April 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Did the bounty system work?
Even people with no interest in sports have heard about the strategy of Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. He offered his players a bounty for injuring opposing players – $1000 if a player was carried off the field, $1500 if the player didn’t return to the game that day.
On the audio released yesterday (listen here), you can hear Williams giving pep-talk instructions to to the defense just before the playoff game against the 49ers. He specifies the injuries he would particularly welcome – a blow to the chin for quarterback Alex Smith, a concussion for receiver Kyle Williams, and as for receiver Michael Crabtree, “He becomes human when we fuckin’ take out that outside ACL.”
Much of the reaction to this story is shock and horror – some of it real, no doubt, by people unaware of football’s backstage, and some of it affected. Among the players, there is anger and genuine surprise. (“One word WOW,” tweeted 49rs safety Reginald Smith.) Others were more sanguine, saying in effect, that football is a violent game where people get injured. Jets linebacker Bart Scott said that getting rid of the bounties wouldn’t change that.
But so far I have seen no data on whether the bounties worked. Did the Saints injure more players than did other NFL teams? Surely those numbers are available.
The only evidence I’ve heard is that the Saints had the highest number of roughing-the-passer penalties in the NFL. That’s probably because they blitz more. Blitzing is a high-risk strategy, and there’s some question as to whether it’s effective. In theory, blitzes should increase the defense’s chances of injuring the quarterback. But the Saints were below the NFL median in sacks.
None of that speaks directly to the question of injuries. The bounty system is a recent and distasteful example of “incentivizing” (a recent and distasteful coinage among economists). Has no sports economist or Freakonmist even counted up the injuries let alone run econometric statistics to see if these incentives worked?
The Jewish Vote, Abortion, and Status Politics
April 4, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
The “Jewish vote” came up on Fresh Air yesterday. The interviewee was Peter Beinart (for the audio and transcript go here), and most of the interview was about Israel, specifically his proposal that Americans boycott products from West Bank settlements.
Towards the end of the interview though, Beinart said that despite the controversy over his proposal, and despite politicians’ ringing statements of stout support for the Jewish state, Israel was not much of a factor in the Jewish vote. But if not Israel, then what?
Issues inflated with the air of status politics are important because they signal the relative status of different groups. These are the issues that usually get classified as “values” issues, a matter of morality. But the important question is “whose values, whose morality?” because the answer to that question is also the answer to the question, “Whose country is this anyway?”
My guess is that to American Jews, abortion looks like the flagship of conservative Christianity, with its assertion that America is a Christian country and should be run on principles of Christianity. Beinart is more circumspect. He frames the issue as “religious / secular” rather than “Christian / Jewish.”
(Previous posts on status politics are here and here.)
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* I haven’t checked the data, but Beinart sounded as though he’d done his homework on this one.
The PRRI survey makes clear that Jews are liberals, not conservatives. One minor factoid. One question asked how well each of several public figures “represents Jewish values.” Leading all others in the “not at all well” category was Eric Cantor with 35% saying he was a poor representative of Jewish values. The figure was significantly higher than Sarah Silverman’s 26%.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The “Jewish vote” came up on Fresh Air yesterday. The interviewee was Peter Beinart (for the audio and transcript go here), and most of the interview was about Israel, specifically his proposal that Americans boycott products from West Bank settlements.
Towards the end of the interview though, Beinart said that despite the controversy over his proposal, and despite politicians’ ringing statements of stout support for the Jewish state, Israel was not much of a factor in the Jewish vote. But if not Israel, then what?
The single biggest driver of the Jewish vote in America is actually abortion.*On the surface, this makes no sense. Does the Talmud or any of the commentaries tell us that abortion is a mitzvah? Does abortion directly affect the lives of many Jews – either as doctors or as patients? I doubt it. Instead, at least for American Jews, abortion is a matter of status politics. Its symbolism far outweighs its practical consequences.
Issues inflated with the air of status politics are important because they signal the relative status of different groups. These are the issues that usually get classified as “values” issues, a matter of morality. But the important question is “whose values, whose morality?” because the answer to that question is also the answer to the question, “Whose country is this anyway?”
My guess is that to American Jews, abortion looks like the flagship of conservative Christianity, with its assertion that America is a Christian country and should be run on principles of Christianity. Beinart is more circumspect. He frames the issue as “religious / secular” rather than “Christian / Jewish.”
American Jews are very strongly committed to an agenda of cultural tolerance, probably, in fact, because they're actually very secular. American Jews are much more secular than are American ChristiansMaybe so. Either way, it’s status politics. It’s about which group – its customs, its morality, its symbols – will be honored as dominant. So when politicians (invariably Christian politicians) rail against abortion, what Jews hear them saying is “This land is our land, this land’s not your land.”
(Previous posts on status politics are here and here.)
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* I haven’t checked the data, but Beinart sounded as though he’d done his homework on this one.
UPDATE: PRRI yesterday released a survey of 1,000 Jewish adults (pdf is here). The main issue, by a mile, for the 2012 election was the economy. Israel, as Beinart said, was a minor concern. But abortion ranked even lower.
Other issues that fall at the bottom of the priority list are national security (4%), Israel (4%), Iran (2%), the environment (1%), immigration (1%), same-sex marriage (1%), and abortion (1%).
Beinart was necessarily basing his statement on earlier surveys. Possibly, when the economy was not so clearly the big issue, the status politics issues were more important.
Handling the Truth
April 3, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
We can’t handle the truth. We want all the facts to fit with our picture of the world.
The “Mad Men” scripts (see last week’s post ) use words and constructions unknown to real 1966 ad men. These anachronisms sound “right” to us despite their historical inaccuracy. And historical facts may sound wrong.
The Times TV critic saw the “Mad Men” season opener and complained:
Bad scene, bad line. “It’s a terrible line that should have been red-penciled,” said the New York Magazine critic.” The only trouble is that it’s all taken directly from a 1966 news item in the New York Times.
Far from being disarmed by the facts, the critics stood their ground when informed of the historical accuracy. The Times critic still insisted that the scene was bad and that the line, a true quote, “just rings so false.”
The critics are right, of course. All the news that’s fit to print does not make for good drama. A scriptwriter or novelist has to select and shape the facts and edit the language. What fictional people do and say must not clash with character.
This preference for a coherent story, a perfect congruence of character and action, becomes a problem when we use it to filter reality and then think that this filtered reality is “the truth.” But that’s another story.
Posted by Jay Livingston
We can’t handle the truth. We want all the facts to fit with our picture of the world.
The “Mad Men” scripts (see last week’s post ) use words and constructions unknown to real 1966 ad men. These anachronisms sound “right” to us despite their historical inaccuracy. And historical facts may sound wrong.
The Times TV critic saw the “Mad Men” season opener and complained:
The themes of civil rights and equal opportunity thudded into view in a couple of unfortunately ham-handed scenes, one involving the scamps at Young & Rubicam dropping water bombs on picketers (“And they call us savages!” an indignant protester exclaimed) . . .
Bad scene, bad line. “It’s a terrible line that should have been red-penciled,” said the New York Magazine critic.” The only trouble is that it’s all taken directly from a 1966 news item in the New York Times.
(This is a screen grab. To see the full 1966 Times story – and if you saw
the episode of “Mad Men” you must read it – go here. )
Far from being disarmed by the facts, the critics stood their ground when informed of the historical accuracy. The Times critic still insisted that the scene was bad and that the line, a true quote, “just rings so false.”
The critics are right, of course. All the news that’s fit to print does not make for good drama. A scriptwriter or novelist has to select and shape the facts and edit the language. What fictional people do and say must not clash with character.
This preference for a coherent story, a perfect congruence of character and action, becomes a problem when we use it to filter reality and then think that this filtered reality is “the truth.” But that’s another story.
Following the Money
April 2, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the politics of wealth and taxes, the dominant emotion in the US seems to be righteous anger. The Occupy movement looks at the 1% and thinks they are getting too much money and paying too little in taxes. The Tea Partiers complain that the government is picking their pockets and giving too much to the poor, who are not paying enough in taxes.
Here are two graphs that might be relevant.
First, of the total increase in income in the US in 2010, who got how much?
This Piketty and Saez graph was included in an article by Steven Rattner at the New York Times website (here). It’s a little misleading because that $80 apiece increase for the 99% was not evenly distributed. I would imagine that in the lower 50% the increase was meager at best.
At the same time, have rising tides been lifting all boats? That depends on which country your boat is floating in.
The income of the median US earner hasn’t moved much in the last twenty years. That includes the economically sunny 1990s. In some other countries, everyone seems to be doing better. (This graphic, found here, comes from a report nearly a year ago. I discovered it today thanks to a link from Matt Yglesias at Slate.)
I would guess that the anger over income and taxes would be less pronounced if incomes had been rising. The signs from the 99% were often complained that they could not find jobs, at least not jobs that would allow them to make even a small dent in their student loans. What rankles them is not just that incomes at the top are soaring but that incomes for the middle have become insufficient. On the other side. It’s even possible that Republicans, had their incomes been rising steadily, might not be so resentful about tax-funded safety-net programs.
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the politics of wealth and taxes, the dominant emotion in the US seems to be righteous anger. The Occupy movement looks at the 1% and thinks they are getting too much money and paying too little in taxes. The Tea Partiers complain that the government is picking their pockets and giving too much to the poor, who are not paying enough in taxes.
Here are two graphs that might be relevant.
First, of the total increase in income in the US in 2010, who got how much?
(Click on the graph for a larger view.)
This Piketty and Saez graph was included in an article by Steven Rattner at the New York Times website (here). It’s a little misleading because that $80 apiece increase for the 99% was not evenly distributed. I would imagine that in the lower 50% the increase was meager at best.
At the same time, have rising tides been lifting all boats? That depends on which country your boat is floating in.
(Click on the graph for a larger view.)
The income of the median US earner hasn’t moved much in the last twenty years. That includes the economically sunny 1990s. In some other countries, everyone seems to be doing better. (This graphic, found here, comes from a report nearly a year ago. I discovered it today thanks to a link from Matt Yglesias at Slate.)
I would guess that the anger over income and taxes would be less pronounced if incomes had been rising. The signs from the 99% were often complained that they could not find jobs, at least not jobs that would allow them to make even a small dent in their student loans. What rankles them is not just that incomes at the top are soaring but that incomes for the middle have become insufficient. On the other side. It’s even possible that Republicans, had their incomes been rising steadily, might not be so resentful about tax-funded safety-net programs.
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