RIGHT NAME, WRONG TERMINAL DEGREE. Steve Verdon discovers the National Center for Science Education's Project Steve.

Creationists draw up these lists to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a "theory in crisis." Most members of the public lack sufficient contact with the scientific community to know that this claim is totally unfounded. NCSE has been exhorted by its members to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of evolution, but although we easily could have done so, we have resisted such pressure. We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!

Project Steve mocks this practice with a bit of humor, and because "Steves" are only about 1% of scientists, it incidentally makes the point that tens of thousands of scientists support evolution. And it honors the late Stephen Jay Gould, NCSE supporter and friend.

We'd like to think that after Project Steve, we'll have seen the last of bogus "scientists doubting evolution" lists, but it's probably too much to ask. We do hope that at least when such lists are proposed, reporters and other citizens will ask, "but how many Steves are on your list!?"

The criteria for membership are here. Although the Center is not interested in Economics Ph.D.s, the project merits mention here for two substantive reasons. (The nonsubstantive reason comes at the end of the post.) First, the exposure to experimental science most youngsters receive is pretty slim, which contributes to the lack of contact with the "scientific community." Second, the project illustrates the dangers inherent in government-provided schooling, as school boards are subject to capture by scientific illiterates or by mushy-headed multiculturalists. The problem, dear readers, is with the government provision of the schools themselves, rather than with the means to attend the schools.

As far as the lists themselves go, we require strengthening of philosophical reasoning as well. A list perpetuates the ad popularum fallacy (hey, the operator of that site oughta join Project Steve too.)

DO I HEAR AN ECHO? Remember yesterday's sermon?

A "secure retirement" is only as secure as the productivity of the current crop of workers.

Matt at Tapped is beginning to understand.

Is it true that faster economic growth can't make Social Security solvent? No. Now it is true that faster growth leads to higher wages, and that higher wages lead to higher benefits along with higher revenue. But faster growth (driven by higher productivity and resulting in higher wages) increases revenue by more than it increases benefits. It does so because a retiree's benefits only get adjusted by the wage index once, when you first start drawing checks. After that initial check, future increases are pegged to the slower-growing Consumer Price Index.

At any rate, the math is complicated, but seeing that the Ponnuru/Longman line is wrong isn't. Just ask yourself why the projected doomsday year for the Social Security trust fund has moved 13 years into the future over the past seven years. It wasn't the magic of mandatory stock ownership (the Ponnuru plan) or a sharp increase in the birth rate (Longman's favored solution) -- it was the end of the 1973-1995 productivity slump and a return to the higher historical pattern. The persistence of a weak labor market over the past several years in the context of strong productivity growth (manifested in the statistics by labor's declining share of national income) suggests that the economy could actually be growing significantly faster in real terms than it is now, especially if we avoid the sort of fiscal meltdown that could be precipitated by the $2 trillion borrowing binge implicit in
privatization plans.

The next challenge: get Mr Yglesias to grasp the next point from the sermon.

The Social Security tax drives a wedge between productivity and reward, which reduces economic growth. Because the bonds currently representing the Trust Fund's "surplus" will be refinanced out of expected tax revenues, the status quo means reliance on that lower rate of economic growth -- or on refinancing the bonds at the Fed, which means your defined benefit of $1 is an inflated $1.

We have agreement that the tax base reflects the gains from trade in a growing economy. That's the beginning of wisdom, young apprentice.

The editorial board at the Washington Post (via Pike Speak) indirectly recognizes that connection.

If these cuts sound harsh, that's partly because the current system makes
promises that aren't affordable. The practice of wage indexing that the
administration appears keen to scrap is one source of this excessive generosity.

Nathan Newman suggests that there is more than one way to address that revenue deficiency.

So since we're talking about expanding the base for social security, why shouldn't non-wage income be taxed to help fund the system? And to help out Medicare by assessing that portion of the wage tax as well on investment income.

His post lays out a case for making federal taxes as a whole proportional, or perhaps taking a greater share of higher incomes. But in doing so, he's illustrated a law of conservation at work that ought give pause to anyone who asserts a "defined benefit" pension plan is preferable. In order to preserve the same level of benefits (or, perhaps, some more conservatively indexed benefits) he is proposing to redefine the contributions, either by redefining those components of income subject to tax, or by rewriting the tax code such that Social Security becomes simply another on-budget item (which is what refinancing the trust fund as government bonds after 2009 really is.) The benefit stays as promised. The investment individual taxpayers make to secure that benefit rises. The return on their investment falls. Isn't that the argument the privatizers are making, which is resonating with younger workers?

A REMINDER. Captain Ed's World Relief Day is Wednesday, 12 January.

CARNIVAL CALL. This week's Carnival of the Capitalists calls at Odyssey of the Mind.

THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF "MERIT GOODS." The Onion lets it out.

A study released Monday by the American Public Transportation Association reveals that 98 percent of Americans support the use of mass transit by others.

It's supposed to be satire, but there is something to this.

Anaheim, CA, resident Lance Holland, who drives 80 miles a day to his job in downtown Los Angeles, was among the proponents of public transit.

"Expanding mass transit isn't just a good idea, it's a necessity," Holland said. "My drive to work is unbelievable. I spend more than two hours stuck in 12 lanes of traffic. It's about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road."

(Hat tip: The Econoclast.)

HERE COME THE RECRIMINATIONS. Defeat may be an orphan, but (as expected) somebody has to be responsible. Paul at The Electric Commentary has a list of things that went wrong, and an invitation to join in the lamentations. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Bob McGinn suggests the recriminations, and the reevaluations, will go on for some time.

Suffice to say that the Minnesota Vikings’ 31-17 victory over the Packers in an NFC wild-card game should force club President Bob Harlan to hold accountable just about everything and everybody in the organization.

Coach Mike Sherman has won a ton of regular-season games but hasn’t even reached the NFC Championship Game in five years. His team failed even to compete Sunday, just as it didn’t against St. Louis in 2001 and against Atlanta in 2002. Last year, Sherman blew it himself in Philadelphia by not going for it on a fateful late fourth and 1.

The defense as sloppily coordinated by Bob Slowik was a dysfunctional mess all season long, including Sunday. Players have begun openly questioning his schemes, which they apparently do not understand and aren’t executing.

Quarterback Brett Favre, the face of the Packers if not the National Football League, was embarrassingly bad for the third time in four elimination games. His passer rating of 55.4 against the Vikings followed a 53.5 against the Rams, a 54.4 against the Falcons and an 82.4 against the Eagles in a game that effectively ended on Favre’s woefully overthrown interception.

Tom Silverstein is somewhat harsher.

If there was ever a death knell for the status of first-year defensive coordinator Bob Slowik, it rang with the 31 points the Packers allowed for the third consecutive game against the Vikings. The Packers did not improve one iota in the three meetings, allowing the same number of points, failing to secure a turnover and looking as inept tackling as they did carrying out assignments.

Under Slowik, the Packers dropped from 17th in the NFL in total defense to 25th and on Sunday they looked every bit worthy of their ranking. It wasn’t that they couldn’t compete physically with the Vikings, who have one of the best offenses in the league, it was that they couldn’t function as a team.

Should make for an interesting off-season.

PRESERVED AS IF IN AMBER. Harold Meyerson reaches back forty years to offer a defense of Social Security.

Above all, what changed the lives of America's senior citizens were the significant increases in Social Security benefits enacted in the 1960s and '70s, and the indexing of those benefits to average wage growth. But since the Bush administration is reportedly soon to propose ending that indexing, and replacing it with a different formula that would greatly reduce benefits, it's worth taking a moment to look back at senior poverty as it existed in the year of John F. Kennedy's election as president.

Mr Meyerson perpetuates a logical error: there is less poverty among pensioners today than there was forty years ago, and Social Security is the cause.

Today, however, the United States is governed by a president who is affronted by the very idea of a successful government program. According to a story in yesterday's Post, President Bush wants to change the Social Security indexing formula in a way that will reduce monthly payments by 32.5 percent by 2052 and 45.9 percent by 2075. Today a retiree receives a Social Security check that equals 42 percent of the average worker's wage; if Bush's plan is enacted, that check will shrink to just 20 percent of that wage.

Better watch the political spouting, Mr Meyerson. In the absence of any action, that check will disappear, or perhaps be paid off in inflated currency. And that "successful government program" might have achieved some of those results by stealing the future from younger workers.

Perhaps there is yet another answer: there is more childhood poverty today because Social Security and Medicare have reduced economic growth compared to what it would have been with a different tax regime. Martin Feldstein has worked on this topic for years. There is also a paper by Alan J. Auerbach, Jagadeesh Gokhale, and Laurence J. Kotlikoff called "Generational Accounting: A Meaningful Way to Evaluate Fiscal Policy" (requires J-STOR privileges) in the Winter 1994 Journal of Economic Perspectives that illustrates the extent to which the current crop of elders are stealing from future generations.

Mr Meyerson would rather score more polemical points.

In 1980, 39 percent of American workers had defined-benefit pension plans; today just 21 percent do, as employers have shunted their employees into 401(k) investment plans. If Bush gets his way, both the government's retirement plan and employers' will be supplanted by plans based on stock performance. If Bush gets his way, his chief domestic achievement will be to have turned "secure retirement" into an oxymoron.

No. A "secure retirement" is only as secure as the productivity of the current crop of workers. The Social Security tax drives a wedge between productivity and reward, which reduces economic growth. Because the bonds currently representing the Trust Fund's "surplus" will be refinanced out of expected tax revenues, the status quo means reliance on that lower rate of economic growth -- or on refinancing the bonds at the Fed, which means your defined benefit of $1 is an inflated $1.

Arnold Kling has some useful observations.

If benefit growth is not slowed, then the taxes required to both pay for Social Security and provide subsidies to low-wage workers's savings plans will be too onerous. Regardless of how private accounts are implemented, we need a "plan B" policy to slow the growth of benefits, using either price indexing or adjustments to the retirement age.That would be true even in the absence of private accounts.

How "defined" is a benefit if Congress can at any time redefine the retirement age?

Mr Kling also offers useful advice to policy wonks. Stop lecturing us about your good intentions.

[The transition to private accounts] would cut the regressive Social Security tax, shifting the burden of paying current benefits to other taxes that are more likely to fall on the wealthy. Thus, the consequence of privatization would be quite progressive, even though [Professor Paul] Krugman assumes that the motives of the Bush Administration do not favor the working class. In my view, this demonstrates the importance for economists of focusing on consequences rather than on motives.

Hear! Hear!

Villainous Company has also spent some time over the weekend following the Social Security debates and has a collection of gems worth your perusal.

THE POINT OF THEORY IS TO DEVELOP REFUTABLE IMPLICATIONS.

Relax, humanities types, everybody knows your "theory" has none. This post is about real theory. I start with Constrained Vision's smackdown of a Jodie Allen column criticizing economics as "common sense made complicated." That smackdown concludes with a link to an Agoraphilia post with some rigorous modeling of a coordination failure problem. I'm not sure there will be rigorous empirical testing of the hypotheses that appear in the post, but perhaps I underestimate the current crop of economists.

Alex at Marginal Revolution links to a more encouraging development. David Warsh attended the just-concluded economics meetings, in Philadelphia (did they sanitize the city after the MLA left?)

Work was presented on all kinds of practical topics. For example: cars, gas and pollution policies; downtown parking and traffic congestion; kidney exchange; private funding in china's education system; patent examiners impact on enforcement; rural and urban poverty in Africa; the sources of racial differences in health care in the United States; the relationship between wealth and democracy; the U.S. gender pay gap; the growing population of postdoctoral students in U.S. universities; the question of who receives IPO allocations and why -- all of them buttressed by careful empirical work.

The conference also featured work of redeeming social value.

The centerpiece of the Philadelphia meetings was a call by a leading applied economist, Martin Feldstein of Harvard University, for an ambitious program of forced savings to replace a series of government social insurance programs -- unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare -- that he said had been shown to have deleterious effects.

The state of the art has improved since Professor Feldstein began this research. (He had to publish extensive corrections of his first paper after somebody discovered a glitch in his estimating program.)

Econometric theory is like an exquisitely balanced French recipe, spelling out precisely with how many turn to mix the sauce, how many carats of spice to add, and for how many milliseconds to bake the mixture at 474 degrees of temperature. But when the statistical cook turns to raw materials, he finds that hearts of cactus fruit are unavailable, so he substitutes chunks of cantaloupe; where the recipe calls for vermicelli, he uses shredded wheat; and he substitutes green garment dye for curry; ping-pong ball for turtles' eggs; and, for Chalifougnac 1883, a can of turpentine.

Things have changed since then. Data have been improved, particularly microeconomic data. Theory is more subtle. Mainly sophisticate number-crunching software has made it possible to implement ambiguity-reducing procedures that would have been unthinkable before. The improved precision is real.

This is an encouraging development. Some days I wonder whether I can do neither theory nor empirics well; other days, I give one or both a shot nonetheless. But one story from years ago will set the quote in context. I one day telephoned an eminent theoretical econometrician, who was a bit surprised that anyone would actually attempt to use his rather challenging looking specification test on observed variables. I did, and published that paper.

NOW THEY ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND. Virginia Postrel comments on a USA Today article that discovers people opting out of the 24/7 treadmill. The article itself might be introduced as a Fourth Turning Alert(TM).

Nobody knows why the change is happening, but there are several possible causes, Galinsky says. "What I hear all the time from young men is that they want to be different than their fathers, who often worked long hours. They want to be more involved in their children's lives."

Many young workers grew up in an era of rising divorce rates and corporate layoffs. "They saw the 'rewards' parents could get for work loyalty," Galinsky says. Gen X'ers and Y'ers also saw stressed-out boomer parents multitasking, Galinsky says. And fears of terrorism may have increased the value of comforting families to young Americans, she says.

There are still incentives at work.

Flexibility at work is a prized benefit for young working moms, according to another recent survey by Galinsky's institute. On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 most valued), employed mothers gave flexibility a 9.2 and advancement 5.5.

That's not to say working mothers are quitting in droves to go home. Even if they wanted to, most can't afford it. "The idea that mothers work for pin money should have died a long time ago," says Stanford University economist Myra Strober.

More precisely, the death of that idea contributes to the higher labor force participation of women, with the Say Aggregation Principle at work. The existence of no-fault divorce induces additional labor-force participation by married women, for reasons of insurance independent of any reason to help pay a higher price for a house that comes bundled with a better school district.

Ms Postrel notes something else at work.

If you're a highly skilled, highly educated professional, you can make quite a good living these days without working terribly long hours or putting your work first. (You can, of course, make more if you work obsessively. But even the most rationalistic economist believes people maximize utility, not income.) And, contrary to widespread belief in places like LA, Washington, and New York, in most of the United States, a family can live a comfortable middle-class life on middle-class pay, in many cases on a single salary. You won't have every luxury, but you'll have more than your parents.

Sounds like a backward-bending supply curve of labor to me. Regular readers knew about the fallacy of longer hours equating more productivity and about income and substitution effects long ago.

REINVENTING THE WELFARE ECONOMICS PARADIGM? Elizabeth at Left2Right suggests it is time to discard ancient classifications of belief systems.

Here's another legacy of the Cold War that should be discarded: the convention of classifying the systems of economic organization on a continuous spectrum from left to right, with communism on the far left, then socialism, then the so-called "mixed" economies of Western Europe and North America, and, on the right, the laissez-faire capitalist minimal state, and on the far right, anarcho-capitalism. We should know this spectrum is in trouble when we recollect that when fascism was still considered a serious alternative, or threat, it was represented as the far-right position.

What you mean, "we?" Fascism travelled in Germany under a much more accurate name, "national sozialistische," and I recall Keynsian professors in the early 1970s describing the German economic recovery of the 1930s as the correct amount, if not best applied, of fiscal stimulus. But perhaps I quibble too much. Let's go here.

Now that communism is thankfully dead, along with such lamentable economic ideas as centralized economic planning, state ownership of major industries, and comprehensive wage and price controls, which were tried by many "mixed" economies as well as communist regimes, we should start reflecting on the economy we have with a clearer eye. The key features of the economy that amount to departures from laissez-faire are:

1. State provision of public goods, such as roads, public health programs, and schools.
2. Centralized banking.
3. Regulation of the environment, securities markets, food and drugs,auto safety, etc.
4. Social insurance, and, to a much smaller extent, "welfare."
5. Laws enabling labor unions (weak in the U.S., but much stronger in Europe).

We still have barriers to trade, to be sure, but the long-run trends here are definitely in the direction of reduction, even in the stubborn area of archaic agricultural subsidies, which should certainly be eliminated. (Here right and left ought to enjoy real common ground. The (libertarian) right hates them because they involve departures from free-market principles. Some parts of the left (e.g., NGO's such as Oxfam), including myself, hate them because they impoverish poor countries that could improve their economies if they were free to export their agricultural products, textiles, and cheap manufactures to rich countries without barriers. Alas, neither element of left or right is numerically dominant in domestic U.S. and European political institutions. But the WTO may force the hands of the U.S. and Europe anyway: chalk one up in favor of sovereignty-compromising global institutions.)

That sounds pretty much like the Welfare Economics Paradigm with market "failures" warranting government "correctives." (It also anticipates the outline of my public policy course; fortune favors the prepared.) Whether or not one wants to get away from the "mixed economy" meme as Professor Anderson suggests, there is much to commend her post.

My point is rather that these five should be seen as developments internal to the dynamics of democratic capitalism itself, rather than borrowings from fundamentally alien economic systems. So it makes no sense to call economies that have them "mixed," as opposed to advanced variants of democratic capitalism. Public provision of infrastructure and education, and sponsorship of science research, has long been a great engine of capitalist development. Even if socialism and communism had never existed, it would have been necessary to invent centralized banking to moderate the effects of capitalism's business cycles. (By contrast, socialists and communists had always hoped to eliminate business cycles through centralized planning.) Regulation of private sector actions to reduce pollution, ensure public safety, etc. was brought to capitalism by popular demand. (By contrast, communism never tried to repair its catastrophic environmental policies and its workplace safety record is disastrous, nor was environmentalism ever much of a socialist issue until capitalist economies embraced it.) Ditto for social insurance and independent labor unions, neither of which were part of the imaginary communist utopia, nor happy in the dreadful communist reality (recall the wretched state of health care in ex-communist Europe, and Solidarity in Poland). Socialists and progressive liberals can take the historical credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) for some of these five.

Precisely the point of the upcoming course. Government actions have the potential to address some outcomes from some kinds of markets. Whether those policies work properly, or achieve allocative efficiency, or some kind of equity, or might be done more effectively by other means, remains an open question.

NOTICE OF SUSPENSION. Bill at Atlantic Blog is standing down until February. His reason for doing so is very good. Stay tuned.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Joanne Jacobs:

Designing a merit pay system that's accepted as fair is quite difficult.

Tradeoffs are everywhere.

NOTHING TO LOSE. The Minnesota Vikings were getting this sort of press (via Wizbang) going into this afternoon's playoff game in Green Bay.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune took a trip to a local sports shop this week to find that jerseys of the Minnesota Wild hockey team - which isn't even playing this season - are outselling Viking jerseys.

Now that the Vikings are in the playoffs - losing two straight games to back their way in - the cold reality of statistics suggests that they won't be there long.

Not only has no 8-8 team ever won a playoff game since the NFL went to a 16-game season in 1978, the Vikings haven't won one in four years. In their last playoff game, they were on the wrong end of a 41-0 loss to the Giants in the 2001 NFC championship game.

Worse yet, a team from the cold can't play in the cold - or anywhere where there's no roof over their heads. The Vikings are 2-18 in their last 20 outdoor games, and it doesn't get any more outdoor than January at Lambeau Field.

Yes, the Packers have a leaky secondary that Daunte Culpepper and Nate Burleson can exploit, perhaps even Moss if he shows up. But the Packers are 12-1 in playoff games at Lambeau and Brett Favre always seems to play well against the Vikings.

Emotionally, it's a blowout. The Packers won nine of their last 11 games, are playing before the home fans and have the magic of Lambeau in their favor.

Pregame commentary from Milwaukee was more measured.

When the Vikings come in today, [first-year defensive coordinator Bob] Slowik’s unit is going to have to do better than it did in the previous two meetings - allowing 31 points in the first and 24 in the second - or else there will be enormous pressure on the Packers offense. Somehow, the defense has to pick up its play.

“The biggest thing is, are we getting better, have we gotten better, can we get better tomorrow in practice and be better against the Vikings,” Slowik said.

Minnesota got its 31 points again, exploiting four interceptions. The Packers finished with 17. Expect more recriminations and second-guessing in Green Bay.

NO CRUSHING OF DISSENT AT SOUTHERN UTAH. Voluntary Xchange has the latest developments on the firing, or not, of a political scientist at Southern Utah, who was denied tenure by the book, as this letter notes.

WHAT DOES NOT KILL ME MAKES ME STRONGER. The Quote of the Day comes from Discoshaman:

An intelligent conservative in America has had his beliefs tested by fire. And he knows the opposing system intimately, rather than having it translated to him through an echo chamber.

The qualifying statement is also noteworthy.

No faction holds intellectual honesty and curiousity as an exclusive preserve,
and plenty of liberals have taken the time to study conservatism.

A 225 PAGE INSTRUCTION MANUAL AND 3104 PARTS. Stephen at VodkaPundit provides an impressive display of model-blogging. The use of empty pop cans to provide scale in the photos helpful to people viewing a project that is not 1/48 actual size.

I was under the impression that British assembly instructions were detailed, but there is nothing in the stack of 1/43.5 projects with that large a manual.

POSSIBLE SOURCE OF COMPANY MAIL? New (Sub)urbanism looks at policy problems of interest to residents of Greater DeKalb.

BETTERMENT REPORT. A Suggestion Box has been installed at Cold Spring Shops.

Provocative give-and-take is permissible, as is curmudgeonliness. Brevity is encouraged.

The use of profanity is prohibited.

IS 13-12 TOO CHRISTIAN TO CELEBRATE? Bear with me, there is method in this.

Mungowitz End questions the use of public moneys to pay for creative arts.

The Soviet Union had public funding for the arts, and (to be fair) their performance arts, of existing works, were nonpareil. Russian ballet and dance companies were among the best in the world, ticket prices were low, and there seemed to be a genuine success for public funding, especially in the larger cities.

But there were some problems with the picture. First, the costs were enormous. Because it was impossible (or at least dangerous) to question spending priorities, there was no problem as long as the totalitarian regime persisted. But with democracy has come a lot of questions about whether this is best use of funds.

Second, public funding in the former USSR did not create good new art. The new art in the Soviet Union was awful! It seems to me there are three kinds of art: Great art (which is great), popular art (some of which is great, and some of which is only good), and politically acceptable art (which is awful).

True enough. Soviet ballet did a great job with works commissioned by tsarist princes. It is that politically acceptable art that I am addressing. Here's an example from the Stalin era, recommended by King at SCSU Scholars.

With the Building of Dirigibles, We Increase the Might of the Soviet Union, 1931.

(I cannot think about the Diversity Boondoggle without images of gasbags coming to mind.)

King's post notes the Stalinesque qualities of the sensitivity trainers' efforts on his campus. At Northern Illinois, the food court area of the student center-cum-bus station displays a number of the posters created for the annual "Unity in Diversity" efforts. One year's winner had the slogan "Unity in Diversity: Celebrating the Differences that Make Us One." Hence the title of this post. Presumably 2-1 is non-controversial, as might be 2,250-2249, and a countable set of others.

WHEN MEN WERE MEN AND NOT AFRAID TO NOTE IT. Some advice from Locomotive Catechism about hanging valve gear.

Q. Where should the point of connection between the eccentric rod and the link and the link motion be?

A. As near to the center line of motion of the main rod as this correction for rod angularities will permit.

Q. With what requirement is this often coupled?

A. Excessive eccentric throw.

Q. What is to be done in such a case?

A. Compromise.

Trade-offs everywhere.

I do not intend to post a review of this Catechism, although it should not be difficult for me to post fifty reviews of varying length in the upcoming year, given the reading I do. Do note this dedication.

TO

Theodore N. Ely,

Superintendent of Motive Power, Pennsylvania Railroad

IN APPRECIATION OF HIS

ENGINEERING AND EXECUTIVE ABILITY

AND HIS

COURTESY AND MANLY QUALITIES.

I'd like to see anything that muscular in a contemporary book.

SOCIAL SCLEROSIS.

A recent Economist editorial raises the possibility that upward mobility in the United States isn't what it used to be.

Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

Perhaps it is the Economist's writer who is examining a tiny sliver of society. There is little difference in lifetime earnings of graduates of the less famous universities compared with similarly-capable individuals with more nameworthy degrees. That's not where the meritocracy comes unglued.

America's engines of upward mobility are no longer working as effectively as they once were. The most obvious example lies in the education system. Upward mobility is increasingly determined by education. The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor's degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed.

The education system is increasingly stratified by social class, and poor children have a double disadvantage. They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries (school finances are largely determined by local property taxes). And they have to deal with the legacy of what Michael Barone, a conservative commentator, has labelled “soft America”. Soft America is allergic to introducing accountability and measurement in education, particularly if it takes the form of merit pay for successful teachers or rewards for outstanding pupils. Dumbed-down schools are particularly harmful to poor children, who are unlikely to be able to compensate for them at home.

Villainous Company (via Robert at Signifying Nothing) suggests there is another omitted variable.

Nor, when they cite the supposed decline in social mobility since the 1970's, does the Economist once mention the flood of illegal immigration that has dramatically impacted America in the past three decades. One would think this factor might, perhaps, be germane.

I believe it is, but don't have the numbers to hand at the moment. William at Truck and Barter offers additional criticism.

Andrew Sullivan simply asks, "Meritocracy in Trouble?" I will repeat an observation from last year: it is difficult to take seriously any lamentations about social stratification from opinion magazines with a strong propensity to hire graduates from the same twenty or thirty universities.

I'D LIKE A KIFLI WITH STRAWBERRY JAM. A Constrained Vision reports the true origin of the roll now known as a "croissant." It commemorates a military victory. (That ought be enough to rule out any French origins right there.)

Got the Magyar word here.

GET INVOLVED. Kindly be advised that Captain Ed is seeking your cooperation in raising money for earthquake and tsunami relief.

At Captain's Quarters, we're declaring January 12th World Relief Day. I ask that CQ readers donate their take-home pay for January 12th to the tsunami relief effort at World Vision.

Reminders will be posted.

SIXTY YEARS AGO. Sgt. Karlson went to Freux for the next 11-12 days and stayed in a fairly decent house. While there, he received his first boxes from home.

POSITIONAL ARMS RACES. This service is not an advice column (unless one is hanging valve gear), but some observations on preening, primping, and pumping deserve a bit of attention.

There's yet another intellectual exchange on the "social construction" of body images, with Professor Kipnis ringing all the changes on femininity as thesis, feminism as antithesis (or is it the other way around?) and Professor Althouse expressing doubts.

Constrained Vision weighs in, invoking the positional arms race that leads people to overinvest in pumping, primping and preening (once a few people develop an advantage, others have to follow.) But isn't this a logical error.

Consider yet another post by Professor Althouse, this one on the latest disadvantage smart girls face, that of being too smart for prospective mates. (I am not making this up.)

I'm going to quibble with the larger assumption that the desire to marry is the same for men and women and at all levels of intelligence. The preference for marriage results from many factors. It may well be that some or all of these things are true: 1. women have less to gain from marriage once they are able to provide for themselves economically, 2. women with a higher IQ are more likely to be able to support themselves well, 3. more intelligent persons are better able to form preferences by analyzing real world factors and less likely to adopt established conventions, and 4. not marrying is the more rational choice for an intelligent woman. If some or all of these things are at least partially true, a high IQ in women might be a hindrance for the institution of marriage, but not for the woman herself.

It is hazardous to generalize from my own experience, but I have made numerous observations of points 1 and 3 over the past 30 years, and points 2 and 4 appear respectively to follow from those points.

Now, let's walk that proposition back to a Constrained Vision observation.

If all women chose to wear sweatpants, not makeup and heels, and/or if all women held men to a higher standard of beauty, all women would be better off.

(The hoochie look might not be required to gain the attention of others in the first place, but that's a different advice columnist writing.)

Let's consider another corollary proposition. Why let the narcissists at the local gym serve as your exemplars? Mean Mr. Mustard has located some exercise regimens that do not require any capital equipment. Or ditch the gym membership, sell the power lawn equipment, and make your yardwork your workout. Or ... and here may be another way to multitask ... locate a sailing club. Lots of people with disposable income seeking additional help turning winches and doing other strenuous things. For Constrained Vision and other D.C. area readers ... King Street in Alexandria, head to the riverfront. Get a good start and sail on the lifted tack.

RUNNING EXTRA: More thoughts on intellect, perceived or actual, and matching, hypothetical or actual, at Althouse and at Villainous Company.

NOBODY LIKES A SORE LOSER. Captain Ed is not impressed with the efforts of a few Democrats from majority-minority districts to raise questions about voting procedures in Ohio.

What a waste of time and effort. Hand recounts and smearing Ohio's Secretary of State and Chief Justice of their Supreme Court isn't enough for the lunatics of the American Left. They want to hold Congress hostage for two hours in order to rant away at their abject failure to win an election in Ohio. Their excuse? Long lines and a lack of voting machines in predominantly Democratic counties -- where the officials in charge of the election were Democrats! Just as in Florida, the Democrats blame the GOP for what they consider poorly-run elections, when Democrats themselves ran them.

Boxer, Conyers, and Harry Reid will get their debate -- a two-hour marathon of smoke and bile which will change nothing, except their prestige and honor with the American electorate. They continue their Great March To The Fringe, now at double-time.

Brainpost suggests that two can play at that game.

I would hope that the Republicans would bring up the inconsistencies in Wisconsin, Philadelphia and other places and would consider instituting voter ID requirements for all states.

Why interfere with an adversary that is self-destructing? The Ohio margin, even with the disputed ballots, wasn't close enough to be reversed. To be sure, reversals in Ohio and in Wisconsin work out as a Bush victory, but if the guttersnipes are in the gutter, why get in with them?

IN MEMORIAM. Via Sports Economist, news of the passing, in Paris on 31 December, of Nobel Laureate Gerard Debreu.

JUST SUCK IT UP. Jacqueline Passey has to deal with a dusting of snow, which the local paper treats as only slightly less scary than a tsunami.

Let's get a grip. Knowledge Problem has already dealt with her snow, and some stocky middle aged guys avoid heart attacks by firing up a snow thrower only slightly smaller than a rotary snowplow. (Only in the State Line and points north: there was a discussion on Charlie Sykes' show this morning about proper snow thrower etiquette in tight spaces, such as driveways between houses.)

WELCOME DISPLACED CHEESEHEADS. Electric Commentary's request for Reciprocal Switching has been approved.

IT'S STILL SNOWING. The Sunday punch is still somewhere west of the Father of Waters.

Common Sense and Wonder at work.

THIS MORNING'S SOCIAL SECURITY ROUNDUP.

Owen at Boots and Sabers is not impressed with the American Association of Retired Persons' advocacy of the status quo when it comes to Social Security.

Will all due respect, screw you, AARP. AARP has done nothing but push lawmakers to ignore Social Security until we have reached crisis level. AARP is one of the primary groups that electrified the “third rail.” Remember that they are an advocacy organization for people who receive Social Security - not the people who pay for it.

Quite. And many of them will have stolen my nephew's future and taken it to their graves.

Too many Americans have frittered away their life’s earnings under the belief that Social Security will be enough, when it was never meant to be “enough.” Furthermore, the trillions of dollars that we’ve spent on Social Security are dollars that were prevented from serving as capital.

It is true that Social Security is based on a promise. We should honor that promise. At the same time, we should make the promise to our children that they won’t be burdened with the promises made to their parents by their grandparents.

Here's the problem:

In 2018, the Fed will start having to put general revenue monies into Social Security. Where do you think that money comes from? You. So, on top of the money paid in payroll taxes for Social Security, you will also be using some of your income taxes, and other taxes, to fund Social Security.

In the except, the term "Fed" probably refers to the national government. If that is a reference to the Federal Reserve monetizing the obligation, there's trouble. Angry Bear (who has been following the debate closely, keep scrolling) is attempting to be sarcastic (I think; I could be wrong):

I'd add that if you really believe the federal government will default on its debt obligations, whether held by the SSTF, the Chinese, or US citizens, then you might also want to consider stocking up on guns and gold.

That is also something to consider if the Federal Reserve monetizes the obligation. But I digress.

THE USE OF THE TERM "QUACKERY" IS OPPRESSIVE. University Diaries has been following a proposal from Florida's Senate that Florida State University include a chiropractic college. She has most recently linked to a weblog from Tallahassee, FSUblius, devoted entirely to the issue.

President Wetherell also reminds readers that the university is based on "inclusion," but if a masters degree in chiropractic is not any more of an issue for medicine than, say, religion, then what kind of chiropractic program is FSU proposing to establish? At what point is this pluralism run amok?

Why is chiropractic (or alternative medicine) going to be housed in its own, separate college and why, based on academic merit, would it qualify for a masters or doctorate degree? Why wouldn't FSU follow the model of other universities -- housing alternative medicine within the medical school, or establishing a program in physical therapy that includes chirporactic techniques? No one has addressed the relative merits of the program to its alternatives.

The burden of establishing a new degree, and an entirely new academic and research discipline, is on its advocates, not those who question whether this has any place at a research university.

That weblog points to suggestions that somebody would like to get a bit more external funding, as well as recognition of the realities of state funding. Although the Official Defense of the policy is that it keeps college cheap for state residents, despite evidence that such policies are a subsidy to the upper middle class, faculty are learning that the people who pay the piper call the tune.

Faculty members say they are afraid to question the chiropractic school because they fear retribution from either top administrators or the powerful state lawmakers who support it.

The atmosphere is grim, said Marc Freeman, a distinguished research professor in the biology department. "We feel as if something is being shoved down our throats that we don't want."

A little late for that, isn't it? Did you object to the Diversity Boondoggle second-guessing your searches?

J. Stanley Marshall, a former FSU president who sits on the board of trustees, said he's heard indirectly about scared professors. He urged anyone who feels threatened to come forward.

"The university should never be a place where people are not able to speak out on any topic," Marshall said.

Provided, of course, the speech does not create a demeaning, hostile, or oppressive environment. Or give a member of the humanities faculty cause to suspect one is a Republican.

More practically, what is likely to happen to anyone who suggests chiropractic is New Age quackery?

THE DIVERSITY BOONDOGGLE'S PLAYBOOK.

Professor Plum has annotated a McGraw-Hill information site that tackles "The Challenge of Defining a Single 'Multicultural Education'." (I'd use nested scare quotes on that final word, but let us stay focussed.)

Consider the five core principles for "multicultural transformation" spelled out in that challenge.

Every student must have an equal opportunity to achieve to her or his full potential.

Every student must be prepared to competently participate in an increasingly intercultural society.

Teachers must be prepared to effectively facilitate learning for every individual student, no matter how culturally similar or different from her- or himself.

Schools must be active participants in ending oppression of all types, first by ending oppression within their own walls, then by producing socially and critically active and aware students.

Education must become more fully student-centered and inclusive of the voices and experiences of the students.

Educators, activists, and others must take a more active role in reexamining all educational practices and how they affect the learning of all students: testing methods, teaching approaches, evaluation and assessment, school psychology and counseling, educational materials and textbooks, etc.

Catch the tension? There are differences in potentials. Somebody who is weak at abstract analysis has little potential as an economic theorist. Does the first principle mean such an individual deserves extra help, or that such a person ought be directed to a field better able to use that person's comparative advantages. That, however, has less to do with cultural differences than with differences in ability or in individual preferences. (Yes, this is an economics site, and an argument from preference is weak. That is why we speak of optimization under constraints. Perhaps some people ought be dissuaded from acting on their preferences to become economic theorists, or lawyers, or computer engineers, or violinists.)

And what to make of that "student-centered" stuff? "I was never very good at math." Well, suck it up and practice, or find a victim studies program that will have you. On to the final point. Can that reexamination include the deduction that admitting unprepared students and calling it access is a mistake?

I also like this.

Overall school cultures must be closely examined to determine how they might be cycling and supporting oppressive societal conditions.

Administrative hierarchies in schools must be examined to assess whether they produce positive teaching environments for all teachers.

Do "oppressive societal conditions" include setting unprepared students up to fail? What is more oppressive than sending someone out the door barely prepared to ask, "want fries with that?" Does the second point mean a professor has cause of action against an administration that asks faculty to fill out all sorts of forms from the therapeutic bureaucracy, or allows students who have not satisfied the prerequisites to enroll?

CLIMBDOWN. The House Republican leadership has abandoned a planned change in ethics rules.

The proposal would have made it more difficult for lawmakers to discipline a colleague for unethical behavior and would have allowed Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) to keep his post if he is indicted by a Texas grand jury that is looking into his campaign finance practices.

Before the GOP leadership reversed itself, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), chairman of the House ethics committee, had denounced the proposed changes to ethics rules. "This package is not bipartisan," Hefley said.

The sudden reversal came amid growing indications of dissension within the GOP. Just before House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office announced that the measures were being dropped, the chairman of the House ethics committee issued an unusual statement denouncing the leadership's plan.

Good.

Andrew Sullivan correctly notes,

Bending ethics rules for their own purposes was never going to fly.

Chris at Signifying Nothing also comments.

LET IT SNOW. Two inches on the ground, more to come.

TONIGHT'S SOCIAL SECURITY ROUNDUP. Just One Minute has been busy. Hie thee hence, and explore.

I particularly liked Dead Parrot Society's smackdown of the idea that Social Security is defensible as an insurance program. (It is always heartening to read people who recognize that it is no defense of a poor investment program to note that it is bundled with a poor insurance program. Read on.)

To Angry Bear's credit, he isn't trying to argue that Social Security isn't a great financial deal on its own; he's just arguing that we should put up with it because it resembles "insurance". Insurance works, of course, because people are willing to pay to avoid risk. Let's restrict ourselves to the main Social Security retirement program, aside from widower's benefits and disability benefits, and ask ourselves what risk has Social Security protected us against?

That's particularly pertinent for new entrants to the work force.

Let's take a male child born in 2005. Let's tell that child that if he signs up for Social Security, he will, on average, lose between 15 and 30% of the present value of his payroll taxes. In return, we tell that child that if he ends up being a low wage earner, we'll be so generous and actually give him back all his payroll taxes. Oh yeah, and if he dies early, tough luck, his estate loses it all.

Deinonychus also chews on the insurance argument.

RESTORING THE ANCIENT VERITIES. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni claims a legislative victory in Colorado, where a new law requires the following.

The core curriculum will be more streamlined and rigorous.

Grade inflation will be addressed and grade distributions must be made public.

Education schools will prepare better K-12 teachers.

Students' knowledge and skills will be assessed using meaningful measures.

Disclaimer: the Superintendent is a member of this Council. The devil will be in the details; for example, there are plenty of ways to assess the obvious. Likewise, one mandatory victim studies course in lieu of a plethora of the same is streamlining.

IN PRAISE OF FRAGMENTATION. A passenger train salesman makes a pitch for corporate welfare.

What does a federal transportation program look like? Simple: like our highway and airport programs. The federal government doesn't operate the vehicles or market the service. There's no such company as "Amcar" or "Amflight." Instead, Washington helps the states to fund a state-of-the-art infrastructure that private operators can have access to -- highways for private cars and commercial motor coaches, airports for airliners. Congress needs to stop focusing solely on Amtrak, a government-owned train company operating on obsolete private and public infrastructure, so that it can refocus on getting matching funds out to states and communities that want to build up their intercity railroad tracks and start running fast, frequent, comfortable trains that people will pay to ride.

State of the art infrastructure? In Illinois, we have two seasons, winter and construction, and equipment failures in the Chicago area air traffic control system are legendary. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Impatient, I guess.

Several impatient states -- California, North Carolina and Washington -- couldn't wait for a federal program, so during the go-go '90s they spent some of their taxpayers' money to build track capacity and buy trains on their own. Their programs are successful -- California's 60 daily departures are carrying more than 4 million riders a year, and growth is quickly surpassing the capacity of the state-owned fleet.

But even rich states such as California have hit the fiscal wall, much as Pennsylvania did in 1939, when it ran out of money to finish its new turnpike and had to wait for an emergency grant sought by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unless Congress develops a federal-state matching-grant plan for railroad tracks like the highway program it started in 1916 and the airport aid program it passed in 1946, passenger trains will continue to starve, highway and airport backups will grow, and Mead's successors at the Transportation Department will continue to scratch their heads about why the federal government can't seem to run a profitable train business.

I thought we had state of the art infrastructure. Why the delays at the airports and on the highways? The trains account for a small fraction of daily miles travelled. Perhaps the simpler solution is to abolish the subsidies?

Passenger trains used to be a profitable business in this country -- many, many years ago, when railroads enjoyed a monopoly over mechanized overland transportation and the federal government was not yet building and subsidizing two competing travel systems. But those days are gone. To expect a passenger train company to earn a profit on today's underfunded, obsolete and downsized track network is an exercise in nostalgia.

Underfunded, obsolete, downsized? Watch the double-stacks rip through DeKalb at 70 mph and tell me it's obsolete. Look at Santa Fe's second main track program and tell me it's underfunded. Look at Union Pacific's third main track in Nebraska and tell me it's downsized. The problem is that passenger trains don't mix well with freight trains. Asking a freight railroad to run one passenger train a day, the usual Amtrak long distance frequency, is akin to asking a steel mill to bake a pizza in a reheat furnace. Asking a freight railroad to accommodate a fleet of passenger trains is even more disruptive. The secret is to provide passenger tracks separate from the freight tracks, which the eastern trunk lines understood years ago.

But to expect fast, frequent, efficient trains to carry masses of travelers who now fly, drive or stay home is the height of reality -- provided the funding is there for a railroad infrastructure as modern as the ones government provides for cars and airplanes. The key is our proven federal system of matching grants. It's amazing how much money a state legislature will appropriate for a project when it knows there's money waiting in Washington to match it. And it's amazing how eager entrepreneurs are to provide quality transportation once they're sure government will keep funding the infrastructure.

What is that quip about the State being the fiction by which each expects to live at the expense of the other? Does anybody remember another Congressional fiddle of the 1990s, not spending all the gasoline and tire tax money intended for the Highway Trust Fund, in order to make the budget deficit look smaller?

Jack O'Toole, who located the article, notes,

As a train enthusiast, I have to admit that opening the door to fundamental change in the current system makes me a little nervous; fact is, an awful lot of folks in DC are bound and determined to let passenger rail die, and they’re almost certain to try to use any major reform effort as a Trojan coach car to achieve that end. Still, what Coston says above makes sense. In the end, rail can only get well if it’s organized like every other mode of transportation in the country, with private companies operating in a subsidized environment (and hiring their share of lobbyists to ensure that the subsidies are sufficient to keep the whole enterprise afloat).

Considering the fate of the legacy air carriers, the intercity buses, and many of the trucking companies, I'm not sure that's the improvement. (I have been doing some reading on Amtrak reform over the Christmas break and will weigh in on that shortly.) Ending Amtrak, which is what the Post article is about, is not equivalent to ending passenger rail, which in several cities operates as a commuter authority independently of Amtrak (consider Indiana's South Shore Line and Metra's former Union Pacific and Rock Island services in Chicago), and which includes land cruise operators such as American Orient Express, and the (sometimes steam-powered!) Grand Canyon Railway, which the National Park Service recommends visitors to the South Rim use.

And speaking of public investment in transportation, Belle Waring's recollections of the Washington (DC) Union Station in the 1970s are spot on.

RESTORING THE ANCIENT VERITIES. At last, women lash out at hip hop's abuses.

The most successful black women's magazine, Essence, is in the middle of a campaign that could have monumental cultural significance.

Essence is taking on the slut images and verbal abuse projected onto black women by hip hop lyrics and videos.

The magazine is the first powerful presence in the black media with the courage to examine the cultural pollution that is too often excused because of the wealth it brings to knuckleheads and amoral executives.

(Hat tip: Shot in the Dark, who notes, "It's high time.")

RESTORING THE ANCIENT VERITIES. The Quote of the Day comes from Oxford don Richard Jenkyns.

People care about their language because it forms part of their identity, and part of the resistance to changes in English is a resistance to change itself. But correct usage is not an elite affectation; it is a badge of competence.

That's the abstract. Here are some of the details.

For instance, universities are now expected to produce mission statements. That ught to be easy: "We teach, study and write, and try to do these things as well as we can." But of course such plain, frank words will not do, and we are driven to swathe simple meaning in the language of bureaucracy. I am unsure why the language of management, Don Watson's main target, is so deplorable, but it is a serious matter, as it clogs the working of schools, hospitals and other public and private businesses.

In the academic world, it may be easier to detect the forces which discourage good, plain English. Modern societies have created large salaried intelligentsias, which are required to keep publishing. Some subject matter is essentially difficult: philosophy, for example, must often be done at a high level of abstraction. But the aim ought always to be to make difficult matters as simple as the subject allows, and the conditions of modern academic life tempt people to do the opposite. History is an almost limitless field, and my impression is that historians usually write well. But the study of popular culture easily tends to statement of the obvious, and its practitioners naturally want to disguise that fact. The English literature industry is so big that in many areas there is not enough material to go around, and here the emptation is to claim that even the most perspicuous authors need the professionals to interpret them. It is like the plumber telling you that it will cost a grand to fix that leaky tap.

As for politics, all governments reasonably stress their successes and palliate their failures, but many people seem to feel that the present government is more widely and systematically dishonest with fact and language than any of its predecessors. In my view, this suspicion is justified.

But wait, there's more. Henry at Crooked Timber links to an article that suggests some of the Modern Language Association (yes!) are considering how to re-connect the humanities to the public.

"I can't say just how long this will take," [outgoing Association president Robert Scholes] said. "But I do believe that this is happening. There is more interest in these things ... grammar, rhetoric, and also logic. ... There needs to be an overall recognition that what you say has to be reasonable. That it has to be answerable to certain disciplinary considerations. Within this discipline, you can only say x if y and z are in fact reasonable suppositions."

Perhaps the literati have been mugged by reality.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, deplored the humanities' inability to give a "publicly intelligible account of what we are doing." If the greater public was uninterested in the humanities, he argued, "it is our fault, not their fault."

Professor Appiah is a member of the Left2Right collective, which advertises itself as such an effort.

A rediscovery of the eternal verities by the loopier precincts of the humanities would suit me just fine. There are plenty of other topics for me to comment on.

CROSSING THE CHEDDAR CURTAIN. Illinois has raised the cash tolls as an incentive for regular commuters to buy the I-Pass prepaid transponder (which also provides the state with some cash flow in the form of $10 deposits on the transponder plus at least $40 of prepaid tolls.) Wisconsin residents, who already have plenty of complaints about Illinoisans (note: the state line area is pretty tolerant of everybody, but get north of Wisconsin 20 or south of U.S. 30 and things change) now must deal with those higher entry and exit taxes.

Paul at Electric Commentary is not pleased.

From this information you may deduce that the state of Illinois is trying to screw Wisconsin residents, and you are correct. Fortunately, If memory serves, screwing people from other states is in this fashion is unconstitutional.

We await the test case. Sean at The American Mind chooses to exploit other taxpayers, recommending the Hiawatha. As contemporary trains go it's fine, but that beverage cart on selected runs is a poor replacement for the bomb bay lounge in the Super Dome. Ah, to blast through Bannockburn at 100 mph, hoisting a libation.

PRIORITIES? Self-Esteem: Downfall of a Great Nation? Karen Burke has a, shall we say contrarian, view of the great time-squeeze.

We have become a society of helpless victims who feel we are only held back by the world’s refusal to see what awesome individuals we are and its failure to pay us proper homage. Then there is the precious self-esteem. This juggernaut, which has parents afraid to rear their children for fear of damaging fragile young psyches, will be the downfall of this society because generation after generation children will become more unruly and less likely to take responsibility for any of their actions. For every convict in the system today there are ten psychotherapists willing to help blame their mothers for their crimes.

Why? Because moms just didn’t do enough to make them feel good about themselves.

These days we are running children to soccer, dance, Tae Kwon Doe, baby gym, and scheduled play dates as if they need to be socialized like dogs. Parents transport their children miles to spend time with the proper influences while the children barely know any of the other children on their street. Moms will spend countless hours being a taxi service to avoid spending five minutes of idle time with their children. The inability to spend five minutes alone with oneself and not go berserk is not a disorder such as ADHD. It is being taught. It is a behavior that is being fostered by families who are so desperate to keep busy that a child feels disoriented and neglected if it actually has to entertain itself with something as simple as a Mr. Potato Head. Parents have erased idle time from any of their youngsters’ schedules because they fear what boredom might lead to, and then, as a result, these same parents suffer periodic meltdowns due to a lack of “me time.” It’s a self-feeding disorder.

When did it become a crime for children to be bored? It is these same children who expect to be entertained every minute of their lives that are falling apart in the real world because, low and behold, their boss isn’t there to entertain them. It is these same children that are turning to drugs because they have been taught that they have to feel good every minute of the day or there is something wrong with them. It is these same children who are completely narcissistic because never until adulthood has anyone said to them, “That was a stupid thing to do.” These are the same children who fail in the workplace because they feel entitled to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. They’ve never taken orders without questioning them, and they don’t know how.

It is this “I’m special,” attitude that fuels one lawsuit after another because people are offended. Narcissistic parenting and guarded self-esteem are turning people into a bunch of whiners, victims, addicts, and hapless misfits. The government is so concerned with protecting children’s precious self-esteem that using red pens to correct children’s school work is frowned upon as too traumatic. A teens’ rights to privacy overshadow parents’ responsibility to parent and to know where their children are, who they’re with, and what they’re doing. A person’s need for “me time” is slowly disintegrating the notion of families spending time together. Mom’s taxi service and the kids’ busy schedule has obliterated the notion that it’s alright to be alone for five minutes and quite possibly even to be bored. In many cases the need for “me time” has caused folks to abandon their children altogether. These children will in turn learn that “me time” is more important that any responsibility they may have to others and think nothing of abandoning their own children in turn.

Her solution: restore the ancient verities.

Children need to be taught to deal with boredom, idle time, criticism, and disappointment. They need to be taught that they will not always like what they have to do in life, but they will have to do it anyway. They need to be taught that they do not know as much as their parents regardless of what it does to their self-esteem. They need to be taught respect for their elders and simple manners. They need to be taught that if they don’t take responsibility for their actions, their actions will take them places they don’t want to go.

(Hat tip: Milt Rosenberg.)

THE PERILS OF MARKET SEGMENTATION. Newmark's Door has identified a potentially useful primer on price-searching behavior. But see if you can spot the error in the counterexample to the Law of Demand.

TWO MAIN TRACKS. Photon Courier quotes one of the great 19th Century railroad work songs to introduce a discussion of the addition of a second main track to the Union Pacific's Sunset Route and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe's Panhandle Route, both to handle additional traffic from Los Angeles and Long Beach. Destination:Freedom notes these are high-stakes projects.

Whoever first spans the continent with a two-lane rail line stands to capture the deluge of Asian DVD players, toasters, apparel and toys that are unloaded at Southern California seaports. The winner also will take the lead in eliminating the bottlenecks that snarl the nation’s tracks.

A pedantic note: these projects are not "double tracking." As the Destination:Freedom article notes,

The contemporary 2,100-mile double-track railroad will allow multiple trains to travel the same route at different speeds and in opposite directions without trains having to stop or use sidings.

We are therefore talking about two main track operation, with centralized traffic control allowing the dispatcher to allow faster trains to overtake slower trains, which is not possible on a double track railroad, which has current-of-traffic operation. On a double track railroad, faster trains get stuck behind slower trains, particularly if train crews must manually throw switches to hole up in sidings to be overtaken. The long-gone caboose provided quarters for the train crew that would throw switches behind the train.

Tracklaying has progressed from the days in which those work songs provided a rhythm for the crews to swing their hammers.

Track workers with nicknames like “Rabbit” and “Tiny” take pride in the powerful machines that do the work once done by armies of laborers. Chief among their equipment is the massive track-laying machine made by Harsco Track Technologies, a unit of Harsco Corp., Camp Hill, Pa. It costs between $2 million and $5 million to buy.

“It’s a thrill, it’s adrenaline,” said Jim Lyons, who operates the machine’s mobile crane amid the Oklahoma sagebrush. The crane hovers over flatcars loaded with 800-pound concrete crossties, grabs 21 at a time and moves them to the front of the machine. There, a conveyor belt lowers the ties to the ground, where track workers push them into position.

Note, however, that the tracklaying record was set by a Central Pacific crew, in early May of 1869, of ten miles of new rails laid down (although not aligned or ballasted) in one long day.

The songs are international. The closing sequence of a video on England's Settle and Carlisle includes a song -- of a very American West flavor -- with a chorus that goes "pick up your hammer and lay another rail."

WHAT BUSINESS COULD TOLERATE THIS REJECT RATE? Congratulations! You're About to Fail.

Free and open to all, the public school system tricks students into believing they've been well educated, then shoves them into higher education, where learning is rationed by cost and capacity. And despite the decades-long effort to beef up academic demands and the tens of billions of dollars spent to open college doors to students who can't pay on their own, the percentage of U.S. college students who eventually earn degrees has been about the same since the 1970s.

Over the same period, the nation's economy, demographics and international competition have become more hostile to the ill-prepared. The sort of manufacturing jobs that can support a family are rapidly being outsourced overseas. The 14 million white-collar jobs that retiring baby boomers are leaving require more college education than the potential candidates for those jobs — who are, increasingly, Latino and African American — have to offer, according to an analysis by economist Anthony Carnevale that has pedagogues chattering.

An economist, eh? Must do some digging and post a followup. For the moment, consider the suggestions on offer in the article.

The education world's best answers are those that focus on high schools, those that focus on what colleges can do, and those that focus on the students themselves.

The emerging consensus in the first category is that just having high schools do a better job of what they do now won't be enough. All students need to be pushed more. They need more support. They need to see college as a realistic option. Exit exams, most of which measure what students should learn in middle school, aren't enough and may be a distraction from preparing students for college and a more-demanding workplace.

On the other hand, perhaps such pushing in middle and high school would equip students for many of those white-collar jobs. Does a degree in English or in area studies or communication really add any value for a middle manager at a grocery store?

With so many eager students queued up outside admissions offices, many colleges don't care much if students drop out or flunk out once their tuition checks have been cashed. A second group of advocates counters this approach by pressing colleges to help students get up to speed, suggesting the schools connect freshmen with mentors, increase financial aid so students won't have to work and could live on campus, and push schools to offer more of the courses in greatest demand so financially strapped students can graduate on time. A third category of problem-solvers pushes for programs such as those in Indiana, Michigan, Georgia and Texas, where the state provides scholarships to high school students who take harder classes. Research confirms the common sense of this: Students who work harder in high school do better afterward.

Some questions: What is wrong with working one's way through college? What is "on time?" (Note the Amtrak-like redefinition of "on time" as finishing within six years implicit in one self-study.) How many recipients of those state scholarships attempt to guilt-trip their professors into higher grades? ("I have to get a B to keep the scholarship.) To what extent does that mentoring and other hand-holding keep slower students around who hold back the pace of classes?

We must grasp that the system that served us well is a failure, producing only two bachelor degrees for every 10 students who start high school. We must acknowledge this failure as our own and recognize it as a threat to the future well-being of our children — even those who think they have a lock on the Ivy League.

Yes. And perhaps the root cause of the failure is the conceit that college is for everybody. (Via Joanne Jacobs. Be sure to read the comments.)

CARNIVAL CALL. Carnival of the Capitalists calls at Management Craft.

Kindly be advised that future consignments to the Carnival of the Capitalists be routed via a new agent, http://www.gongol.com/random/cotc/. The agency at elhide.com is closed.

NOTICE OF REORGANIZATION. J.V.C. Comments is now trading as Quid Nomen Illius?

GAINS FROM TRADE. The North Sails loft that manufactures sails for Laser, Sunfish, Vanguard 15, and several other sailboats is located in Sri Lanka. The manager of North Sails in Sri Lanka reports on the tsunami's effect.

The Island was hit by a Tsunami on Sunday Dec 26th around 9:45 am. The coastal regions of the East, south and south west coasts were hardest hit and were destroyed. These areas are about a 1-6 hour drive from our factory. They have high concentration of population as well as many resort hotels. Unofficially I was told last night that over 30,000 people have died with over a million left homeless. The city of Colombo where 6 million of the country's 19 million live, was not affected much at all. The port was closed temporarily and is now open expecting to clear the backlog in a week or so. The airport remains open as normal. Our factories are located about 20 kilometers inland from Colombo and were not affected.

Our focus for the last few days has been on our employees. Last weekend was a long holiday weekend with many traveling to their coastal villages to visit family. Some visited beaches for the weekend. We opened for business Tuesday and were operating as normal although the atmosphere was very sombre. All of our Management, supervisors are accounted for, but we still are missing 5 factory employees, and have located another who has lost her house and is at a refugee camp. Today Ajantha,our Production Manager,is going to get the one girl we have located and bring her from the camp. Tomorrow we will send out two teams to search for the remaining 5 missing.

Business for North Sails Sri Lanka will continue as normal with perhaps some minor delays due to some shipping backlogs.

Many of you have asked us how you can help. The employees of North Sails Sri Lanka set up a fund and all pledged one day salary from this week to get it established. The fund is to be used to help our employees rebuild houses, buy clothing, water, food, and medicine to assist them getting their lives back to some sense of normalcy. If there is any remaining in the fund it will be used to help others in Sri Lanka.

The North Sails employee effort provides an opportunity to call your attention to World Relief Day, January 12. Captain's Quarters has already posted the Orders of the Day for that Wednesday.

At Captain's Quarters, we're declaring January 12th World Relief Day. I ask that CQ readers donate their take-home pay for January 12th to the tsunami relief effort at World Vision. Obviously, we cannot hope to match the funds raised by governments -- but we can show what a handful of determined private individuals can do to help. If you can't afford to donate all of your take-home pay for that day, please donate what you can.

Updates on this effort will be tracked here as well.

THE REAL MEANING OF SUPER POWER. King at SCSU Scholars links to a collection of Soviet propaganda posters. This one caught the Superintendent's attention.

"Six orders of Stalin to work for transportation., 1932"

Take a close look at that train in the foreground. Definitely American, possibly Lima Super Power, with American coaches behind the tender. I wonder if the artist later disappeared, a nameless number on a list that was later misplaced. It is true that the Soviets did some crazy things to imitate American Super Power, but never this.

The site offers more railroading outrages for your viewing pleasure.

PLAY THAT OOM-PAH MUSIC. A perusal of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's 2004 Wisconsin obituaries includes a reference to polka band leader Dick Rodgers, a pioneer in televised dance shows. What ever happened to the Sunday afternoon polka show?

RELYING ON CHEAP FOREIGN LABOR? A Constrained Vision covers efforts by Wichita State University to provide accent-modification for faculty and graduate assistants in math, engineering, and the lab sciences in particular. (Do these efforts include an explanation of Midwestern idioms?)

What were those critics of the academy saying about professors that are overpaid and underworked? You'd think there would be swarms of native-English speakers pursuing those jobs.

FIVE MINUTES DO NOT A GAME MAKE. Vince Lombardi's teams never lost; sometimes time ran out on them. The Chicago Bears, on the other hand, give their fan false hopes:

Chicago is up 7-0 at the moment.

Reminds me of those weak Wisconsin teams of years ago that would score first and then run out of tricks. It's a sixty minute game.

A noted traditionalist, [Packer coach Mike] Sherman didn’t want to become the first Packers coach since Lindy Infante in 1991 to be swept by Green Bay’s ancient enemy.

Also, after spotting the Bears a quick touchdown, the Packers blew apart the hapless Bears with two 86-yard touchdown drives followed by Darren Sharper’s 43-yard interception return for a touchdown.

Next up: a 3:30 pm kickoff on Sunday, with the Vikings, who demonstrated a better understanding of playing for leaster than the Panthers and the Saints, visiting Lambeau.

OVERACHIEVING? That appears to be Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez's take on the Outback Bowl, which Georgia won, 24-21.

“Quite frankly, I think we overachieved this season,” UW coach Barry Alvarez said after seeing his team suffer its third consecutive loss to finish 9-3. “I think this is a football team that had a lot of adversity, had key players hurt. . . . Yet we found ways to win.”

You mean the team didn't have as one of its preseason goals "play in January?" And consider that the selection committees had to round out their schedule with five MAC teams. Overachieve?

The sidebar to the story shows records for ineffectiveness by Wisconsin's offense and defense. In addition, numerous seniors will have to be replaced.

The Outback Bowl provided another technical delay when an aerial camera stalled on the playing field, delaying the game for about ten minutes. Is wiring one's stadium to ESPN's specifications really the best use of development money?