Sorry, Peter, there hasn't been more discussion. I've had mine partially written for over a week.
I must preface my statements by saying I only partially read the book. I couldn't find it on audio, and I only found it in print in the county where I used to live, (Montgomery County, MD, which was mentioned in the book as being one of the bluest counties in the country).
First, let me call into question Peter's assertion that he lives in the bluest state. I mean, you just elected a Republican, knowing that it could ruin most of the blue plans. And not so long ago, you elected a Mormon Republican as governor. Of course, maybe that was just a blue expression of tolerance because even many red states wouldn't elect a Mormon.
I liked the idea behind the book, as I like looking at plots and interesting trends as much of the next guy, but I ultimately got frustrated that:
a) I couldn't look at their data myself and do my own analyses, asking specific questions that I found most interesting
b) It started to get a bit repetitive, and I'm not into the CNN style over-analysis of every single detail.
c)All of the examples were from the Bush election or earlier. I kept wondering how things have changed because where politics is headed is much more interesting than where it has been.
So here's my theory on why the rich individuals in rich states don't vote as heavily republican: They don't think they're rich. Being rich, after all, is relative. On my mission in Guatemala, you were rich if you had a microwave and super-rich if you had air-conditioning. Did Gelman ever show a graph of the top 5 or 10% in each state? (Again I skimmed.)
Interestingly, Gelman said that rich states attend church less and that church attendance was a better predictor of the way you voted among rich people than among poor people. But while I felt religion was a key piece in the big puzzle he was describing, I never felt like he tied it back into his overall theme or ever said anything definitive.
On the urban/rural point: I grew up in a very rural area (There were 72 kids in my high school graduating class.), and I currently reside in a very urban area (though we bought a home in a less urban area and I commute to work). As I started to write this post, I was going to poo-poo Peter's worries about urban values. It reminded me of the east-coast Mormons who are afraid of living in UT because of the way their kids will turn out. (Wait. Aren't we hoping for a world where everyone is Mormon?) Clearly, one can be a good or bad Mormon wherever, as one can have similar values both in an urban and rural environment. But when you look at the political map and see that every major urban area is blue, then being in a big city must affect people's political values if nothing else. I do think living in a big city takes away from your sense of self-reliance.
In the last three presidential elections, I've voted red, blue and neither, so does that make me a battleground state? No, I think I'm more red than blue. I've seen this recently in my work at the FDA. The law says devices have to be proven to be safe and effective. I have been reviewing a device that has been proven to be safe, but it only gives the hope of being effective. The long-term unblinded results are great, but the blinded (more reliable) results are borderline at best. Personally, my political leanings lead me to say that if it's safe, we can let the doctors, patients, and the market decide how well it works. We presented before an independent advisory panel, and they advised us to approve it in a 7-5 vote. But apparently, I'm the only person in the FDA who thinks the device should be allowed on the market, as my co-workers want to ignore the panel's advice.
I see the logic behind a lot of the blue regulations and bigger government ideas. In theory, I think it would be nice if someone could keep stupid people from being stupid. In practice, the problem is that the government can't. Every time the government solves one problem they create another problem. Plus, the government isn't very efficient. I know that the law-making bodies weren't designed to be efficient, but the unelected agencies that implement government policies are the problem.
Let's look at health care, for example. Unlike many red Americans, I don't think there is anything wrong with giving everyone health care. I don't see any reason why fighting disease should be a private enterprise when fighting bad guys is a public necessity. However, I have little faith in the government's ability to use my money efficiently to insure people. Can they do it? Sure, but at what price. The stimulus created jobs, but sometimes the government was spending 100K to create a single 50K job.
Technically, I'm socially conservative, but I think social issues are a bit of a red herring. Nothing ever happens on those fronts, so it seems a poor reason for casting a vote.
Back to the book, the one thought that struck me that I'm having a hard time figuring out is how much of what I believe is simply the result of my demographic influences. I like to think my political beliefs are as 'true' as my religious beliefs. I know there is a lot of gray in politics, and certainly no party has all the answers. Still, I like to think my thoughts are my thoughts because they are close to being right, not just because of my age, religion, income, etc. However, while there are a lot of wrong views out there, the correct approach likely depends on your demographic perspective.
On a personal note, last month my wife gave birth to a baby girl, Eliza, our third. If you aren't on our mass email list but would like to be, you can subscribe by sending me an email at vanordens@gmail.com. Glenn is coming to visit me this month, and the rest of you are invited to come if you want!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Red State, Blue State, which state are you?
It's been a few weeks since I finished Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. As a denizen of a rich, blue state (possibly the bluest, if not the richest) and a former denizen of a poor, red state (possibly the reddest, though certainly not the poorest) I found the book very interesting. I guess that's mostly as a fan of quantitative social and political science.
To recap for non-readers: the fundamental paradox Gelman's team set out to understand was why wealthy individuals voted Republican but wealthy states voted Democrat. The resolution of the paradox was that individual wealth impacted voter preference much more in poor states (where it made one much, much more likely to be a Republican) than in rich states (where it made one only marginally more likely to be a Republican).
I don't feel that Gelman ever really answered the question of what causes this paradox, at least not to my satisfaction. He analyzes a few other societal features (like race, income inequality and religious ideology), but doesn't come up with a convincing explanation to my mind. Does anyone have a speculative theory on why rich states tend to vary only slightly in partisan id with income, but poor states vary more dramatically?
I thought his insight about the red state-blue state phenomenon occurring primarily at the upper end of the income scale was insightful if not surprising. Poor people seem to be (according to Gelman's numbers) fairly ideologically homogeneous, while it's the rich who are bitterly divided. I think it also speaks to the wealth of the political elites (both in office and in the media) that they seem to be so focused on the partisan divide when it really only impacts a small portion of the overall citizenry (albeit an overwhelmingly influential subpopulation). So why is there such power in the red state-blue state meme? Is it because we want it to be true, in some sense? Because it speaks to a fundamental tension within each of us as citizens and within the structure of the nation as a whole?
A divide that Gelman touches on, but didn't seem to dive into really, is the urban-suburban-rural divide. I read an article during the 2008 election at Salon.com that I thought was somewhat insightful on this topic. As a rural idealist (in the form of Tolkien) I tend to denigrate the urban value system (or lack thereof). Having lived for some time now near a major city I've yet to be persuaded that urbanity has anything positive to offer from a moral perspective. When I've asked proponents of urban values to justify them, they almost universally point to multi-culturalism and tolerance as values you get in a city that you can't in the country. But to my perspective, those who tout the value of such multi-culturalism have only a thin veneer of tolerance, particularly across socio-economic lines. I think I learned significantly more tolerance of "the other" living in rural Utah than I have in multi-cultural Massachusetts. Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about flying out to Harvard for graduate school...
Another thing I found interesting in Gelman's development was breaking out social vs. economic value systems. While I don't know that those are necessarily the "right" axes to separate our political ideology, they certainly are evocative. In the comparison of economic values to income, being richer makes you uniformly more economically conservative, and by almost identical amounts regardless of ones stances on social issues. The social values aren't as uniform, but the strong trend is for more money to make you more socially liberal. So the real mass of people seem to be economically liberal (tax and spend, redistributionist Socialists) and socially conservative (values voting, gay-bashing religious Nutjobs). And that's where I tend to find myself, in direct counterposition to the socially liberal, economically conservative libertarians (of which David Frum is a light-hued version; for more pure examples, go to www.reason.com). And yet, as a Republican it's hard to ignore the youth appeal and renewed vigor of the libertarian movement with its Ron Paulistas and Tea Parties. So I feel conflicted; I'd like my party to look more like me (the compassionate conservativism that got lost post-9/11) but I also want my party to be strong and win elections, which right now seems to imply letting it look less like me.
Anway, I liked the book. I hope a few other people had the patience to check it out, and to wait all these weeks until I managed to get a post off about it.
P.S.- One final point I wanted to make (sorry if this reedit is generating lots of extra emails). When contemplating why I'm socially conservative but economically liberal I would point to my religion. But many of my co-religionists are much more economically conservative, and some are much more socially liberal, so I don't know that that captures the true reason. Thinking deeper, my "social image" (for lack of a better term) is that poor people have greater moral authority than rich people. And I think that's what leads me primarily to that upper-left quadrant in Gelman's 2-D political belief matrix. So a question I wanted to put to the crowd is whether you feel rich people or poor people have greater moral standing (or neither)?
To recap for non-readers: the fundamental paradox Gelman's team set out to understand was why wealthy individuals voted Republican but wealthy states voted Democrat. The resolution of the paradox was that individual wealth impacted voter preference much more in poor states (where it made one much, much more likely to be a Republican) than in rich states (where it made one only marginally more likely to be a Republican).
I don't feel that Gelman ever really answered the question of what causes this paradox, at least not to my satisfaction. He analyzes a few other societal features (like race, income inequality and religious ideology), but doesn't come up with a convincing explanation to my mind. Does anyone have a speculative theory on why rich states tend to vary only slightly in partisan id with income, but poor states vary more dramatically?
I thought his insight about the red state-blue state phenomenon occurring primarily at the upper end of the income scale was insightful if not surprising. Poor people seem to be (according to Gelman's numbers) fairly ideologically homogeneous, while it's the rich who are bitterly divided. I think it also speaks to the wealth of the political elites (both in office and in the media) that they seem to be so focused on the partisan divide when it really only impacts a small portion of the overall citizenry (albeit an overwhelmingly influential subpopulation). So why is there such power in the red state-blue state meme? Is it because we want it to be true, in some sense? Because it speaks to a fundamental tension within each of us as citizens and within the structure of the nation as a whole?
A divide that Gelman touches on, but didn't seem to dive into really, is the urban-suburban-rural divide. I read an article during the 2008 election at Salon.com that I thought was somewhat insightful on this topic. As a rural idealist (in the form of Tolkien) I tend to denigrate the urban value system (or lack thereof). Having lived for some time now near a major city I've yet to be persuaded that urbanity has anything positive to offer from a moral perspective. When I've asked proponents of urban values to justify them, they almost universally point to multi-culturalism and tolerance as values you get in a city that you can't in the country. But to my perspective, those who tout the value of such multi-culturalism have only a thin veneer of tolerance, particularly across socio-economic lines. I think I learned significantly more tolerance of "the other" living in rural Utah than I have in multi-cultural Massachusetts. Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about flying out to Harvard for graduate school...
Another thing I found interesting in Gelman's development was breaking out social vs. economic value systems. While I don't know that those are necessarily the "right" axes to separate our political ideology, they certainly are evocative. In the comparison of economic values to income, being richer makes you uniformly more economically conservative, and by almost identical amounts regardless of ones stances on social issues. The social values aren't as uniform, but the strong trend is for more money to make you more socially liberal. So the real mass of people seem to be economically liberal (tax and spend, redistributionist Socialists) and socially conservative (values voting, gay-bashing religious Nutjobs). And that's where I tend to find myself, in direct counterposition to the socially liberal, economically conservative libertarians (of which David Frum is a light-hued version; for more pure examples, go to www.reason.com). And yet, as a Republican it's hard to ignore the youth appeal and renewed vigor of the libertarian movement with its Ron Paulistas and Tea Parties. So I feel conflicted; I'd like my party to look more like me (the compassionate conservativism that got lost post-9/11) but I also want my party to be strong and win elections, which right now seems to imply letting it look less like me.
Anway, I liked the book. I hope a few other people had the patience to check it out, and to wait all these weeks until I managed to get a post off about it.
P.S.- One final point I wanted to make (sorry if this reedit is generating lots of extra emails). When contemplating why I'm socially conservative but economically liberal I would point to my religion. But many of my co-religionists are much more economically conservative, and some are much more socially liberal, so I don't know that that captures the true reason. Thinking deeper, my "social image" (for lack of a better term) is that poor people have greater moral authority than rich people. And I think that's what leads me primarily to that upper-left quadrant in Gelman's 2-D political belief matrix. So a question I wanted to put to the crowd is whether you feel rich people or poor people have greater moral standing (or neither)?
Next Book of the Month, and an aside
I'm going with "The Quants" for the Book of the Month. The question now is, which month? I have a somewhat long vacation coming up over Easter, and will be reading it then. And it seems like everyone's been pretty busy anyway, so should we just bump things back and make this the Book of the Month for April?
As an aside, I found this article to be the most sensible political piece I've read from a Republican in a while (granted, I haven't been reading too many political articles lately): http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_topstories+(RSS:+Top+Stories)&utm_content=Google+Reader.
I'm especially in favor of dumping government incentives for employer-subsidized health care, for both the reasons he mentions (hiding the cost of health care to the end consumer), and for the reason that, ultimately, I suspect that government incentives for employer-subsidized health care result in an unfair distribution of government subsidies to those who 1) are employed; and 2) are employed by employers who can afford to offer health care. (However, I'm not familiar enough with the tax code to be able to say with certainty that tax breaks on health care plans selected by individuals aren't commensurate with tax breaks offered to employers).
Anyone want to discuss?
(The only point I disagree with is his point #1. Surely the $500,000 is or would eventually be keyed to inflation, rendering his primary argument that it would cover increasingly more Americans moot.)
As an aside, I found this article to be the most sensible political piece I've read from a Republican in a while (granted, I haven't been reading too many political articles lately): http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_topstories+(RSS:+Top+Stories)&utm_content=Google+Reader.
I'm especially in favor of dumping government incentives for employer-subsidized health care, for both the reasons he mentions (hiding the cost of health care to the end consumer), and for the reason that, ultimately, I suspect that government incentives for employer-subsidized health care result in an unfair distribution of government subsidies to those who 1) are employed; and 2) are employed by employers who can afford to offer health care. (However, I'm not familiar enough with the tax code to be able to say with certainty that tax breaks on health care plans selected by individuals aren't commensurate with tax breaks offered to employers).
Anyone want to discuss?
(The only point I disagree with is his point #1. Surely the $500,000 is or would eventually be keyed to inflation, rendering his primary argument that it would cover increasingly more Americans moot.)
Monday, March 8, 2010
Justice
I've been reading my runner up selection for book o' the month last month (The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen) and thoroughly enjoying it, although I'm still convinced it would have made a lousy book club selection.
I've also been watching a series of lectures by Harvard professor Michael Sandel called, simply, Justice. The production quality is pretty good; Harvard teamed with WGBH to put it together. The lectures are fairly engaging, even if I feel too much time is given to Harvard underclassmen and not enough to in-depth topical development.
I'm wondering if there would be critical mass here at PVS for a discussion of some of the material. Is anyone interested in watching, say, one lecture a week (25 min.) and then having a collective discussion? Anyway, just a thought.
As for Red State, Blue State, I finished it some time back. I'll try and collect my thoughts and post something about it tonight or tomorrow.
I've also been watching a series of lectures by Harvard professor Michael Sandel called, simply, Justice. The production quality is pretty good; Harvard teamed with WGBH to put it together. The lectures are fairly engaging, even if I feel too much time is given to Harvard underclassmen and not enough to in-depth topical development.
I'm wondering if there would be critical mass here at PVS for a discussion of some of the material. Is anyone interested in watching, say, one lecture a week (25 min.) and then having a collective discussion? Anyway, just a thought.
As for Red State, Blue State, I finished it some time back. I'll try and collect my thoughts and post something about it tonight or tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
March BOM Candidates
I'm sad that I can't convince myself to find the time to re-read one of my favorite authors of all time (Douglas Adams). But if you've read Dirk Gently and Hitchhikers, and are now so obsessed with Adams that you need more insight into the man, may I recommend the post-humous collection of his ramblings entitled "The Salmon of Doubt." I once heard him say that he considered himself more of a philosopher than a comic, but I had dismissed the claim as disingenuous until reading "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish." I now think he honestly considered himself a philosopher, but was trapped by the realization that he was much better at being a comic--i.e., that he was much better at finding absurdities than reconciling them.
As for the March(ish) book of the month, in traditional PVS fashion, I have narrowed the list to three candidates, in order of the number of characters in their respective titles:
1) Life of Pi
If anyone has any preferences or thoughts on the list, let me know. Otherwise, I will choose one early next week.
Other candidates receiving votes: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (doesn't seem like a good choice for a book on tape); I Am America (And So Can You!) (the "surprise me" pages off of Amazon were pretty funny, but Colbert's style can get old pretty quickly); The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (heard the author on a radio program once and was impressed, but a quick thumb-through made me think I should read it before recommending it); Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (seriously, though, raise your hands if you've pulled something like this out of a box of childhood belongings in your parents' attic, and actually reread a few pages just for the memories. wait. I can't be the only one).
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Accountability
I just want to take a second and say I enjoyed Dirk Gently and I have read a good portion of
Red State, Blue State. I never really got to a meaningful post on Dirk, so this is just me checking in and saying I'm still participating. --DL
Red State, Blue State. I never really got to a meaningful post on Dirk, so this is just me checking in and saying I'm still participating. --DL
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