Once more, Mr. Friedman

Oh, why do I bother?

As for America, we’ve thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subprime mortgages and construction work) and less muscle-building (education, skill-building and innovation). It’s put us in a deep hole, and the only way to dig out now is a new, hybrid politics that mixes spending cuts, tax increases, tax reform and investments in infrastructure, education, research and production. But that mix is not the agenda of either party. Either our two parties find a way to collaborate in the center around this new hybrid politics, or a third party is going to emerge — or we’re stuck and the pain will just get worse.

Two quick points: First, we're not in a deep hole because we live in a post-industrial society. We're in a deep hole because of a massive recession combined with a decade of tax cuts, wars, and un-financed expansions of Medicare. Spending increases plus declining revenues equals big hole. It's really not rocket science.

Second, yeah, it's too bad that we can't get one of our parties to champion an agenda of spending cuts, tax increases, and investment in infrastructure and education. Oh, wait, that's exactly what the Democrats have been pushing. But yeah, hybrids, the kids all love the hybrids.

On the benefits of marriage

According to Amanda Hess, recent research suggests that marriage is a better deal for men than for women. But there's a part of this I don't get:

Married men make more money and get more promotions than single guys. They live longer, have less heart disease, drink less, smoke less weed, and experience less stress. Meanwhile, married women have less fulfilling sex lives and less free time than their husbands. They also have smaller paychecks. (They do get to keep smoking the same amount of weed). These factors help explain why women are less into marriage than men are. And they may also contribute to the gendered risk of gaining weight after getting hitched.

Bluntly, marriage "is more beneficial for men than for women," write Ohio State University sociologists Dmitry Tumin and Zhenchao Qian. "Men after marriage do not gain [significant] weight because they enjoy a healthy lifestyle and receive stronger emotional support"—in other words, they've got the time, energy, and help to maintain a steady weight, thanks to the sacrifices of their spouses. Across the aisle, though, "the unsettling effect of a marriage for women may be strong enough to cause large weight gain." [emphasis added]

The explanations in the first paragraph above don't really line up with those in the second. Married men might be healthier than unmarried men simply because their behavior is being monitored. Guys who are comfortable having a beer or two and smoking a joint or two while watching "Braveheart" and eating Pretzel Combos alone in their apartment might be somewhat less inclined to do so if a wife is watching. And if you drink less and smoke less weed, you're probably going to weigh less and generally be healthier. But then comes the claim that married men have the time and energy to maintain a steady weight, time that unmarried men allegedly don't have. I'm not sure about this -- is marriage really a time-saver? Do divorced men end up working out less?

To make a democracy, not so fast on the democratic stuff

Reporting from Libya, Marc Herman notes some interesting research by political scientists Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig on how dictatorships successfully transition to democracies:

In 2009, working with data collected since 2007, the two claimed to have found a connection that could predict a successful transition between dictatorship and democracy. It was, simply put, to have a post-Revolution legislative body in place before holding national elections to put a single leader in power. The Vaclav Havels and Nelson Mandelas of the world, it turns out, are in the minority.

This strikes me as a rich area for political scientists to make a real contribution. Kudos to Marc for talking to some of us about it.

The depravity of mistaking correlation for causation

Via Matt Yglesias, here's David French at National Review Online speaking about poverty:

It is simply a fact that our social problems are increasingly connected to the depravity of the poor. If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor. At the same time, poverty is the handmaiden of illegitimacy, divorce, ignorance, and addiction. As we have poured money into welfare, we’ve done nothing to address the behaviors that lead to poverty while doing all we can to make that poverty more comfortable and sustainable.

French here is committing the sadly common sin of assuming a correlation indicates a causation, and he's doing so in a way that conveniently reinforces his worldview. It is certainly true that people who complete an education and stay married are less likely to be poor. But it is not obvious that the former leads to the latter. Note that the second sentence quoted above:

If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor.

can easily be reversed to say the following:

If an American has money, they will complete their education, get married, stay married, and find meaningful employment.

while still staying faithful to the correlation.

After all, these key things -- education, a successful marriage, and a job -- are a lot easier to come by if you're not poor. What's more, they're a lot easier to come by if your parents weren't poor. But just being born into a poor home means a person is going to have a much harder time coming by these key things that keep him or her out of poverty. That doesn't make the person depraved. It makes the person a victim of circumstances.

Some of that can be remedied, of course, or at least mitigated, through job training programs, a better public education system, and other things. But those generally fall under the category of government, and French doesn't want to cede a space for that. It's far easier to say that the poor are poor because there's something wrong with them.

Bad spin can't save a bad poll

Last week in Wisconsin, Democratic state senator Jim Holperin survived a recall attempt, winning the race by a healthy 55-45 margin. Automated pollster We Ask America didn't do such a great job forecasting the race, though, showing Holperin only holding on 51-49. Now, to be fair, it's really hard to forecast these off-year, off-season recall elections -- you never know who's going to show up (although PPP was pretty close). But We Ask America's COO Gregg Durham decided to defend his organization anyway:

It's so hard to tell when you do one poll. One thing you can't judge is what the turnout will be. In this case, unions were heavily involved in turning out Democratic votes. Now, I will stand by the numbers -- this may be what the general electorate wanted, but not what the people who turned out wanted.

A pollster should know that those who turn out to vote are the general electorate. I'm not sure what group We Ask America surveyed, but it wasn't the general electorate.

Thought for the day

If Kaddafi's ouster leads to plummeting oil prices, and that leads to an improved American economy, Obama will owe his election to a group of Muslim militants, which is what the right has been alleging for years anyway.

Bite sized nuggets

• Great points from Rebecca Traister and Matt Yglesias on whether President Hillary Clinton would have been a more faithful leader than Obama on issues of importance to liberals. Just another quick point to add: she triangulated on flag burning.
• Nice post from Juan Cole on the end of the Kaddafi regime. Be sure to follow him and Marc Herman, who is en route to Tripoli as I write this.
• Rick Perry is already disavowing his book, which has been on stands less than a year. Meanwhile, he may not like climate scientists, but he loves political scientists.
• Romney is leading in endorsements among Republican automatic delegates. But very few have endorsed anyone yet.
• Who were the Tea Partiers before there was a Tea Party?
• Okay, Barber Conable probably is more directly responsible for the craft beer revolution than Jimmy Carter was, but can we throw poor Jimmy a bone once in a while?
• If presidents are so weak, how did Obama single-handedly destroy Rajon Rondo's jump shot?
• I saw a moose in Rocky Mountain National Park yesterday. Here's a photo (yes I used a zoom lens):