Mickey Kaus Scores Again

No one ever went broke underestimating the power of PC. The Washington Post Wonkblog illustrates the point with this post about the economic prospects of the children of rich and poor families:

America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others.

That's because, in large part, inequality starts in the crib. 

Stop right there! Unequality begins ast conception, or evan at the altar. Height, hiogh energy, good health, good looks and high intelligence are all correlated with high income and all are heritable. The "average" child of successful parents will probably benefit from a more nurturing environment (better diet, health care, books, reading time and so on) but also has, on average, a more favorable genetic endowment. Sort of like the way size, strength, athleticism and effort are heritable.

But as Mickey noted with respect to the WSJ, some things simply aren't said in polite media outlets. So Matt O'Brien of Wonkblog treats us to this:

Rich parents can afford to spend more time and money on their kids, and that gap has only grown the past few decades. Indeed, economists Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane calculate that, between 1972 and 2006, high-income parents increased their spending on "enrichment activities" for their children by 151 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, compared to 57 percent for low-income parents.

But, of course, it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child's formative early years. That's why, as Stanford professor Sean Reardonexplains, "rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students," and they're staying that way.

It's an educational arms race that's leaving many kids far, far behind.

Oh, please. Nurture is part of the story, but nature should be noted as well. The balance of Mr. O'Brien's effort documents something closer to a real surprise - on average, a college grad coming from a poor family barely outearns a high school dropout coming from a well-off family. I have no real guesses as to how that develops, although I will note that since the nationwide high school drop out rate for the highest earning quartile is around 5%, we are talking about outliers amongs the children of the better-off. My out-of-the air (or somewhere) guess would be that well-off dropus are a combination of special needs kids, kids with drug problems, and kids who dropped out of school to take over the (successful) family store or construction business after dad had a heart attack. In any case, learning that the family did not cut them loose but instead propped them up in some sort of a job is not surprising. Geez, parent supporting their kids - welcome to progressive hell, where the family is more important than gther state 

And do let me add - in the study being discussed 'nature' gets a mention:

Most studies incorporating a measure of cognitive ability find strong predictive effects for upward and downward mobility. Even controlling for parental background and personality attributes, measured cognitive ability emerges with a strong independent effect on outcomes.

There is also evidence that cognitive abilities are partly inherited; though there is little agreement among researchers how big that part is. Some behavioural geneticists, comparing correlations in IQ between adopted and non-adopted siblings and identical and non-identical twins (who have varying similarities in genes and in family environment) have suggested that genes account for up to 60% of the variation in IQ (Sacerdote, 2008). But Björklund, Jäntti, and Solon (2005) use a large Swedish sample to explore correlations in earnings across a large number of sibling types, including adoptees, and find a weaker role for genetics in explaining earnings, determining around 20% of the variance in earnings. As Jo Blanden concludes: “This literature indicates that genes play an important role in generating intergenerational transmissions. But they also show that they are not the whole story.”

 So I am not making this up, but the media is supressing it.

Comments

[jack is Back!]

Howdy!

[Jeff Dobbs]

Mickey Kaus Scores Again

FTSAH®™©

[Sandy--Engorged Capital~Fallow Districts--Daze]

Good Morning.

Apologies if already linked:

Obama to expedite U.S. entry for thousands of Haitians

FTA:
Beginning early next year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will implement the Haitian Family Reunification Parole (HFRP) Program to accelerate the reunification of eligible Haitian family members of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, who are living in Haiti and have already been approved for a family-based immigrant visa.

[Threadkiller]

We aren't allowed to talk about citizenship anymore, Sandy.

[henry]

Completely missed is that wealthier families have two parents to spend time nurturing kids, and choose to do so. Poorer families are single moms who choose to spend time with crack / meth / baby daddies and getting more free shit from uncle sugar. (obviously there are exceptions like Dr Carson's mother).

[Sandy--Engorged Capital~Fallow Districts--Daze]

I read somewhere years ago that the number of National Merit Scholarship Finalists in Oak Ridge Tennessee was greater by any measure (overall number, percentage) than anywhere else in the good old USA.
Why?
The reason was attributed to the number of super-duper smart hundred pound heads who were brought to Oak Ridge to work on the nuclear program. These smart guys and gals married, birds & bees, and all that, and soon their progeny were grabbing the intellectual gold ring in the high school merry-go-round of life.

[sbw]

Knowledge.

At a conference my wife explained that in lower educated homes children were exposed to 1 million spoken words before kindergarten and 30 million words in higher educated homes (research reported by David Liben).

Advice to politician, pundits, and professors: Cut the crap and theatric hand-wringing. We know what to do. Let’s get to work.

[Captain Hate]

What do Haitians have to do with homeland security? Has anybody in the "opposition party" asked that question?

[Beasts of England]

Wait, life's unfair! Stop the presses!

[Captain Hate]

Oh boy, Prince Reebus debates Debbie Downer on FNS. Top notch programming by Ailes imo.

[Captain Hate]

My God, Debbie has applied some hair straightener and, more importantly, apparently washed that lice nest.

[Sandy--Engorged Capital~Fallow Districts--Daze]

Oopla - Just reading Clarice's excellent (per usual) PIECES this morning, and she that she has included the report of the opening of the Haitian immigration floodgate.

Pieces

[squaredance]

Oh for an honest analysis of just who the rich are, and how they got rich
(and here I am just limiting myself somewhat to some firms who at least ostensibly produce something. Increasingly, they are the exception.)

Americans keep having one of the, er...ah, "national discussions" about in equality, along with the usual (and tiresome) "nature vs. nurture" cant, but the ascendancy of the Nomenklatura (and I include here their commercial branches) off of the middle class taxpayer is rarely discussed openly. Almost always, of it is addressed at all, it is addressed obliquely is the usual rhetoric of "Small Government".

The Right correctly debunks at the "social justice" agit-prop and senses its intent, but as a nation we are all missing the point.

"The Rich" today, or at least a large portion of them, are not self-made billionaires building out wealth; they are hucksters (or worse) who have figure out how to game the system, or people who have taken what is productive off shore.

It not really the fundamental issue of how much "the rich" spend on their children--there is no news here, and it is comic to see so called "studies" that affirm something so obvious. What is really the issue is what is the path to wealth and what are the consequences of that path to the nation at large.

Yes, there is growing inequality in this country, but it is not due to "nature vs. Nurture", it is due to 1) the institutional Left looting the nation; and 2) an elite, via the doctrines of "globalism", thoroughly disconnected from the nation. We need to stop having this discussion of inequality while we still hold to older notions of how advanced one worked in this nation for those assumptions no longer obtain. This is a failure of the Right.

Calls to "fix" this problem from the Left will only mean yet more huskers getting rich and further destroy the American Middle class.

The (mostly white) middle class has been betrayed by the "the Establishment", and that is the source of this growing "inequality".

Taking these vipers advice on how to "fix" this is madness. Rather, the whole corrupt tribe must be held into account and "the system" reformed. This is beyond politics, but of course has its political elements.

It is doubtful that we will see much actually here.

Often when I see what is happening I am reminded of the "Enclosure" period of England, the "Clearances" in Scotland, or the resurgence of the high elements of the Acient Regime after the 30 Years War.

In a certain sense, that quite similar is happening now here. The villains behind this new usurpation differ in that they are almost wholly parasitical and do not even offer a merger "optimization" of production or even a whiff of nobility. It is (literally) wholesale decadence. It is the Soviet Nomenclature with better tailoring.

The nation has been hijacked--they are at the very cusp of making it permanent. This is not a momentary tendency that can be adjusted through an election or two; this "long game" if ever there was one.

It is a distraction to argue about "the advantages" of the rich. We should be talking about this ongoing coup, just how we allowed it to happen, and what we can do to reverse it.

[Sandy--Engorged Capital~Fallow Districts--Daze]

*and see that she*

[Captain Hate]

Reince did his homework; one of his more impressive appearances. It helps that Debbie is a full retard and isn't hitting some things for which he's really vulnerable.

[Captain Hate]

Debbie refuses to answer a travel ban question while Reince says absolutely there should be one. War on Citizens.

[Beasts of England]

@squaredance: The assault on the middle class is extraordinary, and I appreciate your synopsis. I think it goes far beyond the economic factors and melds into the social factors, as well, and these are just as harmful. I'm sickened that the nominal traits that produce the middle class are disdainfully lumped into absurd memes such as 'white privilege'.

[Beasts of England]

Just as TM reads the Times so we don't have to, Captain Hate watches DWS so we don't have to. ;)

[squaredance]

Agreed, Beast.

(That was just off the top of my head, BTW, I did not mean it as comprehensive).

[Jeff Dobbs]

Couple threads back, Steph posted this:
Mecklenburg County Health officials requested that American Airlines not move the aircraft or allow passengers to deplane until the woman's Ebola test results were returned. Her tests eventually came back negative.

Oh, uh...

A female passenger was removed from US Airways Flight 1829 from Charlotte to Tampa Friday evening.

FTSAH: I landed at Charlotte-Douglas at 6:30 PM Friday and boarded my flight back to GSO around 7:30 PM. Flying US Airways.

Hmmm, I arrived at Gate D7 and departed out of Gate C3.

Let's see, quick google and...

Flight 1829 departs out of Gate C10, with a scheduled departure of 5:50 PM. No signs of any emergency personnel or anything out of the ordinary when I was there, though.

But Yike.

...for mrs hit and run before I tell her about a possible ebola scare going on in the airport while I was there.

[Cecil Turner]

So I am not making this up, but the media is supressing it.

Yes and some of the best examples of what they seem to be looking for appear to be off-limits. For example, Biden’s Son ‘Embarrassed’ Over Navy Ouster :

Mr. Biden was tested for drugs in June 2013, after he reported to his unit in Norfolk, and the result was positive for cocaine, according to the people familiar with the matter. The Navy said he was discharged in February.

It was unclear why Mr. Biden decided to join the Navy Reserve while in his 40s. He needed a waiver because of his age. He received a second waiver because of a drug-related incident when he was young, said the people familiar with his discharge, which was first reported in The Wall Street Journal. [emphasis added]

Something tells me this opportunity wouldn't be available to every 44 year-old who was looking for a risk-free military resume, nor that Biden's other lawyer son would've had quite the same military or political career without some help from his family.

[Jim Eagle]

Meet Judge Morrison C. England, Jr., The Federak Judge Fed up Government Misconduct. Its the Sierra Pacific "Moonlight Fire" litigation. Read the whole thing. Talk about corrupt prosecutors and the enabling DoJ of Eric Holder.

http://observer.com/2014/10/fed-up-with-govt-misconduct-federal-judge-takes-nuclear-option/

[Mike Giles]

Interesting point. Before retiring I used to ride public transportation (only a madman drives into NYC if he doesn't have to). I noticed a difference between white and black children. White children were constantly talking, with their parents answering innumerable questions. Black parents were always telling their children to sit still and be quiet. I'm not sure for the different parenting styles, but I couldn't help but wonder about blacks tendency later on in life to express themselves physically as opposed to verbally.

[AliceH]

Interesting, Mike Giles@11:24. Now I can blame my "children should be seldom seen or heard" parents for why my comments are so often clumsy and inarticulate. (Haven't punched anyone in years, though). ;)

[RickB]

"they are at the very cusp of making it permanent."

Squaredance,

The parasite Nomenklatura parasites and the zampolit parasites who act on their behalf are feeding and living on borrowed resources. If the host does not produce sufficient sustenance for survival, the parasite winds up in the embarrassing position of being dead (vide USSR et al).

It's really a question of whether the body politic as host will destroy the parasite before the parasites kill the host. "Permanence" is not a factor in either outcome.

[Iggy]

The left creates and encourages social policies which exacerbate and incentivize poverty and social pathologies while creating and encouraging economic policies which hinder upward mobility and then, as always, beg for more power to solve the mess they've made and which they blame on others.
And of course their Casey Krugman solution is always "Pour on the coal! Just one more Trillion!"

[matt]

That's odd. My mother ended up in an orphanage at 10; was picking potatoes and blueberries at 14; was a domestic, as they were called then, at 15 and ended up working at CBS News during WW II as William Shirer's secretary. I guess it was all of that white privilege.

She did more than okay over her lifetime and every ounce of it was earned with blood, sweat, toil and tears. Screw communists.

[Jim Eagle]

Mel Brooks must be writing a new version of Blazing Saddles as he is watching this Ebola crisis unfold .

"We doin't need no freaking hazmat suits." So sayith the new Sherriff in Liberia (actually the CO of the Screaming Eagles).

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/10/101st-airborne-wont-get-full-protective-hazmat-suits-for-ebola-mission-in-west-africa/

[Jeff Dobbs]

NC Senate polling...

RCP average right now is:

RCP Average_____Hagan +1.4
SurveyUSA_______Tillis +1
Rasmussen_______Hagan +2
High Point________Tie
USA Today_______Hagan +2
NBC News________Hagan +4

(I've shortened the names of the pollsters to try and align the columns easier)

That NBC/Marist poll was 9/27. Itsa gonna drop off soon. If it dropped off without a replacement, Hagan's lead would go from +1.4 to +0.75.

*IF* it is replaced by another Tillis +1 poll, the average goes to Hagan +0.4. Or put another way, if we get a Tillis +3 poll, it's a complete dead heat.

HOWEVER, let's say Rasmussen is up next with a new poll (looks like they've been polling monthly, this close to the election, will they do an extra mid-month poll?). What if Rasmussen shows up with a Tillis +2 poll? Drop the Hagan +2 and replace it with Tillis +2 and . . . voila . . . Tillis +0.25

Of course, it looks like the next poll(s) might come from one or another of the following: CBS/NYT, CNN, Civitas, Fox, and PPP. The average of those pollsters' last polls was Hagan +4.

Well, much speculation, but Tillis might be in better position than ND was last night at the 2 minute warning, and without the need to convert a fourth-and-18.

The good news is, I think it safe to say that Tillis is almost incapable of offensive pass interference on a potential game-winning TD pass. Unfortunately, that doesn't preclude Team Tillis from calling a draw play from the 20 yard line with 10 seconds to go and no time outs, even though they only need a field goal for the win.

Or something like that.

[MarkO]

It is a vital lie that intelligence cannot be passed genetically.

[Jim Eagle]

Mel doesn't really have to write this new version: It writes itself.

New script morsel.

Fauci: Clipboard Giy Should Have Geared Up If Only For Public Relations Appearances. Even Mel couldn't write that laugher any better.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/390657/fauci-clipboard-guy-should-have-geared-public-relations-appearances-tim-cavanaugh?utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Corner&utm_source=twitterfeed

[MarkO]

Nate Silver is D+3.

[Jim Eagle]

Scene 3: Dallas Judge says Duncan Family "free to go" Tonight. New Common Core Math where 14 days equals 21 days of quarantine.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/221210-dallas-judge-duncan-family-free-to-go-tonight

[anonamom]

Here's the NYT from the other day about a child not just benefiting from the number of words exposed, but how those words are presented.
It doesn't take money to say to baby "doggie" when he points to a dog.
But somebody needs to be paying attention to the baby, not scrolling their smartphone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/quality-of-words-not-quantity-is-crucial-to-language-skills-study-finds.html?src=me&_r=0

[RickB]

I'll stick with RSE's take and claim neither the quality nor the quantity of words parroted make much difference (vide Pitzer College or Harvard Law School). The ability of a child to solve the phonetic puzzle is much more indicative of intellectual potential and also an insurmountable hurdle for the roughly 35% of the population which could never get out of high school when high schools had standards.

"Hooked on Phonics" just ain't that useful for those from continents unmarked by the passage of wheels until the strangers showed up.

[Jim Eagle]

Think Frain will be helpful?

How about the UN Ebola Tsar?

UN Ebola tsar has form

Ebola, filling the news like an ongoing horror film, is clearly a ghastly disease. But we should not perhaps take too much cheer from the fact that the UN’s top man on Ebola, supposedly in charge of co-ordinating international efforts to stop this deadly virus stalking across the globe, is a British doctor, David Nabarro.

He was last this big in the news in September 2005, when he was drafted in from the World Health Organisation to play a similar role as the UN’s top man on Asian bird flu.

Dr Nabarro immediately predicted that that virus could kill “150 million people”, telling the BBC that it was “like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids”. Despite the WHO stating that this was not its “official view”, he stood by his claim.

Nine years later, the WHO’s figure for the total number of deaths from Asian bird flu is 379.

[(A)Nuther Bub]

Of course it's genetic, but our self proclaimed science-and-data obsessed friends on the Left will not permit us to point that out. Studies of the IQ of Haitians show an average at various levels between 67 and 72. The 100,000 new recruits about to arrive will in most cases fall within that range. They'll eventually be Democrats, but how will they thrive and prosper in a technological society, no matter how many five-syllable words are spoken in their presence?

[(A)Nuther Bub]

Last!

[peter]

funny bub

[Danube on iPad]

I love watching Jay Cutler throw interceptions.

[(A)Nuther Bub]

The majority of my comments are the last in any thread, Peter, long after others have moved on. Perhaps I pay insufficient attention. (If only my parents had used bigger words in my presence.)

[Miss Marple]

Greg Ballard, the mayor of Indianapolis (and a former Marine and Republican) is not waiting for the lame CDC response teams. He had a press conference yesterday to announce they have made sure all hospitals and first responders have appropriate protective gear, an ambulance has been dedicated to transfer suspected Ebola patients, training is on-going to make sure everyone is aware, etc.

http://wishtv.com/2014/10/19/mayor-and-health-leaders-reveal-indy-ebola-plan/

[Miss Marple]

http://www.redstate.com/2014/10/19/bobby-jindal-ebola-crisis-enters-phase-ii-obama-plan/

Bobby Jindal says we have entered Stage II of the Obama Crisis Plan, "I'm so angry."

Jindal says (and he put this on Twitter) that there are 4 stages to every crisis Obama has.
1. "I got this."
2. "I'm so angry."
3. We need more money.
4. The Republicans are obstructing.

[AliceH]

I bristle sometimes at calling paramedics, fireman, etc "first responders". Unless you're unconscious, the first responder in any emergency you have is You.

[Danube on iPad]

In the AP rankings out today, 4 of the top 5 and 5 of the top 9 are SEC clubs. Notre Dame is 7th.

[Beasts of England]

4 of the Top 5 are from the SEC West. Fairly impressive.

[Porchlight]

Studies show that kids who grow up with books in the home do better academically than kids who don't.

It's not the physical presence of the books. It's not even because of a greater emphasis on education (though that is also present). It's a third factor: IQ. Reading habits and education correlate with IQ, which is heritable.

Giant DUH from most people who aren't libs. The libs read about the studies and think the answer is to put more books in homes.

[maryd]

Porch,my brother was an elementary school principal in Northern New Jersey. He read the New York Times,because he had to, and gasp, he was a democrat

From the time my goddaughter came home from the hospital, he cradled her in a rocking chair every morning and read her the New York Times. Terrible choice, but boy did she become a reader. Went to Clemson, married a Southern Gentleman, and is a conservative.

[Porchlight]

Good for her, maryd! :)