Whenever one of these studies comes out--that giving kids food, or money to poor schools & families, or air conditioning to 100 degree areas has big effects on educational & economic outcomes--I get sadder that foundations keep searching for nonsense non-redistribution solutions
"How do we make poor children do better in school? No, I mean how do we make them do better in school without taxing the rich? I guess all we can do is gamification, ed tech, nudges, criminalize poor parents..."
Sorry, forgot the ultimate solution: "fire the bad teachers and hire all the amazing teachers just waiting in the rafters to take on long term teaching careers in poor schools"
"We exploit an exogenous shock to grit. The results suggest that raising grit levels to very gritty would modestly increase test scores among low-income students while preserving our ability to celebrate wealthy philanthropists and blame poor kids for having insufficient grit"
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I too am somewhat interested in discussing the relative differences in urgency between these things (I'm a social scientist), but it's unclear how this discussion helps democracy given the non-zero sum nature of attention to these threats.
i really want pizza, but when you proposed that we order a large pizza, you turned me off from the idea of pizza and took my attention away from small pizza and have sapped my capacity to order a small pizza.
-some of my online friends' theoretical models democracy legislation
Very sorry to say that the only time in US history when "moderates" ruled and things weren't polarized involved excluding Black people from politics, and that this indeed calls into question many contemporary appeals from scholars and pundits to reduce polarization
The United States just hasn't experienced non-polarized multiracial democracy. And that's why, absent some serious context, calls to reduce polarization and encourage moderates to run just doesn't really hit.
Don't get me wrong, I hate cable news and the culture war as much as the next guy. I just think anti-polarization considerations have to engage with the possibility that an unpolarized politics requires racial exclusion as a necessary condition
Why are there so few local politicians off of this diagonal dimension? More specifically, why are so many local politicians either YIMBY or committed to changing policing--and so few are both?
When my family friend was murdered unarmed by police, which local politicians showed up? Not the YIMBYs!
When we're trying to build more housing, who shows up? Not the police defund/abolish (or even the policing reform) ones!
It's a puzzle for which I don't have a great answer.
This is definitely a pattern in cities where the GOP isn't competitive, but I think it's also true in places with party competition.
Amazing reporting from @AsteadWesley on a depressing reality: Black members of Congress are often from districts that the GOP gerrymandered into existence by packing Black voters--and some of these legislators oppose HR1 because they want to keep their gerrymandered districts.
This is the latest demonstration that single member districts were a mistake.
I hope these usually very senior representatives consider that sacrificing their often +30D district to end gerrymandering is absolutely worth it if you care about American democracy. But do single minded seekers of reelection ever sacrifice for collective goals?
When it comes to discourse about whether Dem messaging should be more race, class, or race-class, there is such a glaring gap between people who care about racial & economic justice and want to get the right answer, and the anti-anti-racists.
In case people are confused, the paper is great, the writers are great. The reactions, though, come in two types:
a) "interesting! do you think x y z changes things?"
b) "the wokes secretly know this but watch them double down on virtue signaling after seeing this paper"
I guess c) is "you should've cited me" which isn't wrong but is easily fixable.
But group b) has such axes to grind, it's really something to behold.
No matter the verdict, I hope they practice nonviolence tonight. They often commit violence in the streets after these kinds of announcements. I hope their leaders and elders issue calls for calm and peace. Maybe then the police won't riot. Then our communities will be safe.
I'm not optimistic. These gangs that control the streets are heavily armed. They're men with authoritarian personalities and little impulse control. Their leaders never speak out against the violence. I'm expecting these police to be violent against people and property tonight.
They go home after committing violence and physically abuse their spouses at extremely high rates. You never hear their leaders speak out against this culture of violence. Any one of the officers who speaks out against this gang "code" will be punished by the gang leaders.