I try to draw some lessons from Social Security for social policy debates today. Social Security is arguably the most important social policy in the American welfare state. And yet, I routinely find contemporary social policy debates disconnected from the history and politics of Social Security.
"What the HIstory of Social Security Can Teach Us."
New Substack post.
open.substack.com/pub/davebrad...
CfP for our 3rd Annual HPE Conference @uscprice.bsky.social @usc.edu sponsored by @usccis.bsky.social and PIPE. Submit by May 30. If you work on MENA, I am running a smaller pre-conference for HPE papers focused on the region. @polisky.bsky.social docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
The @priceschool.usc.edu Sol Price School of Public Policy School is looking forward to hosting the Bedrosian Symposium on Effective and Successful Government tomorrow Friday April 17.
6 leading scholars will present followed by discussions. 9am-3pm in RG Lewis Hall 100. Join us:
lnkd.in/gtZQTVDN
“Meanwhile, Jernigan noted, National Institutes of Health director and acting CDC director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has continued to delay the release of a study that found COVID-19 vaccines reduced hospitalizations related to the virus by 55%.”
www.latimes.com/science/stor...
I’ve seen enough. God is 1) real 2) nonbinary 3) primarily motivated by a deep hatred of JD Vance
Pearlman is also a frequent commentator on the nutty and complicated politics of Orange County, California in which we both live.
Thinking back on the John Rocker’s racism and sexism (especially), Pearlman’s reporting has been a real public service for a long time.
I’ve read Pearlman’s books on Showtime Lakers & Barry Bonds, and highly recommend both. Pearlman has a lot of insight (often quoting social worker wife) on how some athletes really struggle in life (Josh Hamilton). Great stories about good (Sean Casey) & bad guys (John Rocker, Dave Kingman).
As a big podcast consumer, I strongly recommend @jeffpearlman.bsky.social “Press Box Chronicles.”
Episode on the miserable plight of Jets fans correctly captures that being a fan of some teams is “the worst decision of one’s life.”
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
So when the pronatalists talk about raising birth rates, it's questionable whether that's possible without raising unintended fertility.
Of course, some of them think it's fine to have unintended births and that we should stop discouraging it... ifstudies.org/blog/do-we-n...
Yeah, our unintended pregnancies kept us propped up quite a bit! @kaseybuckles.bsky.social has a paper on how the decline in unintended births has played a big role in the post-Recession decline in births overall. jhr.uwpress.org/content/60/1...
Hey @karenguzzo.bsky.social
I recall Phil Morgan saying ~20 years ago (basically) that if the U.S. didn’t have as much unplanned pregnancy, we’d have had lower fertility at the time.
If so, one wonders if recent decades of declining fertility is just successfully preventing unplanned pregnancies.
The idea that internal validity comes first and external validity comes after is a misconception—particularly in economics. In reality, research design involves a trade-off between the two, and the goal is to choose an optimal point on the validity frontier. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
Karen identifies a really beautiful example of the social construction of social problems. Teen pregnancy was a moral panic until fertility fell to low levels. Now, they’re actually saying it’s a problem we don’t have enough teen pregnancy.
Some might suspect government spending automatically increases with family structure or disability. But any effect of those on how much a society spends varies a lot. So those aren’t really close to automatic.
Perhaps unemployment insurance almost automatically increases during economic downturns?
If you were to say we cannot trust welfare effort measures because they conflate generosity and need, what makes up need?
I’d say population aging bc every rich democracy for a long time has pretty mechanically expanded public pensions and public healthcare spending as the population gets older.
This has long been the critique of “welfare effort” measures of the welfare state (e.g. social welfare expenditures as % of GDP).
For a factor like demographics to “automatically” increase spending, this would have to be true across rich democracies and recent decades.
What mechanically drives up welfare spending?
It has long been understood that the share of GDP on welfare programs (incl public pensions & healthcare) almost automatically increases with population aging. Also, perhaps unemployment mechanically triggers spending.
What else?
Why do we live in such a childish, stupid country? A country that wastes its money on useless billion dollar aircraft carriers, when it could be spending those tax dollars to actually help its citizens like sane countries.
The Bedrosian Symposium will be on Friday April 17 from 9am to 4pm. We will feature hour long presentations by 6 eminent scholars. Each speaker will then have a Price faculty discussant. Please register and if you register, the Bedrosian Center will provide lunch. The event will be in RGL 100.
At a time when the public enterprise and belief in effective governance are under enormous scrutiny, it is more important than ever that public servants take stock of their mandate to serve the public good. Come hear about some of the programs that are succeeding and why others are not.
*BEDROSIAN SYMPOSIUM ON EFFECTIVE & SUCCESSFUL GOVERNMENT*
Join the Bedrosian Center for Effective Governance and the Public Enterprise and the @priceschool.usc.edu on Friday April 17.
t.e2ma.net/message/rwp9...
Bob has written a whole series of critiques of prominent Econ papers. While I don’t agree with every single one of his critiques, many points highlight significant problems.
econjwatch.org/authors/robe...
I’ve long since lost count of how many papers built on Autor and Colleagues’ famous “China Shock” papers.
Bob Kaestner gives us good reasons to really doubt the whole enterprise.
econjwatch.org/articles/glo...
Had a small part of this that I am pretty proud of:
Full push-button reproducible manuscripts from data to manuscript.
Nearly every stat, figure, number, table, etc is pulled directly from analysis code and data and "knit" with manuscript text written in Google Docs.
Blog post coming soon ...
🧵1/ Our first meta-science paper (with 350+ coauthors) is published today in Nature. It presents one of the largest-ever reproducibility projects in economics & political science.
Here’s what we found 👇
It’s not just that there is no requirement, but ASA prohibits any requirement. This is why I am no longer an ASA member and won’t serve on ASA journal editorial boards.
Did New York blow $10 million on reading instruction that doesn’t work? hechingerreport.org/new-york-ten...
"the course may push the state backward because it promotes balanced literacy and sometimes distorts what the research shows about how children learn to read"
Question for the Bsky hive mind: what’s the most batshit pop Evolutionary Psychology study you’ve ever come across? Particularly interested in examples in the area of female parental investment, but I’ll take others too …