Does Vigo's bellwether voting status really mean much?

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 24 January 2016


For the last four presidential elections, I’ve been a sought-out “expert” on Vigo County’s bellwether status. Should you be unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Vigo County has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1952 missing only twice since 1888.


Initially, reporters sought me and Professor Kirby Goidel because we had polled during the 2000 and 2004 elections. We were the first, as far as we knew, to ever poll Vigo voters’ presidential preferences Since then, I am not aware of any scientific polling of the county’s preferences. Nevertheless, journalists continue to contact me for interviews.
                                               

This year, attention to Vigo’s bellwether phenomenon is receiving increased and early attention. A documentary production company, Three Blind Men Productions, has taken up residence in Vigo to document the bellwether effect. Filmmaker Don Campbell will have lived in Terre Haute for a year. I’ve been consulting (unpaid) with Don since the beginning of the project. Politico ran an article consisting of little more than a reporter stopping by a Pie and Politics meeting, the Republicans there were for Trump, and the article declares the bellhether is going for Trump. WFIU did a story on the Politico story and contacted me for a response to the article. Last Saturday, my living room was transformed into a television studio as Bob Abeshouse of Al Jazeera English interviewed me for two hours for an early March news documentary.



Whether political bellwethers exist is not much of a controversy among political scientists. As far as I can tell, the answer is “no.” Nevertheless, Vigo County’s record is impressive and makes for a good story and a different hook on the glut of presidential campaign news. I expect there to be more reporters and all variety of political storytellers showing up because of Vigo’s bellwether status.                                                  
                                                                                                                                           
Questions posed to me tend to be similar: “What accounts for Vigo’s amazing record in ‘getting it right’?” My answer:  I do not know why Vigo County has such a record of voting for the presidential winner and I don’t think anyone does.       
                                                                                                                                                                                        
Then I speculate on reasons why Vigo has such a remarkable record and respond to reasons posited to me by the journalist. A common one that is wrong, at least now and for the last couple of decades, is that Vigo is a microcosm of the United States. It is not. Vigo is poorer, more poverty stricken, whiter, older, fewer immigrants, less educated (despite four institutions of higher education residing here), more people with disabilities, more people without health insurance, higher unemployment rate, more reliant on manufacturing jobs, local ownership of business is more male, less minority, and Vigo is less urban than the U.S. is as a whole. According to information provided to me this weekend, Vigo also has more nonaligned voters than does the U.S. as a whole. Vigo County is not a microcosm of the United States and I doubt it ever was. 
.                                                                                                                                                                                             
Another posited explanation is that issues of America are the issues of Vigo County. This one is hard to address because one would need to know what the issues were in the campaigns and what the local issues were. I’ve voted in six presidential elections in Vigo County and based on past polling, the most important local issue has been “jobs,” pretty much swamping all others. When is a presidential campaign not about jobs? Maybe the candidate that mentions jobs the most is who Vigo votes for. This might make for an interesting undergraduate research project. 
                                                                                                                                                                                              
My current “most sociologically best guess” points to the relative stability of the population in Vigo County. By stability, I mean there is neither a lot of out-migration nor a lot of in-migration. Being born here is almost the sole means of entry and dying here is almost the sole means of exit; thus, the social barriers and forces that separate us into like- minded “echo chambers,” jobs, religions, race, and social class, are muted when people first meet each other in school.     
                                                                                                                                                                                          
For example, four people become good friends in the second grade and remain adult friends despite one becoming a union carpenter, one a physical therapist, one chronically unemployed, and the other a local business owner. The four, I submit, may influence each other with their different points of view. By being friends, they gain a better appreciation of each other’s views, in a respectful manner and, perhaps, as they decide who to vote for, all those influences come to bear on their choice.

Study gun violence in the US? Don't count on it

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 27 December 2015


It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes ... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn




Why do we bother arguing with numbers? Numbers and statistics are ubiquitous in our society. Someone should do a content analysis of our media and speech and see how much content is oriented around numbers whether it be rankings, opinion polls, scores, profits, costs, guns and crime. Yet, to what degree does any of it make a difference? What numbers change anyone’s mind?

Take the “gun debate.” Recently crime statistics were the topic of the nanosecond. In short, murders and violent crime are way way down. Of course the perception of violence and violent crime is way way up. Research into the perception of crime suggests that one’s perception of crime is not based on personal experience as much as media viewing habits. In other words, those who watch a lot of crime shows and news (both of which are ubiquitous) overestimate by a significant amount the actual level of crime and violence. The actual numbers don’t matter.

Take one disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners: What it means to have lots and lots of guns. The pro-gun side claims more guns reduce crime, especially the murderous kind. The anti-gun side claims, no, more guns leads to more violence. This is what scholars call an empirical question, we can answer this. So, let’s look at the states with the most guns and compare it to the states with the most murders. (This is not perfect because not all gun violence ends up with a corpse, but this is how research proceeds.) We are going to “correlate” state murder rates with gun registrations, a measure of ostensibly legal guns. Washington, D.C., Arkansas and Louisiana are in the top 10 in terms of both number of guns and murder rate. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are among the top 10 murder rates but rank in the next 10 in number of registered handguns. South Carolina and Tennessee are in the top 10 of murderous states but fall in the middle of registered guns. None of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates are among the states with the 10 highest gun registrations. Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and New Hampshire are among the bottom 10 murder rate states but fall in the range of 11-30 in terms of gun registrations. There is a correlation here but it’s not nearly as strong as either side wants to believe.

Looking just at murders with guns, by far the most common means, it’s clear that not all people are equal. Not to dismiss the tragedies, but the chances of being murdered by a gun in the U.S. is much greater for males than for females. The Brookings Institute analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and found for women, the gun murder rate is less than five per 100,000 while for men, it is at least three times higher. In short, gun violence is a “man thing,” though not all men are murdered equally.

The greatest gun danger to white men is suicide, not being murdered. Almost 80 percent of gun deaths among whites are suicides, while it’s black men who have reason to fear others with guns, over 80 percent of gun deaths among blacks are murders.

As a scholar, arguments over numbers call for more research which means more numbers. There are all kinds of interesting correlations (correlations do not equal causation) regarding guns and violence, risk factors, and cultural factors. All of which are worthy of study and could yield some valuable insights regarding policy. 

 Yet, as a nation, as reflected in our national policies, we choose to NOT study it. A 1993 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, funded by the CDC, that concluded rather than protection, guns in the home pose an increased risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. This article received a lot of attention and the NRA began a campaign to stop federal funding of such research and succeeded. In 1996 an amendment to the omnibus budget bill was passed that prohibited any CDC money to be spent on research that advocated or promoted gun control. That ban remains in effect and was later expanded to include the National Institutes of Health.
           

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes ... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

Why do we bother arguing with numbers? Numbers and statistics are ubiquitous in our society. Someone should do a content analysis of our media and speech and see how much content is oriented around numbers whether it be rankings, opinion polls, scores, profits, costs, guns and crime. Yet, to what degree does any of it make a difference? What numbers change anyone’s mind? Take the “gun debate.” Recently crime statistics were the topic of the nanosecond. In short, murders and violent crime are way way down. Of course the perception of violence and violent crime is way way up. Research into the perception of crime suggests that one’s perception of crime is not based on personal experience as much as media viewing habits. In other words, those who watch a lot of crime shows and news (both of which are ubiquitous) overestimate by a significant amount the actual level of crime and violence. The actual numbers don’t matter. Take one disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners: What it means to have lots and lots of guns. The pro-gun side claims more guns reduce crime, especially the murderous kind. The anti-gun side claims, no, more guns leads to more violence. This is what scholars call an empirical question, we can answer this. So, let’s look at the states with the most guns and compare it to the states with the most murders. (This is not perfect because not all gun violence ends up with a corpse, but this is how research proceeds.) We are going to “correlate” state murder rates with gun registrations, a measure of ostensibly legal guns. Washington, D.C., Arkansas and Louisiana are in the top 10 in terms of both number of guns and murder rate. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are among the top 10 murder rates but rank in the next 10 in number of registered handguns. South Carolina and Tennessee are in the top 10 of murderous states but fall in the middle of registered guns. None of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates are among the states with the 10 highest gun registrations. Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and New Hampshire are among the bottom 10 murder rate states but fall in the range of 11-30 in terms of gun registrations. There is a correlation here but it’s not nearly as strong as either side wants to believe. Looking just at murders with guns, by far the most common means, it’s clear that not all people are equal. Not to dismiss the tragedies, but the chances of being murdered by a gun in the U.S. is much greater for males than for females. The Brookings Institute analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and found for women, the gun murder rate is less than five per 100,000 while for men, it is at least three times higher. In short, gun violence is a “man thing,” though not all men are murdered equally. The greatest gun danger to white men is suicide, not being murdered. Almost 80 percent of gun deaths among whites are suicides, while it’s black men who have reason to fear others with guns, over 80 percent of gun deaths among blacks are murders. As a scholar, arguments over numbers call for more research which means more numbers. There are all kinds of interesting correlations (correlations do not equal causation) regarding guns and violence, risk factors, and cultural factors. All of which are worthy of study and could yield some valuable insights regarding policy.   Yet, as a nation, as reflected in our national policies, we choose to NOT study it. A 1993 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, funded by the CDC, that concluded rather than protection, guns in the home pose an increased risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. This article received a lot of attention and the NRA began a campaign to stop federal funding of such research and succeeded. In 1996 an amendment to the omnibus budget bill was passed that prohibited any CDC money to be spent on research that advocated or promoted gun control. That ban remains in effect and was later expanded to include the National Institutes of Health.  A continuing mistake.

As 'privatization' expands, the public sphere erodes

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 13 December 2015


Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-party series of essays about free speech on college campuses.

Two other forces have brought us to the point where students feel threatened on ISU’s and other campuses by “street preachers” and “unsafe” in the face of passionate disagreements and potential objectionable Halloween costumes. And they are related. The first is the incredible narrowing of the “public” as well as the tarnishing and demeaning of all things public.


“Private” is good, while “public” is bad. What public institution is held up with pride in the United States anymore? Certainly not democratic government or our courts. Even the military is forced to increasingly privatize. Public education once used to be held up, but not anymore with those who are entrusted with our public institutions working effectively to undermine them. Public lands are constantly under fire to be privatized. National, state and municipal Parks’ budgets are cut and cut until they are no longer truly public because to stay in operation they have to charge user fees and then “privatized.”


Who doesn’t love Disney World? But you don’t have freedom of speech there. Try wearing a provocative piece of legible clothing without a Disney trademark. Go to a town square, and you can start talking loud about the mayor if you want, except there are no people anymore in the town square, they are at the mall. So, go to the mall and start on about the mayor being a crook; you will be escorted out. Public might as well be “pubic” in today’s America. Facebook isn’t public, not only can people “block’ you but Facebook can violate your constitutional rights by shutting you out, except it’s not your constitutional right, you have to play by Facebook’s rules and that is their right as (private) property owners. Even the Livefyre commenting feature on the Tribune-Star’s website where this essay appears has “rules” about speech.


As we de-public our democracy, we create fewer and fewer spaces where those cherished rights can be exercised. You don’t have rights to free speech in the workplace (unless you work for the government, oh right, not even there, ask the Terre Haute police officer about his political statements contrary to the current administration’s favor). You don’t have rights to free speech in a private home at the dinner table. As a culture we might emphasize it, but it mostly only works when people are relatively equal. Your boss or your mom aren’t going to respect your mouthiness as free speech, its back-talking or insubordination and you get grounded or fired for it.


Most of those corporate sponsored SEC football schools, like Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, and Texas A&M, are all government schools established as Land Grant Universities by the Federal Government following the Civil War to specifically further the industrialization of the country, but today, they are more like private schools because the states are getting out of the public anything business (even prisons as they are rapidly being privatized). And with that privatization comes the inevitable treating students as “customers.” And customers are treated well are they not?


I mean, if an employee is treated shabbily by a boss, we hardly care. Just look at the waning public support for unions. But if a customer is treated poorly by a business, it’s known and in some cases, some treatment is considered illegal, such as refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, or refusing to serve a customer with the wrong religion or skin color. Public institutions treat people shabbily, like the IRS, while our universities recruit students as though they are heading off to a private resort and given the debt that so many students carry even in public (government) colleges. No wonder they feel the right to exclude offensive individuals from their “private” space, especially the obnoxious and biased press.


No, it’s not the “pussification” of America nor is it the” progressivism” of higher ed or the continued insensitivity of the dwindling white power structure of academia, it’s the systematic devaluation of and shrinkage of the “public” in our society. Free speech only ever existed in the public sphere which once was ubiquitous, especially with such incredible institutions as education and a press that served the public. But today, public is an insult and everyone unquestioningly assumes the superiority of “private.”

The result is a loss of social space to exercise free speech or to have a free press. Besides, the “press” is so vilified today. For some, it’s the press that is the “enemy.” Mizzou students formed a ring around protesters to protect them from the intrusive eye of the press. Later some of them will be the legislators who pass laws that make it a crime for journalists to take pictures of factory farms to show the public the conditions of the animals that become bacon and hamburgers. As our “public” rights erode, “private” rights expand.

Free Speech is Taking a Beating on Campus

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of two columns from Thomas L. Steiger on the subject of free speech on college campuses. 

The events at the University of Missouri and Yale last month have pushed questions of free speech and freedom of the press into the limelight. I’ve been thinking about free speech and its meaning in our society today since ISU’s “microdrama” surrounding free speech when the Chief of ISU Public Safety sent an email to all students pointing out that the evangelizing by Terre Haute’s own fiery modern circuit riders, Brother Jed, Sister Cindy, and I’m sure in spirit, “Mad Max”, was protected speech under the US Constitution.




I don’t know what precipitated it, but I’m guessing that some ISU students who didn’t like the street preacher’s insults of “fornicator,” “whore,” “whore monger,” and “sinner” either complained or perhaps got physical, because the preachers were then relocated with a barricade around them with a sign that read “THIS IS PROTECTED SPEECH YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO LISTEN OR IGNORE WALK AWAY OR STAY YOU MAY ALSO PARTICIPATE THREATENING OR INTIMIDATING CONDUCT WILL NOT BE ALLOWED.”




I was surprised by this and began watching the students interact with the street preachers. The angry students worry me. I saw no one trying to use humor to argue back. I know our students are religious and many know their bibles and have paid attention to the lessons of their home church, but few tried to argue with the preachers at that level, instead people were googling things to hurl back to the preachers.




Brother Jed, Sister Cindy and (now departed) Mad Max first insulted me when I was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Florida. Holding court on the Plaza of the Americas with often 100s of students mocking back at them was great entertainment in a pre- Internet time. I recall Jed calling me a whore monger. I actually was familiar with the term, my preference for 1940s serial detective novels taught me a lot. As an awkward 17-year-old on a campus of 60 percent males, I wished I was a whore monger.




Jed, if you have never seen him, has quite an act. It’s dramatic and very physical. We learned to imitate it and often would line up behind Jed and go through his motions with him. Sometimes he would get agitated with us. We never threatened him. We mocked him; laughed at him and each other. I don’t recall any anger. I saw intense anger, perhaps hatred, as ISU students yelled “you preach hate” at the street preachers.




Because of the threatened boycott of one of the sacred rites of fall advertising, SEC football, by 30 African American gladiators (football players) the attention of the nation was momentarily fixed. The hunger striker never seemed to make the news. But, by god, threaten Saturday football in the SEC and stuff happens. A university president and chancellor are toppled. But it was the student reporter getting poor treatment and a liberal journalism prof stopping the reporter from doing his job that really hijacked the show. Follow that up with the controversy at Yale over Halloween costumes and you now have this essay.




Conservative reactions to the Yale incident, where the Yale administration sent out an email to the students to be culturally sensitive regarding their Halloween costumes and a faculty member who thought the Administration’s official email was a bit heavy handed and encouraged the students to express themselves and for others to just look away or ignore a costume they didn’t like, led to an eruption on campus where the faculty were harangued, apologies demanded, threats made, etc. Look it up, it’s a fascinating peek into the lives of some of our most privileged students.


Conservatives have jumped on this with their usual memes around such topics with the “pussification” of America, which is nothing more than a not-so-subtle complaint about women’s greater equality. One thing has changed on American college campuses, there are more women than men today and while there are still some areas that are still heavily male, they are dwindling.




Another conservative meme, one artfully crafted by that noted sociologist George Will (anyone who knows him will smile at me calling him a sociologist) blamed “higher ed progressivism” for the debacle at Yale. Really? So a year or two at Yale causes this? Never mind the 12-14 years of private school education among a select “people like us” atmosphere. Or that Yale students aren’t like “government” school university students who attend “public” (said with derision) universities where the grounds are public property and free speech must be respected. It’s not just a school policy as it is at Yale, but American Constitutional Law that protects it at a government school like ISU.


Liberals are having a hard time responding to these issues. They can’t seem to deal with the contradictions. It’s OK, use the contradictions to move the discussion along. Use data, evidence, and reason. Oh, and throw in “nuance.” That’s always a winner.




Next week: As public rights erode, private rights expand.

Tom Steiger:

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 30 August 2015


What would the ratings be for these early Republican presidential debates without Donald Trump? What are the indirect effects as well? How much more are people reading early presidential primary coverage just because of him? Arguably, no doubt it will be by Trump himself, that he is a job creator just given the coverage he receives.




The political professional class explains his rise to frontrunner among a jammed field because he is “just” tapping the frustrations and anger among a swath of the electorate. That swath appears to be growing then, as his poll numbers continue to rise despite gaffe after gaffe and his insistence on not playing by the “rules.” He’s such a “bad boy” demagogue.

A more sociological explanation would be to think about “authority.” Presidential aspirants campaign on three threads. The first is their qualifications to be president, which is not extensive, only to be a natural-born citizen and at least 35 years old. Taxi drivers have more formal qualifications than that. A traditional qualification for presidential authority is that the candidate be male, white and “successful” (meaning either rich and/or having some power in their life up to the point of running for president). No one questions if we are ready for a successful white male to be president.





Other informal qualifications matter, too. Can a woman be president, is America ready for an African American president, is s/he too old, is s/he too young. Of course, President Obama did not fit one of those traditional qualifications, but this has not led to a groundswell of otherwise racially diverse candidates. Tradition is a powerful force in politics, like going to Iowa.





The last thread is the plan to fix whatever is wrong with America. Funny how candidates never say, “America is great, don’t fix what is not broken, I promise to not change a thing.” One unstated qualification to be president apparently is to think America is not great and needs substantial, fundamental, radical change, that is unless you are the incumbent, then you “stay the course.”





Sometimes It’s not enough that our presidential candidates be people of accomplishment, whether it be deal maker, reality TV star, noted neurosurgeon, governor, senator, former CEO of a tech company, or be a white male natural-born citizen, the candidate that inspires devotion to them and their plan is going to be the candidate to beat. And that candidate must answer the big questions her/his following has. The mundane questions are answered in policy briefings, such as fixing all the programs that are messed up, even the ones that are not. What I am referring to here are the really big questions like “how to make American great again”, or “how to have a political revolution,” “how to achieve the higher ground”, “how to make the new century an American one” (that’s already 15 years old), “how to reignite the promise of America,” “how to create a ‘right to rise,’” among many others.





These three threads match up well to what sociologists see as three societal sources of authority: bureaucratic authority flows from technical qualifications; traditional authority flows from long-standing practices and; charismatic authority flows from devotion to the individual’s exceptional qualities, “heroism” or exemplary character, and the answers the individual provides to important questions. It is charismatic authority that is driving Donald Trump to frontrunner status. I am not a Trump supporter, but I can see that he inspires personal devotion through his acts of “heroism” (making disparaging remarks about women, disrespecting the press [who are only doing their jobs], being crass and crude), and his exemplary character focused on his business exploits and personal flair (reality star). Plus he offers simple fixes (“it’s simple, George, it’s simple”) to the big (political) questions of the day: how to make American great again. Send back the immigrants and make Mexico build a wall to keep its people in, take our jobs back from the Chinese, stop being PC, get tough with the Saudis and force them to pump more oil, seize the oil fields in Iraq, stop taxing rich people (corporations), but tax those corporations that export jobs overseas.





As I finish this essay, Trump’s poll numbers have increased to 32 percent of Republican voters. Trump dominates the news with more vitriol toward Megyn Kelly and throws Univision’s Jorge Ramos out of a press conference. Trump’s growing legion of devoted followers may see these actions as “heroism” and exceptional character, not boorish, racist or misogynist.

Three rulings and the end of the world as we know it

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 5 July 2015


Does the Supreme Court have a publicist?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 




The three decisions delivered last week, one on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one on the Fair Housing Act and then on marriage equality couldn’t have generated more buzz. Each one of these is worth its own essay but in the fast paced world of “news” three weeks from now no one will be focused on these so I’ll write a bit about each one here. Typically I prefer to write about people’s reactions to events. I’m going to deviate a bit and write my own impressions of these cases.

The 6-3 ruling on the ACA really shouldn’t have been a surprise. “Intent” is a major factor in conservative jurisprudence and the Supreme Court has five conservative justices (six really but no one likes to suggest Breyer is a conservative). As Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, the intent of Congress was to improve insurance coverage, not wreck the markets, so the “inartful” language in that section of the law that King v. Burwell was based on makes no sense in the wider context of the law. Exactly.





Justice Scalia, however, saw it different and said what could be clearer than the clear language of the text. Yet, in Washington, D.C., et al v. Heller, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, found an individual right to bear arms in the second amendment which reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The plain and simple reading of this notes the well regulated militia as the reason for the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Yet, Scalia’s opinion writes extensively about what the meanings of plain and simple terms meant “then” including a long discussion about rights not enumerated in the Constitution but that were already understood and then cited a raft of documents including English Common Law. Reading Scalia’s decision in Heller is one of the best examples of why “fundamentalism” is so wrong on its face. Yet, Justice Scalia seems less able to infer the intent of Congress from six years ago than he is the intent of the founders more than 200 years ago.





By upholding the use of statistical evidence of disparate impact in housing cases without the need to show discriminatory intent the Supreme Court allows us to hold our policies and our actions accountable even when our intentions are good. This is big because the Supreme Court in the early 1980s disallowed the same kind of analysis in employment discrimination cases.





Still, today, evidence of intent is necessary to prevail there. Perhaps time is ripe for a change in employment law, too. In any case, for those who point to “institutional discrimination” this is a big win because intent is not necessary when the practices or rules lead to discriminatory outcomes. Sometimes intent to do “good” is insufficient. We must look at outcomes of our practices. We are more residentially segregated today than we were in the 1950s. This causes all kinds of problems from inequality in schooling, to gerrymandered legislative districts, to an institutional barrier to wealth accumulation for minority peoples. Intent is subjective to determine, whereas outcomes are not.





The 5-4 ruling on marriage equality, no doubt, created the most furious responses. Suddenly the rainbow flag meme was everywhere.





The backlash began as well with such typically American extreme reactions as “the end of civilization was upon us.” This is similar to the response to Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage. The laws were defended eerily similar to how same-sex marriage has been justified: Religious grounds, a dubious claim to damaged children and a historical and factually inaccurate claims of the “natural order” and universal forms of marriage.





Does anyone really think that civilization has fallen apart since 1967? Yes, white supremacists do. Revisit Obergefell v. Hodges in 50 years and there will no doubt be other social issues that are front and center that threaten civilization as we know it having survived marriage equality; that is if climate change hasn’t ended civilization as we know it.

Deciding how much equality America can afford

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 14 June 2015


How much are we willing to pay for equal opportunity? Cultural values are ideas that are broadly held that people use to decide what is good, right, proper and just. As individuals, we typically do this as part of “common sense.” In public policy, we often find we need to balance competing or even conflicting values.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Individuals are faced with resolving competing values. For instance, family is a common value, as is hard work and material success. Yet, devotion to family can be challenged by demands of the workplace, and workplace success can be challenged by family obligations. Individuals typically find a balance that works for them, and different individuals will balance those competing values differently. Sometimes a promotion is turned down for family reasons. Public policy, however, does not generally permit each of us to have our own policy.

There is much discussion over the last few years about rising economic inequality in the United States. There is no question that economic inequality, as conventionally measured, is increasing; the effect of its rise is beginning to add up and is undermining structures that create equal opportunity, such as education, enrichment programs, access to tutoring, even “middle class values.” Without making measurement the subject of this essay, trust me when I say, if we examine wealth, the picture is even worse. Income, even today, is distributed far more equally than wealth.

Policies impact economic inequality. Progressive income taxes reduce it. The tax changes ushered in by President Reagan in the early 1980s, that reduced income tax progressivity, led scholars at the time to predict a rise in income inequality. The busting of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (a union) by President Reagan signaled a tilt in public policy against unions. Changes since then, at both the federal and most states levels, such as reducing income taxes, property tax caps, and so-called right-to-work laws all contribute to increasing income inequality.

Do Americans no longer value equal opportunity? I see no evidence of that. Many would argue that the rich and corporations have bought our politicians. While the rich have always had a disproportionate ability to influence politics, I think what has happened is a slow and until recently not-so-noticed tilt of the balance in favor of another core American value: Wealth creation or free enterprise.

Just as individuals can value equally their family and their work, in reality people try to balance them but it’s difficult. At different times individuals may tip the scales in work’s favor and family is neglected. At other times family demands may result in missed opportunities at work. For nearly 40 years America’s public policy has favored the value of wealth creation and free enterprise over equal opportunity. Just as some individuals over time spend increasing time at work and less with family, they only realize it when they don’t know their kids and have missed those milestone moments because of work.

The undermining of equal opportunity in the U.S. is finally so glaring that researchers can predict individual’s economic place based on the zip code they grew up in. When one’s origin is that predictive then the reality of equal opportunity is nothing more than a myth.

Progressive income taxes, higher taxes on capital gains, inheritance taxes, robust unions, social safety nets, especially Social Security, and public education among others all help create the reality of equal opportunity. Those things also reduce the creation and accumulation of private wealth; in short, they reduce the efficiency of the economy. Taxes transfer potential private wealth into the public sphere where it can be used to maintain the reality of equal opportunity.

There is no question that reducing taxes, especially on the rich, weakening unions, hammering away at all things public, especially education which is often the largest portion of state budgets, will increase the efficiency of the economy and the creation of private wealth but at a social cost of greater inequality. Virtually all Americans would agree that equal opportunity is valued and so is free enterprise and wealth creation. The challenge is in balancing the two.


Perhaps the 2016 election will provide a platform for just such a debate. Savvy listeners will hear it but don’t expect the candidates to admit that their favored policy positions have any downside whatsoever, any costs to either economic efficiency or to equal opportunity. Every voter will, in essence, be deciding how much equality America can afford.