The European Union: A Disaster for Equality, Etc.

A lot of progressives seem to be afflicted with a weird form of ADHD. Try as they might, they simply can’t talk about poverty for more than 30 seconds without lapsing off into talking about inequality. Progressives claim to have a special care for the poor, but what really gets them animated is talking about the rich, and in particular how much more the rich have than anyone else (including their very not poor selves). Inequality, though, is not the same thing as poverty. A society where everyone is starving to death is highly egalitarian.

Should we care about equality as such? A lot of progressives say that we should. Here, for example, is a bit from Tony Judt’s posthumously published Ill Fares the Land (helpfully provided by my former co-blogger Morning’s Minion):

“Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reason why infant mortality, life expectancy, criminality, the prison population, mental illness, unemployment, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, illegal drug use, economic insecurity, personal indebtedness and anxiety are so much more marked in the US and the UK than they are in continental Europe.

The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is. Thus Sweden, or Finland, two of the world’s wealthiest countries by per capital income or GDP, have a very narrow gap separating their richest from their poorest citizens–and they consistently lead the world in indices of measurable wellbeing. Conversely, the United States, despite its huge aggregate wealth, always comes low on such measures.

Of course, if inequality leads to crime, mental illness, and so forth, then you might wonder: why the crime rate is higher in Finland than the U.S.,? Why is the suicide rate higher in Finland and Sweden than the U.S.? Etc.

I suspect that deep down progressives do not care about inequality.

God vs. The State

Religious belief and allegiance to the state can coexist comfortably, or even overlap entirely (as in Iran). But in many instances across history, the two have been rivals, even antagonists.

A sense of political stability provides comforting reassurance that our world is orderly and controlled. So does belief in an all-powerful deity. This puts the two in a seesaw relationship: When one goes up, the other goes down.

That’s the contention of a group of researchers led by Duke University psychologist Aaron Kay. Writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they provide evidence of this dynamic and suggest it can be found in Eastern as well as Western cultures.

79 participants read one of two articles ostensibly published in the journal Science. One stated that science increasingly believes in the existence of a God or God-like entity who is “continually making changes to alter the course of cosmic history.” The other explained that while God may exist, the laws of physics mean he could not interfere in man’s affairs.
Afterward, the participants answered a series of questions, including eight that measured their support for the current national government.

“When participants were led to believe that scientists have concluded that God is unlikely to intervene in the world’s affairs, participants showed higher levels of government support,” they report. “When God was depicted as a source of control and order, participants less ardently defended the legitimacy of their government.”

More.

The Plight of Christians in the West Bank

Here is a bit from recent reportage by British journalist Peter Hitchens:

[In the West Bank] I saw the outline of a society, slowly forming amid the wreckage, in which a decent person might live, work, raise children and attempt to live a good life. But I also saw and heard distressing things.

One – which I feel all of us should be aware of – is the plight of Christian Arabs under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. More than once I heard them say: ‘Life was better for us under Israeli rule.’

One young man, lamenting the refusal of the Muslim-dominated courts to help him in a property dispute with squatters, burst out: ‘We are so alone! All of us Christians feel so lonely in this country.’

This conversation took place about a mile from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where tourists are given the impression that the Christian religion is respected. Not really.

Is Libertarianism Individualistic?

Note: This is an old post of mine, long since deleted. I’m reposting it in response to this comment by Kyle Cupp.

Is Libertarianism individualistic? No doubt for many the answer to this question would seem to be “um, yeah, obviously.” But like most ‘isms’ the terms libertarianism and individualism can be used in several different senses. If by libertarianism one means something like “the views of Ayn Rand” and by individualism one means something like “the views of Ayn Rand” then the answer will be um, yeah, obviously. For purposes of this post, however, I’ll define libertarianism as the belief that government ought ideally to be limited to the core functions of the so-called “nightwatchman state,” e.g. policing, national defense, the courts, etc. As for individualism, I’ll just quote Wikipedia:

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one’s choices, whether by society, or any other group or institution.

Certainly there are many libertarians in the above sense who are also individualists. Be that as it may, there is, I think, no necessary connection between libertarianism and individualism so defined. Libertarianism, as I’ve defined it, is concerned only with placing limits on the state. It says nothing about the institutions of civil society, be it social norms, voluntary associations, the Church, or marriage and the family. Individualism, by contrast, does not draw a sharp distinction between limitations on individual freedom imposed by civil society and those imposed by the state. Nor is libertarianism a “moral stance” in the sense of the Wikipedia definition of individualism. Libertarianism offers a set of policy prescriptions which can be held on a variety of different grounds. One might subscribe to libertarianism because one is a committed individualist, or one might advocate it on purely practical grounds. It’s true that libertarians don’t tend to talk about civil society much (though there are exceptions). This may, in fact, partly explain its as yet limited appeal. But at the risk of repeating myself, allow me to repeat myself: there is nothing inherent in libertarianism that requires one to downplay civil society, or to view the limitations on individual action that it sometimes involves with suspicion.

Is Europe Destroying The Middle Class?

As a follow up to Darwin’s post, I think it’s important to note that what the Financial Times calls the Great Stagnation is not just limited to the United States. Growth slowed throughout the developed world after 1973, and in fact slowed more in Europe than it has in America.

Here, for example, is a bit of an article from before the current crisis about wage stagnation and the decline of the middle class in Europe:

The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.

Potentially more disturbing — especially to the political and social order — are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

Europe Vs. America

Brad DeLong recently compared the economic performance of communist countries with their capitalist neighbors and found, surprise surprise, that capitalism works a lot better than communism:

DeLong comments:

Eschewing markets robs you of between 80% and 90% of your potential economic productivity.

DeLong’s argument is persuasive, but it also seems a bit dated. Outside of a few English departments pretty much everyone recognizes that communism was a flop. Heck, even Fidel Castro admits that it doesn’t work. Today the pressing question is not America vs. the Soviet Union but America vs. the European Union, i.e. the relatively free market system of the United States vs. the relatively more social democratic system of many European countries.

Here is some recent OCED data on median income by country, from the mid 2000S

Some People Are Too Stupid To Be Atheists

If you haven’t already, expect to hear a lot about the recent Pew survey on the religious knowledge of Americans in the coming days:

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

The European Model in Action

As I mentioned, I’m currently reading Thomas Geoghegan’s Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? Geoghegan’s day job is as a labor lawyer, so naturally there’s a good deal of discussion of German employment law practices and how they differ from America’s. At one point, for example, Geoghegan tries to explain the American system of employment at will to a group of German students:

I’d thought that, in the first class, I’d explain how, in the U.S., people could be fired for any reason at any time, or for no reason at all. “Here’s an example. I work for you for twenty-nine years, one year from retiring. One day I wear a yellow tie to work. You say, ‘I don’t like your tie. You’re fired.’ In the U.S., you can do that.”

The students are, understandably, incredulous, to the point that G is forced to backtrack a bit:

“Sure, we fire people for no reason, or for the color of their ties – yes, we do. But we don’t do it every day.”

It’s true that people don’t get fired every day for wearing a yellow tie. In fact, I’ve never heard of someone getting fired for wearing a yellow tie. The closest thing I can think of to the yellow tie story was a story from the 1990s in which a guy at a supermarket was fired for wearing a particular team jersey the day of the Superbowl (the owner was apparently a fan of the other team). That caused a decent sized stink; big enough that if something like the yellow tie incident were to occur, big as this country is, I think I would hear about it.

Do Americans Work Too Much?

I’m in the middle of reading Thomas Geoghegan’s Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life. The book is part travelogue, part prosecutors brief against American-style capitalism and in favor of European-style social democracy. It’s a very enjoyable read. Many of Geoghegan’s arguments are backwards or loopy (his claim, for example, that the reason Americans have plastic surgery is to avoid being laid off gets more points for creativity than for persuasiveness). But Geoghegan is a good writer and comes across as a really likable guy, and many of the point he makes warrant at least further reflection.

Geoghegan’s main argument in favor of Europe has to do with work/life balance. Yes, Americans tend to be richer than Europeans. But they also tend to work a lot less.:

# 1 Australia: 1,814 hours
# 2 Japan: 1,801 hours
# 3 United States: 1,792 hours
# 4 Canada: 1,718 hours
# 5 United Kingdom: 1,673 hours
# 6 Italy: 1,591 hours
# 7 Sweden: 1,564 hours
# 8 France: 1,453 hours
# 9 Norway: 1,337 hours

That’s not the whole story, of course.*

Taxes, American Style

A while back Harvard economist Greg Mankiw caused a bit of a kerfufle when he noted that the amount of tax revenues raised by the United States per capita wasn’t much different than the amount raised in Europe. Tax rates in the United States are lower than in Europe, but per capita income is also higher in America, and the two facts seem to largely cancel each other out. Here, for example, are the per capita tax revenues for a handful of developed countries:

France .461 x 33,744 = 15,556
Germany .406 x 34,219 = 13,893
UK .390 x 35,165 = 13,714
US .282 x 46,443 = 13,097
Canada .334 x 38,290 = 12,789
Italy .426 x 29,290 = 12,478
Spain .373 x 29,527 = 11,014

Now granted, European countries tend to spend their tax revenues differently than we do in the U.S. For example, we spend more on defense, whereas they spend more on welfare. However, to some extent Europe’s apparently larger welfare state is an optical illusion. It looks bigger than it is, because the rest of the economy is so small.

Christine O’Donnell on Tolkien and Women

In a recent column, Maureen Dowd heaps scorn on Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell for her admiration of famed Catholic writer J.R.R. Tolkien. That is according to the Christian Science Monitor. I confess that I am unable to comprehend most of what Dowd writes, so that when I read the column in question all I see are a series of impressionistic comments that have little apparent logical relation to each other.

Anyway, if you’re interested in Ms. O’Donnell’s thoughts on Tolkien and feminism, here is a C-Span recording of her talk on the subject (and here is a Catholic Exchange article on the same subject).

Space Alien Followers vs. Pope Benedict (No, Seriously)

A prophet, who now goes by the name “Rael,” once encountered space aliens who told him the secret of life. Later, his followers, “the Raelians,” set up an advocacy group to expose pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church. But the group’s work was frustrated when Pope Benedict XVI (a.k.a. Joe Ratzinger) covered up the crimes of Catholic priests, in an effort to discredit the Raelians and suppress their message.

If I were writing fiction, this would be about the point where Tom Hanks holds a black light up to a window in Washington National Cathedral to reveal the precise location of Area 51. But before he can tell anybody, Al Pacino (heretofore unobtrusively sitting in a pew, drinking a glass of orange juice) makes Hanks an offer he can’t refuse.

But this isn’t fiction; this is the real world. In the real world, there is only one way to handle this kind of massive conspiracy, cover-up, and intrigue: a lawsuit.

And so it is that today, on the thirteenth of September in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, that Pope Benedict XVI finds himself sued in the High Court of Justice: Queen’s Bench Division, for tortious interference with business…

Full story here.

The Ground Zero Mosque and Religious Freedom

Here’s another guest post by David Jones, a former Muslim and Iraq veteran.

———————

On the anniversary of 9-11 I feel it’s time to have a serious dialogue about Islam and religious freedom in the U.S. It is my hope that my Catholic brethren and anyone else who reads this article will finds my position a reasonable one to hold.

If anyone on this planet understands the concerns of those who are against the building the Ground Zero Mosque, I do. This includes not building it near Ground Zero out of respect for all those that lost their lives there. I am absolutely convinced that most Americans don’t have a clue about Islam though. Many are completely ignorant as to what it really teaches and the threat it poses to both Europe and the U.S. Islam by its nature is an ideology which is inherently political. In many regards it is a closed system, which is not open to reality. It does not organically develop as Catholicism has done throughout its history. Islam considers itself to be a completed (and total) system to be imposed on the rest of the non-Muslim world by any and all means necessary, both through peaceful and non-peaceful means. Therefore it struggles with this concept of religious freedom. If your system or ideology is closed, how can you really be free? Many good Muslims are attempting to answer this question though and many others related to it. We should be open to dialogue with them. We should offer our friendship.

How the Drug War Leads to Actual War

As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, I am not a huge fan of the recently passed Arizona immigration law, SB 1070. The Arizona law has mainly been justified as a means of combating violent drug gangs from Mexico. I frankly don’t see how the law helps in this regard, but no one should mistake my opposition to SB 1070 for sanguinity on the topic of Mexican drug and gang-related violence. Drug related violence is up sharply in several regions of Mexico over the last few years, and there is always the danger that violence could spill over into the United States.

Why is drug violence up so sharply in Mexico? Ironically, the cause seems to be an upsurge in attempts by the Mexican government to suppress the drug trade. Since his election in 2006, Mexican President Calderon has made going after the drug cartels one of his top priorities. The cartels have responded in kind, murdering anyone they perceive as a threat.

The idea that anti-drug efforts are causing an increasing drug-related violence can be hard to stomach. After all, the law enforcement officials fighting against the cartels are heroes, whereas the cartels themselves are made up of profoundly evil people. Suggesting that the increased violence is the result of anti-drug policies may thus seem morally perverse. My claim, however, is not moral but causal. The drug cartels have existed in Mexico for a long time. Yet it was only when the government stepped up anti-drug efforts that the violence has increased so dramatically.

Is Economics Universal?

I’ve been reading with interest some of the materials David Jones and Chris Blosser posted the other day about the debates between Tom Woods and Tom Storck over economics and Catholic Social Thought. From what I can gather, one of the major areas of dispute has to do with economics status as a science, and specifically with the question of whether economic principles have any universal validity.

For Woods, there are certain economic principles (such as, say, the law of supply and demand) which are valid at all times and in all places, though of course how such principles are applied may vary (for instance, the law of supply and demand would still apply in a society with price controls; it’s just that what would be predicted by the law – shortages, black markets, etc. – would be different than where prices are set by the market). Storck, by contrast, seems to think that economic laws are historically contingent, and cites the German historical school of economics, among others, in support of his view.

I have to admit that I am more in sympathy with Woods here (big shocker). In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argued against moral relativism by asking the reader to “[t]hink of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.” In a similar vein, it’s hard for me to picture a society in which increases in the supply of a good or service make it more expensive. Perhaps, though, this is just the result of my own ideological blinders. Sure, economic principles appear to work in modern capitalist economies, but would they still hold in radically different circumstances?

Tu Quoque Checking the Kochtopus

Socrates famously said that the one thing he knew was that he knew nothing. As it turns out, though, he was atypical. In general, people who are ignorant or incompetent tend to consider themselves very knowledgeable or competent, more so even than people who actually are highly knowledgeable or competent. Apparently this is because the skills you need to do something well are the same as the ones you need to recognize whether you are doing it well.

I have a strong suspicion that something similar is true when it comes to political bias and partisanship. Every once and a while you will meet someone who is hyper-partisan and biased, but who claims just to be an impartial rational observer of events. And you wonder: is he serious? Surely on some level he must recognize his own propensities, given that they are so glaringly obvious to everyone else. But no. From his perspective, it just so happens that all his political opponents are wicked and stupid. After all, didn’t he once criticize people on his own side for being too much like the other side? How can he be biased if he is critical of both sides? Etc.

When I hear criticism of a political figure whose politics I disagree with I try to do what I call a “tu quoque check.” Would I find this criticism persuasive if it was about someone I agreed with? The problem is that the brain is very crafty, and can come up with all sorts of pseudo-distinctions for how what the other guy did was totally okay when your guy did it.

Labor Day Reflections, A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Labor unions are typically justified as a means of raising the wages of workers. According to this view, workers individually lack the bargaining power necessary to negotiate a decent wage, but by banding together they can increase their bargaining power and gain a higher wage at the expense of Capital.

The perspective of neoclassical economics on this issue is a little different. Neoclassical economists wouldn’t deny that the above story could be true for individual cases, at least in the short term. What they would deny, however, is that unions can raise the real wages of workers generally or over the long term. This is because unions ultimately benefit their members not at the expense of Capital but at the expense of other workers. It’s true that when a union shop wins a wage increase above the market rate this will initially be paid by employers. But according to the neoclassical picture this increase will ultimately be offset either by higher prices or by lower employment (as paying the increased wages leads marginal firms to either go out of business, cut back their workforce, etc.) Since each union benefits its own members at the expense of everyone else, unionizing all workers would result not in higher wages for workers generally, but would lead to the individual gains of each worker being more than offset by the higher prices and lower growth caused by the unionization of everyone else.

Which perspective is right? A few months ago the blogger/economist Tino from SuperEconomy compared the share of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements with Labor’s share of GDP. If the pro-union perspective is correct, and unions lead to higher wages at the expense of Capital, then labor ought to have a higher share of income in countries with more unionization. If the neoclassical picture is correct, by contrast, and unions benefit some workers at the expense of others, then the correlation between unionization and labor’s share of income ought to be small if not nonexistent.

Why Morning’s Minion Should Favor Extending All of the Bush Tax Cuts

My former co-blogger Morning’s Minion recently attacked the idea of extending the so-called Bush tax cuts to individuals earning more than $250,000 a year:

It would cost $680 billion dollars over 10 year. This is far greater than the cost of extending unemployment benefits to those out of work, something the Republicans opposed vigorously (the unemployed do not fill their coffers). It gets worse. Nearly all of the benefit goes to the richest 1 percent, those making more than $500,000 a year. Even more than this, 55 percent of the benefit goes to a mere 120,000 people – the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all taxpayers. Doing the math, that comes to an average $3 million tax reduction to those lucky enough to sit at the helm of the income distribution. It is indeed the preferential option for the super rich. This would be troublesome at the best of times, but in the current economic climate when so many struggle to get by, it’s simply immoral.

I can see where Minion is coming from on this, but it seems to me that his position here (aside from being contrary to the views of most economists) is contrary to other things he’s written on the desirability of fiscal stimulus.

Indians Commemorate Mother Teresa Centenary

Hundreds of nuns, bishops and volunteers attended a Mass on Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa, the selfless nun who dedicated her life to serving the sick and poor in India.

School children, tourists and volunteers, some carrying bunches of flowers or candles, also crowded Mother Teresa’s grave in the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns she founded in 1950 in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.

Special feasts to feed the poor, a festival of films on her life and work, the launch of a new train called the Mother Express, and interfaith prayer meetings were among events planned to mark the yearlong anniversary.

More.

Monks Challenge Casket Cartel

Can the government restrict economic liberty just to enrich a group of politically favored insiders?

That’s the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) and its client, Saint Joseph Abbey of Saint Benedict, La., have taken to federal court in challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s outrageous requirement that the monks of the Abbey must be licensed as funeral directors and convert their monastery into a licensed funeral home in order to sell their handmade wooden caskets.

“We are not a wealthy monastery, and we want to sell our plain wooden caskets to pay for food, health care, and the education of our monks,” said IJ client Abbot Justin Brown.

Under Louisiana law, it is a crime for anyone but a licensed funeral director to sell “funeral merchandise,” which includes caskets. To sell caskets legally, the monks would have to abandon their calling for one full year to apprentice at a licensed funeral home, and convert their monastery into a “funeral establishment” by, among other things, installing equipment for embalming. The State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is now going after Saint Joseph Abbey for the “sin” of selling caskets without a government-issued license.

More. (HT: Popehat)

A Nation of Immigrants

Recently there has been a fair amount of discussion over whether the U.S. should continue to grant “birthright citizenship” to the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has long been held to require the granting of such citizenship, and last month Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a Constitutional Amendment to change that fact.

The issue has led to a few topsy-turvy political conclusions. Here, for example is Mark Krikorian (author of The New Case Against Immigration: Legal and Illegal) arguing that ending birthright citizenship would be a bad idea:

I don’t like illegals having U.S.-citizen kids any more than anyone else, but there’s no evidence suggesting that this “drop and leave” stuff is true — anything’s possible, I suppose, but it’s just an assertion at this point. My own sense is that most illegal alien women who have kids here (accounting for nearly 10 percent of all children born in the U.S. each year) didn’t come for that purpose; they came for jobs or to join relatives, and one thing led to another, birds-and-bees style, and they had kids. There are no doubt some people who dash across the border illegally to have kids, but they just can’t amount to a large share of the problem. Nor does the problem of “birth tourism” require a change in the Constitution — we just need to permit (and require) our consular officers to reject visa applications from pregnant women, inviting them to re-apply once they’ve given birth in their own countries.

And here is open-borders advocate Will Wilkinson arguing that ending birthright citizenship could paradoxically make Americans more open to immigrants:

Joseph Galambos and Intellectual Property

A few years back I read a fascinating book on the history of libertarianism in America called Radicals for Capitalism. Of the many colorful characters in the book, one of my favorites was Joseph Galambos, an astrophysicist-turned-libertarian-guru who took a very stringent view of intellectual property rights. Galambos’ students were forbidden even to mention or paraphrase his ideas with anyone who hadn’t paid for his lecture course (which may help explain why you’ve never heard of him before). One libertarian in the book gives the following humorous account of how a conversation with a Galambosian might go:

“There are five legitimate functions of government,” said the Galambosian.
“No kidding. What are they?”
“I am not at liberty to say. The theory was originated by Andy Galambos and it is his primary property.”
“If the rest of us were free to discuss his ideas,” said the Galambosian, “there is no question in my mind that Galambosianism would spread throughout the whole world like wildfire.”

Wikipedia reports that:

Since his father’s name was Joseph Andrew Galambos, Galambos changed his name from Joseph Andrew Galambos, Jr., to Andrew Joseph Galambos, so that he wouldn’t infringe on his father’s property right in the name Joseph Andrew Galambos.

Galambos also dropped a nickel into a fund box every time he said the word “Liberty,” as a royalty to the descendants of Thomas Paine, who invented the term.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Galambos was kind of nuts. Yet his views are little more than the logical workings out of the idea that intellectual property is a matter of moral right.

You Cannot Eat Rights

There was a fascinating article in yesterday’s New York Times about the current controversy in India over how best to deal with the country’s hunger problem (HT: Matt Yglesias):

Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight . . . And they are hardly alone: India’s eight poorest states have more people in poverty — an estimated 421 million — than Africa’s 26 poorest nations, one study recently reported.

Sonia Gandhi [leader of the ruling Congress party], is pushing to create a constitutional right to food and expand the existing entitlement so that every Indian family would qualify for a monthly 77-pound bag of grain, sugar and kerosene. Such entitlements have helped the Congress Party win votes, especially in rural areas.

To Ms. Gandhi and many left-leaning social allies, making a food a legal right would give people like Mr. Bhuria a tool to demand benefits that rightfully belong to them. Many economists and market advocates within the Congress Party agree that the poor need better tools to receive their benefits but believe existing delivering system needs to be dismantled, not expanded; they argue that handing out vouchers equivalent to the bag of grain would liberate the poor from an unwieldy government apparatus and let them buy what they please, where they please.

Working for Women’s Equality

Take the wages of every male employed in the U.S. and divide by the number of men employed. Now do the same for females in the U.S. Perform these calculations, and what you will find is that the average female wage in the United States is about 78% of the average male wage. This doesn’t mean, of course, that a woman will get paid seventy eight cent for every dollar paid to a man for the same job, though it’s often phrased that way in popular discourse. If it were really true that an employer could get a woman to do the same job at the same level for 78% of the wages, some entrepreneur would long ago have started hiring only women and cleaned his competitors’ clocks. Rather, the difference is largely due to different career choices made by men as opposed to women. Men, for example, tend to work more in risky professions, and tend to work longer hours, whereas women are more likely to cease being employed for extended periods of time in order to raise or have kids (for details, see Warren Farrell’s book Why Men Earn More).

For decades liberal denial of this fact has led to some remarkably silly policy proposals, such as that the government should determine how much every job is *really* worth and force employers to pay accordingly.  An article by David Leonhardt this week in the New York Times, however, indicates that progressives may be ever so slowly to accept reality on the point. Writes Leonhardt:

A recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago found that in the early years after graduating, men and women had “nearly identical labor incomes and weekly hours worked.” Men and women also paid a similar career price for taking off or working part time. Women, however, were vastly more likely to do so.

As a result, 15 years after graduation, the men were making about 75 percent more than the women. The study — done by Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz — did find one subgroup of women whose careers resembled those of men: women who had no children and never took time off.