Fishtown
File: c:/ddc/Angel/BestIntentions/Fishtown.html
Date: Fri Apr 20 13:13:02 2012
Wed Sep 24 21:09:39 2014
(C) OntoOO/ Dennis de Champeaux
| Belmont | Fishtown | |||
| Topic: | 1960 | 2010 | 1960 | 2010 |
| Fraction of the US population | 6% | 21% | 64% | 30% |
The data presented below is for whites only to avoid the usual discussions about race differences. Murray gives in a later chapter the corresponding data for the population as a whole and shows that the same observations and conclusions apply.
Here the summary of his findings for those aged 30-49 in these towns/ segments of the population on most of his dimensions:
| Belmont | Fishtown | |||
| Topic: | 1960 | 2010 | 1960 | 2010 |
| Marriage | 94% | 84% | 84% | 50% |
| Remaining single | 5% | 10% | 8% | 25% |
| Divorce | 1% | 7% | 4% | 35% |
| Single parent children | 0% | 3% | 2% | 22% |
| Happy marriage(*) | 68% | 63% | 55% | 25% |
| Children living with biological parents | 97% | 87% | 95% | 35% |
| Males not in the labor force Belmont at least BA Fishtown at most high school | 2% | 3% | 5% | 12% |
| Head of house hold working at least 40 hours | 90% | 89% | 81% | 60% |
| Inmates come from(**) | 0% | 0% | 80% | 80% |
| Violent crime arrests per 100,000 | 5 | 5 | 100 | 600 |
| Property crime arrests per 100,000 | 50 | 40 | 900 | 2000 |
| Religious core(*) | 30% | 23% | 22% | 12% |
Murray constructs a synthetic metric for "white new lower class" with
the sum of:
- prime age males not making a living,
- single mothers raising minor children, and
- a quarter of the isolates.
This yields the trend:
| Belmont | Fishtown | |||
| Topic: | 1960 | 2010 | 1960 | 2010 |
| New lower class | 3% | 3% | 10% | 36% |
The trends of the last century matter a lot. Many of the best and most exceptional qualities of American culture cannot survive unless they are reversed.A root cause analysis is called for, to judge steps to pursue a reversal. But before diving in, we need to to demarcate Murray's topic. He is not addressing the trend in the world or of what happens in all welfare states. Instead, he worries 'only' about the growing divergence in the US since 1960 between the top and bottom segments.
Remarkably enough Murray warns that the US runs the risk to catch the "Europe Syndrome", which he characterizes with:
The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible ...Murray claims that the European welfare states take away the satisfaction to solve one's problems by providing an extensive set of entitlements and safety nets. He adds to the "Europe Syndrome" with:
As publicly financed benefits grow, so do the populations who find that they need them. The more people who needs benefits, the more government bureaucracy is required. The more people who rely on support from the government and the larger the government, the fewer the people in the private sector who pay for the benefits and the apparatus of the state. The larger the number of people who depend on government either for benefits or for their jobs, the larger the constituency for voting for ever-larger government.With the out of control US healthcare segment pumped up through Medicare and Medicaid and with the food-stamps, school-lunches, affordable housing, rent control, employer subsidized retirement savings, etc. programs this is a fine characterization for the US as well. Hence, we can question whether Murray's concern regarding the "American project" is actually specific for the US. Is the social decline in the bottom segment of the US also happening in the EU societies? Is a chasm between the bottom and top also emerging in Europe? Our financial data (see the Finale chapter for the Netherlands) suggests that the bottom segment is declining in the EU similarly to what occurs in the US.
Murray provides examples where the social capital has declined in the US:
| Belmont | Fishtown | |||
| Topic: | 1968 | 2008 | 1968 | 2008 |
| Voting | 96% | 92% | 70% | 51% |
| Estimation trusting of others | 75% | 60% | 45% | 20% |
| Estimation fairness of others | 80% | 78% | 62% | 40% |
| Estimation helpfulness of others | 72% | 62% | 48% | 33% |
If this is not enough, Murray quotes [Putnam] to report that social
capital decreased due to the following declines:
- Attending meetings: -35%
- Serve as officer: -42%
- Work for a political party: -42%
- Serve on a committee: -39%
- PTA membership: -61%
- Membership of an association: -50%
- Entertain friends: -45%
- Having dinner together: -69%
- Contribution to United Way: -55%
- Bowling membership: -73%
Murray goes back to Toynbee [Toynbee] to attempt an explanation for these developments with the repeating pattern of: a good creative minority that leads a new society becomes complacent, and slowly retreats from imposing its norms downwards and even adopts lower class behaviors.
Well, this abstraction ignores (or avoids) the concrete topics of the out of control population explosion and the society's sympathetic generosity causing the inability to constrain fertility by the 'wrong' population segment. The latter is the 'simple' cause for all the ills Murray describes.
We can explain the problems in Fishtown more specific with:
- Good employment does not scale from 180M in 1960 to 310M in 2010,
- The economy was driven by demand for academic skills to increase
overall efficiencies,
- Automation reduced the need for mid-level and unskilled
labor,
- Generous social service support programs eliminated the need for
finding work by marginal male providers, which in turn made them
ineligible as marriage partners,
- Low IQ females had more offspring than their fair share,
contributing to the new lower class members with marginal economic
skills,
- Dysgenic fertility during the 20th century caused a decline of
genotypic IQ, producing a larger segment of low IQ males, which are
crime prone,
- Exports to pay for energy imports reduced goods available to the own
population, yielding price increases only partially compensated for by
wage increases, which was felt disproportionally by those in the
Fishtown segment.
A social democrat may see ... a compelling case for the redistribution of wealth. A social conservative may see a compelling case for government policies that support marriage, religion and traditional values. I (= Murray) am a libertarian, and see a compelling case for returning to the founders' concept of limited government.Really?
Murray's solution is a call for the Belmont folks to wake up and preach what they practice themselves. This seems quite insufficient.
Again: the US population was in 1900 76M, in 1960 179M, in 2010 308M. The majority does not pay enough taxes for the social services they consume. Nobody can even suggest that the freedom to procreate (at the expense of the society) has produced too many people (unsustainable) and has produced an abundance of 'wrong' people (dependent on society's charity).
A way stronger intervention is required to avoid the collapse of Murray's "American project".
[Toynbee] Toynbee, A.J. & D.C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1946.
Quite amazingly Murray suggests - using a question - something beyond unseemliness with:
Or to what extent have the boards of directors of corporate America - and nonprofit America, and foundation America - become cozy extended families, scratching one another's backs, happily going along with a market that has become lucrative for all of them, taking advantage of their privileged positions - rigging the game, but within the law?Others have often taken this stance already using the growing ratio between the incomes of top and bottom employees. We certainly agree that this development is very unfortunate, however, we are not willing to use the term unseemliness and certainly not the nefariousness in Murray's quote.
It is easy enough to exploit resentment in a great majority of the population when learning about compensation packages of CEOs who may even get booted out by their boards. Missing by the public - we believe - is an appreciation of the complexity of the task to run a large - these days typically global - corporation, whose revenues are often larger than the economies of sovereign nations. There are very few people on the planet who can assemble and manage a top team that runs the different corporate functions in a very hostile environment. Market requirements for offered products and/or services change on a daily basis. Government regulations are changing continuously. Customer expectations change. Innovations by competitors can wipe-out own revenue streams. Creation of new products and/or services for which there is market demand is very, very tough. Internal entropy requires yearly reorganizations.
A reader who is not convinced by the reasons for high compensations of CEOs doing impossibly hard tasks is invited to ponder the scope of these 'unfair' practices: a few thousand 'very fat cats'. Always focusing on what is happening in this tiny, tiny top by the public, by the press, and now also by Murray deflects attention away from - what we believe, and which we must repeat again and again is way more significant: the increasing 150+M bottom majority being economic dysfunctional and 'superfluous', which is horrible indeed.