The Sociological Imagination

Part I: The Temper Tantrum

March 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I am a social worker who works with children who have been diagnosed as having major Axis I diagnoses.  Frequently, these children exhibit behaviors that may be classified, colloquially, as “temper tantrums.”  There is no unequivocal definition of a temper tantrum, but over the next few weeks, I will detail what I believe are the stages of the typical temper tantrum and detail methods that residential providers, foster parents, treatment parents, and parents can deploy to manage them. 

What is a Temper Tantrum:

My experience leads me to believe that temper tantrums are a child’s “effort” (e.g., screaming, yelling, throwing things, threatening, destroying property, etc.) to maintain control and self-esteem in the face of poor judgment and poor reality testing.  Basically, the tantrum is an inefficient means of coping with feelings and reality.  As a social worker, my goal is to understand its immediate process sufficiently well to teach the child, and her/his caregivers, alternative coping behavior to survive their crisis.

During my next post, I will enumerate the stages of the typical temper tantrum.

Brian A. Pitt

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Regime Uncertainty in British Steel

March 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I hate to write another post based off Monica Prasad’s book, but the damn thing is just so full of insights that I can’t help. Fabio can have his Skocpol Zone, I’ll take Prasad any day of the week! This one stems from her discussion of the French and British steel industries in the 1950s and 1960s. The private American system was the most productive, the state-run French industry was almost as productive, and the British industry was least productive. Why was this? According to the studies cited by Prasad, much of it had to do with the history of nationalization in Britain. The steel industry was nationalized in 1951, denationalized in 1953, and then renationalized in 1967! By this point, the lag in productivity was huge. According to Alasdair Blair:

This can be attributed to the uncertainty of the individual company managers and owners as to whether their firm would be nationalized again. And with this feeling of uncertainty, there was an unwillingness to adopt the new techniques, as they rightly assumed that the industry would return to government control and that they would not be rewarded for their expenditure by the public purse.

Prasad points out that sometimes either private or public ownership is a better policy than flip-flopping between the two of them. Most libertarian writers put an emphasis on both liberty and the rule of law as requisites for development and growth, but I wonder if they put too much emphasis on the former while neglecting the latter.

  • Josh McCabe

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Higher Education and the Moral Economy

March 8, 2010 · 1 Comment

The AP is reporting that California is seeing a rise in demonstrations against cuts in subsidies to the University of California system. Most recently, hundreds of students walked onto Interstate 880 in Oakland during rush hour and blocked traffic for miles. Similar protests have taken place elsewhere in the country.

It reminds me of a time last year when I was approached by a student at UMass Lowell looking to do the same thing. I was then president of our RESD Club of which this student wanted support as part of a larger planned protest against tuition hikes at the school. Regardless of the cause, I wasn’t going to get the club involved in politics, but I was intrigued by the student’s rationale. I stunned him by telling him that maybe we should raise tuition at the school given that it’s lower than any place around and the school could use the funds. He was perplexed at my reaction. “What about poor students who can’t afford it?” he said to which I replied that they could easily take out subsidized loans which they could pay back once they got a decent job. The next question was classic: “But what about English majors?” My reply was maybe we should have less English majors and people should study something that will bring a decent economic return to their investment.

The point of telling you about this exchange is to show the differences in our approach to higher education. I was taking a narrow economic approach (not being naive, mind you, but just as a way to explore this student’s thoughts) while he saw it through the lens of what EP Thompson coined as the moral economy. In his seminal article on the subject, Thompson looks at the food riots that occurred in 18th century Britain. Prior to Thompson, many historians simply assumed that high unemployment and high food prices caused rioting. No one asked why they necessitate rioting. Thompson filled in the black box by looking what the participants thought about the situation. He found that rioting was a response to the perceived injustice of bread prices that were deemed too high. Much like the just price theory of Thomas Aquinas, the idea is that some things are too intrinsically valuable to tag with a price that could fluctuate with market conditions.

Higher education falls under that category today. The students protesting in California as well as the one I talked with all believed that education was so valuable in and of itself that they have a right to it at any cost. Their actions only make sense within this context. Thompson or Polanyi might argue that this gives reason for government intervention to hold back the market as it invades society, but one could just as easily argue that this shows the need for a better explication of economic principles among the general public.

  • Josh McCabe

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Explaining Policy Divergence: MA and NH

March 6, 2010 · 5 Comments

Why are Massachusetts and New Hampshire so different?

Massachusetts is known as the most liberal state in the union. It produced Michael Dukakis, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry. If you ask my dad, it’s because Massachusetts is filled with moonbats. In other words, it’s got a very liberal culture. New Hampshire, on the other hand, is known as the most libertarian state in the union. The Free State Project is targeting New Hampshire based on its relatively small tax burden and a “culture of individual responsibility.” There is a lot of fear that as an increasing number of Massachusetts residents move north, they will change the culture of New Hampshire and it will become more politically liberal like Massachusetts. Using culture to explain the political differences between Massachusetts and New Hampshire is popular, but does it really stand up to scrutiny? Massachusetts has a history of electing Republicans to the corner office while the recent election of Republican Scott Brown has caused many people to rethink their perception of Massachusetts of extremely liberal. New Hampshire is not dominated by either party.

Culture may be an important factor, but I don’t think that it is the primary factor. If we channel Monica Prasad for a moment, some obvious factors comes to mind.

The first is tax structure. What kind of taxes do we see in MA and NH? Massachusetts (or “Taxachusetts”) relies primarily on broad-based regressive taxes, such as a personal income tax and a sales tax, which spread the burden over a wide section of society. Alternatively, New Hampshire taxes, such as the property tax, corporate income tax, and tolls, are much more concentrated and visible. The state has no sales or personal income taxes. This has several implications for the way state actors are constrained in their policy decisions.

Cognitively, personal income and sales taxes fly under the radar of employees and consumers. The regressive 5.3% personal income tax automatically comes out of your check each week and the same percentage comes out whether you make $20,000 or $200,000. There is no sense among voters that politicians are “soaking the rich.” As for the sales tax, most people automatically compute it into their purchase decisions. Again, it is regressive in that the burden falls disproportionately on middle and lower income individuals who have a “higher propensity to spend.” There isn’t really a “redistribution” effect to these taxes.

Property taxes and tolls are both collected yearly or at the point of use. Along with corporate income taxes, they all target a concentrated group: property owners, drivers, and corporations. This actually creates an adversarial system where the majority tries to get as much as they can out of a minority group. Of course, as Mancur Olsen has taught us, smaller groups are much more able to form organizations to protect their interests. For example, the most successful anti-tax initiative in Massachusetts was Proposition 2 1/2 which limits property tax hikes.

The other major difference is the remuneration and number of legislators. Being a Massachusetts legislator is a fulltime job with excellent pay and even better health benefits. New Hampshire legislators get something like $100 per year and gas money. Additionally, despite having a significantly smaller population than Massachusetts, New Hampshire has more than twice the number of legislators. This makes rent-seeking a lot tougher.

From this perspective, state structure plays a much underappreciated role. While my dad’s moonbat thesis is interesting, I’m just not sure how well it stands up to a comparative analysis!

  • Josh McCabe

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Why I Support Free-Markets

March 5, 2010 · 6 Comments

My faith in free-markets is not ideological.  That is to say, I am no market fundamentalist who believes that unfettered markets automatically operate in the most efficient and “economic” of ways, producing optimal results.  My confidence in free-markets stems, rather, from my view of the market as an ethical human institution. 

In a perfect social world populated by omniscient utility-maximizers, there would be no reason to quibble with (doctrinaire) anarchists and market fundamentalists who contend that there can be liberty without law.  But, given that human beings are only capable of being human beings; my faith in free-markets rests upon this ethical institution being interconnected with a proper institutional framework which includes politics and society.

Why do you support free-markets?

Brian A. Pitt

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New Poverty Measures

March 3, 2010 · 1 Comment

The New York Times reports that the federal government is experimenting with a new way to measure poverty. I think this is great news given that nobody has been happy with the old measure which basically only took cash income into account. It’s too early to see whether the new measure is better, but it’s hard to believe that it could get worse.

Federal officials describe the supplemental measure as experimental and a work in progress. It establishes a poverty threshold that depends on the cost of food, shelter, clothing and utilities “plus a little more” for “a population that is not poor but is somewhat below the median.”

The original measure figured costs for two adults and two children. The new one covers one adult and two children, a family structure more prevalent these days among lower-income households, and would be adjusted to reflect living costs in different metropolitan areas.

The threshold would be adjusted to calculate the value of in-kind benefits, like food stamps, and whether homeowners have a mortgage. Tax credits would be added to the total income and benefits; taxes, work expenses (including commuting and child care), and out-of-pocket medical costs would be deducted.

At least it looks like we’ll be able to better pinpoint the source of changes in year-to-year poverty rates which is always a good thing.

  • Josh McCabe

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How Milton Friedman Saved Chile

March 2, 2010 · 7 Comments

That’s the title of an interesting piece from Bret Stephens in today’s Wall Street Journal. Stephens argues that the relatively little destruction that occurred in Chile in comparison to Haiti after earthquakes in each country can be attributed to the economic growth that resulted from the implementation of Chicago-style economic reforms. As Matthew Kahn puts it in a recent paper: “Economic development provides implicit insurance against nature’s shocks.” Andrew Carnegie once asserted that capitalism is all about turning luxuries into necessities. The maxim can also be applied to protection against natural disasters.

It’s a shame some still demonize Friedman instead of praising him for his contributions to making a better world.

  • Josh McCabe

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ASA 2010 in Atlanta

February 24, 2010 · 4 Comments

I just found out that the special price for attendees is a mere $180/night… plus a 15% tax.

Or as we grad students would say “more than a half week’s pay. “

Does anyone know of any cheaper stays? I’m not averse to distances… or cockroaches.

  • Josh McCabe

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From The England Problem to Regime Uncertainty

February 23, 2010 · 2 Comments

Before there was the University of Chicago’s law and economics movement, there was Max Weber. The sociological relationship between law and the economy permeated much of Weber’s work. “The England Problem” refers to what some see as a discrepancy between Weber’s theoretical work on law and economics and his historical accounts of the rise of capitalism. According to critics such as David Trubek, Weber argued that rational capitalism required a formal rational legal system so economic actors could calculate their actions with a certain degree of certainty. While continental legal systems provided this, the English common law, with its decentralized and ad hoc decisions, was not “rational” as defined by Weber. Despite this, England was also the birthplace of modern rational capitalism.  How can this be?

Richard Swedberg argues that there are three ways to resolve this discrepancy. Either 1) Weber argued that capitalism took off in England despite the lack of legal rationality, 2) Weber never argued that legal rationality was a requirement for economic calculation, or 3) England’s legal system was actually a lot more rational than people think. I think (2) is the most likely candidate, but there still remains much confusion given that Weber puts so much emphasis on legal rationality in his work. Hayek, for example, thought Weber’s conception of law as consisting only of a formal rational legal system was “wholly useless and rather characteristic of a widespread confusion” since it didn’t leave any room for spontaneous orders such as the common law.

Regardless of arguments surrounding what Weber actually said, his insight that the main benefit of law (broadly defined) is that it serves to enable economic calculation among economic actors is genius. The best enumeration of this insight can be found in Ludwig Lachmann’s aptly titled book The Legacy of Max Weber. “An institution,” according to Lachmann, “provides means of orientation to a large number of actors. It enables them to coordinate their actions by means of orientation to a common signpost.” In this way, institutions are a form of embedded knowledge which creates order. These institutions can the result of both purposeful planning and spontaneous ordering of individual action.

More recently, Robert Higgs has put forth a much underappreciated theory of “regime uncertainty” which he applies to the Great Depression to explain its persistence. Higgs argues that business leaders avoided new investments because of “pervasive uncertainty among investors about the security of their property rights in their capital and its prospective returns.” It was not so much FDR’s leftist policies that scared them per se, rather the fact that they didn’t know how far the administration would go. From other accounts of FDR that I’ve read, I don’t think he knew either. I’m not sure if Higgs is familiar with Weber or Lachmann’s work, but the idea of regime uncertainty complements them well.

I’ll end with a question: How much of our current economic situation can be attributed to regime uncertainty? How does simply being uncertain about the prospect for more stimulus funds, major healthcare changes, or housing market supports affect decision-making among economic actors?

  • Josh McCabe

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CPAC, SFL, and GOProud

February 20, 2010 · 5 Comments

A few years back, I met a young man named Alexander McCobin at a conference. McCobin mentioned to me that he was starting up a new student group dedicated to liberty. The group was going to be called Students for Liberty (SFL). Two years later, SFL now hosts several regional and international conferences a year and has active chapters on over 250 campuses. You can learn more about the organization here.

McCobin recently spoke at the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) annual conference where he caused quite a stir by thanking the ACU for allowing GOProud, a gay Republican group, to co-sponser the conference. The video is below:

I applaud McCobin for his stance and the courage to make such a statement at CPAC. Liberal blogs like Daily Kos and ThinkProgress have twisted the story to make it seem like McCobin’s comments were unwelcome by the audience. This could not be further from the truth. If you actually listen to the video, you can easily hear that cheers and applause vastly outnumber boos from the audience. Furthermore, when another panelist following McCobin, Ryan Sorba, took to the mic to condemn the ACU for the same thing, he was met with widespread boos and jeers. As much as they might like to characterize conservatives as knuckle-dragging reactionaries, McCobin’s actions and the audience’s reaction prove otherwise. 60-80% of CPAC attendees are under the age of 30. This shows that the new generation of conservatives is a lot more tolerant and socially progressive than some liberal activists would have you believe.

This event is also significant as it gives me optimism for the future. Regardless of how today’s struggles for marriage equality turn out, we can be assured that the tide is turning in the long run. It’s not a matter of whether or not America will achieve marriage equality, it’s simply a matter of when it will happen.

  • Josh McCabe

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