The American Gun Problem - And How a Master Wizard of Persuasion Could Fix it. →

The reasoning behind his proposal isn't nuanced or particularly fact-based, but it's politically deft.

So how do we balance the legitimate safety interests of citizens who find themselves in wildly different risk situations? Some need more guns to feel safe and some need fewer.

The approach least-likely to work is the one we are trying now, in which the President pushes for gun restrictions while responsible gun owners resist. I don’t see that changing, no matter how many mass killings happen. 

So here’s one suggestion, based on the rules of persuasion that I have been blogging about lately. The idea is for President Obama (or our next president) to do the following:...

Quietly, Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence →

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.

It’s expensive to be poor →

Life is expensive for America’s poor, with financial services the primary culprit, something that also afflicts migrants sending money home (see article). Mr Martin at least has a bank account. Some 8% of American households—and nearly one in three whose income is less than $15,000 a year—do not (see chart). More than half of this group say banking is too expensive for them. Many cannot maintain the minimum balance necessary to avoid monthly fees; for others, the risk of being walloped with unexpected fees looms too large.

Doing without banks makes life costlier, but in a routine way. Cashing a pay cheque at a credit union or similar outlet typically costs 2-5% of the cheque’s value. The unbanked often end up paying two sets of fees—one to turn their pay cheque into cash, another to turn their cash into a money order—says Joe Valenti of the Centre for American Progress, a left-leaning think-tank. In 2008 the Brookings Institution, another think-tank, estimated that such fees can accumulate to $40,000 over the career of a full-time worker.

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The high cost of being poor has two main implications. First, inequality is worse than income figures alone suggest. This is true even before non-financial disparities, such as the implications for health of living on a low income, are considered. Second, finding ways to reduce these costs, for instance by making it easier to claim the EITC without borrowing, or by changing the rules on overdraft fees (which at the moment are used to cross-subsidise banking for other customers), would be a cheap way of helping low earners—and bargains are rare for the poor.

Why are working class kids less likely to get elite jobs? They study too hard at college. →

When social scientists think about economic inequality and the ways in which elites are able to hand down advantages to their kids, they usually argue that it’s driven by obvious material differences, such as access to good schools. Your book argues that elite privilege can involve subtle benefits that help some students – and not others – get jobs at top ranked law firms, banks and management consultancies. What are these benefits?

LR – Whether intentionally or not, elite parents expose their children to different experiences and styles of interacting that are useful for getting ahead in society. Many of these are taken for granted in upper and upper-middle class circles, such as how to prepare a college application (and having cultivated the right types of accomplishments to impress admissions officers), how to network in a business setting in a way that seems natural, and how to develop rapport with teachers, interviewers, and other gatekeepers to get things you want from those in power. Basically, if we think of economic inequality as a sporting competition, elite parents give their kids a leg up, not only by being able to afford the equipment necessary to play but also by teaching them the rules of the game and giving them insider tips on how to win.

One big reason Congress ignores the poor: they don't vote →

People don't vote when they think their vote won't count, or when they don't have time or money to be able to make it to the polls. If we want America truly represented, we need to reform the voting and campaigning processes.

Already in America, the wealthy are more likely to donate to politicians, work on political campaigns, and be in regular contact with elected officials. In addition, politicians are far wealthier than ordinary citizens. These biases already conspire against the interests of poor people.

But deep differences in turnout based on income, age, and race only serve to further reduce the poor’s say. In the status quo, politicians don’t have incentives to listen to ordinary Americans, because it won’t cost them anything. That won’t change until turnout among nonwhite and poor voters increases. There are a number of ways that government can encourage voting: by fixing the Voting Rights Act, by enacting automatic voter registration, by repealing voter ID laws. All would give the poor more voice, and give policies they support a better chance of passage.

Prison: America’s Most Vile Export? →

Shameful.

...These similarities are not coincidental. They’re the result of a deadly game of global copycatting whose origins lie in the United States. Prison is not only one of America’s most catastrophic national experiments—it’s also among the country’s most vile exports.

The most glaring example of this dynamic involves the supermax model I explored in Brazil. America invented this model. In 1787, the Quakers experimented with solitary cells at the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia; in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary was opened nearby as an all-solitary facility, modeled after monasteries (those incarcerated covered their heads with monk-like hoods and were given Bibles to read). In 1983, a Marion, Illinois, prison became America’s first to adopt a 23-hour-a-day cell-isolation policy in its designated “control unit.” As the U.S. prison population soared and tough-on-crime rhetoric intensified over the next two decades, other states followed suit. California built Pelican Bay, where as of last year over 200 incarcerated men have been in solitary for over a decade; Colorado’s so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies, ADX Florence, is home to a man who has spent 32 years in solitary, mostly under a “no human contact” order that at times bars him from interacting even with prison officials. By 1999, there were 57 supermaxes in 34 U.S. states.

Today, iterations of the supermax exist in at least nine countries, from Australia to Mexico. In Brazil, where the 550,000-strong prison population is among the fastest-growing in the world, they come at a tremendous cost to taxpayers: I was told by the superintendent that the annual price per prisoner at Catanduvas is a whopping $120,000 a year, compared to an average of $36 per prisoner per year in Brazil’s impoverished state system, where the incarcerated are often left to feed and clothe themselves.

Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s →

The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans between 1971 and 2008 and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI.

They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.

Rational Drug Pricing →

Drug pricing has taken center stage in U.S. politics, and it's high time that it should. The soaring prices for drugs like Sovaldi ($1,000 a pill) and the recent hike of Deraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill after the supplier was bought by a shady hedge-fund manager, have caused white-hot fury in the public. Corporate lobbyists and their friends in the media spout free-market platitudes about why the sky-high prices are necessary to promote innovation. It's time for a serious understanding of the policy issues.

Drug pricing is not like the pricing of apples and oranges, clothing, or furniture that well and good should be left to the marketplace. There are two major reasons. First, the main cost of drug production is not the cost of manufacturing the tablet but the cost of producing the knowledge embedded in the tablet. Second, there is often a life-and-death stake in access to the drug, so society should take steps to ensure that the drug is affordable and accessible.