twitter account, meaning while they follow the President, they are still part of Twitter’s audience. And Twitter “controls” if not “owns” the audience. Nothing stopped him from calling a press conference, the pre-social media manner in which presidents communicated to the country. He could have issued a statement to be run through news media or on the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov).

Finally, if you believe that President Trump’s free speech was violated by Twitter, then getting angry at what the Tribune-Star publishes and canceling your subscription in response is a violation of the freedom of the press. And if that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is, just as ridiculous as claiming that President Trump’s free speech was violated by Twitter.

However, the ability to deny an audience to certain ideas does seem to have a negative public impact. The ACLU thinks so (will conservatives embrace the ACLU on this one?). But to rein in social media’s power will require regulation. Regulation that conservatives detest (let the market decide) and that liberals might consider but once you begin the task, it quickly becomes impossible. Perhaps we need an NPR Twitter-like platform. A public option, if you will. Less Disney, more National Park.

Thomas L. Steiger is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Student Research and Creativity at Indiana State University. Email thomas.steiger@indstate.com.