A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Life can be good. We have evidence of this. We’re just not sure how to make it happen. In part, this is because we’re not really sure who “we” are. Will Hutton, writing for the Guardian, talks about Britain, Brexit, and ‘Shit-Life Syndrome.'” He notes that this shit-life syndrome in Britain parallels a lot of the suffering in the U.S. (wherein lower class white folks are starting, more often, to be afflicted with the same problems non-whites have suffered from). Hutton says that the decline in life-expectancy in Britain is starting to look like the worse problems we have in the U.S. A recent study indicates that, in the U.S.,  “all cause mortality increased… among non-Hispanic whites.” Drug overdoses were the leading cause but mortality also increased for “alcohol-related conditions, suicides and organ diseases involving multiple body systems” (notably liver, heart diseases and cancers).

US doctors coined a phrase for this condition: “shit-life syndrome”. Poor working-age Americans of all races are locked in a cycle of poverty and neglect, amid wider affluence. They are ill educated and ill trained. The jobs available are drudge work paying the minimum wage, with minimal or no job security. They are trapped in poor neighbourhoods where the prospect of owning a home is a distant dream. There is little social housing, scant income support and contingent access to healthcare. Finding meaning in life is close to impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources. Yet turn on the TV or visit a middle-class shopping mall and a very different and unattainable world presents itself. Knowing that you are valueless, you resort to drugs, antidepressants and booze. You eat junk food and watch your ill-treated body balloon. It is not just poverty, but growing relative poverty in an era of rising inequality, with all its psychological side-effects, that is the killer.

Hutton says that white people afflicted with shit-life syndrome are Trump’s base and the core of Brexit supporters. They respond to accusations that their woes are caused by dark foreigners. Meanwhile, suggestions that the Nordic countries have managed to create a system where their citizens are happier and more prosperous are met with dismissive responses about how the countries are communist.

Hutton doesn’t really get into it, but that’s not the only rejoinder about why we can’t have the good life enjoyed in the Nordic countries. There was another column in the New York Magazine by Eric Levitz entitled “Conservatives can’t decide if Nordic Socialism is a totalitarian nightmare or actually capitalist.” Levitz observes that the traditional conservative notion is that the Nordic countries are totalitarian nightmares. As a representative sample, Levitz references a recent piece by Noah Rothman wherein Rothman argues that single-payer healthcare and tuition free access to a university education are pillars of the Soviet Constitution. However, they are also features of Scandinavian government and Rothman apparently feels no need to explain why those ideas lead to the gulag rather than to, say, Denmark.

Democrats may think they “can control the monster they’re bringing back to life,” Rothman writes, but if socialists are given an opportunity to prevail at the polls, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer “will find themselves prisoners to their party’s collectivists soon enough. After all, taking captives is what socialism does best.”

Levitz can’t resist twisting the knife a little bit by mentioning that the American system is way better at incarcerating its citizens than these socialist countries. At the same time as conservatives are making these gulag-socialism arguments, other conservatives are making incompatible arguments about how Nordic socialism is actually capitalism. According to this version of the argument, ” the real secret of the Nordic country’s success lies in its ‘strong protection of property rights and the integrity of the legal system,’ along with its commitment to free trade, light touch with regulations, and the fact that its ‘labor market is very flexible: there is no legislated minimum wage, and there are few restrictions on hiring and firing.'” Levitz rejoinder to this is that, even if we accept that Denmark’s welfare state isn’t responsible for its strong economic growth, “there’s little question that the country’s aberrantly high levels of social spending are responsible for its exceptionally low levels of relative poverty and income inequality.” Levitz concludes that the implication of this argument is that:

The economic success of the Nordic countries is actually a testament to the vitality of free-market capitalism — because free-market capitalism is (apparently) totally compatible with giant welfare states, nearly universal private-sector unionization, and state-owned oil, telecoms, and financial services companies.

Snark aside, the relative success of the Nordic countries suggests that it’s possible to have substantial wealth transfers from rich to poor without crippling the economy. (Other places, of course, show that wealth transfers can be done in a way that cripples the economy.)

A couple of themes I’ve seen raised in similar contexts that don’t necessarily come up in Hutton or Levitz columns but seem relevant: a) People suffering from shit-life syndrome are lazy and make poor life decisions; and b) the success of Nordic countries has to do with “homogeneous” populations. Here’s the word dropped into a 2015 column by Jeff Jacoby. (Incidentaly, Jacoby goes with the option #2 ‘actually capitalist’ dismissal of Scandinavian socialism.)

The real key to Scandinavia’s unique successes isn’t socialism, it’s culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries. In the region’s small and homogeneous countries (overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and native-born), those norms took deep root.

The connection between homogeneity and a successful social welfare state is usually left unstated as somehow self-evident, so I have to guess a bit at the rationale. The less charitable interpretation is just straight up racism. “Sure, you can have a successful system where the population is made up of hard-working white people. But, too great a population of the lazy mongrel races will suck us dry.” The not-great but probably more realistic connection between homogeneity and the success of a welfare state is that we’re more likely to feel comfortable spending money on people like us and more likely to resent spending money on people who are not “us.” Racism is probably the biggest stumbling block here. But it’s not the only one — there are other significant cultural divisions that also present challenges. If we think of our fellow citizens as “they” because those citizens look different, it’s going to be tougher to develop consensus about spending money on a strong social safety net. “Helping industrious people like us who are down on their luck is a great idea. Supporting lazy people like them will ruin us.”

So, the homogeneity argument is related to the one where people who suffer from shit life  syndrome do so because of laziness and poor life decisions. Why would we spend money to help those who refuse to help themselves? Don’t do drugs! Don’t have kids when you don’t have a job! Don’t have sex out of wedlock! Exercise every day! Don’t buy junk food! Do your homework! Don’t spend your money on luxuries! Don’t smoke! Save more money for retirement! Pay your credit cards off every month! The litany of admonitions is endless. It’s easy to make suffering the result of personal failings. But, as I’ve said many times — and it’s hardly original to me — the economy isn’t a morality play. There are plenty of hard working, sensible poor people; and there are plenty of wealthy people whose wealth is not at all proportional to their personal merit. The fact is that almost none of us are self-made. (Cue the howls of indignation from the people who foamed at President Obama’s unremarkable observation that if you were successful, you had someone help you along the way.)

I’ve never been too comfortable with any one ideology, but I suppose utilitarianism has been more or less my guide when judging whether a public system is good. If your system is mostly making people happy, it’s probably a good one. If your system is mostly making people unhappy, it’s probably a bad one. (But, yes, uncomfortable questions arise if you push this to the extremes. It has to be bounded by individual rights and protection for minority groups.) The success of these Nordic systems seems to be based on giving individuals more opportunity to succeed. It’s probably tougher for an individual to hit the economic jackpot and become a billionaire in the way that the American system makes possible. But, the flip side is that one doesn’t have to beat the odds in order to live a middle class lifestyle which also seems to be increasingly the case under the American system.

A post from Diane Ravitch’s blog on a study from Joseph Waddington and Mark Berends. The Study is called, “Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School.”

Overall, voucher students experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 SDs in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with matched students who remained in a public school. This loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English/Language Arts, we did not observe statistically meaningful effects. Although school vouchers aim to provide greater educational opportunities for students, the goal of improving the academic performance of low?income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.

I do take issue with one of the study’s assumptions, however. The abstract says that improving the academic performance of low-income students is a goal. My contention has long been that this stated goal for Indiana’s voucher system is a pretext. My working theory is that the real goals are primarily: a) reduce the influence of teacher’s unions; b) redirect education money to friends and well-wishers of pro-voucher policymakers; and c) subsidize private, religious education.

A brief aside – I know that sounds cynical. And I’m not a fan of knee-jerk cynicism when it comes to politics. It’s too easy, corrosive to public discourse, and so often doesn’t capture what’s happening. Too many lawmakers and other policymakers — even those with whom I disagree — are subjected to being unfairly painted as these cartoonish supervillains by members of the public who can’t be bothered to deal with nuance. In my experience most public servants honestly have their hearts in the right place. So, I would be delighted to learn that my cynicism is misplaced. Maybe lawmakers will review these studies and reconsider the state voucher program. Maybe they’ll restructure their voucher initiatives in a way that’s contrary to the big three “real” reasons for vouchers I’ve listed above. If that happens, I’ll certainly reconsider my cynical take on the matter.

Ravitch also mentions a study by Robert Planta and Arya Ansari showing that apparent advantages of going to a private school disappear when one controls for socio-economic advantages of the kids going to those schools. In other words, the private school wasn’t particularly responsible for the high performance of the kids; the advantages the kids had outside the school were responsible.

[I]n unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence. However, by simply controlling for the socio-demographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children, or children enrolled in urban schools, benefited more from private school enrollment.

So, we’re diverting funds from traditional public schools and adding administrative burdens for a voucher system that doesn’t help kids’ educational performance and might even hurt it. There are higher performing public school systems all over the world that we could be copying — but, doing so might not hurt teacher’s unions, might not redirect education funds to friends and well-wishers of voucher advocates, and might not provide a subsidy to private, religious education. The link in the previous system is to a blog post I did from 2016 on an National Conference of State Legislatures study that looked at Finland, Singapore, Ontario, Alberta, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Shanghai, and Taiwan. My take aways from the report:

1. The U.S. is falling behind when compared to the rest of the world. This can’t be explained away by hand waving about apples-and-oranges.

2. The good news, of sorts, is that there are now lots of countries doing better than we are, so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We can see what works and copy it.

3. There needs to be a support structure in place so that kids come to school ready to learn. In other places, that can take the form of government support to families with young children or extended family structures or the community generally. The upshot is that the kids are healthy and the kids are being educated before they get to school. Extra resources are devoted to struggling kids once they get to school.

4. Access to elite teachers. The system recruits high quality educators; implements a rigorous system of preparation and licensure; pays them well; develops a mentor system; gives them a professional environment to work in; selects high quality administrators; and develop standards benchmarked to other countries.

5. Develop a Career and Technical Education path for those students preferring more of an applied education rather than a more academic approach. This shouldn’t be an educational backwater like so many vocational programs. It should be geared to boosting the national economy and providing a higher standard of living for a broader base of the population.

6. These reforms should be part of a comprehensive plan. It will probably be the case that not all problems can be tackled at once, but the plan implementation should not be erratic or arbitrary.

This may be simplistic, but my current thinking is that our biggest obstacle to achieving a world-class education system (and a world-class health system for that matter) is the legacy of centuries of slavery in the U.S. It has left the civic equivalent of psychological scars that results in social dysfunction and seemingly insurmountable division. “We” are perfectly happy to spend huge amounts of Our money to help Us. But, We get really parsimonious when They might get some of Our money. Places where the public mostly regards everyone in the country as Us have any easier time providing for the welfare of the general public (as the preamble to the Constitution puts it) than places where the public has a significant division between Us and Them.

Brian Slodysko, writing for the Associated Press, reports that the State of Indiana has had to spend $21 million and counting on the cleanup of Kiel Bros. Oil Company sites. The company operated widely under the name “Tobacco Road.”

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family’s hometown.

Mike Pence is, of course, the Vice President and former governor of Indiana. His brother, Greg Pence, is the GOP candidate to take Mike’s former seat in Congress. Greg was running the company when it went bankrupt in 2004. According to the AP report, the company was founded by Carl Kiel in the 1960s. Pence father, Edward, became corporate vice-president. Mike and Greg worked for the company as well with Greg eventually became president of the company after Edward died in 1988.

The corporate bankruptcy filing and environmental damage in this story underlie a lot of what I find problematic about conservative and libertarian rhetoric about personal responsibility and small government. The rhetoric often involves a lot of talk about personal responsibility, the evils of government, and the wisdom of allowing people to keep their money away from the prying hands of the state. And, you know, that sounds great. Often there is truth to it. But it’s far too simplistic.

Let’s start with the corporation. It is a legal fiction created by and made available by the government and enforced by the government to shield individuals from personal responsibility. The individuals who owned Kiel Bros. were thereby allowed to cause damage to the environment, presumably pocket money from those activities, then retain the money after the bankruptcy was filed and the damage came to light. Bankruptcy is similar — a government created loophole to the enforceability of government created property rights that shields people from their obligations.

Then there is the environmental damage. Libertarians in particular, but often conservatives as well, have always been very weak in terms of their ability to reconcile their philosophy with an ability to deal with pollution. The general notion is that property owners should be allowed to do what they want with their own property without government interference (putting aside for a moment the fact that property is a legal creation that has no practical existence without the force of the government backing it up.) They might generally assert that if pollution caused by someone else’s property hurts you, you should be able to recover damages to compensate you. But, in practice, the culprits can be long gone before the damage comes to light, and the problems of proof and recovery can be immense. Meanwhile, pollution distorts the marketplace which is generally held in high regard by libertarians and conservatives. If you pollute, you are externalizing the costs of your operations. Operations cost more if they’re done in a way that doesn’t contaminate other people’s air and water. Because you’ve externalized that cost, the cost is not reflected in the price of your product. So, the market doesn’t get accurate information about the true cost of the service or product and money flows to people who are externalizing their costs. In this case, money is flowing to the Kiel and Pence families rather than to other oil companies or energy producers who create their product without surreptitiously harming others.

Which brings us to the last point about allowing people to keep what they’ve earned. If the State were to raise taxes on the Pence family to help mitigate these environmental costs, they would definitely moan about big government. I don’t know if they’d go so far as to say “taxation is theft,” but there is definitely a libertarian contingent who goes that far. Can the Pence family be said to have “earned” money that comes, in part, from offloading the environmental costs of their operation? They’ve earned some but not all of it. And I think that’s probably true of a lot of economic activity and its relationship to government and society at large. It’s complicated. You’ve earned some but not all of it. Sometimes you’ve offloaded costs. Sometimes you’ve skimmed off the value created by an employee. Sometimes you’re profiting from the infrastructure put in place by the government. So, sometimes taxes are too high. Sometimes, they’re too low. And, in any event, calling taxation theft just doesn’t capture the true dynamic.