Today’s Links

Last updated on: April 22, 2014 at 9:03 am by Jane the Actuary

Today’s Links 2014-04-22T09:03:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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1) This was in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, non-paywalled: “Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families; Intellectuals fretting about income disparity are oddly silent regarding the decline of the two-parent family.” They authors write:

Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something—ideology, tobacco money—other than science?

Yet in the current discussions about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of single-parent families during the past half century.

They then continue by citing much of the same statistics that we’ve seen countless times before that it matters, and matters a lot, for a child to be raised by mom and dad living in the same home, and lamenting that policymakers are unwilling to acknowledge the problem.

But this is no surprise. The unspoken operating philosophy is that “a child needs a father like a fish needs a bicycle.” And it absolutely is an ideology that drives the insistence that there’s nothing wrong with single-parenting that a hefty dose of government subsidy couldn’t fix.

2) From National Review Online, “The ‘Royal’ Clinton Baby.” Apparently, the media is fawning over the prospect of a Clinton granddaughter, and fawning over Chelsea Clinton as a woman of great accomplishment (even though her “achievements” have largely been academic successes and positions handed to her due to her name and connections). Really, I’m not sure about this: are “rank and file” Americans doing any such fawning, or is it purely a few media types doing more than enough fawning to make up for the disinterest of the rest of us. How broad a base does the “Hillary in 2016” movement actually have, or is it just half-a-dozen Slate writers and MSNBC commentators?

Then again, I never understood the obsession with the Kennedys either, neither the conviction held by many that, if only Kennedy hadn’t been shot, subsequent generations would have experienced nothing but peace and equality, nor the belief that Kennedy “heirs” had positions of power as their birthright.

3) An article on NPR linked to by Ann Althouse, “To Keep Business Growing, Vendors Rebrand Pot’s Stoner Image.” Here’s the key quote:

“But the whole point of marketing is to grow a business by reaching people who are on the fence about trying marijuana.”

And Althouse says, “Get ready. This is where we are now, and there is no way back. The link goes to NPR, where the headline is “To Keep Business Growing, Vendors Rebrand Pot’s Stoner Image” and there’s a photo of a broadly smiling wholesome female marketer. NPR itself is participating in this optimistic rebranding. We’re not just talking about decriminalization. We’re talking about promotion and encouragement.”

Which is a far ways away from the claims that we have to decriminalize pot because of the young people for whom a single criminal conviction takes away their otherwise-bright future, and because of the supposedly-massive number of black men jailed for the “victimless” crime of selling pot.

I suppose, given the number of times I read articles on pot where commenters dive in to say, “I smoke pot every day and I’m at the top of my highly-demanding technical field,” it shouldn’t be a big suprise, but I’d never before seen a statement as direct as this: “we’re in the business of getting more people to smoke pot.” The closest I’d seen before was an optimistic suggestion that maybe alcoholics might be persuaded to switch to pot and become mellow potheads rather than angry drunks.

What next? If there is no social stigma, if there is a large and vocal crowd insisting that pot has no negative consequences, even while we rush to ban smoking as extensively as we can without actually banning it outright (even treating e-cigarettes in the same way to a point that’s all about ideology, not science), what will happen to pot consumption in the next generation?

You’re not going to tell me, by the way, that the over-21-only restriction will be effective. How do you believable send the message that if you’re 20, pot is harmful, but not if you’re 21? People generally believe that the 21 age limit for alcohol is arbitrary, and their willingness to comply is purely a matter of willingness to follow the laws, not a belief that they’re sensible laws.

Maybe it’ll be appealing to the same minority as drink-to-get-drunk on a regular basis — because most of us don’t drink-to-get-drunk, even though alcohol is legal. Most of us have better things to do, or family or other responsibilities. Maybe the net number of people who are interested in pot/alcohol/etc. is limited anyway.

But that’s not what these marketers seem to think.

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