On the Editorial Pages

People have, rightly, jumped all over the David Brooks column today in the New York Times that tries to spin a positive story about rising inequality. He is effectively rebutted at:

• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (David Brooks of the New York Times Edition) by Brad DeLong
• David Brooks Fact-Check Brigade by Ezra Klein
• More on Brooks by Ezra Klein
• So Are Real Average Wages Up? by Ezra Klein
• Real Wages for the Reality-Based Community Which Does Not Include David Brooks by PGL
• David Brooks omits context on economy by Brendan Nyhan
• David Brooks Sets Record for Most Economic Errors in An Oped Column! by Dean Baker

There are also questions about whether he came up with this himself, or whether he was fed (and willingly ate) the data and arguments:

• Fed to Him by Atrios
• A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing by Ezra Klein

If so, and it's hard to believe he did this by himself, I wonder who's feeding him?

There is another editorial today, this one in the WSJ, that also deserves a little scrutiny. Apparently Paul Krugman's column on competition among high-speed internet service providers rattled some cages and brought this response from Robert McDowell, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission. ("Mr. McDowell is a George W. Bush appointee. He is a former FCC lobbyist from Virginia for telephone companies.")

As you read this keep in mind that when you don't have an argument to offer in rebuttal, a common tactic is to attack the data. The scare tactics, beginning in the second paragraph with every "heavy-handed" possibility he could come up with, also point to the lack of effective counterargument Modern market-based telecommunications regulation that promotes competition through correct market incentives does not fit the "mandates" description he gives, not at all, e.g. see "Designing Incentive Regulation for the Telecommunications Industry," by David E. M. Sappington and Dennis L. Weisman. So his "heavy-handed government mandates" are nothing more than scare tactics. And when argument actual is provided, it's less than convincing:

Broadband Baloney, by Robert M. McDowell, Commentary, WSJ: American consumers are poised to reap a windfall of benefits from a new wave of broadband deployment. But you would never know it by the rhetoric of those who would have us believe that the nation is falling behind, indeed in free fall.

Looming over the horizon are heavy-handed government mandates setting arbitrary standards, speeds and build-out requirements that could favor some technologies over others, raise prices and degrade service. This would be a mistaken road to take -- although it would hardly be the first time in history that alarmists have ignored cold, hard facts in pursuit of bad policy.

Exhibit A for the alarmists are statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD says the U.S. has dropped from 12th in the world in broadband subscribers per 100 residents to 15th.

The OECD's methodology is seriously flawed, however. According to an analysis by the Phoenix Center, if all OECD countries including the U.S. enjoyed 100% broadband penetration -- with all homes and businesses being connected -- our rank would fall to 20th. The U.S. would be deemed a relative failure because the OECD methodology measures broadband connections per capita, putting countries with larger household sizes at a statistical disadvantage.

I need to jump in here. This whole thing about household sizes, which he makes a big deal of, is a red herring. If you look at this table you see that if you do it as subscribers per household, not per capita, France goes from having slightly more penetration than the US to slightly less. Big deal. And Japan still has higher penetration. Back to the "counterargument":

Furthermore, the OECD does not weigh a country's geographic size...

This is followed by an argument where the author, surprise, "does not weigh a country's geographic size." Comparing the number of "Wi-Fi hot spots" in the U.S. to the number in smaller countries doesn't tell us much:

The OECD conclusions really unravel when we look at wireless services, especially Wi-Fi. One-third of the world's Wi-Fi hot spots are in the U.S., but Wi-Fi is not included in the OECD study...

Most American Wi-Fi users do so with personal portable devices. It is difficult to determine how many wireless broadband users are online at any given moment, since they may not qualify as "subscribers" to anyone's service.

In short, the OECD data do not include all of the ways Americans can make high-speed connections to the Internet, therefore omitting millions of American broadband users. Europe, with its more regulatory approach, may actually end up being the laggard because of latent weaknesses in its broadband market.

The portable device usage isn't included for other countries either, so it's not clear how this adjustment would turn out without actually doing the calculations. Also, when he says "Europe ... may actually end up being the laggard," he implies Europe is not the laggard now, contrary to the impression he is trying to give. Oh well, that's what happens when you are grasping for any argument that might convince the unwary. Continuing:

Our flexible and deregulatory broadband policies provide opportunities for American entrepreneurs to construct new delivery platforms enabling them to pull ahead of our international competitors. For instance, newly auctioned spectrum for advanced wireless services will spark unparalleled growth and innovation.

Soon, we will auction even more spectrum in the broadcast TV bands to spur more broadband competition. In addition, we are in the midst of testing powerful new technologies to use in spectrum located in the "white spaces" between broadcast TV channels.

This is all wonderful news for our future.

But the point is that we are behind now. What happens in the future is a guess, not a certainty, and does not rebut the existing statistics on high-speed access that have been given. He also says:

In a competitive market, consumer demand compels businesses to innovate. ...

Yes, in a competitive market that's true. But these markets are not competitive and that's why we need incentive based regulation to ensure a robust, competitive, telecommunications market. Continuing again:

When it comes to broadband policy, let's put aside flawed studies and rankings, and reject the road of regulatory stagnation. ... Belief in entrepreneurs and a light regulatory touch is the right broadband policy for America.

Better yet, "when it comes to broadband policy, let's put aside flawed" editorials and reject scare tactics. Belief in regulation of monopoly power "is the right broadband policy for America."

Update: Tyler Cowen has more on the WSJ commentary.

Comments

[evagrius]

Brooks would have been an excellent spokesperson for the ancien regime.

[pioneer10]

WiFi in many places is based on wireless routers hooked up to to land based broadband sources (my house for example). Getting behind landbased penetration could easily hurt wireless internet use because of this.

As more spectrum is auction offed it would be nice for consumers to have access to wireless from as many sources possible particularly if the proposals like Googles do end up getting brushed off in favor of the traditional telecoms

[sk]

The Brooks column is really unbelievable. It's not only Brooks but the NYT editors should also share the responsibility for the basic facts presented.

As for the WSJ column regarding US broadband connection, I probably don't understand what it says.

The WSJ column says NJ has higher broad band penetration rates than that of Korea. According to the same web site Mark Thoma linked, NJ household broadband penetration rate is about 49% while South Korean rate is above 90%.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0608/
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0705/

The WSJ column also refers to a research done by Phoenix center. The following seems to be the article that WSJ is eferring.(PDF file)
http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP29Final.pdf

I quickly browsed through the 33 page article. I didn't understand and I hope somebody can explain it to me.

It claims the researchers created a what-if scenario in which all the households and businesses in the OECD countries have broadband access and recalculated per capita based penetration per each country. I didn't have a chance to really analyze the report but it sounds like they are comparing the households size of the countries because they assume every household has access to broadband. (See Table 2 in page 8 or 9 of the PDF file.)

Currently none of the countries have 100% household penetration rate so under their assumption every countries' per capita subscription rate should be higher than OECD statistics but some countries actually show less per capita rates.
Can anybody help me understand what they are doing?

[Jim]

There is hope for true competition in the U.S., assuming that the cable companies, phone companies, and wireless providers build out high speed access of 50mb/sec or greater to homes. A rational policy would ensure that this competition occurs, rather than creating a government approved monopoly of some sort.

[anne]

Paul Krugman's column on our generally poor Internet service is of course a given for anyone from Los Angeles or New York who has used the Internet from Madrid to Stockholm to Berlin. Why even mention Tokyo? What puzzled me was the immediate attacks on Krugman's comments and the sameness of attacks beginning with the stereotypical comments on Mark Thoma's thread. Was it the comparison with France, any comparison for any reason, such as, say, health care insurance, with France? Was it the reflexive defensive of American corporations, the less competitive the better? Was it the fear, a crazed fear of government programs, beyond military programs, that still has not allowed for hospitals to begin serving New Orleans again? Puzzling, but there.

[Lafayette]

MacDowel: "The OECD's methodology is seriously flawed, however."

Umm, let's see, the last time were heard this sort of phrasing was the Bush administration's negation of the Kyoto Agreement.

Have they developed nothing better in terms of argumentation, since then?

Then, McDowel, to show that he knows "flawed reasoning" when he sees it, comes out with this bit of nonsense: ... but Wi-Fi is not included in the OECD study...

For the original OECD document, go here

Since the methodology counts subscribers and since we might assume that, at least, residential subscribers require an address, we may we assume that each subscriber is also a residence? No, we can’t. We’d forget small business subscribers, but not large business, since the latter probably has its own T1 connection to the Internet. Are these included. No, I don't think so.

How many people have only a business related DSL-interconnect - and therefore should be counted?

Further understanding of the statistical base is required, to my mind.

Regardless, here is an excerpt from the OECD summary: The number of broadband subscriptions throughout the OECD continued to increase in the first half of 2005 from 119 million to 137 million. Broadband penetration in the OECD grew by 15% in the first half of the year to 11.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

So, neither should WiFi be included. The OECD study is counting ISP DSL service contracts, not the carrier’s communication means. When you have a DSL subscription, in France, it may include (with the proper device) a means to access DSL from a WiFi hotspot. WiFi hotspots can be furnished by ISPs, or they can have been established on public frequencies. But, it is an additional cost to an original subscription that MUST be residential … for contract purposes an ISP must have a billing address – either a business or a residential address.

The OECD study counts ISP subscriber contracts, given over a land-line, a cable or “other” (presuming satellite). If WiFi exists somewhere, all it does is allow interconnection with an ISP-server, who then provides subscriber DSL Internet interconnect. The DSL subscriber contract is therefore in the name of either the individual at their residence or the business at its residence - regardless of the way the user interconnects to the ISP.

So, what’s a residence? If it is individual, it means a family of three or four, but if it’s a business, and if the individual already is a residential subscriber at home, isn’t that tantamount to double counting?

As said, more inspection of the statistical accounting methodology is required.

Maybe per capita subscriber lines, though crude, is the best parameter that is uniform from country to country? (But, still, as regards comparison, be careful of which countries are selected.)

[Lafayette]

anne: Was it the comparison with France, any comparison for any reason, such as, say, health care insurance, with France?

This is entirely plausible.

Given your political standpoint, particularly on the right, "socialist France" is perhaps seen as the devil's debauched handmaiden.

Certainly, from a political perspective, if one wanted to point to the countries that made the most in "social investments" they would have to include France and Germany on their list. Since Germany has US bases on its soil and since Charles de Gaulle kicked NATO HQ out of Paris, the sinister country is obvious (for some).

[anne]

Which comment is true?

"People have, rightly, jumped all over the David Brooks column today in the New York Times that tries to spin a positive story about rising inequality."

"People have, rightly, jumped all over the David Brooks column today in the New York Times that tries to spin a positive story about rising segregation."

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/opinion/06brooks.html

July 6, 2007

The End of Integration
By DAVID BROOKS

Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration. This dream has illuminated American life for the past several decades — the belief that the world is getting smaller and that different peoples are coming together over time.

Over the course of the 20th century, the civil rights movement promised to heal the nation's oldest wound. Racism and discrimination would diminish. Blacks and whites could live together, go to school together and gradually integrate their lives.

The end of the cold war promised to heal the rift between democracy and dictatorship. More nations would be welcomed into the community of free peoples....

All these promises hung in the air, but then crumbled, even in the past few weeks.

The progress in civil rights has not produced racial integration. Amid all the hubbub about last week's Supreme Court decision, we were reminded that five decades after Brown, blacks and whites do not live side by side, even when they share the same income levels. They do not go to the same schools. And when they do go to the same schools, they do not lead shared lives. As several people noted last week, many educators are giving up on the dream of integration so they can focus on quality....

Expecting integration, Americans find themselves confronting polarization and fragmentation. Amid all the problems that have made Americans sour and pessimistic, this is the deepest....

But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.

For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them....

[anne]

So, setting aside a 50 year formal acceptance of the idea that separation is inherently unequal, that segregation fosters inequality, is seemingly of trivial importance in discussing inequality. Though I looked to see the response to the Supreme Court resegregation ruling, only Mark Thoma evidently found the radical ruling worth notice.

[Lafayette]

DB: blacks and whites do not live side by side, even when they share the same income levels. They do not go to the same schools. And when they do go to the same schools, they do not lead shared lives.

When two peoples do not share the same cultural values, or share only part of them, then there is no "common ground".

I see the blacks, Arabs, Armenians, etc., etc., etc. here in France and I doubt seriously that they "share common lives".

Yes, the share the benefits of a modern economy. Yes, they are even friends at work. But, within the intimacy of the family, then more is necessary ... common cultural values.

What is curious in all of this, is that America, the Great Melting Pot, seems to have done just that -- obliterated imported cultural values so immigrants could accept the American variety. Why has this not happened to blacks, who are in America almost from its inception?

I see that same social phenomenon in Europe. Consider those in the last terrorist bombing in the UK - they are were born and bred there.

Consider those snatched by the French police over the past two years preparing terrorist attacks. Ditto.

Blood is thicker than water? Sometimes, apparently.

[anne]

"Amid all the hubbub about last week's Supreme Court decision, we were reminded that five decades after Brown, blacks and whites do not live side by side, even when they share the same income levels. They do not go to the same schools. And when they do go to the same schools, they do not lead shared lives."

This is of course rubbish, simply a justification of a legacy of segregation. Rubbish.

[anne]

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/03/040503crbo_books?printable=true

May 3, 2004

Did Brown Matter? On the fiftieth anniversary of the fabled desegregation case, not everyone is celebrating.
By Cass R. Sunstein

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," the Court ruled unanimously, declaring that they violated the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It thus overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal," which had been the law of the land since 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was decided. The Brown ruling—the culmination of a decades-long effort by the N.A.A.C.P.—has today acquired an aura of inevitability. But it didn't seem inevitable at the time. And the fact that it was unanimous was little short of miraculous....

[robertdfeinman]

Two process comments:

1. The fact that so many people jumped in to rebut Brooks is a "good thing". In an earlier age the best that could be hoped for was a letter to the editor, if the Times chose to print it. Not only are people commenting but the comments themselves are getting wider notice.

2. In another example, the web site openleft.com has teamed up with Senator Durbin to draft new internet neutrality legislation. It is a step beyond the YouTube debates, in that there was back and forth blogging on the site with the Senator at an appointed time. It also bypasses the lobbyists. He claims he wants the actual markup of the bill to take place via this mechanism, not just for him to get ideas tossed his way. Take a look at the site.

This may be the beginning of the next phase in the communications revolution.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30B13FC3F5B0C748DDDAC0894DC404482

May 17, 2004

50 Years After Brown
By STEPHEN G. BREYER

Fifty years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Here is the question that case presented: ''Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?'' The court answered this question unanimously: ''We believe that it does.''

As a member of the Supreme Court, I am going to Topeka today to represent that court; not nine individual justices, but the institution itself -- an institution as old as the Republic, charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution of the United States.

May 17, 1954, was a great day in the history of that institution. Before May 17, the court read the 14th Amendment's words ''equal protection of the laws,'' as if they protected only the members of the majority race. After May 17, it read those words as the framers who wrote them immediately after the Civil War meant them to be read, as offering the same protection to citizens of every race. Thurgood Marshall, who later became a member of the court, represented the schoolchildren in Brown. He argued that separating children by race violated the Constitution's promise of equal protection. The court agreed, embracing Marshall's argument with a simple affirmation: ''We believe that it does.'' And what great effect those few words have had.

The court told the nation that segregation based on race is wrong and that the law cannot tolerate that wrong. It said to parents in Topeka and across the country that ''education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,'' thereby setting the United States on a still-unfulfilled path toward a goal of quality education for all children....

[anne]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/07/30/070730taco_talk_lemann?printable=true

July 30 2007

Reversals
By Nicholas Lemann

George W. Bush, whose father was often accused of being too cautious and incremental by conservatives, came into office six years ago with an ambition to remake nearly everything about American government. In some cases, like Social Security and immigration, he hasn't been able to get the big changes he wanted. In others—Iraq, tax cuts, civil liberties, the environment, education—it seems clear that his successor, whoever it will be, will have to spend a good deal of time undoing what was supposed to have been Bush's legacy. But the President has achieved one wholesale change that will likely endure for a generation: the construction of a distinctly right-wing Supreme Court.

Just before the end of the past term, the Court issued a decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that signalled a complete departure from more than half a century of jurisprudence on race. The case is called Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, and it addresses a legal challenge to two city school systems—Seattle's and Louisville's—for consciously trying to achieve racial integration in assigning students to particular schools. Roberts, in his decision, is almost reverential toward the last major Supreme Court decision on race, which in 2003 upheld the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in admissions. But the thrust of his argument—"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race"—makes it impossible to imagine that he would have joined the majority in the Michigan case had he been on the Court at the time.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented in the Michigan case, wrote a concurring opinion in the Parents Involved decision that is far more confrontational than Roberts's, and lays out once again his long-held view of race and the courts. We have a "color-blind Constitution," he asserts, even though the Supreme Court refused to recognize this until its monumental, unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954. The essence of Brown, Thomas believes, is an absolute prohibition on taking race into account for any reason. "What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today," he writes....

[Paul G. Brown]

It's flying rather below the radar, but watch Google, and WiFi.

Google's ambition is to be the Microsoft of the Internet age. Microsoft's strategy was ubiquity. Put their platform on every PC that ships. Google's thinking is that by providing free, ubiquitous WiFi, they can place themselves in a similar position.

I refer you to:

http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=12000BST2G40

Google have pilot programs in Mountain View and San Francisco. They're building a nationwide high speed hard line network. They could, basically, leave a smoking, greasy crater where the existing Telco companies once stood.

[Lafayette]

PGB: Google's thinking is that by providing free, ubiquitous WiFi, they can place themselves in a similar position.

For this they would need to buy more than just spectrum. They need to buy backbone structure before they can get to your door via a local loop.

To do so, they would do better to by a Telco than build one. Google as a Telco? A bit bizarre that with far, far too much overreach, like a child that has eyes larger than its stomach.

What it seems to be seeking is a bona fide colossal failure ... for it to understand its basic business is that of a search motor first and utmost.

It should leave ubiquity to telecoms professionals and just go along for the ride. If not, they are in for one helluva case of heartburn.

When a company tries to be everything to everyone, it generally ends up as nothing to no one.