“One does not have to go abroad to experience alien cultures.”
If you live in Los Angeles you can drive 15 minutes in any direction and reliably experience a very different culture from where you started. Within Hollywood alone you have Thai Town, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, and Korean, Pilipino, and many Latin American neighborhoods. Also Hollywood Hills where the celebrities live and West Hollywood where many LGBT people live.
One of Jonathan Haidt’s recommendations in The Coddling is that students take a gap year after high school to do work or service in another place before college.
Haidt's "Coddling" is very good stuff, esp. on "Always trust *your* feelings", and
"Life is a battle between good people and *evil* people."
As long as this culture produces slews of Wokesters who are indoctrinated in such thinking, the culture will continue on its current path toward a Rwanda-like cataclysm.
I would say going to a different country is still better for that purpose. Yes, rural West Virginia would be very different from the culture an Oregonian is used to, but it's still fairly familiar; the key laws are similar, the customs largely are too (e.g., they know the traffic laws, that they're supposed to tip in restaurants, how to greet people, etc.), they know how/when to deal with the authorities. Living in another country (except Canada) is much more of a genuine 'shock' that forces one to deal with a totally new set of rules and customs. I've travelled pretty extensively in the US and never felt anywhere near as challenged as being in another country.
A hearty cheer for your proposal to do semesters "abroad" within the U.S. Among much else, this country is so full of treasures that many within it never so much as hear about let alone experience in person.
I grew up in the Northeast and spent summers and holidays in the Mountain West, and what I took from those experiences matters more in many ways than what I've learned from significant international experience. I also got to live for a year as an adult in the South and now look for opportunities to travel to and discover more about the South as much as I can. Your idea is a wonderful one and I hope it catches on.
Redistributing income to support low earning workers has been a long standing, virtually defining element of progressivism, not some new development. As for the populist right, we'll see if they are interested in down-ward redistribution or only want to use the rhetoric to justify trade and tax policies that redistribute income upward. When I see them supporting immigration, free trade and higher taxes on high income groups to achieve lower deficits, I'll believe they are pro-poor.
"... the populist right, we'll see if they are interested in down-ward redistribution or only want to use the rhetoric to justify trade and tax policies that *redistribute* income upward."
The idea, that the "populist right" seeks trade and tax policies that redistribute income upward, is all-but preposterous. Those are the aims of, not the populist right, but the McConnell / Fortune 500 Establishment "right".
We'll see how much downward redistribution the do when they are in power next. It will be slow growth and special favors for special cronies like big steel.
Re: "I can think of a lot of targets for such a commission [a Congressional commission for smart deregulation]. Occupational licensing. College degree requirements for government jobs. Restrictions on residential construction."
Compare Casey Mulligan, "Trump’s Vast Deregulatory Landscape Goes Unnoticed by the Experts" (13 January 2020)":
Did the Philipson/Mulligan CEA focus on low-hanging fruit (political feasibility)?
Would a Congressional commission willy-nilly favor excessive centralization of regulation?
I would emphasize a default presumption of exit options, competition, decentralization, private governance, and experimentation in regulation. Government regulation should have to provide clear and convincing evidence to overcome this default bundle.
A key political-economy conundrum arises in deregulation of residential housing construction and in deregulation of occupational licensing:
Homeowners and licensed professionals, who consider themselves legal stakeholders in extant regulations (zoning, occupational licensing), will fear that deregulation would constitute 'takings without compensation'. The scale and scope of these political-economy issues will be orders of magnitude greater than, say, clashes between NYC owners of taxi medallions and Uber.
Libertarians should reckon with political-economy of concerns about deregulatory takings. Will exhortations about dynamism suffice to persuade homeowners to accept major zoning changes, and licensed professionals to accept much more open occupational licensing? Where are the creative, entrepreneurial keyhole solutions to this political-economy issue? How might stakeholders in the legal status quo receive clear-cut compensation and/or new stakes in new rules?
Compare a recent NBER study of “a major zoning reform on the build environment” (p. 3) in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The authors quantify the magnitude of the reform as follows: “the maximum BAR [built-area-ratio] in the city’s approximate 45,000 blocks increased from 1.54 to 2.09, allowing 36% more construction for a given lot size, and 45% of the city blocks had a maximum BAR increase of 1 or more.” (p. 3) They estimate that “nominal house price losses faced by existing homeowners and landlord overshadow all consumer welfare gains.” See the abstract below.
Santosh Anagol, Fernando V. Ferreira, and Jonah M. Rexer, "Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform," NBER Working Paper No. 29440 (October 2021)
"ABSTRACT
We develop a framework to estimate the economic value of a recent zoning reform in the city of Sao Paulo, which altered maximum permitted construction at the city-block level. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that developers file for more multi-family construction permits in blocks with higher allowable densities. We incorporate these micro-estimates into an equilibrium model of housing supply and demand to estimate the long term impact of zoning changes. Supply responses from the reform produce a 2.2 percent increase in the total housing stock, leading to a 0.5% reduction in prices on average, with substantial heterogeneity across neighborhoods. Consumer welfare gains due to price reductions are small, but increase 4-fold once we account for changes in the built environment, with more gains accruing to college-educated and higher-income households. However, nominal house price losses faced by existing homeowners and landlords overshadow all consumer welfare gains."
“ would like to see high school students in America have semesters living in different environments within the United State”
Puritans in the New England colonies routinely exchanged adolescents so families raised each other’s kids for that last mile. I agree that a little further away would be good, but as we grow more and more local (people living all there lives in one place to a yet greater degree) and more siloed, not likely to catch on. I wonder how foreign exchange programs are doing?
FWIW, I am never going to be one millionth of the scholar of Puritan life as Fisher, so trust him over me any day. Nevertheless, this claim always stood out at me as one of the less well-founded ones he made.
It seems to me that he made more of an 'institution' out of a few isolated records of events which were also common for non-Puritans at the time, for example, being in the character of apprenticeships (think Benjamin Franklin), or else the kind of work-for-welfare deal common in extended families in which Poor Family struggling to put food on the table sends just-mature-enough-to-handle-it teenager to Prosperous Cousin or close friends in the congregation, where the kid gets room and board in exchange for labor.
The modern mindset has a tough time grasping just how different growing up was for everybody for most of history, how 'childhood' ended so much sooner, how life was so much more precarious a struggle, and with labor and responsibility and often procreation beginning astonishingly early from our perspective. It's easy to mistake folkways discovered to be useful for mere survival to have been consciously founded with a more ideological motive.
"The typical cant is "we need to invest in improvements to renewable energy to boost the economy and save the planet from certain destruction."
*This* sort of cant is only from the Left, and very few outside of the Left see the words about "to boost the economy" to be any other than minimal lip service.
Protectionist academic economists may defend industrial policy as dynamism-increasing (the infant industry argument), but in practice, in developed countries, industrial policy is almost always deployed to protect dying, decrepit industries from more efficient competitors (e.g., in the US, manufacturing and agriculture).
“One does not have to go abroad to experience alien cultures.”
If you live in Los Angeles you can drive 15 minutes in any direction and reliably experience a very different culture from where you started. Within Hollywood alone you have Thai Town, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, and Korean, Pilipino, and many Latin American neighborhoods. Also Hollywood Hills where the celebrities live and West Hollywood where many LGBT people live.
One of Jonathan Haidt’s recommendations in The Coddling is that students take a gap year after high school to do work or service in another place before college.
Haidt's "Coddling" is very good stuff, esp. on "Always trust *your* feelings", and
"Life is a battle between good people and *evil* people."
As long as this culture produces slews of Wokesters who are indoctrinated in such thinking, the culture will continue on its current path toward a Rwanda-like cataclysm.
I lived in Los Angeles for two years as part of a volunteer experience.
"How much time did you spend...?"
Yeah, and how much serious discussion did you engage in, e.g. negotiating prices or whatever?
I would say going to a different country is still better for that purpose. Yes, rural West Virginia would be very different from the culture an Oregonian is used to, but it's still fairly familiar; the key laws are similar, the customs largely are too (e.g., they know the traffic laws, that they're supposed to tip in restaurants, how to greet people, etc.), they know how/when to deal with the authorities. Living in another country (except Canada) is much more of a genuine 'shock' that forces one to deal with a totally new set of rules and customs. I've travelled pretty extensively in the US and never felt anywhere near as challenged as being in another country.
A hearty cheer for your proposal to do semesters "abroad" within the U.S. Among much else, this country is so full of treasures that many within it never so much as hear about let alone experience in person.
I grew up in the Northeast and spent summers and holidays in the Mountain West, and what I took from those experiences matters more in many ways than what I've learned from significant international experience. I also got to live for a year as an adult in the South and now look for opportunities to travel to and discover more about the South as much as I can. Your idea is a wonderful one and I hope it catches on.
Thanks
Redistributing income to support low earning workers has been a long standing, virtually defining element of progressivism, not some new development. As for the populist right, we'll see if they are interested in down-ward redistribution or only want to use the rhetoric to justify trade and tax policies that redistribute income upward. When I see them supporting immigration, free trade and higher taxes on high income groups to achieve lower deficits, I'll believe they are pro-poor.
"... the populist right, we'll see if they are interested in down-ward redistribution or only want to use the rhetoric to justify trade and tax policies that *redistribute* income upward."
The idea, that the "populist right" seeks trade and tax policies that redistribute income upward, is all-but preposterous. Those are the aims of, not the populist right, but the McConnell / Fortune 500 Establishment "right".
We'll see how much downward redistribution the do when they are in power next. It will be slow growth and special favors for special cronies like big steel.
Re: "I can think of a lot of targets for such a commission [a Congressional commission for smart deregulation]. Occupational licensing. College degree requirements for government jobs. Restrictions on residential construction."
Compare Casey Mulligan, "Trump’s Vast Deregulatory Landscape Goes Unnoticed by the Experts" (13 January 2020)":
https://economics21.org/trump-deregulation-unnoticed-experts
Questions arise:
Did the Philipson/Mulligan CEA focus on low-hanging fruit (political feasibility)?
Would a Congressional commission willy-nilly favor excessive centralization of regulation?
I would emphasize a default presumption of exit options, competition, decentralization, private governance, and experimentation in regulation. Government regulation should have to provide clear and convincing evidence to overcome this default bundle.
A key political-economy conundrum arises in deregulation of residential housing construction and in deregulation of occupational licensing:
Homeowners and licensed professionals, who consider themselves legal stakeholders in extant regulations (zoning, occupational licensing), will fear that deregulation would constitute 'takings without compensation'. The scale and scope of these political-economy issues will be orders of magnitude greater than, say, clashes between NYC owners of taxi medallions and Uber.
Libertarians should reckon with political-economy of concerns about deregulatory takings. Will exhortations about dynamism suffice to persuade homeowners to accept major zoning changes, and licensed professionals to accept much more open occupational licensing? Where are the creative, entrepreneurial keyhole solutions to this political-economy issue? How might stakeholders in the legal status quo receive clear-cut compensation and/or new stakes in new rules?
Compare a recent NBER study of “a major zoning reform on the build environment” (p. 3) in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The authors quantify the magnitude of the reform as follows: “the maximum BAR [built-area-ratio] in the city’s approximate 45,000 blocks increased from 1.54 to 2.09, allowing 36% more construction for a given lot size, and 45% of the city blocks had a maximum BAR increase of 1 or more.” (p. 3) They estimate that “nominal house price losses faced by existing homeowners and landlord overshadow all consumer welfare gains.” See the abstract below.
Santosh Anagol, Fernando V. Ferreira, and Jonah M. Rexer, "Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform," NBER Working Paper No. 29440 (October 2021)
"ABSTRACT
We develop a framework to estimate the economic value of a recent zoning reform in the city of Sao Paulo, which altered maximum permitted construction at the city-block level. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that developers file for more multi-family construction permits in blocks with higher allowable densities. We incorporate these micro-estimates into an equilibrium model of housing supply and demand to estimate the long term impact of zoning changes. Supply responses from the reform produce a 2.2 percent increase in the total housing stock, leading to a 0.5% reduction in prices on average, with substantial heterogeneity across neighborhoods. Consumer welfare gains due to price reductions are small, but increase 4-fold once we account for changes in the built environment, with more gains accruing to college-educated and higher-income households. However, nominal house price losses faced by existing homeowners and landlords overshadow all consumer welfare gains."
“ would like to see high school students in America have semesters living in different environments within the United State”
Puritans in the New England colonies routinely exchanged adolescents so families raised each other’s kids for that last mile. I agree that a little further away would be good, but as we grow more and more local (people living all there lives in one place to a yet greater degree) and more siloed, not likely to catch on. I wonder how foreign exchange programs are doing?
> Puritans in the New England colonies routinely exchanged adolescents so families raised each other’s kids for that last mile.
Interesting. Where can I read about this?
It's "Interesting Puritan Fact" #11 from Scott's review of Albion's Seed:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
FWIW, I am never going to be one millionth of the scholar of Puritan life as Fisher, so trust him over me any day. Nevertheless, this claim always stood out at me as one of the less well-founded ones he made.
It seems to me that he made more of an 'institution' out of a few isolated records of events which were also common for non-Puritans at the time, for example, being in the character of apprenticeships (think Benjamin Franklin), or else the kind of work-for-welfare deal common in extended families in which Poor Family struggling to put food on the table sends just-mature-enough-to-handle-it teenager to Prosperous Cousin or close friends in the congregation, where the kid gets room and board in exchange for labor.
The modern mindset has a tough time grasping just how different growing up was for everybody for most of history, how 'childhood' ended so much sooner, how life was so much more precarious a struggle, and with labor and responsibility and often procreation beginning astonishingly early from our perspective. It's easy to mistake folkways discovered to be useful for mere survival to have been consciously founded with a more ideological motive.
ALBION’S SEED David Hackett Fisher
"The typical cant is "we need to invest in improvements to renewable energy to boost the economy and save the planet from certain destruction."
*This* sort of cant is only from the Left, and very few outside of the Left see the words about "to boost the economy" to be any other than minimal lip service.
I see that link referring to "These findings are based on a nationally representative survey of 822 American registered *voters*."
I was talking, less about voters, than about leaders/ activists.
Voters mean nothing at the nat. level of the Dem Party.
It's all about the machinations of the DNC, backed by armies of activists and MSM personnel.
Protectionist academic economists may defend industrial policy as dynamism-increasing (the infant industry argument), but in practice, in developed countries, industrial policy is almost always deployed to protect dying, decrepit industries from more efficient competitors (e.g., in the US, manufacturing and agriculture).