This is really interesting, especially in the larger context of the tendency to blame culture, not economics, for the problems of lagging groups in our society 1/ nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opi…
We used to see this mainly about blacks, whose social troubles were attributed to culture and, implicitly, racial inferiority rather than the disappearance of decent jobs in inner cities 2/
Then when we started seeing social collapse in parts of white rural America, people like William Barr blamed "secularists" rather than the disappearance of economic opportunity 3/
I'm not a full economic determinist, but when I hear the word "culture" I reach for my spreadsheet 4/
