A Result of Assortative Mating

Psychologists in Great Britain have looked at the heritability of educational achievement - which is very high - and find that in addition to inherited intelligence (the largest contributor), there are several other inherited factors which influence scores on the school-leaver's exam, the GCSE. See the abstract at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As fewer bosses marry secretaries and more marry peer executives, as fewer doctors marry nurses and more marry other doctors, we will see an intensifying of the actual inequality of intellectual ability among the social classes. The result will be declining interclass mobility and something closer to the alphas, betas, deltas, etc. of A. Huxley's Brave New World crossed with G. Orwell's inner party, outer party, and proles.

This outcome will be the entirely unintended consequence of feminism - something I find ironic. Imagine a CSI two hundred years from now doing DNA analysis to determine a battered corpse's place in the social strata.

Weird Economic Science

Who would imagine parenting style would be influenced by economics? The answer: two economists who have done a study, reported by Vox, which finds that the degree of economic inequality in a nation influences its prevalent parenting style. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

The literatures identifies three parenting "styles" - authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive.

As the name suggests, the authoritarian style is one where parents demand obedience from their children and exercise strict control; this style is often associated with corporal punishment. Permissive parents, in contrast, follow a laissez-faire approach and let children make their own choices. The authoritative style is one where parents attempt to influence their children’s choices, but they do so by reasoning with them and by shaping their values.

The authors find in more economically equal nations, the permissive style is more common. In societies with a high degree of economic inequality, and a high return on education, permissiveness is uncommon. Interestingly, so is the authoritarian style, for the following reason:

From the economic perspective, the advantage of the authoritative approach is that the children, once successfully indoctrinated, no longer need to be monitored to do the right thing – they will implement the parent’s preferred choices on their own accord.

The crucial phase of education is now often the college or post-graduate level rather than elementary or secondary school. Once off to university, children are no longer under the direct control of their parents, and they will succeed only if the appropriate values (such as valuing hard work and academic success) have already been instilled in them.

Their findings lead them to the following predictions:

Given that the spread of higher education is unlikely to reverse, our theory predicts that authoritarian parenting will continue its current decline. (snip) Regarding permissive versus authoritative parenting, the evolution of the return to education is what matters. If the march towards higher inequality continues, the current era will mark the beginning of a sustained trend towards ever pushier parenting.

Sixteen Months and Counting ....

RealClearPolitics' average of polls finds the President's approval rating has sunk to 42%, it's been near that level for some time. A more interesting factoid is the following: the last time more people approved than disapproved of Obama's performance was on June 7, 2013, over sixteen months ago.

Barry O. was only five when Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me came out in 1966. All the same, I'd guess he's learning how being down month after month feels, and not enjoying the experience much.

Obama isn't accustomed to less-than-stellar outcomes. Woody Allen said 80% of success was showing up. For affirmative action hires it's closer to 100%, except in the Presidency as BO has learned to his discomfort.

Wisdom

A former stand-up comic turned columnist for Power Line blog who uses the nom de plume Ammo Grrrl (she likes target shooting), posts lessons taught her by a long and occasionally misspent life. I particularly like this one:

If you are over 35 and still whining about what your parents did or did not do, you need to get over it. With rare, mentally-disturbed exceptions, your parents did the best they could with the hand they were dealt. Grow up.

In the words of Smokey Robinson, "I second that emotion."

A Noonan Twofer

The new Peggy Noonan column for The Wall Street Journal is really two essays. The first says plainly that the government's response to Ebola is a series of half-measures designed primarily to make people feel something is being done, when actually no serious measures are being taken.

The second essay is a review of Leon Panetta's new book Worthy Fights which she finds crudely partisan in every way save for its criticism of Obama. Comparing it unfavorably to Robert Gates' book, she is unimpressed. See her conclusion:

Mr. Panetta is savvy, shrewd and quick to see where things are going. I suspect he’s trying to detach his entire party’s fortunes from Mr. Obama. Reading this book and considering its timing, you get the impression that’s the real worthy battle on his mind.

In other words, Panetta says it's okay for Democrats to distance themselves from loser Obama. My mental image is of Leon tossing former boss Barack under the Party's bus.

Doublespeak

Breitbart.com reports as follows:

Speaking at Cross Campus, a technology hub in the "Silicon Beach" region of Los Angeles, Obama said he will not wait for Republicans to pass amnesty legislation. (snip) Obama then said that if Republicans "were thinking long-term politically, it is suicide for them not to" pass comprehensive amnesty legislation.

Okay, sports fans, let's analyze that statement. You know his internal mantra is "no more GOP governments, ever." Therefore you'd think nothing would please loyal Democrat Obama more than a GOP suicide. And you'd be correct.

Of course, that is exactly what Obama is urging the GOP to do: commit suicide by supporting amnesty. It has the double barreled effect of (a) infuriating the GOP base, and (b) hugely increasing the Democrat-loyal Hispanic electorate.

I label that with the faux-Orwellian neologism "doublespeak," saying exactly what you do not mean.

UKIP Wins One

On Thursday, the Brits held what they call a "by-election." That means a special election in a parliamentary district to fill a vacancy that has occurred between general elections.

What makes this one memorable is that, for the first time ever, the United Kingdom Independence Party or UKIP won a seat in parliament. See a Reuters story for details.

UKIP is known for opposing UK membership in the European Union or EU. It also favors control of immigration, and to some degree occupies an analogous niche in UK politics to that occupied in French politics by the National Front. It is mostly thought to be a threat to the Conservatives.

Where Is Obama Unpopular?

Based on New York Times/YouGov polling reported on the Power Line blog, here is an honor roll of 7 red states in which fewer than 3 people in 10 approve of the job Obama is doing, listed alphabetically.

Alabama
Arkansas
Idaho
Oklahoma
Utah
West Virginia
Wyoming

I am proud to report that our home state of Wyoming reports the lowest average job approval score: 21%. Neighboring Idaho is second with 22%.

At the other end of the distribution, we see at least 5 out of 10 people in the following 5 states approving Obama's job performance:

Hawaii
Massachusetts
Maryland
New York
Vermont

His approval is highest in Maryland with 56%, Hawaii is second with 53%. Maryland is home to a great concentration of federal employees, and Hawaii is his home state - neither is a surprise.

North Korean Update

Five days ago COTTonLINE wrote about the strange absence of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from the public events at which he is normally present. That absence now stretches to about 5 weeks.

Today the Associated Press reports that Kim was conspicuously missing from an important event celebrating the founding by his grandfather of the ruling Workers Party.

It has been widely alleged that should Kim miss this annual event, the presumption of him experiencing serious difficulties would become much stronger. You may therefore feel free to ratchet up your enjoyment of various conspiracy theories.

Quote of the Day

Robert Kaplan of Stratfor, writing for RealClearWorld about potential instability in the futures of Russia and China:

The Chinese Communist Party is just the latest Chinese dynasty.

An historically valid analogy.

Understanding Failure

Have you wondered why the Iraqi Army, which the U.S. spent billions manning, equipping, and training, was such a washout? I have, and it isn't because they're Arabs - heck, the ISIS guys who beat them are Arabs too.

The American Conservative has a good article by Kelley Vlahos on this subject. She spends most of her time commenting on their corruption, which is cultural and likely shared with the opposition. I suspect the following is more like it, Vlahos quotes the opinions of Maj. Donald Vandergriff (Ret.), who has done contract work training Afghan security forces:

He said the U.S. made the same mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq that it did in Vietnam over 40 years ago. “I’ve said all along, we keep trying to make these forces in our own image,” he said, and “they don’t take ownership because the system was forced upon them.”

The technology, the logistics, the modern air power, the intelligence—were and are all foreign to them. U.S. trainers come and go on short rotations, and there is no consistency, no ability to learn the foreign culture and understand the gaps. “Again we have to say, what kind of force would these people buy into? What kind of military can they afford and accept? Instead we force our own grand, narcissistic vision.”

Decades ago we saw the people of Guam blindly following a model they'd learned from the U.S. Navy even though the Navy no longer ran things and it no longer made sense to do it the bureaucratic Navy way. You can be darn sure the ISIS forces are doing what comes naturally to locals, not going through the motions of trying to imitate U.S. troops without truly understanding why.

The local idea of military tactics, and organization, probably has more in common with an Apache war party than with a U.S. combat unit - very tribal.

Happy Polling Numbers

If poll results that look very good for Republicans in the election less than a month from now would cheer you up, I have a link for you. Guy Benson posts at Hot Air some very upbeat polling from CBS News, Reuters-Ipsos, and Fox News. Let's hope these findings are not outliers.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza comes up with three charts which suggest that, if this election is  a mirror image of 2006, Dems are in deep doodoo. In 2006 the unpopularity of GOP President Bush pulled down a number of Republican members of Congress. Cillizza suggests an unpopular President Obama may pull down a like number of Democrat members of Congress. It's an outcome devoutly to be desired.

Matt Drudge Strikes Again

Nice graphics, courtesy of the Drudge Report website. So many cartoonists, and others, have had fun with that circular sunrise logo.

A History of Mental Illness

The Australian Broadcasting Company has a relatively good retrospective on changing attitudes toward, and treatments for, mental illness. The most telling quote is about the changes in the 1960s:

Deinstitutionalisation became the catchcry and across the world there were campaigns to replace asylums with smaller day hospitals and halfway houses which would allow patients to work, live normal lives and be better integrated into society.

What really happened between 1960 and 1980 was that the asylums dumped their inmates onto the streets of cities. Today in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain many of the severely mentally ill end up in prison.

And many more sleep in doorways or cardboard boxes and defecate in alleys, coarsening the public arena. The destruction of mental hospitals, spurred on by Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was one of our least admirable acts.

Deinstitutionalization sprang from an unholy alliance between two groups. Liberals who believed blithe non-conformity was what mental hospitals suppressed and conservatives who saw a way to cut large chunks of government spending. When next you see a hollow-eyed wreck pushing a stolen shopping cart filled with grimy possessions, remember why the mentally ill are left to their own pathetic devices.

A Misleading Statistic

Business Insider reports China's economy is now larger than that of the U.S. Assume their data is correct, should we worry? Not anytime soon.

The Chinese economy sure as blazes should be larger. China has over four times as many citizens as the U.S. - to have the same standard of living China would need an economy four times as big as ours.

You should interpret the data as showing China having a standard of living just slightly better than one quarter of the standard of living in America. No need for us to start feeling impoverished.

Willie Brown: Only Blacks Remain Loyal

The New York Times quotes one-time San Francisco mayor and former Speaker of the CA Assembly Willie Brown (scroll down) on where President Obama should campaign during the coming month:

I think he really should go to the black base. I don’t think there’s any other place I would trust he wouldn’t create an adverse reaction rather than a positive reaction.

Brown is one of the shrewdest politicians CA ever produced, albeit essentially amoral.

Unemployment Higher Than Reported

Writing in The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell tries to answer the question: why haven't I had a raise in several years? After considering (and rejecting) several reasons, she finally lands on the right one:

The main reason that wages haven’t risen, though, is that the job market is not nearly as “tight” as the headline unemployment rate makes it appear. Nine million workers are currently counted as unemployed. But another 6 million are sitting on the sidelines, wanting to work yet not officially tallied among the unemployed because they’re not actively applying for jobs.

Labor-force participation rates remain shockingly low, even among Americans in their prime working-age years. This shadow surplus of workers takes the pressure off employers to raise wages, whatever their protestations about labor shortages.

There is no shortage of working age people without jobs.  So long as this surplus persists, don't expect much wage growth.

It isn't clear how many "discouraged workers" even want to rejoin the workforce. Many on disability will choose to continue in poorly paid "early retirement" over the hassles of better paid employment. Obviously, the greater the income differential between remaining on disability and potential wages, the more who will choose to seek work.

Weird Evolutionary Science

See an article from The National Interest which examines why human societies are characterized by warfare. Guess what? Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom - chimpanzees - are brutal, organized killers. You may enjoy the conclusion:

The true source of the tragedy of the human condition is that we evolved in conditions of intense resource competition. Like Russell Crowe organizing the outnumbered combatants in Gladiator, natural selection favored individuals who cooperated to avoid being killed—and, if necessary, to kill. Regrettably, Einstein's concise question, “Why war?”, is answered by nature equally succinctly: because we are human.

No dispassionate student of human history could reach any other conclusion. Humans are the true killer ape.

Economic Problems: Currently Unfixable

John Steele Gordon, writing in Commentary, about problems facing the U.S. economy. Gordon quotes economist Peter Morici about what is wrong:

1) Poorly enforced trade agreements that allow China to manipulate its currency and export more goods to the United States, costing U.S. jobs.
2) Counterproductive energy policies that reduce domestic production, and therefore jobs, and cause more oil to be imported.
3) Burdensome regulations and taxation, such as restrictive licensing requirements and the highest corporate tax in the developed world.
4) Crony capitalism that reduces competition in the private sector in exchange for political contributions.
5) Disincentives to work, such as ever-expanding entitlements.

Gordon says there is good news, and bad news.

The good news is that, unlike the economic problems faced by many countries, all of these problems are amenable to reform.

The bad news is that reforming the status quo, which always has determined defenders, requires strong presidential leadership and a Congress capable of acting in the national interest, not just in its members’ interests. Right now, of course, we have neither.

The Bell Curve - 20 Years Later

Real;ClearPolicy's statistician - Robert VerBruggen - takes a retrospective look back at The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray, twenty years after its highly controversial publication. A telling quote:

Someone running a program to help the poor might want to know (from the National Longitudinal Survey) that 45 percent of women who've received welfare and 62 percent of men interviewed behind bars are in the bottom 20 percent of the IQ distribution.

It is tempting to conclude these women and men simply aren't bright enough to make good life decisions. Alternatively one could surmise that each group has craftily found a way to be provided three hots and a cot.