links for 2008-04-21

• Worked Over and Overworked - New York Times
• Tax Progressivity and the Rise in Inequality - Lane Kenworthy
• Nudge - Will Wilkinson
• Choice Architecture and Paternalism - Will Wilkinson
• McCain Embraces ‘Cocktail-Napkin Economics,’ - Think Progress
• An Almost American Attitude to Risk - Economic Principals
• Greg Mankiw Writes about Education and Income Inequality - Richard Green
• Where Does Inequality Come From? - Richard Florida
• The trouble with Joe - New Economist
• 2 Banks Said to Be Trying to Raise More Capital - New York Times
• Discovering a Dark Universe: A Q&A with Saul Perlmutter - Scientific American
• Q & A: UC Berkeley professor discusses rising food prices - sacbee.com
• Now is the time to reduce international trade and migration barriers - Vox EU

Comments

[anne]

http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=77844

April 21, 2008

Weekend Clashes Claim Dozens of Lives
By IRIN

NAIROBI - Hundreds of families fled their homes in Mogadishu over the weekend as intense fighting between Ethiopian troops and insurgents raged on, claiming the lives of up to 100 people, local sources told IRIN.

Another 200 people were reportedly wounded in the clashes, which started on 19 April, hospital sources said.

"What we have seen on Saturday and Sunday was the worst fighting ever,” said Asha Shaur, a civil society spokeswoman. “It was the most intense and destructive the city has experienced.”

The fighting was mostly concentrated in the districts of Wardhigley in the south, Heliwa, Wahara Ade and Yaqshid (both in north Mogadishu), according to a local journalist.

It started when Ethiopian troops moved from their base at a former pasta factory in Yaqshid and tried to enter areas not previously under their control, said the journalist.

“That is when the insurgents and the Ethiopians clashed, and it has continued for two days non-stop,” he said.

The escalation in the fighting comes as the worst drought in more than a decade grips most of the country. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs-Somalia, said 2.5 million Somalis were in urgent need of assistance. "If things do not improve within the coming weeks, and it is not likely, then we will be confronted with the images of 1991-1992", when drought and civil strife claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis, leading to the deployment of American troops in Operation Restore Hope.

He added: "We are talking about saving lives not alleviating suffering." ...

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/rice-muqtada-coward-najaf-tense.html

April 21, 2008

Muqtada a Coward
By Juan Cole

Condoleezza Rice has her "bring'em on moment" * in Iraq, talking trash to the Mahdi Army and calling Muqtada al-Sadr a "coward." Muqtada al-Sadr eluded Saddam Hussein for 4 years after Saddam killed his father and two elder brothers; and in 2004 he twice took on the US military. He may be a lot of things, but he is not a coward. Has Rice ever said anything about Iraq that was true or useful? Even as she was talking up "improved security" in Baghdad, mortar shells were falling about her in the Green Zone.

* http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/34319.html

[Such is our diplomacy.]

[anne]

http://rand.org/news/press/2008/04/17/

April 17, 2008

One In Five Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Suffer From PTSD or Major Depression

Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a new RAND Corporation study. *

In addition, researchers found about 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed, with 7 percent reporting both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression.

Many service members said they do not seek treatment for psychological illnesses because they fear it will harm their careers. But even among those who do seek help for PTSD or major depression, only about half receive treatment that researchers consider "minimally adequate" for their illnesses.

In the first analysis of its kind, researchers estimate that PTSD and depression among returning service members will cost the nation as much as $6.2 billion in the two years following deployment — an amount that includes both direct medical care and costs for lost productivity and suicide....

[anne]

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1072

April 21, 2008

The Opiate Of the Elites
By Jeronimo Cortina, Andrew Gelman, David Park, and Boris Shor

Barack Obama recently postulated that frustrated poor people vote based on cultural and religious values. But the data say exactly the opposite – value voting is a high-income activity.

Barack Obama attracted attention recently by describing small-town Americans who were "bitter" at economic prospects who "cling to guns or religion'' in frustration. This statement, made during the height of the Democratic nomination battle, has received a lot of attention, but it represents a common view. For example, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia wrote, "Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of 'God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag' while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet.'' And this perspective is not limited to Democrats. For example, conservative columnist David Brooks associates political preference with cultural values that are modern and upscale ("sun-dried tomato concoctions") or more traditional ("meatloaf platters").

All these claims fit generally into the idea of religion as the opiate of the masses, the idea that social issues distract lower-income voters from their natural economic interests. But there is an opposite view, associated with political scientist Ronald Ingelhart, of post-materialism—the idea that, as people and societies get richer, their concerns shift from mundane bread-and-butter issues to cultural and spiritual concerns.

Which story better describes how Americans vote? Who are the values voters? Are they the poor (as implied by the "opiate of the masses'' storyline) or the rich (as would be predicted by "post-materialism")?

Case studies are interesting but do not resolve the question. Thomas Frank described how Kansas is full of socially conservative Republicans at all income levels. But then there is south Texas, whose low-income Latinos are socially conservative on many issues but vote for Democrats. Manhattan's upper west side remains strongly Democratic despite its steadily increasing income level, but the suburbs of Dallas are full of high-income conservative Republicans.

There are many ways of looking at social class, attitudes, and voting. We'll take a demographic approach and compare religious to secular voters.

Regular churchgoers are about 15% more likely than non-attendees to vote Republican. Perhaps surprisingly, this big religion gap did not show up until 1992, when Bill Clinton ran against George H. W. Bush, as we show in Figure 1.

Back in 1980, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and other Religious Right organizations played a prominent role in rallying support for Ronald Reagan and other Republican candidates. But the gap between religious and non-religious in voting was actually less for Ronald Reagan—in both 1980 and 1984—than for Gerald Ford in 1976. As Glaeser and Ward (2006) point out, the recent political divisions associated with religious belief coincide with the geographic pattern of richer states supporting the Democrats and poorer states going Republican.

[Figure 1]

Difference in probability of voting for the Republican candidate for president, comparing people who went to church at least once per week to nonattenders. Nothing much was happening until 1992, when all of a sudden George H. W. Bush received 20% more of the vote among religious than among the nonreligious.

So religion matters. For whom does it matter? Does it matter for the frustrated masses, seduced by emotional issues, or for the less economically-pressed elites? We can answer the question by measuring the religious/secular gap among voters at different income levels....

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/rice-muqtada-coward-najaf-tense.html

April 21, 2008

40 Shiite Militiamen Killed in Iraq Clash: US Military
By Juan Cole

Over the weekend there were clashes in Nasiriya * between Mahdi Army militiamen and the Iraqi army. Although this official Iraqi government communique suggests that 40 militiamen were killed and 40 captured and does not mention government casualties, I'd take it all with a grain of salt. What is not apparent from the squib is that the Iraqi government is so weak it is having to fight for a toehold in one of its own cities.

* http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080420175027.ffmuxfxi.php

[A lesson in how to read official dispatches.]

[anne]

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cesaire.htm

1939

Notebook of a Return to My Native Land
By Aimé Césaire

my negritude is not a stone
nor a deafness flung against the clamor of the day
my negritude is not a white speck of dead water
on the dead eye of the earth
my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral

it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the blaxing flesh of the sky
my negritude riddles with holes
the dense affliction of its worthy patience.

Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal

[Numbers]

NYT..."As health costs consume more and more of the nation’s economic output — they account for 16 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, up from 5 percent in 1960 — that necessarily leaves less money for wage increases."

Consumer items account for 70% of GDP. Subtract 16% health care, and that leaves 54% of GDP devoted to non health care consumer items. 55% of 15 trillion is 8.25 trillion, to be divided between 300 million consumers. $27,500 worth of non health care consumer items per citizen.