Seeing Through the Clouds

January 31, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Tag clouds offer content analysis at a glance. Here, for example, is the cloud of Monday’s State of the Union speech.

The biggest tags are no surprise: America, Iraq, people, terrorists. Nor are hope and future, which fit with the often-noted American cultural traits of optimism and future orientation (besides, it might have been difficult for Bush to look backward and review the list of his accomplishments).

Two tags of about the same size as these got my interest: trust and world. Here, you have to look at the contexts, and you have to look at what does not appear in those contexts, to understand what they mean in the Bush perspective.

Trust is usually a reciprocal sentiment, and Bush might have stressed the trust that people must have in their government, particularly in time of war. Or he might have said something about his administration having kept the trust of the American people (or would that have been too much of a stretch even for Bush?).

Instead, the speech was all about the government trusting the people. In fact, lurking not very deep in the subtext is the idea that the government itself is not to be trusted, certainly to be trusted with money (all those earmarks). This trust-the-people theme is, of course, just a flattering way of saying that the government is not going to do much for the people. Instead, the Bush administration will trust us to take care of ourselves as best we can.

The Bush view of “the world” is similarly unreconstructed. American exceptionalism reigns. No “taking our place among the nations of the world” or “working together for a better world.” Instead, Bush looks at America and the world as though he were a fan at a football game: We’re number one, and they’re out to get us. Cooperation with other countries is not an option, unless, of course, they want to co-operate by doing what we tell them.

“We showed the world the power and resilience of American self-government.” Take that, world.

I haven’t seen any polls yet measuring popular response to the speech. But I wonder if this stuff still sells.

When the Average Isn't Average

January 29, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Here’s George Bush in the State of the Union last night urging Congress to make his tax cuts permanent.

Unless the Congress acts, most of the tax relief we have delivered over the past 7 years will be taken away. Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800.

You can’t blame a guy for trying, and you can’t blame the general public for not appreciating why the “average” tax cut is not the same as the tax cut for the average person. But income and income tax distributions are so skewed that using the average is misleading. When Bill Gates walks into the room, the average income goes way up, but everyone in the room except Gates is now below average.

The Tax Policy Center has computed the tax savings for each income quintile. For the middle income quintile, those tax cuts meant a savings of, on average, $814. In other words, the median savings was less than half the mean that Bush mentioned.

The big winners in the tax cuts are those at the top. The savings for the top fifth averaged $7452. For the top 0.5%, the tax cuts have meant an annual savings of over $100,000.

Lolita or Zane?

January 27, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Books That Make You Dumb posts a chart showing the SAT scores of books.


Well, not the books themselves, and this isn't the entire chart. Scores are based on the average SAT scores of campuses where these books are listed on the Facebook campus network statistics. Interesting that books classified as erotica (pink on the chart) anchor both ends of the SAT scale. You can find the full chart and a better description of the method here.

You can also go from there to the list of schools and see what's popular on your campus. Harry Potter cuts across all types of schools. So do Grey's Anatomy (though for some reason it doesn't make the top ten at art schools like Cal Arts and RISD), Fight Club, Garden State, and Coldplay.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for the link to Books That Make You Dumb.

The Moving Edge

January 26, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Every so often I meet Claude the brand consultant for morning coffee at Zabar’s café right next to the main Zabar’s store. If café suggests a Parisian-style venue, think again. The place is small and purely functional. Fluorescent lights and formica counters. (The pictures here are from New York Magazine.) Last week, once again the audio system was piping out the Beethoven Violin Concerto –Zabar’s has twelve different kinds of lox but apparently only one CD – and it prompted Claude to inaugurate his own blog with a post about brands and background music. I guess you’re not supposed to be aware of the music. In some stores, mostly those for the younger crowd, the music is so loud you can’t help but notice. But usually the music provides an innocuous subliminal background. Like in the Macy’s in Sarasota, where I was returning some stuff a couple of days after Christmas.

I listened, actually listened, for a minute, and I recognized what was coming out of the speakers: Horace Silver’s 1953 recording of “Opus de Funk.” When that Blue Note album (with Art Blakey on drums) came out, it was for hip folks only (or were they still “hep” in the early 50s?*). I couldn’t imagine Macy’s shoppers in the era of Patti Page and Mantovani tolerating hard bop piano, even at a very low volume. But in 2007, nobody noticed.

Things change. The concertgoers of one era react with incomprehension or revulsion to avante-garde music, but those same sounds – dissonant, polyrhythmic, minimalist, or whatever – become, after a generation or two, the stuff of barely noticed movie soundtracks. John Lennon dreaded that when he got old, he might need money and wind up having to play Las Vegas, like some latter day version of Wayne Newton or Andy Williams. Hard to Imagine.

But what was once edgy becomes mainstream – so far from the edge that you can play it for South Florida shoppers at three in the afternoon and not ruffle a feather. It was no accident either. Yesterday, I called Macy’s here in New York about my bill, and what was the music playing while I was on hold? Horace Silver’s trio recording of “Que Pasa.” How long will it be till it’s Mötley Crüe?

*Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip,” contains the line which should certainly be in Bartlett’s some day – “When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.”