1. $5 million advance for Audrey Niffenegger's new book (she wrote "The Time Traveller's Wife").
2. Happy and sad states (Utah wins, WV loses).
3. Showdown: Brad DeLong vs. Luigi Zingales.
4. Glenn Loury: America is a nation of jailers.
5. Can we increase our intelligence and if so how?
From the Glenn Loury article:
I’d like to see articles that bemoan the high incarceration rate in the US at least acknowledge this information:
Follow the link for more figures, graphs.
If an article doesn’t deal with this, and with how (if?) the involuntary institutionalization rate relates to crime rates, it’s hard to take it seriously.
on the intelligence article, i think a piece of research disproved the n-back test. i can’t find it though.
I loved the Time Traveler’s Wife, but the description they gave of her new book does not make me want to read it at all.
Loury’s piece isn’t worthy of being linked to by Cowen. It’s essentially special pleading. Instead of citing crime statistics or trying to explain why many crimes are committed by the same small percentage of the population, Loury cites Tolstoy (very poetic but utterly unconvincing) and charges racism.
Loury claims “our inclination toward forgiveness and the extension of a second chance to those who have violated our behavioral strictures” has declined.
Gee, did you notice that he provides NO DATA to support this ridiculous claim.
Take his own personal case: I don’t recall him doing any time for crack possession. Nope, he got a second chance–as is virtually routine in the criminal justice system.
“And we should be ashamed of ourselves”
If anything, I’m embarassed by “our” public education system.
Until people can walk the streets of North Phila. in peace, it would seem like we don’t have enough people in prison.
Who cares if the imprisoned are “black and brown” if they’ve committed violence against others?
Why isn’t the civil right to not get shot at of concern to leftists?
I am sure I will be in the minority here, but I really felt Delong slaughtered his opposition. His basic thrust seemed to be that depression situations are ‘different’, that the ‘slack’ in resources can be made up in government, and that because of the unique situations, the corresponding ‘crowding-out’ effect witnessed in non-depression situations is lacking.
The rebuttal claimed that the Keynesian inspired reign of Greenspan proves that Keynes doesn’t work…..interesting rebuttal….
Loury’s so brilliant on Bloggingheads.tv that I expected his work in long-form to be mind-blowing. Instead I found it profoundly disappointing.
His article was a textbook case of table-pounding. He did an excellent job of showing how incredibly radical and repressive our world-beating incarceration rates are. So far, so good. After that, I would’ve liked to have heard about specific reforms to our criminal justice system and other social structures that would diminish our prison population while still serving the legitimate goals of public safety and, yes, punishment for wrongdoing.
Loury’s an economist of the first rank and therefore a first-rate measurer of things. Where are my measurements, Glenn? I feel like my student just handed in the first seven pages of a 20-page term paper.
I’m hoping that Loury is just keeping his powder dry. Surely he will be challenged on this by J.Q. Wilson and John Lott.
On the infinitesimal chance that Loury is reading this and still churning the answers in his mind, here’s my suggestion.
Although violent crime has dropped, public safety is still a concern. There are still horrible crimes that occur at a too-high rate and this problem is especially bad in the ghettos. Loury knows that American politics means capturing the median voter which means addressing her concerns–even if they’re overblown.
So, my suggestion is a trade-off: We should make a credible commitment to visibly increase penalties on violent crime, while reducing punishment for almost everything else. Securing our physical safety from attack is an incontrovertible goal of government. It’s a Hobbesian world. On the other hand, if people are going to jail for having weed or coke or a gun, then it’s the punishment that’s unjust.
Perhaps more importantly, we need better schools. Our schools do such a bad job of creating prospects for inner city youth that it makes crime seem not-that-costly or even attractive.
School choice now.
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