Bono: America is ‘an idea.’ That’s how we see you around the world, as one of the greatest ideas in human history

Bono Speech at Georgetown - Keeping Faith with the Idea of America

JACKSONVILLE - It is somewhat strange that we live in a society where anyone can speak in glowing terms about American exceptionalism - except Americans.

Screw that!! Happy Birthday and God Bless America.

from aei.org
http://www.aei.org/publication/bono-america-is-an-idea-thats-how-we-see-you-around-the-world-as-one-of-the-greatest-ideas-in-human-history-2/

America is an idea. Ireland is a great country, but it’s not an idea. Great Britain is a great country, but it’s not an idea. That’s how we see you around the world, as one of the greatest ideas in human history.

Quotation of the day on 'intertemporal abstractions' and 'entering the world with prepackaged grievances'.... - AEI

from aei.org
http://www.aei.org/publication/quotation-of-the-day-on-intertemporal-abstractions/

Quotation of the day on 'intertemporal abstractions' and 'entering the world with prepackaged grievances'….

… is from Thomas Sowell's 2010 book "Intellectuals and Society" in the chapter titled "Intertemporal Abstractions" (emphasis mine):

The intelligentsia in 21st century America speak of "whites" and "blacks" as intertemporal abstractions with centuries-old issues to be redressed, rather than as flesh-and-blood individuals who take their sins and their sufferings with them to the grave. There is surely no more profound difference between human beings than the difference between the dead and the living. Yet even that difference is glided over verbally when speaking of races as intertemporal abstractions, of whom the current living generation is just the latest embodiment.

Intertemporal abstractions are especially useful to those intellectuals who tend to conceive of social issues in terms which allow the intelligentsia to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. When intellectuals are unable to find enough contemporary grievances to suit their vision or agenda, they can mine the past for harm inflicted by some members on others. By conceiving of those involved in the past as members of intertemporal abstractions, the intelligentsia can polarize contemporary descendants of those involved in past acts. The kind of society to which that leads is one in which a newborn baby enters the world supplied with prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day.

• 
  

Sent from my iPhone

'The racism treadmill' - AEI

Amen!

from aei.org
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-racism-treadmill/

'The racism treadmill'

That's the title of an excellent article in Quillette by Coleman Hughes, an undergraduate philosophy major at Columbia University. Some excerpts appear below (emphasis added), but reading the full article would be worth your time. Hat tip goes to Charles Murray, who remarked on Twitter:  "This is really good, period. That it was written by an undergraduate is extraordinary." Amen.

The disparity fallacy holds that unequal outcomes between two groups must be caused primarily by discrimination, whether overt or systemic. What's puzzling about believers in the disparity fallacy is not that they apply the belief too broadly, but that they apply it too narrowly. Any instance of whites outperforming blacks is adduced as evidence of discrimination. But when a disparity runs the other way—that is, blacks outperforming whites—discrimination is never invoked as a causal factor.
……
Intuitive examples of the importance of culture are all around us. Disparities in athletic achievement, for instance, are inexplicable without reference to culture. Although blacks make up 14 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 8 percent of MLB baseball players. This relatively small disparity has been enough to prompt articles in US News, NPR, and Vox that blame the decline in black baseball representation on everything from mass incarceration to racial bias to a generic sense among white fans that "baseball culture should stay white," as the Vox piece summarized it.

Meanwhile, blacks account for a staggering three-fourths of all NBA basketball players, while whites account for a mere 18 percent. Curiously, progressives have not seen the under-representation of whites in basketball as requiring any explanation whatsoever. When whites are under-represented somewhere, it is assumed to be a choice or a cultural preference. But when blacks are under-represented somewhere, progressives descend on the issue like detectives to the scene of an unsolved murder, determined to consider every possible explanation except for the "lazy" one: that in black culture, basketball is more popular than baseball.
………..
The disparity fallacy and the denial of cultural factors conspire to create a dynamic that I call the Racism Treadmill: as long as cultural differences continue to cause disparities between racial groups, and as long as progressives imagine that systemic racism lies behind every disparity, then no amount of progress in reducing systemic racism, however large or concrete, will ever look like progress to progressives.
…..
Staying on the Racism Treadmill means denying progress and stoking ethnic tensions. It means, as Thomas Sowell once warned, moving towards a society in which "a new born baby enters the world supplied with prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day." Worse still, it means shutting down the one conversation that stands the greatest chance of improving outcomes for blacks: the conversation about culture.

By contrast, getting off the Treadmill means recognizing that group outcomes will differ even in the absence of systemic bias; it means treating people as individuals rather than as members of a collective; it means restoring the naive conception of equal treatment over the skin-color morality of the far Left; and it means rejecting calls to burn this or that system to the ground in order to combat forms of racial oppression that grow ever more abstract by the day. At bottom, it means acknowledging the fact that racism has declined precipitously, and perhaps even being grateful that it has.

• Sent from my iPhone

Quotations of the day on equality of outcomes.... - AEI

Too much wisdom and logic for some, but maybe in small doses......Sowell and Friedman are a dynamite combination.

from AEI.org
http://www.aei.org/publication/quotations-of-the-day-on-equality-of-outcomes/

Posted: 26 May 2018 07:20 AM PDT AEI Quotations of the day on equality of outcomes…. …. are from Thomas Sowell: 1. If you cannot achieve equality of performance among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, how realistic is it to expect to achieve it across broader and deeper social divisions? …… 2. If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable? Quotations of the day on equality of outcomes…. Mark Perry

Sent from my iPhone

Some thoughts from Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural speech for Memorial Day 2018 - AEI

This is why we honor the men and women who paid the ultimate price for freedom, not just on Memorial Day, but every day. And it's also why we respect the flag and the national anthem. Thanks Ronnie. A great three minute explanation and a mini-history lesson.

from AEI.org
Some thoughts from Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural speech for Memorial Day 2018 - AEI:

Here’s a great quote from Reagan that opens the video above:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

And later in the speech, some thoughts on terrorism….

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

'via Blog this'

Why do American parents push their kids so hard when it comes to sports, but not so much when it comes to academics? - AEI

There are a ton of good questions embedded in this article and should give pause to anyone involved in youth sports generally and elite level sports specifically.

It seems like many parents/athletes do not want to even entertain the notion of a Plan B when it comes to sports/academics, which leads to the ridiculous notion that a college scholarship given to an elite athlete who otherwise would never have had the means or the opportunity to attend __________________ (fill in the blank) university, HAS ZERO VALUE! Which is an absurd notion.

It has zero value only if the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits offered are not capitalized on, and that is a choice. Let's just put all the eggs of our proverbial future in one basket, the one that has the least chance of turning out in our favor, and see how that works out. It's just insanity.

from AEI.org
Why do American parents push their kids so hard when it comes to sports, but not so much when it comes to academics? - AEI:

There’s a dichotomy/inconsistency among many of today’s American parents. Many parents aren’t afraid to push their children really hard when it comes to athletics, and emphasize the connection between hard work and athletic achievement. Strict standards, scores, times and rankings are accepted as necessary and accurate measures of athletic success. Any type of cheating in sports is unacceptable to parents and coaches and would be met with strict consequences. Hard work, effort, and athletic success are more important to most parents than athletic self-esteem.

On the other hand, many of today’s parents in the US don’t push their children very hard when it comes to academics, they don’t necessarily believe in the connection between effort and academic achievement, and don’t believe that academic success is within the reach of any student willing to work hard for it. Establishing and enforcing strict academic standards has given way to less challenging curricula that emphasize self-esteem and vague concepts like “social justice” over academic excellence. Parents now complain to teachers and administrators if their children are disciplined for cheating and expect inflated grades and report-card mercy. Many high schools no longer have a valedictorian or have multiple dozens of them, rendering the valedictorian distinction meaningless, all in the name of greater self-esteem. That diffusion and degradation of academic excellence would never be tolerated in sports, where there are still state champions, state rankings for sports teams, and state records for sports like track and swimming.

Here are excerpts from two articles that illustrate that parental dichotomy.

1. From the Wall Street Journal article (September 8, 2017), “Why American Students Need Chinese Schools” by Lenora Chu, an Asian-American mother whose two sons (ages 5 and 8) have been attending schools in Shanghai (bold added): 

Another bracing Chinese belief is that hard work trumps innate talent when it comes to academics. Equipped with flashcards and ready to practice, my son’s Chinese language teacher knows that he is capable of learning the 3,500 characters required for literacy. His primary school math teacher gives no child a free pass on triple-digit arithmetic and, in fact, stays after school to help laggards. China’s school system breeds a Chinese-style grit, which delivers the daily message that perseverance—not intelligence or ability—is key to success.

Studies show that this attitude gets kids farther in the classroom. Ethnic Asian youth are higher academic achievers in part because they believe in the connection between effort and achievement … and they believe that success is within reach of anyone willing to work for it. This attitude gives policy makers in China great latitude when it comes to setting out and enforcing higher standards.

In the U.S., parents have often revolted as policy makers try to push through similar measures. In part, we are afraid that Johnny will feel bad about himself if he can’t make the grade. What if, instead, Johnny’s parents—and his teacher, too—believed that the boy could learn challenging math with enough dedicated effort?

Americans aren’t afraid to push their children when it comes to athletics (see below). Here we believe that hard work and practice pay off, so we accept scores and rankings. Eyes glued to scoreboards at a meet, we embrace numbers as a way to measure progress. A ninth-place finish in the 100-meter dash suggests to us that a plodding Johnny needs to train harder. It doesn’t mean that he’s inferior, nor do we worry much about his self-esteem.

Educational progress in the U.S. is hobbled by parental entitlement and by attitudes that detract from learning: We demand privileges for our children that have little to do with education and ask for report-card mercy when they can’t make the grade. As a society, we’re expecting more from our teachers while shouldering less responsibility at home.

2. From the Star Tribune article (first in a three-part series) “Year-round sports push kids to limit: Families are pouring in more time and money — and more athletes are burning out“:

The sport Kali O’Keeffe loved at age 12 had turned into a chore, devouring her free time, leaving her out of touch with friends. She was the starting second baseman for the [Minneapolis suburb] Chanhassen High School’s softball team by eighth grade and a major college recruit by 15. But O’Keeffe reached a breaking point before her junior year, on the way back from Tennessee, where her club team had played in a national tournament.

Three hectic years traveling to tournaments across the country and spending countless nights inside a batting cage had taken a toll. She sat down next to her father on a curb outside their roadside hotel. Crying, she told him the pressure of playing year-round softball was just too much. “When I told my parents, I felt so bad,” she said. “They had spent so much money on softball, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”

O’Keeffe is among a generation of Minnesota athletes who have pushed themselves to extremes, developing highly polished skills through year-round dedication to their sport, while their families make major investments of money and time. Her father, Bryan, said the family spent a minimum of $7,500 per year on softball, adding, “That could be on the conservative side.”

After seeking input from coaches, the Star Tribune spent the summer examining some of the most profound changes affecting high school sports in the metro area. What we found reflects the growing influence of year-round youth sports, where seasons and training never seem to let up. Youth sports are an estimated $15 billion industry, and the increasing specialization of these budding athletes is irrevocably changing Minnesota’s high school landscape in softball, baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball, volleyball and lacrosse — basically, every team sport except football.

The offseason is disappearing, fueled by an explosion of pay-to-play club sports that have scores of young athletes training year-round. While a select few, such as O’Keeffe, become good enough to attract college scholarships, others devote countless extra hours in the quest to make varsity teams.

In the never-ending blur of year-round practices and games, the importance of the high school season itself is shrinking, to the chagrin of many coaches. Teen athletes and their families spend thousands to play for club teams, attend skill-instruction camps and hire personal trainers and college recruiting advisers. A local baseball recruiting service offers a $2,400 guarantee that the teen will play college baseball — or their money back. “You see families that can’t afford to buy groceries, but they’ll somehow find a way to get a thousand-dollar pair of skates and get to New York,” Hill-Murray boys’ hockey coach Bill Lechner said. “It scares me; our priorities are out of whack.”

The Minnesota State High School League didn’t allow coaches to work with players during the summer until 1998. The league had faced pressure from parents who felt their sons and daughters couldn’t maximize their potential under the old system. “Our kids were running off and spending thousands of dollars for training in the offseason,” Bloomington Jefferson boys’ hockey coach Jeff Lindquist said. “We just felt it was a time to let them train in our community.”

For families seeking extra help attracting college recruiters, there’s help available — at a price. The Baseball Advising Team is one example, assuring clients they’ll play college baseball for $2,400. It works with the Hit Dawg Academy in Chaska, creating a training regimen to follow while the company networks with college coaches on players’ behalf.

“I believe that anybody who wants to play college baseball can,” said Matt Paulsen, the company’s founder. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to be playing for Florida State.”

While some athletes and their families can approach these pursuits with open checkbooks, others can’t. In 2016, children from families making $25,000 or less were only half as likely to take part in a team sport as families making at least $100,000, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry.

MP: Venn diagram version above.

Q: What gives? Why the dichotomy/inconsistency? Comments welcome. 

'via Blog this'

The best sentence I read today..... - AEI

http://aaww.org/limits-diversity/

from aei.org
The best sentence I read today..... - AEI:

… is from Scott Johnson writing about Penn Law professor Amy Wax on the Powerline Blog “Darkness at Penn, Take 2“:

As a wholly owned subsidiary of “multiculturalism,” the ideology of “diversity” adheres to certain tenets: (a) outcomes must be equal among racial and ethnic groups, except when they accrue to the advantage of a racial or ethnic “minority” (including women); (b) disparate outcomes among racial and ethnic groups represent some form of institutional bias to be rectified by the authorities; (c) all cultures are equal, except for that of the United States, which is eternally guilty of racism under (a) and (b) above; (d) the expression of views disagreeing with (a) through (c) must be suppressed or, if it cannot be suppressed, must be stigmatized as “racist.”

'via Blog this'

There is no ‘epidemic of mass school shootings’ - children are more at risk when they ride in a car, swim in a pool, or put food in their mouths - AEI

There is no ‘epidemic of mass school shootings’ - children are more at risk when they ride in a car, swim in a pool, or put food in their mouths - AEI:

That’s the conclusion of Eric Levitz writing in New York Magazine:

American children do not “risk their lives” when they show up to school each morning — or at least, not nearly as much as they do whenever they ride in a car, swim in a pool, or put food in their mouths (an American’s lifetime odds of dying in a mass shooting committed in any location is 1 in 11,125; of dying in a car accident is 1 and 491; of drowning is 1 in 1,133; and of choking on food is 1 in 3,461, see chart above). Criminal victimization in American schools has collapsed in tandem with the overall crime rate, leaving U.S. classrooms safer today than at any time in recent memory.

'via Blog this'

Quotation of the day on how the success of others is now a grievance, rather than an example..... - AEI

from AEI.org
Quotation of the day on how the success of others is now a grievance, rather than an example..... - AEI:

"…. is from Thomas Sowell, writing in his 2002 book The Quest for Cosmic Justice:

There has now been created a world in which the success of others is a grievance, rather than an example. Irrational as such ideological indulgences may be, they are virtually inevitable when equality becomes the social touchstone, for equality can be achieved only by either divorcing performance from reward or by producing equal performances. Since the latter is all but impossible, if only because everyone is not equally interested in the same kinds of performances, the passion for equality leads toward a divorce of performance and reward – which is to say a divorce of incentive and behavior, and even a divorce of cause and effect in our minds."

'via Blog this'

Chart of the Day from Carpe Diem

9. Chart of the Day IV (above). For those who are upset by a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 300:1, they must be really upset by the MLB star player-to-worker pay ratio of 500:1. from Carpe Diem / AEI:

US Poverty Rate is Still 14.5%; But Yes, The War On Poverty Worked - Forbes.com

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-27/when-work-punished-tragedy-americas-welfare-state

So we won the War on Poverty by killing the incentive to work? Have I got this about right. I didn't think so. It sounds like this guy went a down a long road of confusion to basically say, we need a new measuring stick. That will just change the reporting of the issue in the future, not any of the underlying conditions.

But this is the kind of crap that passes for expert commentary these days.

from Forbes.com:
US Poverty Rate is Still 14.5%; But Yes, The War On Poverty Worked:

I know, I know, it seems very odd: the rate’s the same, we’ve spent tens of trillions of dollars on this (using the current value of money) and yet I say that it has worked. What’s going on here? 

The detail is simply in the way that the US measures poverty. We’ve a number for the income of a  family of a certain size. If they get less than that then we define them as poor. All of which seems simple enough. That number goes up as inflation goes up but that’s it, we don’t, unlike other countries, change it for wages going up, for the country in general getting richer. So, at first look, that poverty rate should be coming right down. We spend near $1 trillion a year on sending things and money to the poor and that really should push some large number of those poor families over our line. But it seems that it doesn’t: so, why? 

Because, would you believe it, we don’t actually count most of the money that we give to the poor as being incomes to the poor. Weird but entirely true. We have roughly, in order of size, four large programs to alleviate poverty. Medicaid, the EITC, SNAP (food stamps) and Section 8 housing vouchers. There’s a vast raft of smaller programs following on as well. And almost all of them give things (health care, food stamps, rental apartments) to people instead of cash. The EITC is paid through the tax system. And the way we measure poverty is simply that goods and benefits in kind, plus aid through the tax system, are not counted as income when we measure the poverty line. 

We could give everyone twice what they get now, five times what they get now, and the number living in poverty woudn’t change by one single person or family.

That might not be the most sensible way to be measuring it but it is the way that it is done. The US alleviates vast amounts of poverty. When we measure all those goods and things the child poverty rate is 1 or 2%. Which is pretty good for government work and very different indeed from the 19% or so that the current method of measurement gives us.

There is one more important point here too. Back when Johnson was gearing this thing up aid to poor people was in direct cash transfers. Those are measured as income to poor families before we measure the poverty line. So back then the poverty line was a measure of people who were poor after the government had helped them. Today we measure before almost all of the help that people get (there’s still a couple of small programs that dole out cash). So today’s measurement is more like the number of people who would be in poverty if government weren’t going to help them.

 'via Blog this'

For a better perspective of the situation as it is, from someone who apparently works within said system.

Read: Welfare's Failure and the Solution:
http://www.aei.org/files/2012/07/11/-alexander-presentation_10063532278.pdf
by Gary D. Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

It's a real eye-opener.

And nothing about the introduction of perverse incentives or the impediments to building  a growing economy that would take people off welfare ie: Too Many People on the Cart, Not Enough People Pulling the Cart.

Great googly moogly.

With OSHA and other various federal agencies that have sprung up over the last generation to protect workers, how is #6 even possible. Except state have (perverse) incentives ($$$) to funnel people toward disability (which the Fed pays for) rather than Welfare (which the State pays for).

Don't even get me started on the effects of ObamaCare:

Consider, for instance, how the subsidies for Obamacare are affecting economic growth:

The CBO, the government's nonpartisan number-cruncher, included the figures in its projection of economic growth over the next decade. The CBO estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3m in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform. That 2.3m drop is nearly three times larger than the CBO's earlier projection.

The CBO does not give credence to Republicans' common claim that Obamacare is already reducing employment. Rather, the CBO expects Obamacare to have its biggest impact from 2017. Furthermore, the main reason for the decline is not that employers will slash jobs, but that Americans will choose to work less. Nevertheless, the CBO provides the best  case yet that Obamacare will depress work, rather than boost it.

Many factors account for the drop. Top among them is the affect of subsidies for health insurance. To help Americans buy coverage on new health "exchanges", Obamacare offers tax credits to those earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line (about $11,500 to $46,000 for a single adult). Those tax credits are offered on a sliding scale, by income, so workers effectively pay a higher tax rate as their wages rise. This may dissuade workers from trying to earn more. It also allows a higher standard of living (that is, with health coverage) at a lower income, which may further discourage work.

[. . .]

The CBO analyses other provisions, too. For example the higher payroll tax for couples earning $250,000 or more may lower their desire to earn higher wages. Obamacare's requirement that insurers cover the sick, without raising their rates, may prompt some to retire earlier than they would have otherwise.

The unintended affect of Obamacare is that it provides incentives to work less — or to not work at all. And with fewer people in the workforce, the government will be bringing in zero revenue from the income those people would have otherwise generated.

This outcome was not exactly unexpected — it was what Republicans had predicted all along — but it seems to come as a surprise to President Obama. Perhaps he should invite Laffer to bring his napkin to the White House to show him exactly where he went wrong.

Great system we have going here at any rate. End the War on Poverty. PLEASE!!! Before it kills us all, especially those left pulling the cart.

from Carpe Diem:
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/07/6-charts-that-show-the-welfare-state-run-amok/

1. Fewer workers and their tax payments have to support more and more Medicaid recipients.


2. The number of takers is now approaching the number of makers.



6. Disability enrollees have exploded and are rising faster than job creation.


Even the Brits, socialists that they are, have begun to at least ask the relevant question. How much giving is too much?

They like us, haven't got the heart -- or maybe it's the head -- to figure out the right answers. So here they are.