What does SAT expand to? Student Affluence Test!

One of the best lines ever from the political theatre that I have had the pleasure of watching after moving to the country was the one delivered by Ann Richards, when I was just about getting acquainted with the actors and their affiliations, by which I mean politicians and their parties:

Poor George, ... he can't help it ... he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

It was the best of the show business in America and I was hooked.  I remain a political junkie to this day, sadly! ;)

Bush, of course, went on to win the elections.  A few years after that, Ann Richards lost the governorship to Bush's son, "W."  And then she lived long enough to see "W" also get elected as president, and then get re-elected as well.

Being born even with a silver foot in the mouth helps. It helps a lot.  To make it is relatively easy when born into the "correct" contexts.

We discount the head start that the silver spoon kids get because of the other narrative that we want to believe--the Horatio Alger myth of rags to riches, from nowhere to the White House.  We are so desperate to believe in the myth that will go to any length to be in denial of the reality, which I have blogged often here, sometimes as choose your parents well.

Today's evidence is from SAT scores.  It will be a rare older American adult who does not remember his/her SAT scores from the high school days.  The number leaves a permanent imprint in one's mind.  Because of the repercussions that the score has for college, scholarship, and the rest of one's life.

It is increasingly clear that the SAT score is highly correlated with the silver spoon effect:

On average, students in 2014 in every income bracket outscored students in a lower bracket on every section of the test, according to calculations from the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (also known as FairTest), using data provided by the College Board, which administers the test.

Students from the wealthiest families outscored those from the poorest by just shy of 400 points. Given the widespread use of the SAT in college admissions, the implications are obvious: Not only are the wealthiest families best equipped to pay for college, their kids on average are more likely to post the sort of scores that make admissions easy.

Now, before you condemn that finding as something from a loony left publication, well, it is from the capitalist-friendly Wall Street Journal.  As I noted in a different context, if even the WSJ or the Economist is reporting about something that I have often worried about, it then means that the shit has hit the fan. Game over, folks. The end. Finito. The fat lady has sung.

Family wealth allows parents to locate in neighborhoods with better schools (or spring for private schools). Parents who are themselves college educated tend to make more money, and since today’s high school seniors were born in the mid-1990s, many of the wealthiest and best-educated parents themselves came of age when the tests were of crucial importance. When the SAT is crucial to college, college is crucial to income, and income is crucial to SAT scores, a mutually reinforcing cycle develops.

Yep, when you choose your parents well, a mutually reinforcing cycle begins.

The problem is glaringly obvious--you can't choose your parents.

So, what happens then if your parents happen to be, say, high school educated blacks who live a blue-collar life in the low-income neighborhood that has awful schools?  Tough luck, kid!  It is your fault that you didn't choose your parents well!

Now, think about the WSJ's report from just a few months ago:

Proving the adage that all of life is like high school, plenty of employers still care about a job candidate's SAT score. Consulting firms such as Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co. and banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ask new college recruits for their scores, while other companies request them even for senior sales and management hires, eliciting scores from job candidates in their 40s and 50s.

Yep, choosing the parents well is an awesome strategy--don't worry about the silver foot in your mouth because it will all work out in your favor, and you can even proudly beat up on others who can't make it despite all the "equal opportunity" that the land of the free provides!

When even the Wall Street Journal is against the 1% ...

In one of my many favorites of George Carlin's routines, he makes fun, in his trademark manner, the arrogance that we humans have when interacting with nature.  Carlin mocks how we build homes next to volcanoes and wonder why there is lava in the living room.

But, even George Carlin couldn't force people to think and act sensibly.  What chance do I have then, right?

Of course, my Quixotic pursuits mean that I have yelled and written about that kind of madness too.

Back on March 3, 1997--yes, almost 17 years ago--the Bakersfield Californian published my op-ed in which I questioned the sanity behind "locating a home or a business in a flood plain in the first place."  To me, this is simply asking for trouble.  And when homes get flooded, we immediately demand that government bail out the homeowners.

Instead of asking such "real" questions, we insist on playing Russian Roulette with the chaotic forces of nature.  The result is that it has become quite common for every natural happening to be labeled a disaster. 

If we were rational, then we would not build homes in flood plains and by the coastlines.  We would keep a safe distance between those natural boundaries and our built environment.  But, irrational we are.  And worse than being irrational, we are irrationally arrogant!

Here is the irony: in poor countries--think Bangladesh, for instance--it is the poor folk who live in those dangerous lowlands.  Because they cannot afford any better.  Here in a mighty rich society, it is the other way around--the richer one is, the closer they want to have their buildings near the pounding waves and the flowing waters.

So, ask yourself this: when we bail out these rich folks, does it not mean that poor in inner cities or rural hinterlands are being shortchanged?

But, who ever listens to me!

Which is why I nearly fell off the chair when I read a Wall Street Journal editorial that came out swinging with this opening sentence:

Federal flood insurance is a classic example of powerful government aiding the powerful, encouraging the affluent to build mansions near the shore

Say what?

Congress finally had the gumption to reform the program in 2012, but now the beachfront homeowner and housing lobbies are trying to reverse this progress.

Imagine that!  Thanks to a bipartisan reform signed into law by President Obama, "the federal insurer is slowly raising its rates to actuarially sound levels" and that is being opposed by lobbies, when the beneficiaries are the rich.  How insane is that?

When Republicans hear such good sense from the Obama Administration, they ought to embrace it. They should not endorse another taxpayer subsidy for those who want to live next to the ocean while sticking others with the costs of their lifestyle.

My failure to influence any action is easily understandable.  You, dear reader, are as powerless as I am.

You think the mighty Wall Street Journal and its allies will be able to fight those lobbies that are active on behalf of the one-percent?

I doubt it.  "We the people" will always get screwed over and over.

Maybe my problem is that I don't dream enough to be in the one percent ;)

Quote of the day: on free market and free men

In reviewing Nicholas Phillipson's book, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, Adam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker (subscription required) that

[Adam Smith] believed not that markets make men free but that free men move toward markets.  The difference is small but decisive; it is most of what we mean by humanism.

This sentence is essentially now being tested through the so-called Chinese model of economic development, which countries like Rwanda are too glad to adopt.  In this model, it is clearly not a case of free men moving toward markets.
Yet another test of that sentence comes through the likes of hard core Republicans and the the Wall Street Journal ideologues who believe that freeing the market will lead to free men. 

In both these Chinese and WSJ approaches to market and men, the priority is clear: economic interactions.

But, Adam Smith the philosopher was focused on humans, which is why Gopnik writes of humanism. "Sympathy alone, Smith makes plain, isn't enough to make us good. ... For Smith, the market is imaginative sympathy on speed."  How does the market make us sympathetic?  "Mere love is not sufficient for it, till he applies in some way to your self love. A bargain does this in the easiest manner."  Where do you find this bargain among a sympathetic community?  The market.   

Gopnik writes about Smith's other book that all these free marketers ignore at our peril--The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and weaves in David Hume into this narrative and the mentoring role he played.  After reading this book review, I am all the more curious about David Hume--his life and intellectual contributions.  Will begin the hunt for a book on this; any recommendations? 

Remember Haiti?

In a world where attention spans that seem to get shortening everyday, and where crises abound, there is good chance that we have forgotten the horrible devastation to life and property after the earthquake back on January 12th.
The Guardian, from where I grabbed the photo, reports that:
In devastated Haiti, much of the promised aid has failed to materialise and many of the homeless are still sleeping rough.
The Wall Street Journal adds to this depressing state of relief efforts:

With European economies in trouble and the U.S. recovery weak, there are growing doubts over the generous financial commitments promised in a first rush of international sympathy.
"I have the sense that the government and the international community have lost the sense of urgency that we had at the beginning," says Edmundo Mulet, head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission here.

The way that WSJ report ends is even more tragic:

The World Bank estimates the quake caused $7.3 billion in damage, about 130% of GDP. The bank estimates Haiti will need a decade and more than $11 billion to rebuild. Within days after the earthquake, the United Nations raised some $960 million, of which it has spent about $357 million on relief operations.
There is no tally of private-sector donations, but they likely add up to at least $2 billion: The International Red Cross alone has raised $900 million it says it will spend on Haiti.
At a U.N.-sponsored conference in New York in March, donors pledged an additional $10 billion for reconstruction, with $5.3 billion aimed at the first two years of the process. But pledges have been slow in arriving.
"The money is not there," says Mr. Voltaire, the government's liaison to the U.N. "The Haitian people think the government is stealing the money, and the international community doesn't want to say there is no money, and the government, which doesn't communicate, doesn't want to say there is no money."

 If the WSJ report is this depressing, then I can only bet the situation is way worse than we can ever imagine :(

Photo of the day .... India ... again? :-)

Cell phones have revolutionized India.  Every visit, I am simply amazed at how much of a market penetration they have achieved. 
With innovative and unique plans and calling strategies.  The first time I heard a driver tell me "give me a missed call, sir" it took me a few nanoseconds of conscious processing of that statement to figure out what he meant.  It made sense once I got used to that logic :-)
Or calling plans where one can only receive calls, but cannot make any.  Comes in handy for the much poorer folks who are keen on finding work--if only somebody would let them know where the job is.  Bingo--cellphone with receive only calling plans.

Despite the evil Murdoch taking over the WSJ, the paper continues to do some decent reporting.  Today's paper had a neat feature on cell phone usage in India, which is where this photo is from.  I think believe that cell phones have played a fantastic role in the economic and social transformation of India--way, way more than what Doordarshan and Hum Log managed to accomplish.  Good for them.

Slumdog Millionaire: post-Oscar notes

First, this comment from Tunku Varadarajan, who wrote many interesting pieces in the Wall Street Journal until the arrival of Rupert Murdoch:

Maybe it's a result of 200 years of colonialism, but Indians are world champions at caring - really caring! - about what foreigners (more accurately, Westerners) think or say about them. They will live blithely with impressively foetid slums in their midst, thinking nothing of the juxtaposition of Victorian-era poverty and world-class, 21st-century living standards. But the national outrage stirred when a Western film-maker uses “slumdog” in the title of his film is an incandescent sight to behold.

That foreigner's neologism (“slumdog” doesn't exist in real parlance in India, although gali ka kutta, or alley-dog, comes close) is thought to heap more shame on the land than the slums themselves. And yet when that same film, with that same neo-imperialist title, is fêted by tuxedoed Americans at an awards ceremony watched across the globe, Indians burst with pride. Eight Oscars, yaah! Isn't that a record? Isn't A.R. Rahman the best composer in the world? Isn't Bollywood bloody wonderful? And aren't our slums a lesson in how to overcome adversity and cruelty?

Aren't our slum people stoical, resilient, self-reliant, courageous, fraternal, resolute and inventive? Aren't our slum people the world's best slum people?

Yes, we people from India are a strange lot. I routinely tell my students not to try to "understand" India because it is full of complex contradictions. There is no neat little narrative. Maybe India is truly a postmodernist society :-) So, I tell them to merely keep up with what ever goes on there ....

How celebratory is the mood in India? My mother, who rarely watches movies, and definitely not any new ones (I think) was all pumped up about AR Rahman grabbing two Oscars. The newspaper that I grew up with, The Hindu, had extensive coverage, including an editorial!
Here is an excerpt from that editorial:

The staggering interest in the fate of Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars and the delight and celebration at its sweeping victory is a reflection of a curious but revealing fact. Although it has been made by a British Director and funded by a European company, it is seen by many at home as an Indian film. Unlike in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (which also won eight Oscars and which was also about how one man overcomes insurmountable odds), the cast of Slumdog Millionaire is almost entirely Indian. More importantly, the style that permeates the film is a curious amalgam — one that represents a true cinematic union between Hollywood and Bollywood. This interesting marriage was represented also in the choice of the film’s music, which earned India’s finest modern musician A.R. Rahman, whose compositions reflect a fusion of west and east, two richly deserved statuettes for the best original score and the best song. The recognition earned by the man who was once described as the Mozart of Madras should go a long way in opening Indian popular music to the world. India impacted on this year’s Oscars in another way, and one that deserves a special mention: the best documentary award to Smile Pinki. Shot in Bhojpuri and Hindi by Megan Mylan, it is a story about an Indian girl with a cleft lip who is socially ostracised before a social worker helps her avail of free surgery. In the midst of the delight over Slumdog Millionaire, we need to pause to also celebrate the victory of this life-affirming documentary about a real fairy tale.

To bring things to a full circle, and relate all these to where I currently live and work .... well, Megan Mylan who made Smile Pinki has Oregon connections :-) Here is an excerpt from the Statesman Journal's report:

Although the Mylan family moved to Texas after Megan finished elementary school, Jack and Irene Mylan kept their home in southeast Salem, and they return to visit each summer.Jack was a longtime law professor at Willamette University until moving on to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He since has retired.

GM's Volt, and the the quest for the holy grail

From Peter Gordon:
On July 2, the WSJ's Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., wrote "What is GM Thinking?" I have to admit that it took Jenkins' column to get me to see the light. GM's investment in its 2010 Chevy Volt is a political and not a market move.
Now we see that during NBC's Olympics coverage, GM runs a strange ad for its 2010 Chevy Volt. I cannot buy it for a while (and Holman suggests I would not want to anyway), so why are they not using valuable air time to push their 2009 models?
This morning's NY Times includes "Automakers to Seek More Money for Retooling Vehicle Plants". Aha! It's the politics, stupid. With politicians of both parties honing their "investing in energy alternatives" message, the ailing Detroit automakers can smell the pork.
Combine two sentiments du jour ("too big to fail", "end our addiction to oil") and, presto, a new boondoggle. I finally get it.

I suppose I would disagree with Peter's libertarian free-market thinking most of the time. But, on this one, I am inclined to agree with him--the big three are gearing up (yes, pun intended!) for the possible billions of subsidies that seem very likely in the quest to move to personal transport that is not powered by gasoline or diesel. Given how much our fascination with domestic ethanol as the path to nirvana has generated unintended consequences regarding food prices, I am certainly concerned about the rather overzealous and faith-based approaches to finding alternatives. Oh well ....

(I was a grad student at USC's School of Planning, where Peter was a professor and Associate Dean. A few years ago the School merged with the School of Public Administration and is now SPPD.)