Real Bipartisanship...

What Defines Middle Income? On Romney's Views.

You may have already heard about how Mitt Romney responded to George Stephanopoulos' question about what a middle income might be:

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I said that there are five different studies that point out that we can get to a balanced budget without raising taxes on middle income people.  Let me tell you, George, the fundamentals of my tax policy are these.  Number one, reduce tax burdens on middle-income people.  So no one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is $100,000 middle income?
MITT ROMNEY: No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.  So number one, don’t reduce– or excuse me, don’t raise taxes on middle-income people, lower them.  Number two, don’t reduce the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest.  The top 5% will still pay the same share of taxes they pay today.  That’s principle one, principle two.  Principle three is create incentives for growth, make it easier for businesses to start and to add jobs.  And finally, simplify the code, make it easier for people to pay their taxes than the way they have to now.

That's a pretty loose definition of "middle income," especially as it has no lower bound at all, so even the poorest households might be covered by that definition.  

For more meaningful definitions, have a look at this piece by Alicia Munnell.  For instance, in  2010, an annual household income of $180,810 would have put a household at the 95th percentile of the income distribution.  What does that mean?

That only approximately five percent of American households earned more than that figure.  It could be that the figures Romney cites define the 95th percentile today?  But in any case "middle income" cannot be more than or equal to what 95% of American households earn.  It cannot even be the upper bound of such a class.

One might bicker over whether something like "middle income" can even be defined.  Is it the amount which allows a family to live "a middle class lifestyle?"  That amount obviously varies between geographic areas, but it also will vary depending on how we define such a lifestyle.

It's better to stay within statistical definitions.  If we stick to those, in 2010 the median (the middle income in the sense that roughly half of all incomes were less than that particular income and roughly half were more) household income in the United States was $49,445.

This has been a post in the series of excruciatingly boring economic posts by yours truly.

Useful Reading About Social Science And Humanities Research

For those of you who are interested in research ethics and similar questions, this Guardian article is worth a read.  I also recommend the 2010 piece on the Decline Effect.  My intention is not to cast a negative light on researchers, most of whom are honest in their work.

But it's important to reduce the publish-or-perish imperative, especially in the form of (only)  positive findings, and it's important for the professions to police themselves more carefully.  Because the reputation effect of bad research, when it is widely believed in and discussed, will taint all research.

Laypeople often cannot tell the difference between good and bad research (and neither seem most popularizers).  It's a bit like the effect tainted medications have on the markets for all pharmaceuticals.  Your firm may not produce tainted medications but the consumers cannot tell that this is so.  The only solution is to regulate the whole market, to ensure high quality.

In the context of research this means publishing the data the results are based on and also placing more emphasis on publishing no-difference or negative findings.  The idea that only results which comply with one's own theory are worth publishing is dangerous.  It's obviously so in the field of medicine where the finding that a new drug does not work is of great value, for instance.

But it's also important in other fields, as I have written before.  My pet example has to do with the science of gender differences.  To have a field focused on finding differences means that not finding them will make a study less publishable.  Thus, we get more popularizations on how men and women might differ than on how they do not differ.  The overall impression  this will leave is of large gender differences, like gulfs which cannot be bridged.  Yet measures of gender differences in various cognitive fields are usually much smaller than similar measures of gender differences in adult heights or shoe sizes.

Katha Pollitt Reviews Naomi Wolf's New Book. I Think About Related Stuff.

Katha Pollitt has reviewed Naomi Wolf's new book, about the vagina.  Or Wolf's vagina, it seems.

I have not read the book yet, only Katha's deliciously biting review of the same. But if the review is correct, Wolf has skipped happily down a very odd essentialist path into romantic woods where candles are lighted and the lingam waved.  In honor of the yoni.

I do want to read the book (or at least put it in the long list of books to be read) because there's one sense in which Wolf is probably correct:  Our view about sex have changed in the last two decades and that mostly due to Internet pron.  The intended clientele of pron is predominantly heterosexually male and the dream stories told are therefore not going to be about what turns women on.  Or at least mostly not about that.

As I've written before, I worry about any young people whose first contacts with sex come through those images.  Pron is not real-world sex, but can young people distinguish between the two?  And to what extent are our current sexual expectations (what he will do, what she will do) based on those unrealistic scenarios?

So yes, it seems to me that the time is pretty ripe for some kind of a correction.  For instance, blow jobs are extensively discussed all over the net.  Cunnilingus?  Hardly ever.  And that concerns me.

Here's the problem about writing on the topic of pron and feminism:  We get into a vigorous debate about other questions, including the advisability of having pron at all and the prudishness of one Echidne-of-the-snakes.

But the question I really want to have answered is whether our sexual norms have changed in a way which might not be that good for women, in general, or not even for men, ultimately, remains unanswered.  I think silicone breasts and shaving the pubic hair are both caused by what pron actresses look like.   If that's the case, what other aspects of our sexual mores are similarly affected?

All these are musings based on the general topic and in no way do I imply that Wolf's book is the response I'm seeking for.  Or that it is not, either.  But, yes, we should have many books out on this topic, preferably with a basis in proper research about what it is, exactly, that causes the changes we can all observe and what their consequences are.

On The Libyan Embassy Murders and Egypt Demonstrations

This is a difficult topic.  After I've read through the available material I'm filled with a dry despair, like sandpaper on very tired eyes.

That despair has to do with the impossibility of communicating across the immense cultural chasms and with the ability of some people to take advantage of this.  The latter might include Al Qaeda in the sense of being the killers in Tripoli and, in a much smaller but self-centered way,  Willard Romney in the United States, who decided to play president before he is one (goddess forbid), giving a cheerful press conference on this very topic, putting his silver-shod hoof straight into that cultural chasm, too.

What's behind all this?  A film made by some obscure group in the United States:

New information is emerging over the origins of an anti-Islamic video which is at the centre of violent anti-American protests in Egypt and Libya.
A film was shot in the US, and was shown at a small cinema in Hollywood at the end of June. But it is the clips posted to YouTube, translated into Arabic, which appear to have sparked these protests.
The video first appeared online on 1 July, posted in English by someone using the pseudonym "sambacile."
It was very badly made and cheaply produced, with poor acting and little in the way of storyline.
The most offensive comments about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad had been quite obviously dubbed onto the soundtrack afterwards and not spoken by the actors.
One actress featured in the film said she had no idea it would be used for anti-Islamic propaganda and condemned it.
Cindy Lee Garcia, from Bakersfield in California, was quoted by the website Gawker saying she had a small role in the film which she was told would be called Desert Warriors, about life in Egypt 2,000 years ago.
She threatened to sue the director for the way the actors were represented.
Questions asked
In fact a film called The Innocence of Bin Laden was shown at a small independent cinema on Hollywood Boulevard called the Vine Theatre on 30 June this year.
Someone present, who asked not to be identified, said it lasted about an hour, had very poor production values and attracted just a handful of viewers in the two showings that evening.

Get it?  A poorly made video shown only to a small number of viewers.  Then clips of it are put on YouTube, translated into Arabic and possibly enhanced with more offensive comments.

It's hard not to put on a tinfoil helmet and wonder who did that and to what purpose.  But I won't go there.

The consequences?  Protests and demonstrations.  And more are expected:

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood called for a million-man march on Sept. 14 to protest the video. Under Islam, any depiction or representation of the prophet is deemed blasphemous and ridiculing him is even more serious.
The protests cast a new spotlight on Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt after the election of President Mohamed Mursi, who came from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. After clashes between Muslims and Christians in the months following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last year, Mursi’s government has repeatedly said it will represent all Egyptians.
The U.S. must take a “firm stand” against the producers of the film and act in line with international accords that “criminalize actions that create sectarian strife” on the basis of race, color or religion, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil told reporters yesterday, reading from a government statement.

Whether any of this was behind the murder of four people at the American Embassy in Tripoli is unclear.  It's looking more likely that Al Qaeda at least exploited the opportunity to run an assassination under the cover of the video protests.   On 9/11.

Then about the minor problem of one Mitt Romney.  His speedy press conference didn't go down well.  That's the general judgement, from both sides of the political aisle.  Besides, one is not supposed to gloat during national emergencies.  Or, I might add, to show utter ignorance about that cultural chasm I referred to.
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After glancing through this post I almost erased those references to how I feel.  They are self-centered and stupid and I'm not important.  But I left them in because I think so many others feel the same way:  Exhausted from trying to make some sort of a difference and disappointed when seeing how easy those tinder boxes are to light.

Others decide when there will be wars and violence, others decide the arenas in which we might die, others (on both sides) play with us as if we were pawns in some important chess game.  Right now my pawn has been left in the box but that may change whenever the players so decide.

The End Of Men, Again

Some days ago I got an e-mail from Hanna Rosin's agents asking me if I wanted her book The End Of Men to review.  The same night I got a gastritis attack.

Such are the rewards of writing in this field.  What is it that made me ill, you ask (other than countless cups of coffee, caused by anger)?

The title of the book, for one thing.  It's an obscenity in this world where women in many countries have fewer rights than dogs or bicycles.  It's an outrage even more generally, because it has made a bet on flaming the gender wars and as we all know such wars are great fun and lucrative for the instigators.  Likewise, these topics don't get any attention whatsoever when they are flamed from the other side.  I don't think a book called The End Of Women would get the same attention, even though women are somewhat ending in China and India.  Men, on the other hand, are not ending.

Had the book been called The End Of Male Dominance? (which appears to be its actual topic), the potential numbers of readers would have quickly shrunk to a few beady-eyed feminists such as yours truly.  As things are, I will find reading it tough going because I know it's supposed to press all sorts of unseemly buttons about feminism having gone too far and so on.  Yet I hear that it's kinda disappointing in that it doesn't tell us how all those men are ending.  Indeed, it might even suggest that rigid definitions of masculinity are at fault here.

So thinks our David Brooks who has written a meditative piece on the book.  I started reading it because I already have too much stomach acid. But he isn't truly horrible in that piece, which disappointed me.  Still, it's always worthwhile to do research on our David's assertions:

Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. In Friday’s jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.
Millions of men are collecting disability. Even many of those who do have a job are doing poorly. According to Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, annual earnings for median prime-age males have dropped by 28 percent over the past 40 years.
Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.

 Derek Rose responds to those arguments:

Actually in 1954, the 92.8 percent — not 96 percent — of men aged 25 to 54 had a job, according to BLS statistics. In August that percentage was at 82.2 percent. A lot of that has to do with, y’know, the recession. As recently as 2007, 87.5 percent of men had jobs. Others were in school, being a housedad or, yes, collecting disability. More on that in a sec.
Meanwhile, the percentage of women aged 25-54 working (outside the home) has also been dropping — from a high of 74.9 percent in fourth quarter 1999, to 69.1 percent in the first half of this year.
In Friday’s jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.  True, but as the Atlantic explained, this has more to do with an aging population than anything else.

Millions of men are collecting disability.

True, but so are millions of women — about 300,000 more women than men, in fact. According to the Social Security Administration, 3.28 million males and 3.58 million females were receiving SSI disability payments in December 2011. (pdf, page 22).

What about the annual earnings of men dropping?  Derek Rose again;

Brooks misrepresents Greenstone’s work here. Greenstone does indeed conclude that when you adjust for inflation, average earnings for median prime-age [25-64] males did drop 28 percent from 1969 to 2009 — but that’s because fewer men are working, and so aren’t earning any wage. When you look at men working full-time, the mean earnings of men aged 25-64 has risen 13 percent (but the median has dropped 1 percent, a sign of growing inequality. (pdf, page 13).

 Here's recent data on the male-female earnings difference from the second quarter of 2012:

It doesn't look to me as if men are ending.  Or as if women are completely taking over, either, though with that paltry exception Brooks allows, the top of the societal ladders:

Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.

Child-related absence from the labor force only affects the high-flyers?????   How very odd that view is.

So what have we learned so far?  Both men and women have lower labor market participation rates because of the recession.  More women than men collect disability.  Men's real earnings may have fallen or not risen much, over time, but men are still earning more than women.

What about women in their 20s out-earning men in their 20s?  That, too, is rubbish.  You can see it from the above graph, of course.  You don't have to use a study which singled out large metropolitan areas, removed all married individuals from the study and then didn't compare like-with-like by not controlling for education.  Young unmarried women in those areas have, on average, higher educational qualifications than young, unmarried men, and it's the education difference, rather than gender, that matters in those findings.

I've written about that particular study so many times before but it simply refuses to die because it's such a fun study to believe in.  And fits the framework of the coming monstrous petticoat regime!

Finally, let's have a look at those 15 fastest growing professions which are dominated by women. It's not clear which list Rosin's book used as there are several ways of defining "fastest growing" (percentage increases or absolute numbers etc). The one Rosin probably used is Table 2 in this article (scroll down), although it lists twenty occupations, not fifteen.

It's worth noting the text under that table:

The education categories and wages of the occupations with the largest numbers of new jobs are considerably different than those of the fastest growing occupations. Only three of these occupations are in the associate’s degree or higher category. Fourteen of the 20 occupations with the largest numbers of new jobs paid less than the national median wage of $33,840 in May 2010.

Out of the top five listed (all female dominated, by the way), only the first occupation mentioned, registered nurses, has a highish median annual salary: 64, 690 dollars.  The next four:  retail salespersons,  home health aides, personal care aides and office clerks, general, have median annual salaries of $20,670, $20,560, $19,640 and $26,610, respectively.  In other words, dominating twelve out of the top fifteen categories doesn't actually make women the winners in some giant employment race.

That's enough on our David today.  I might read Rosin's book one day and then I will do more ranting here.
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Two post-scripts:  The first:  I spent time at the Bureau of Labor Statistics site trying to find labor market participation rates.  The ones I found for men and women aged 25-54 for 2010 don't exactly match the information Derek Rose provides but it is close.  All the labor market participation rates I could find (the most current ones were for men and women over the age twenty) demonstrate the same pattern:  Women have a lower labor market participation rate than men do.

The second, and more substantial:  This post is not meant to  belittle the troubles of men who are losing blue-collar jobs in this country, and there may well be something to the idea of rigid definitions of masculinity keeping some back.  At the same time, "flexibility" seems to mean accepting a very low-paid service job instead, and the losses in salary are real.  Women have had fewer opportunities for the better-paying jobs in the past and hence may be more accepting of low earnings opportunities than men.  Still, before we can discuss any of this properly we should drop the gender wars framework and at least get the basic data correct.

Today's Deep Thought

Is in this Twitter picture:

The small print says "Made in China."

Most likely Obama's campaign giveaways (if any) are also made in China.

The deep thought this picture obviously elicits has to do with reality smashing straight against that "rah-rah-we're-number-one" type of patriotism.  The latter can be all rainbows and butterflies and pretense and it still seems to work.  Reality is a bit different, given that most everything I see in the stores (even in food stores) comes from China, these days.

For The Sake Of The Child. Maternal Depression and Child Height.

I came across these headlines yesterday:

Mom’s Depression May Lead to Shorter Kids

Depressed moms might have shorter kids, new study suggests 

Postpartum Depression May Lead to Shorter Kids: Study

Mother's Depression Linked to Child's Shorter Height

Only that last headline is correct, in the sense that the study all these cover cannot prove causality of any kind.

I read through all those popularizations and then got hold of the article itself (thanks to the funding of you, my sweet readers!).  The study is not bad, as such studies go, but the way it is popularized and discussed is such a beautiful example of how and why certain studies are picked for wider dissemination and others are not.  It is also a beautiful example of the kinds of conclusions that we are offered, together with the gist of the study.

On those conclusions:  

"The hopelessness of depression often leads people not to seek the care that they need," said Robbins. "If [mothers] can make the connection that this is not just affecting them but also affecting their family, it may become motivation to get the proper treatment."

The person quoted there is a psychiatrist and not involved with this study.  I would have thought a psychiatrist would realize that the last thing a severely depressed woman will be motivated (to seek care, not suicide)  by is dumping more guilt feelings on her.  After all, here are some of the symptoms of post-natal depression:

According to the CDC, postpartum depression among women is characterized by the following:
    •    Trouble sleeping when your baby sleeps (more than the lack of sleep typical among new moms)
    •    Feeling numb or disconnected from your baby
    •    Having scary or negative thoughts about the baby; for example, thinking someone will take your baby away or hurt your baby
    •    Worrying that you will hurt the baby
    •    Feeling guilty about not being a good mom, or ashamed that you cannot care for your baby

Now add to those guilt feelings the idea that your child will be stunted because of you.  One has to tread very lightly indeed, to get the message home in a loving and non-blaming way, and I don't sense that from the various conclusions I've read, such as this:

The new research doesn’t explain how kids with depressed moms end up shorter. That’s something the researchers are looking into right now, said the study’s lead author Pamela J. Surkan, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Surkan suspects, however, that depression might get in the way of nurturing.
“We think that mothers who are depressed or blue might have a hard time following through with caregiving tasks,” Surkan said.
“We know that children of depressed mothers often suffer from poor attachment and the depression seems to have effects on other developmental outcomes. It makes sense that mothers who have depressive symptoms might have reduced ability to take care of infants, that they might not always pick up cues from their kids.”

 It sounds very authoritative.  Until you learn (as I did) that this particular study has NO DATA on nurturing practices.  The conclusion about child-rearing practices is based on earlier studies, it seems.  Still, this is the first paragraph in one popularization of THIS study, after the headline
"Postpartum Depression May Lead to Shorter Kids: Study":

It's not certain why, but feeding practices might play a part, expert says

Rewind back to that symptom of post-natal depression:    Feeling guilty about not being a good mom, or ashamed that you cannot care for your baby.   I get that this topic is an important one.  But to put something which isn't even based on the study at the beginning of the popularization is kinda bad.  On the other hand,  these ruminations ARE based on the comments of one of the researchers....

What about the study itself?  As I mentioned above, it's not a bad study as such.  BUT it has no data on the heights of the child's parents, none at all.  This means that the results do not take into account the genetic component in children's heights.

And while the study stresses that it has not proved causality from the mother's depression to the child's lower stature it proceeds as if that has been done, by proposing various theories about how the former might cause the latter.  Yet the study also mentions past research into this topic:

Results from other developed countries on the association between maternal depressive symptoms and child growth have been mixed.27–32 Two studies from the United Kingdom examined failure-to- thrive in children age #1; one found no association,30 and the other reported an association only at 4 months that disappeared by 1 year of age.29

 In studies including children followed only until age 2, pooled data from 5 countries showed no differences by depressive symptoms for child weight, length, weight for length, or body mass index.32 However, a case-control study reported that children #2 years old with growth faltering were more likely to have depressed mothers.31

The only US study with follow-up until at least age 3 was from an affluent mostly white sample.27 Unlike other studies, Ertel et al found maternal depressive symptoms at 6 months postpartum associated with increased child height- for-age z scores at age 3.27 Using longitudinal growth models from birth to age 3 to examine weight-for-height z scores over time, they reported no difference between children with and without depressed mothers.28

Only one of the popularizations I've read mentions that other studies have had different findings.

The study controls for various socio-economic variables.  But as mentioned, it has no data on the parents' heights or on the parent's nurturing practices.  Neither has it any data on the father's mental or emotional state.  As is common in these studies, fathers and their behavior is not generally studied (in this study they are present only in the sense of the variable reflecting single-parenthood of the mother or not).

 That is because the job of nurturing is assigned to the mother.  But that omission may prove harmful if family dynamics are affecting the mother's depression.  For instance.

I write about this study not because of the study itself but because of the extent and type of popularization it acquired.  Those earlier studies with all sorts of findings about the relationship between maternal depression and child height did not get this kind of exposure.  Certain studies are pulled out of the file cabinets and highlighted, and those studies usually are interpreted as the whole knowledge of a particular field.  That the overall findings are much fuzzier is ignored.

I also write about this study because of the practical advice the popularizations include.  Those amount to the exhortation that severely depressed women should seek care because they might be hurting their children.  When one important symptom of post-natal depression consists of giant feelings of maternal guilt, this advice seems ignorant at best.

What is the take-home message from all this?  That post-natal depression can be a severe medical condition?  Didn't we know that already?  That it should be treated as a severe medical condition because it might affect the children and not just the mother?
 

On Body Decorations: Chris Brown and Spiders

Or what I have come across today while surfing for stories.

First, Chris Brown appears to have a tattoo of a battered woman's face on his neck, at a visible point.  Is this to serve as a warning signal in cultural exchanges or what?  Is it a sign of remorse?  Or an angry challenge?  Or what?

And do we care?

Second, here's a lovely body decoration demonstrated by a male spider in Australia while he woos his sweetheart.  The decoration clearly has a social role in that case.

I put these two topics together for no other reason than happenstance.  I went from one story to the other and noticed the odd commonality.  Make of that what you wish.

Stopping Those Tax Loopholes

This is a fun glimpse into an important Republican program about taxes:  The idea that we can lower taxes for everyone, close all the nasty tax loopholes, and then have government tax revenue either rise or stay constant.

That policy aspect requires two important questions:  First, is it really the case that the loopholes could be removed without increasing taxes for the middle classes?  After all, the mortgage deduction is pretty important for that class of taxpayers.

Second, would the Republicans actually pursue a policy of filling the loopholes?  My impression is that all details about that are left murky and hidden, and Paul Ryan in that interview follows the same pattern:

RYAN:

...

 

Now the question is, not necessarily what loopholes go, but who gets them. High-income earners use most of the loopholes. That means they can shelter their income from taxation. But if you take those loopholes, those tax shelters away from high-income earners, more of their income is subject to taxation. And that allows us to lower tax rates on everybody — small businesses, families, economic growth.

…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Congressman, as you know –
RYAN: When Reagan did this, it worked –
STEPHANOPOULOS: — many say it’s difficult –
RYAN: Go ahead, George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: — to accept your word if you’re not going to specify which tax loopholes you’re willing to close. Don’t voters have a right to know which loopholes you’re going to go after?
RYAN: So Mitt Romney and I, based on our experience, think the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this. That’s how you get things done. The other thing, George, is–
STEPHANOPOULOS: Isn’t that a secret plan?
RYAN: — we don’t want to — no, no. No, no. What we don’t want is a secret plan. What we don’t want to do is cut some backroom deal like ObamaCare, and then hatch (ph) it (ph) to the country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not specify the –
RYAN: We want to do this –
STEPHANOPOULOS: — loopholes now?
RYAN: — out in the open –
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not say right now –
RYAN: — because we want to do this –
(CROSSTALK)
RYAN: — we want to have this — George, because we want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people, and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.
And our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes. And we should have broad-based policies that go to middle-class taxpayers, to make sure we can advance things that we care about, like charities. But that is a debate we shouldn’t cut in a back room, shouldn’t hatch a secret plan like ObamaCare. We should do it out in the public view where the public can participate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, having it in public before the election so voters can have that information before they make up their minds.

I'm skeptical about the Republicans actually following suit on this part of their proposals, both because for it to work it the total taxes higher-income individuals pay (and those are the real base of the party) would have to rise and also because corporations would fight like mad to keep their loopholes:  All those corporate deductions which allow some large firms to pay essentially no taxes on their profits.

Today's Bowl of Gender Science Granola

It comes from researchers at York University, England.  They decided to have a look at the old evo-psycho saw about men seeking beauty and women being gold-diggers, when it comes to mating.  The popularizing writeup of that research prepares us with a few paragraphs of the usual pseudo-science:

Men seek youth and beauty, while women focus on wealth and status — evolutionary psychologists have long claimed that these general preferences in human mating are universal and based on biology. But new research suggests that they may in fact be malleable: as men and women achieve financial equality, in terms of earning power and economic freedom, these mate-seeking preferences by gender tend to wane.

Once again, I must remind you, my sweet readers (was going to type "sweet dreamers") that what meant "wealth" in the imagined nomadic African tribe or family group many thousands of years ago is most likely the same thing as youth and health in a man, just as "beauty" in a woman is youth and health.  Because groups on the go in that world could not amass wealth as such. 
 
Or put in other terms, to argue that something is based in biology without any actual genetic evidence or the ability to time-travel to whatever the Era and Area of Evolutionary Adaptations might have been is simply speculation, especially if the actual differences in women's and men's ability to acquire wealth in general are not taken into account.

Never mind.  What this new research appears to have found suggests the importance of culture in these mating customs:

In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers looked at two large samples of people who were surveyed about the qualities they most wanted in a mate: one survey was conducted in the late 1980s and included 8,953 people from 37 different cultures; the second survey was more current, administered to 3,177 people from 10 nations via the Internet. 

Noting prior research finding that women who expect to be employed full-time on their own put less emphasis on a man’s “provider” qualities, the authors write: “As the positioning of men and women in societal roles changes, gender differences in mate choice criteria should change because people look for mates who fit into their anticipated future lives under prevalent societal circumstances.” 

To figure out if that’s true, the researchers ranked nations according to a new measure of gender equity introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006. Within various societies, they looked for relationships between the gender gap and how much of a difference there was between male and female mate preferences. And indeed, the researchers found, the greater the equality of power between the genders, the more similar were the traits that both men and women sought in potential mates. In Finland, the country with the greatest gender parity among the 10 countries included in the more current of the two surveys, there was a far smaller difference between male and female preferences than in Turkey, which had the biggest gender gap.

That means, basically, that the more equal men and women became, the less emphasis men placed on youth and beauty, and the less emphasis women put on wealth and power. These findings were borne out by the 37-culture survey as well; although it showed a definite gender difference in mate-seeking preferences, it also showed that these gender-based differences narrowed in countries with more equality. Further, it found that the top few most desired traits were shared by both men and women: most people first look for intelligence, kindness and sense of humor, even before men mention beauty or women mention wealth and status.

So.  It's possible that the ten-nation survey, at least, may have suffered from a self-selection bias if the respondents selected themselves into the study on the net.  But I find it difficult to see in what direction that bias might go.  People who like to respond to studies of that kind tend to hold stronger views on the questions.  Whether those views are of the EP type or not is unclear to me. 

I'd like to draw your attention to the part in the above quote I have bolded.  In fact, the early evo-psycho studies arguing for innately different mating preferences  by gender also found that other aspects of the potential partner mattered more than beauty or money.  Which is nice, given the cartoonish nature of so much being published under that label.

Looking for a Medicaid-Covered Pap Smear in Texas

This video demonstrates that without Planned Parenthood poor women will have a hard time finding preventive gyno checkups in Texas.

President Obama Speaks, Echidne Listens

The last speech of the Democratic National Convention was by Barack Obama.  Opinions on the speech vary, as they say, but it wasn't one of the best from this gifted orator.

Did it serve its intended purpose?

That depends on what the purpose is assumed to be.   I think his speech was aimed at the so-called undecided voters, not at the choir, but others disagree.  If I'm correct then the speech may have worked.  If it was intended to the base it sorta limped along.  But feel free to disagree.

Hmm.  Convention fatigue seems to have stepped into  my posts about the speeches.  The DNC beat the RNC in enthusiasm and in oratorial skills.  That was added for those of you who like bloggers to be style judges.


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And for all my non-American readers:  You and I, my friends, live in the bottom mud of this world.  This is because of American Exceptionalism.

The Republicans are big on American Exceptionalism,  humongous, in fact.  But even the Democrats must mention it every few seconds lest they be equated with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys (the French).  Here's the president on the topic of American Greatness:

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we’re getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best:
We’re making things again.
(APPLAUSE)
I’ve met workers in Detroit and Toledo who feared they’d never build another American car. And today, they can’t build them fast enough, because we reinvented a dying auto industry that’s back on top of the world.
(APPLAUSE) I’ve worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America, not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products. Because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.

So I don't work hard and smart.  OK, better shuffle dejectedly into that dark crevice in the ground to hide my shame and sloth.

I get the point of all the rah-rah-we're-the-greatest.  It's akin to children buying their mom or dad a t-shirt which says "The World's Best Mom/Dad."  It's not meant for the consumption of outsiders.

Still, it wore me down a bit.






 

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Women Should Not Be in Bars

It's the year 2012.  In Arizona this means:

A woman who was groped by an off-duty DPS officer at a Flagstaff bar last summer says that comments to her by the judge during Wednesday’s sentencing were inappropriate and that the judge should apologize.
Before giving the officer two years’ probation on his conviction for sexual abuse, Coconino County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Hatch said to victim: “If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you.”
Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims. Hatch also said that even going to the grocery store after 10 p.m. can be dangerous for a woman.
“When you blame others, you give up your power to change,” Hatch said that her mother used to say.
Reached today by phone, the victim said: “It felt like she was saying to me, ‘If you wouldn’t have been there that night, it wouldn’t have happened to you.’ Yeah, well, it probably would have happened to someone else.”

Women should stay out of bar, I guess, and also out of grocery stores late at night.  Better still, women should never leave their homes unattended

I guess mugging victims should be scolded for being out on some street and burglary victims for not having installed extra-strong security systems.

Without knowing more about the details of this case, Hatch's statement sounds like a parody, something I might write as a form of satire.  Because she uses an argument which has merit (be vigilant, avoid bad situations and so on) and then merges it with the idea that transporting the vagina-carrying structure almost anywhere equals being in a bad situation, given that one IS a vagina-carrying structure and there will always be those gropers.

It's hard to know what got Judge Hatch going like this.  Perhaps her sympathies were on the side of the off-duty police officer who appears to have lost his job because of this case?

But that's not the fault of the victim.  It's the fault of the man himself.  If he had not been in that bar that night or if he had kept his hands to himself  he would still have his job and his good reputation!

See?  Two can dance that tango.

I also  liked the victim's point that had she not been in that bar that night, some other woman would probably have received the genital gropes.
----
Via DailyKos.

There's a petition to get Judge Hatch removed from the bench.

Added later:  Judge Hatch has now apologized for her comments. 

Advice, Please

I'm at the beginning of a book project*.  I need your opinions on the best type of writing style for a book which is going to have granola contents (i.e. facts and information).

Is the best style the slightly weird chatty style I use on this here blog?  Something academic and very neutral?  Or a compromise between the two?

And how much humor?

This picture below is not a specimen page from the book but one of my first efforts (from that Echidne-At-Five booklet) at teaching myself to write.  For those of you who read Finnish, it's a copy of a Christmas song or poem about Santa Claus and such, with no spacing and with a few of the letters flipped over.

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*The topic remains a secret right now and the 'book' may never become a proper book.  But I'm gonna write it, says she, determinedly.

Bill Clinton Speaks, Echidne Listens

Bill Clinton spoke a long time last night at the Democratic Convention, longer than was planned.  I thoroughly enjoyed his easy and simple chat.  Probably because I've said all those things before on this blog, at various times.  Hmmm.  I wonder if his speech writers read me?

Just joking though a goddess can always hope.  Still, I was surprised when some observers found his speech confusing or complicated.  He carried out the job that the Obama administration has utterly failed to perform, that of clearly and simply  listing its victories and defending its performance against the critics.  The major point to take home was this one:

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re- election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: "We left him a total mess. He hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in."

Which is true.   Additional good points:

We Democrats, we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor folks to work their way into it, with a relentless focus on the future, with business and government actually working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. You see, we believe that "We're all in this together" is a far better philosophy than "You're on your own."

(APPLAUSE)

So who's right? Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private- sector jobs. So what's the job score? Republicans: twenty-four million. Democrats: forty-two. (APPLAUSE)

Now, there's -- there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth.

...

So let's get back to the story. In 2010, as the president's recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around. The Recovery Act saved or created millions of jobs and cut taxes -- let me say this again -- cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

And in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4.5 million private-sector jobs.

(APPLAUSE)

We could have done better, but last year the Republicans blocked the president's job plan, costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another job score. President Obama: plus 4.5 million. Congressional Republicans: zero.

The Republicans in the House and Senate made quite sure that Obama couldn't do better with the economy.  This is important to stress, given the Republican campaign argument that the Obama administration is a failed administration.

What about Clinton's facts in general?  FactCheck.org finds the speech mostly factual, with a few exaggerations and a few debatable cause-effect assertions.

One might talk about the gaps in the speech, the things not said.  It's still true that Bill Clinton was the best moderate Republican president of the last fifty years and that Barack Obama is right now shaping to be the second best moderate Republican president.   The seeds of our current harvest of economic depression and increasing income inequality were eagerly sown by the previous Republican administrations, true, but Bill Clinton was also out there with his seed basket and trowel, when he expanded corporate access to easy outsourcing and helped to adjust the blinders on the regulators of the stock markets.   And the 1990's economy shared something with the economy of the early 2000s:  both were built on unsustainable bubbles, the first on the dotcom idea as Our Savior and the second on both war and housing bubbles.

Now I feel as if I'm complaining of a toothache from the DNC when the RNC offered me nothing but slow and painful end.  Thus, it's important to stress that the Republican alternatives to the Clinton and Obama administrations would have been much worse.  Just think of the eight years of George W. Bush, slipped between the two Democratic reigns.

In an ideal world we could do much better but then pigs could fly if they could buy boarding passes.
-----
One criticism which doesn't fit into the general discussion above:  The idea of a skill deficit among the United States workers and the need to fix it:

Of course, we need a lot more new jobs, but there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled in America, mostly because the people who apply for them don't yet have the required skills to do them. So even as we get Americans more jobs, we have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are actually going to be created. The old economy is not coming back. We've got to build a new one and educate people to do those jobs.

(APPLAUSE)

The president and his education secretary have supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities. And even more important, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the dropout rate so much that the percentage of our young people with four-year college degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to 16th in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees.

So the president's student loan reform is more important than ever. Here's what it does. Here's what it does. Here's what it does.

It's certainly the case that education in the US needs to be improved but I'm not at all sure that the mantra of "college for everybody" would work.  That seems to be based on a worldview where all American workers are managers or white-collar or pink-collar office workers.  Who is going to do all the rest of the necessary work?  Is it people in China and India?  Or computers and robots?

It's not the importance of education that I quibble with but the somewhat mythical idea that if we all had B.A.s and B.Sc.s then the labor market would boom.  Or in other terms, that firms would start hiring immediately if they could just find more college-educated workers.  We need better education for manual or blue-collar jobs, I think, and we need general education about how to be a human being (arts, music, sport, literature, political knowledge).  But I'm not convinced that having a higher and higher percentage of students spend four years in a college to learn how to work computers is the best way to achieve this.  Or the cheapest.

The Penis Monologues

A fun title, don't you think?   It refers to this, because tweets really are monologues, and Erick Erickson always speaks from the....er....heart of his being.  Short and sweet, Erickson called the first day of the Democratic Convention "Vagina Monologues."   If that's the way we are going then most of the Republican Convention consisted of "Penis Monologues."  Certainly their platform is exactly that.

There's a petition for CNN to fire Erickson, I hear.  I doubt that he will be fired as he is an important part of CNN's diversity!   But I could be wrong.

Photo-Shopping Classic Nudes

This is an interesting project: 

Anna Utopia has made several female nudes in old paintings more compliant with today's body ideals.  One example below, with the original work on the right:

left: anna utopia giordano's reinterpretation of 'venus, cupid, folly and time' by angelo bronzino , 2012
right: 'venus, cupid, folly and time' by angelo bronzino, 1545

Michelle Obama's Speech. A Feminist Look.

She spoke very well and her speech achieved the various goals pundits tell me a candidate's wife's speech has:  to humanize the candidate, to relate the love story of the couple and to inject into this human and emotional message as many subtle links to the policies of the candidate's party as possible.

Michelle Obama's speech was even cleverer than that because she managed to contrast her messages with those of the Republican candidate and his wife.  And yes, she looked fantastic and her dress was great and so on.

It would be better if Barack just resigned tomorrow and president Michelle Obama took over!  Michelle won the War of the Wives.

The above paragraphs are my summary of what I have learned about the general political opinions on this matter.   I agree with them, of course.  Michelle Obama is a great speaker, a beautiful woman and very intelligent.

But here's the reason why I can cheer as wildly as all those folks at the Democratic Convention one moment and go a bit sulky the next moment:  I need a feminism-ectomy!  Also:

Speeches by spouses are one of the many aspects of American electoral politics that puzzle the rest of the world. As a reporter from VG (The Way of the World), the largest newspaper in Norway, was heard to ask, "What do these women do that their men can't?"

In many western European contests, the voting public doesn't even know the names of the candidates' families -- but that's never been true in America. From the first, presidents' wives have been the focus of the public eye, much to the chagrin of Martha Washington, who never wanted her husband to be the leader of the new republic. Abigail Adams, wife of the second president, John Adams, had no time for "the people" and their curiosity about the family that led the nation. It would not be until Dolley Madison became the figurehead for her reticent and uncharismatic husband, James, that a new role for the first lady was born.

That's the way I grew up.  Having wives of candidates take the podium to discuss the candidates as husbands and fathers still sounds very weird to me.

But it's that feminism-ectomy need that truly bothers me.  I don't want to pee on the parade, I don't want to be a fanatic single-issue goddess and I don't want to be a curmudgeon.  I also understand that the role of the political spouse is but one role for women in politics, that women also give speeches as candidates on their own right, and I very much understand the specific trials and tribulations a woman of color would face in the role of the First First Lady of Color, what with various racist stereotypes about black women, in particular.  I don't blame Michelle Obama for the only track she can really take.  Besides, her speech did much more than that requisite get-to-know-my-husband.

Still.  The role of the First Lady does not translate into the role of the First Husband, and that's where the feminist problem with this tradition lies. 

Suppose that the roles were indeed reversed between the two Obamas (as courteous commentators suggest).  Would the First Gentleman, Barack Obama, then give a speech which would end in his vow that his most important role is to be Dad-in-Chief?  Michelle finished with the female equivalent, after all:

And I say all of this tonight not just as first lady.and not just as a wife.
You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still “mom in chief.”

And would the viewers of that imaginary speech then discuss Barack's clothing and shoes and handsomeness?

My point is that this stuff does not translate, which means that the institution of the First Lady and all the baggage that comes with it is an essentially female one.  

And this is why the role of the First Lady cannot be the role of the First Gentleman.

That is a minor obstacle in the road of female politicians to the highest office in the country, the absent script for the role of the First Spouse.  Other obstacles are much more severe.  Perhaps the best way for me to look at my small sulks is to accept the times we live in.

Now that I got that off my chest,  let me point out that Michelle Obama works that difficult, ill-defined and unpaid job of a First Lady very well.   My grumbling is not about her (or about the earlier First Ladies, either) but about the expectations attached to that role.

 

On Angry White Guys And The Need For Liberals To Shut Up. Recent Immortal Statements.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.):

The tensions come amid a debate within the GOP on how best to lure new voters. The nation’s shifting demographics have caused some Republican leaders to worry not only about the party’s future but about winning in November, particularly in key swing states such as Virginia and Nevada.
“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Bolds are mine.  I saw a reference to this statement before and simply couldn't believe that it wasn't a hoax.  But nope.  It's real.  Note the verb "to generate" in that sentence.  Graham is taking credit for fueling the anger of the white guys, by presenting them with straw enemies.

An odd moment of honesty perhaps?

Then there's  Alessandra Stanley of New York Times:

You can agree with everything that Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz say on MSNBC and still oppose their right to say it.
Especially when they and their hyped-up panelists shout that Republican claims are “lies,” or Chris Matthews says that Republicans view welfare recipients as “looters.” MSNBC panelists gave Mitt Romney his due on Thursday but mocked his audience. Mr. Matthews noted that when Mr. Romney called for Americans to give the poor a helping hand, Mr. Matthews said, “He got zero applause,” adding, “I think that’s so telling about tonight.”

Bolds are mine, again.  Some of Stanley's points in that piece are valid.  It's true that Fox News has pretty much destroyed informative and fact-based political debate, and it's true that others are now following suit.

But how come has Fox been allowed to say utterly disgusting things for years without much criticism from journalists in general?   As long as one meta-debating partner (Fox) is allowed to blow farts and breathe fire without any punishment but rather with the rewards of good profits, others will follow suit, right?  Unless rudeness and bias are only OK when carried out by Republicans?

Then there's that whole bit of opposing someone's right to say nasty things.  I have never seen that applied to Fox News, and if it were there would be very loud yells about the freedom of expression.

I guess my point is that if there ever was an idyllic era of polite and fact-based political debates in the American media, that era has been broken by the political right, a long time ago.  The intermediate outcome has been an odd one where your average political debate has consisted of a few fire-breathing monsters from the right, high on angry testosterone and furious at the whole world, and one vewy scawed pseudo-liberal whose point has been to act as a stupid mouse for the cats to play with.

Whether having monsters on both sides is better than the mouse-torture games depends on the spectator.  But the process towards general monstering appears unavoidable if the right are allowed to practice it.